Ashes and Arsenic Read online

  Sofia had walked out on Domingo right before my last visit to their house, but that had been over a year ago. I hadn’t talked much with my brother since. Too busy working. But I’d assumed that Sofia must have returned at some point.

  Considering what I’d found at the First Bank of the Sierras and the missing Porsche, I was guessing that my assumption had been nothing more than delusion.

  I rearranged myself on Domingo’s front step, making sure my jacket was smooth, sunglasses were straight, hair was neat. On the off chance that Sofia was home, I wanted to look as professional as possible. She’d never liked me all that much. And if Domingo was home, I wanted him to know that this was business. I wouldn’t be suckered into letting him off easy just because he was my brother.

  Then I hit the doorbell.

  While I baked in the sun in front of his house, I watched the surrounding street for signs of trouble. There was nothing to see. Domingo and Sofia had picked a nice house in a nice neighborhood so that they could start a family. Somewhere kids could play outside without getting beaten up. A working neighborhood populated with good folks, like Domingo wanted to be.

  I hit the doorbell a couple more times and waited a total of ten minutes. I didn’t hear any movement inside the house.

  When there was no response after that, I pulled out a charm that I’d picked up from the OPA supply closet. Like I said, my spellcasting talents are limited. Luckily, OPA agents don’t have to have diverse skills to enjoy all the fruits of magic. We can just check them out of the crafting department.

  This charm was an advanced lock pick. It would open doors and dismantle most barrier spells simultaneously.

  I pressed that sucker against Domingo’s doorknob.

  Magic flared. I sneezed three times in a row, hard and fast. My head throbbed with every sneeze. The cold was getting worse.

  But Domingo’s lock clicked open.

  It was a little surprising that the OPA’s charm had worked. We didn’t have any witches as powerful as my brother on staff. If he wanted to keep us out, he would. Either he didn’t think I’d be coming for him, or he wasn’t afraid of what I could do to him.

  The door swung open easily under my hand. I tossed the now-empty charm into the bushes before heading inside. It was only about two degrees cooler in Domingo’s home.

  “Domingo,” I called. “You home?”

  As I expected, there was no response.

  An old answering machine sat on the table in the hallway. The kind that takes miniature tapes. Probably belonged in a museum. The light on the recorder was flashing, indicating that Domingo had messages.

  I pressed the button for his answering machine. The automatic voice said, “You have three new messages.”

  I’ll be honest: I didn’t feel even a twinge of guilt when I hit “play” to listen. Everything was fair game with Domingo. He’d read Ofelia’s diary out loud at Thanksgiving one year, letting our whole family hear that she’d been practicing kissing with her best friend.

  Yeah, he was that kind of brother.

  The answering machine beeped and the first message began to play. I took out my Steno pad to jot down notes. “Hey, Domingo. It’s Emcee. Your car’s done—you can come get it from the shop whenever you’re ready. I’ll be there until the race tonight.”

  Another beep. End of message.

  I wrote down Emcee’s name, just in case, then hit the “next” button.

  The second message was empty air. A little hissing, the sound of shuffling, a couple of annoyed grunts.

  That message had come from Pops. I’d sent him an iPhone for Christmas with the receipt and a note that said he could return it if it was too complicated. Pops was outmatched by the iPhone, but his pride was too much to admit that. He hadn’t returned it. But he also hadn’t figured his phone out, so I’d been getting blank messages almost every week for eight months. Apparently Domingo was too.

  I was nice enough to delete that one. Hey, what are brothers for?

  The third message was from a woman. “Where are you? It’s me. Pick up the phone.” She paused a long time before continuing. “Okay. Fine. Don’t forget the meeting with Scott Whyte on Friday.”

  That was it.

  “Sofia?” I muttered, replaying the third message. I didn’t recognize her voice. Couldn’t tell who it was.

  I searched for “Scott Whyte” on Google. A page for a marriage and family therapist turned up as the top link.

  Ouch. So that last message was definitely Sofia.

  I searched his house, first floor and second, and found nothing of interest. Every room was empty. Domingo’s bed was unmade, the fitted sheet piled at the foot of the mattress. The ashtray on the nightstand was overflowing. His TV remote was dusty, untouched, even though Domingo usually kept the TV on all night as he slept. He liked the noise.

  The whole place felt empty, all the way down to his kitchen and its empty refrigerator.

  “Where have you gone, man?” I asked, picking through the detritus pinned to his fridge. There were business cards, receipts, a calendar—nothing recent or interesting.

  Underneath one of his magnets, I found a hidden wallet-sized photo. The picture was Domingo somewhere dark, maybe a club, with a peroxide-blond sitting in his lap. She wasn’t particularly attractive. Kind of snub-nosed. She looked comfortable with my brother, though. Arms around his neck, head resting on his, big old smile.

  “Oh man, Domingo.” What was he thinking?

  A car drove past on the street. The kitchen window was halfway open, so I could hear its exhaust whining clearly.

  “It’s cracked open,” I muttered, running a finger along the screen. “Shit.”

