Crime Spells

Pike shrugged. “Keep it. At least we’ll know where they’ll be: right behind us.” Then he gave me a sideways glance. “You might be useful after all, Beckstrom.”

Comforting. I tucked the photo in my pocket and climbed into the cab. I wanted to know what Pike knew. Or at least enough of it to keep myself alive.

I half expected his truck to be loaded with secret military gear, but I didn’t see anything unusual, unless you counted the bobble-headed dog on his dash.

“Cute.”

“Grandkid gave it to me.”

He started the car and headed out of the parking lot, which was fine with me. I had no idea Pike had a family. For that matter, I had no idea he had a life except for Hounding. Hounds tend to be loners-the kind of people who work nights and dull the pain of using magic with pills, needles, and booze. Not exactly white picket fence compatible. Still, watching Pike in the sliding light from the street gave me a sort of morbid hope. He was not a young man, and he seemed to be holding up okay.

“How long you been Hounding Portland?” he asked.

“About a year.”

“Before that?”

“College. Don’t you read the headlines? Billionaire Daniel Beckstrom’s Daughter Drops Out of Harvard.”

He glanced at me. He was not amused.

“Why did you come back here?”

That was a question I’d asked myself almost every day for a year. Maybe because Portland and the Northwest were familiar to me. Home. Or maybe because I wanted to succeed on my own terms, right under my father’s nose.

Yeah. Mostly the second thing.

“Family ties,” I said. Then, before he could ask anything else: “Who’s looking for me, what does it have to do with Lulu and Rheesha, and where the hell are we going?”

“Do you know Lon Trager?”

“No.”

“High-end dealer. Blood magic mostly. Owns a place down Burnside. Likes to make the rich come begging him for it.” He turned a corner and we were heading down Burnside. About every other streetlight worked, and there were an awful lot of people leaning against buildings for this late at night.

Pike turned down a side street and into the neighborhood a bit. He parked and turned off the truck engine.

“You any good at lying, Allie?”

“No,” I lied.

That almost got a smile out of him.

“Good. Here’s what you’re going to say. You want to see Trager. Tell them your name-they’ll know who you are, because they’re the kind of people who do read headlines.”

“Wait. I am not going into the office, drug den, or whatever the hell it is, of a known Blood magic dealer. I wanted out of this, remember? I wanted to lie low.”

Pike just sat there and stared at me. Then, in a voice devoid of inflection:

“The cops think she’s a runaway. There’s no evidence of kidnapping. None. There’re no lines of magic to sniff down. But I know she’s in there. And you know why I’m not going in after her? Trager and I have history. Bad history. For all I know, she’s already dead. It’s been two weeks. Two weeks.” He stopped as a car passed by. I had the strangest feeling he wasn’t talking to me, that he was looking across the cab of his truck and staring down demons I could not imagine.

“I can’t get in there short of blowing up the building,” he finally said. “There’s no proof. No evidence. The cops won’t push for a search warrant on a teenage runaway. But you fit Trager’s clientele.” He nodded. “Rich, young, looking for a good time. You can walk right in there. And the best thing? Trager doesn’t know you’re a Hound. If the girl, if Rheesha’s in there, you’ll know. You can get her out.”

Okay, this had just gone way out into holy-shit crazyville territory.

“Listen Pike. I’m not a cop, a private detective, or a secret agent. I have no military training. I’m just a Hound. I can track magic better than anyone out there, but I have no idea how to rescue kidnapped girls. I don’t even know how to shoot a gun.”

That got through to him. He blinked, and his eyes cleared. I knew he was looking at me. Right at me.

“Rheesha’s my granddaughter.”

Oh, fuck.

My mind started working through all the things that one statement meant.

“Lulu?” I asked.

“Her half-sister. She’s-” He took a deep breath and let it out loudly. “She’s not the girl she was before the drugs and Blood magic. I think she sold Rheesha for her debt, for her fix. She doesn’t know I suspect her. I haven’t told the cops. Yet. I can’t-I just can’t. Her mother is all I have.” He laughed, a raw bark that sounded more like a sob. “You still want to be a Hound, Allie? Want to become a sorry son of a bitch who’s too afraid to save his own granddaughter?”

“What does Rheesha smell like?”

“What?”

“Does she smell anything like you? Like Lulu? Do you know what the last spell was that she cast? What are her favorite spells? Does she have any pets? Has she ever touched this picture?”

Pike’s eyebrows arched up, and he gave me one respectful nod. He was going to owe me a lot more than that for Hounding his granddaughter. Still, the questions and my all-business, no-bullshit attitude seemed to pull him out of what I feared was a suicidal spin.

That was another way Hounds died young. One of the easiest ways.

He took five minutes telling me what I needed to know, the perfume, her pets (snakes), and the spells she most used.

“I’m not going to get her out,” I said, “but I’ll try to find her and get out as soon as I can. If she’s in there, we’ll call the police. I’ll tell them what I know, and I’ll try to keep Lulu out of it. We’ll let the law take over from there.”

Pike nodded. “She was right about you,” he said.

“Who?”

“Mama.”

Sweet hells, who wasn’t trying to make me Hound this girl? I decided to get angry at Mama for selling me out later.

“Tell me about it when I come back.”

I left the photo on the seat of the car and headed down the street toward Trager’s address. After about fifteen minutes, I was right in Trager’s backyard. If any of his people had brains, they’d come out and escort me to their boss.

“What’s a lovely lady like yourself doing out alone tonight?” A man appeared out of the building’s corner shadow and took a few steps toward me. He was dressed in a suit and had one of those cell phone things sticking off of his ear.

“I’m looking for Trager. Is his place down this way?” Here’s one of the things I didn’t think Pike, or really anyone, knew about my family line. We are very, very good at Influence. With just the slightest nudge of magic, we can pretty much make people want to do what we tell them to do. And this guy was not immune. I hated using it, because it wrecked hell with a person’s free will, but, hey, there could be an almost-dead girl in there who needed my help.

Suit smiled, and the streetlight caught a glint of gold off his incisor. “Yes, it is. Who may I say is calling?”

“Allison Beckstrom. I’d like to see him now. Take me inside.”

“Of course. Right this way.”

Bingo.

I gave him what I hoped was a bright smile. Inside I was pretty terrified. I wasn’t kidding when I told Pike I didn’t own a gun, and it took more than Influence to dodge a bullet.

Note to self: If I survive this, take a martial arts class and go to the shooting range.

The walk wasn’t far-just two more doors down. Okay, I don’t know what I was expecting-a seedy room, people lying around in their own filth, maybe. Bad lighting at least. But the room looked like a fine restaurant. White linen tables all arranged behind silk privacy screens were tastefully up-lighted to give off pastel tones of gold and amber and plum. It looked trendy, expensive as hell, and stank of cherries, cherries, cherries.

“Very nice,” I said. I was starting to sweat under the strain of Influencing Suit. He wasn’t resisting, but I think deep down, he knew he was screwed. “I’d like to see the girl named Rheesha Miller. Take me to her.” I dug magic out of the ground and threw it behind my words. Unlike other spells, I could use Influence without a mantra and without tracing the glyph for it with my fingers. But it still took effort, still took magic, still took calm and concentration.