Trickster (9 page)

I thought about a cigarette. I had a crumpled pack in my jacket pocket, but I thought in my current dry condition a single cigarette might make me pass out. I pulled the pack out anyway and shook one out to buy time. I didn’t have a light, and waggled it between my dry lips for a moment, giving Hiram back his blank stare.

“I can’t let that happen, Hiram.”

For a moment, everything in the room was still and silent as we stared at each other, and then he shrugged, turning away. “You don’t have a choice in this, Mr. Vonnegan. I am going to collect her now. If you think you can stop me, please do. But I won’t fight you unprovoked. You’re still my apprentice, after all.”

There were consequences for going against the oath of
urtuku
. All of them theoretical for me, so far. Taking on a
gasam
bound you to your master. In one way, this was tradition: Magicians had a loose set of rules. Easily forgotten when convenient, but in general, once you were bound to a
gasam,
no one else would teach you. You could seek a new master, and they’d take one look at you, see the binding, and refuse. It was just common courtesy. In another way, this was a function of the oath: I could never stray too far from Hiram. If I tried to leave the city, I would suffer for it. Fever, convulsions, coma—eventually death, if he wished.

I was tied to the fat thief until he freed me. Or until one of us died. And Hiram was still, after all these years, so angry with me, I had little hope he would ever let me go.

He turned for the bathroom. Mags, who’d been ping-ponging his head back and forth between us, trying to keep up with what was happening, leaped for the old man. Tried to envelop him in a bear hug, simply stop him from leaving the room. Mags thought of Hiram as his grandfather, and wouldn’t hurt him on purpose.

The second Mags moved, Hiram brought his hand out of his pocket, straight-razor extended, and in a well-practiced move slashed it down across his own palm, a superficial, wet wound. Blood welled up and Hiram was hissing out a spell as he spun away, and suddenly Mags froze in mid-leap, one foot the only part of him still touching the floor. Without a sound he toppled over, still holding the leaping position.

The spell would last only a half hour or so, and Mags’d come out of it without any permanent damage. Hiram and I locked eyes for a moment, and then he spun and was out the door. I ran after him, cursing. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do—I didn’t have enough strength to start throwing spells at Hiram Bosch, and Hiram had fewer scruples than me. And played dirtier.

“Dammit, Hiram!” I shouted as I chased him down the hall. “I came here for
help
!”

“You ungrateful shit, I
am
helping you!” he shouted
back, stopping in front of the bathroom door. He reached forward with his bloodied hand and turned the knob, pushing the door inward . . . and then stood there.

I almost crashed into him, and then turned to look in through the doorway.

The window was open, a classic image of the drapes fluttering in the chill wind blowing in. The tub gleamed with the shiny kind of clean only a constant, unhealthy obsession could purchase, and the only sign that anything had happened in here at all was the slick of blood Hiram had left in the sink.

She was gone.

To my surprise, the old man put his arm around me. He smelled like pipe smoke and liquor. “Well, my boy—the girl has
spirit,
doesn’t she? Not my best work, perhaps, but I haven’t had someone shrug off one of my spells that easily in
years
.” He sounded admiring. “And she’s killed us all!”

I stared at the window and thought of her, bound and gagged, kicking and screaming, her eyes flashing. Thought of her calm and quiet, answering our questions. Thought of the runes all over her body.

And I smiled.

Keep running,
I thought.
Don’t look back.

I
inspected the brown paper bag Mags had left on the dresser and frowned. “Jesus, Mags,” I said over my shoulder. “All you bought was liquor. Liquor,” I added wearily, “is not
groceries
.”

He didn’t say anything. Mags was in a pissy mood because we’d been cooped up in the motel for three days now, smelling each other’s farts and acting like sunshine burned. I pulled the bottles from the bag and inspected them, wondering what the nutritional value of cheap booze was, how long we had before we turned yellow and our teeth fell out.

“That was our last forty bucks,” he said from the bed. “I didn’t want to waste it on food.”

I closed my eyes and started twisting the cap on the off-brand bourbon he’d brought in. Going underground wasn’t easy. It sounded easy, but cash was a dying breed and the world that mattered at the moment was wide-awake watching out for assholes like
us. Cal Amir and his boss didn’t need electronic receipts and surveillance cameras to find us. Mika Renar would slit a half dozen throats and fucking
materialize
in the room, thunderbolts in her withered old hands. Hiram had made fun of me for even suggesting going into hiding.

“My boy,” he said, shaking his head, “if your name comes up connected to this, where will you hide that an
enustari
cannot find?”

This encouraging bit of mentoring had occurred while we were dumping the body of the Skinny Fuck, whose name I still didn’t know. No one
thought
their names. I had a fading impression of him, his inner monologue, everything that had been him, but he’d never once thought his own fucking name. Everyone was
I
in their heads. We’d put him in the river and Hiram had bled for thirty seconds, muttering a spell that would keep the body in the dark water forever. I’d swayed next to him. ready to pass out, wishing for a cigarette.

I almost hadn’t noticed Hiram palming the
udug
. I didn’t need to see it; Hiram stole everything.

“Mr. Vonnegan, if Mika Renar wishes to find you, she will find you. You should be thinking about how to appease her.” Hiram had turned to me, wrapping his hand delicately in a bandage, his white beard looking silver in the moonlight. “Find the girl. Bring her to Renar, or her apprentice. Beg forgiveness, claim ignorance. Everyone will believe you.”

The fucking bastard, with his twinkling eyes.
He’d
never forgive me.

I took a long swig from the bottle Mags had brought. It was terrible. Wincing, I choked it down, and it bloomed into a believable spot of warmth in my belly. I turned and leaned against the dresser, bottle in hand, and looked at Mags. He was stretched out on the musty floral bedspread, his suit tight and wrinkled on him like a snakeskin about to slough off, his stocking feet wiggling in the air. He jabbed at the remote control every three or four seconds, grimacing at each new offering. He looked about thirty seconds away from hurling the remote at the TV. Which meant he was about an hour and thirty seconds away from telling me, in a singsongy, tiny voice, that he wished there was another TV to watch.

I took another swig.

It was time to go. It was time to make an excuse, put on my shoes, steal a towel from the bathroom, and walk out into the night and leave Mags behind. Pitr wasn’t bright, and I’d been kidding myself that I’d been taking care of him all these years. Here we were, broke again, on the run. We had nothing to show for anything, and it was all my fault. The worst part was how easy it would be. I could wait for Mags to fall asleep, or just tell him I was going out for a smoke. Step out, crack a scab and cast a quick Glamour, make everyone’s eye skip over me, and just walk away. He’d be better off without me.

I brought the bottle into the bathroom and closed the flimsy wooden door behind me. I was, as usual, wearing everything I owned. I set the bottle on the
back rim of the sink and leaned forward, staring at myself. Sunken eyes, limp, greasy black hair, an uneven, sallow sort of face with a crust of beard. I looked like someone who’d lift your wallet and cry if you caught him. I was twenty-nine and I’d had Mags for eight years, and here we were. All the fucking power of the universe at my fingertips and nothing to do.

The bathroom was small and cramped, crowded with mildewed tiles that looked like they were sliding off the walls—salmon-colored in a way that was essentially
not
salmon but something else entirely—and a popcorn ceiling that would never, could never feel clean no matter what you did to it. People had died in the tub, I was sure of it. A layer of human grease left behind, invisible but detectable nonetheless. I picked up the bottle and watched myself take another swig. The Vonnegans had always been good drinkers. We took to it naturally.

I was about to turn and inspect the thin, scratchy towels for the best one to steal when I heard the hollow knock at the door.

A second later, the squeal of hinges and Mags framed in the bathroom doorway, silent in his socks. “Lem?” A squeaky whisper, Mags like a startled cat.

I took the bottle with me back out into the room and put a hand on Mags’s shoulder for a second, nodding, already feeling a little light-headed from the liquor; we’d last eaten in the morning, and I was starved. I felt strangely unconcerned and light as I crossed to the door. I had, after all, nothing much left to lose.
I didn’t even have much blood left to lose. Another short Cantrip would put me in the hospital. A spell of any heft—of any
use—
would kill me. As I paused at the door of the room, I thought,
Look around, take it in. This is Bottom. There is freedom in Bottom.
Then I twisted the knob, and pulled the door inward, and stood blinking for a moment at Calvin Amir.

And there it was: the New Bottom.

“Mr. Vonnegan!” he boomed. “You are a hard man to find.”

I gave him an eyebrow. “Not hard enough.”

He smiled. His smile was sunshine. It appeared instantly and made me happier for having seen it. Cal Amir was the most handsome man I’d ever seen, with clear, smooth skin the color of creamed coffee, a pleasant, squarish face that was masculine yet finely etched, with just the right level of blue shadow on his cheeks. His hair was dark with a streak of gray on one side, the imperfection sanding him down to a smooth finish. His eyes were blue and seemed to reflect all the available light back at me. He was also, I thought conservatively, wearing more money on his back than I’d ever had in my hands in my entire life.

He spread his gloved hands. “May I come in?”

I took a deep breath. “Could I stop you?” I said, stepping aside.

He shrugged a little as he stepped in, tugging his gloves off. I glanced down and saw his hands. They were perfect. Smooth, manicured. Not a scratch on them.

“I’ve come alone,” he said, meaning no Bleeder.
Meaning he hadn’t come ready to burn the place to the ground or make a fucking giant roach grow inside us that would eat its way out. It was a friendly call.

Which also let him avoid any attention, any publicity. An
enustari
could kill with a few words, could disappear, could make themselves fly—but it took time, and blood. It took a Bleeder producing a blade, opening a vein. It took a recitation, with perfect pronunciation and grammar. Even an
enustari
preferred not to have police, investigations, vendettas. We’d survived as a species because we were roaches. We stayed out of the light. Even an Archmage could be buried if enough cops came after them.

“Mr. Mageshkumar,” Amir said cheerfully. “Good to see you again.”

Mags was pressed up against the wall to the right of the bathroom door, his hands in his pockets as deep as he could push them. It was an old habit of his, from the orphanage, hiding the cuts. He went back to it whenever he was afraid.

Amir walked in easy, looking the place over like we were trying to sell it to him. He stopped at the dresser and examined the bottles for a moment, turning back to me with a grin.

“Celebrating?” He laughed. “Perhaps not.” He wagged a finger at me. “You know why I’m here?”

I nodded. The door was still hanging open, but moving felt impossible. I just stared at Amir. He was mesmerizing.

“Good. Come on, then. We’re already late.”

I nodded again, then frowned. “Late for what?”

He regarded me for an uncomfortable moment. “For your appointment with Ms. Renar.” He looked me up and down. “Do you have a shaving kit?”

•   •   •

The leather seats made my skin crawl. The moment he’d shut the door, the world had disappeared, and it was just the expensive hum of the engine and low music, something classical, all strings and timpani. It was so low I might have been imagining it. Amir had put his gloves back on to drive, which somehow made perfect sense.

Without Mags at my side, breathing in my ear, I felt exposed. And lonely.

“Are you afraid?” he asked.

I nodded immediately. Magicians were not
good
people. “Yes.”

“That is well. It will make the interview go more smoothly.” I saw him turn to look at me briefly. “Why hasn’t Bosch released you as his apprentice? Even a mediocrity like Bosch would have more self-respect, I think.”