  Doors and windows needed to be closed to effectively ward a house. No smart, self-respecting witch would leave without wards.

  My heart was beating a little faster as I headed down into Domingo’s basement. I flipped on the lights to find that he’d finished remodeling the basement. Domingo had only had the new floors and shelving the last time I’d visited; now the walls had nice wallpaper up top, some wainscoting, a new window treatment.

  Despite the completed remodel, the basement was otherwise empty. His sugar skulls were gone. So were the crystals he used to keep charging on those shelves.

  Domingo had emptied out his ritual space, left the windows open, and hadn’t erected any wards.

  My brother wasn’t coming home.

  Thump.

  The floorboards above my head shifted.

  Someone else was inside my brother’s house.

  My hand reflexively went to my belt, where I’d been wearing my Desert Eagle with increasing frequency. I hadn’t worn it that morning. Shouldn’t have needed it at the scene of a bank robbery long after the robbers were gone, shouldn’t have needed it against my brother.

  I held my breath and listened to the footsteps. The stride was short and the footsteps seemed to be circling the kitchen. Whoever was walking was pretty light, too.

  That wasn’t Domingo. He walked like a one-man herd of elephants. You’d think a guy who used to be a thief—who might have still been a thief—would have been light-footed, but magic had spoiled him. Didn’t need to be sneaky when people couldn’t see you.

  I searched Domingo’s basement for a weapon, just in case. Most of the boxes were empty. He’d taken all his ritual knives with him. Athames weren’t sharp anyway—not great for self-defense. But he’d left behind a giant quartz crystal, a jagged rock the size of both my fists pressed together. It was used for focusing magic during rituals. Didn’t really do anything special. Very low value.

  Great bludgeon.

  I hefted the crystal. It didn’t make me want to sneeze, so Domingo must have stripped the magic from it before leaving. All the better. If the intruder were a witch, she wouldn’t feel me coming.

  Domingo might have been heavy-footed, but I wasn’t. I evaded all the creaky spots on the stairs as I climbed back into the kitchen.

  Peering around the door,
I spotted a woman working at Domingo’s counter. The sink was running. Couldn’t tell what she was doing because her body blocked the view. She was a black woman with short curly hair, and fairly young judging by the skinny jeans and leather jacket. Her jewelry was adorned with tiny gold bells that jingled every time she moved.

  Damn. I couldn’t bludgeon a woman.

  “What are you doing in here?” I asked, stepping out of my hiding spot behind the door.

  She whirled, revealing an athame in one hand and a small ruby in the other. She was shocked to see me. Even more shocked than I was to see her.

  Then I realized.

  The footsteps had been circling the kitchen because she was casting a circle of power.

  I only had a second to take in the sight of it—the way that she had hidden the salt line around the perimeter of the room, the herbs glowing on the counter, the bowls of oil laid out in a line on the island. Then she activated the magic and I sneezed.

  My vision blurred. My skull rang like a gong.

  The witch spoke a word of power. It was a special word, a word that had no sound but came out of her mouth as pure magic. It activated the circle. Inflamed it with energy that lashed throughout Domingo’s entire house. That energy filled every wall, every stud, every grain of wood, and began to expand.

  The witch was trying to blow up my brother’s house—and with me inside of it.

  I clutched the quartz crystal so hard that my fingertips turned white. It was a focus crystal and I was inside the circle of power, just like the witch. I could refocus her power.

  Still sneezing, still defenseless, I reached out with my mind and dragged the witch’s power into the circle. I aimed it at the crystal.

  “What are you doing?” she cried.

  I could feel her trying to wrest control of the circle back from me. It was a battle of minds. Too bad—if it had been a physical fight, I would have won, easy. I was twice her height after all. But mind against mind, magic against magic, she was easily above my weight class.

  The crystal was on my side. It was big and hungry, wanting to fill its void with magic. I forced it to drink up every ounce of her power.

  “You’re insane!”

  Her feet pounded against the floorboards. I couldn’t see her, mind you. I was still sneezing too hard. But I felt the instant she crossed the salt line, breaking the circle. It snapped like a belt on an engine and everything fell apart.

  Now I had all this power in the crystal, and it wanted to go somewhere. If I’d let the witch finish her spell, it would have torn Domingo’s whole house down outside of the protective circle of power. Instead, I’d pulled the vibrating, deadly magic into the crystal.

  “Shit,” I said.

  I lost control of her spell.

  Magic blasted in from the edges of the shattered circle. Pebbles sprayed my body, shredded my suit.

  And the kitchen exploded.

  Spoiler alert: despite my best efforts, I didn’t die.

  But I was dazed. Somehow I’d ended up flat on my back on the kitchen floor staring at the ceiling, which now had a hole leading directly into Domingo’s bedroom. It was a great way to air out the cigarette smoke. Probably not as great for that whole structural integrity thing, though.

  I let myself rest there for a good five, maybe ten minutes. And by “let myself,” I mean that I didn’t have the strength to move a muscle beyond the ones it took to make pathetic whimpering noises.

  The longer I sat around in Domingo’s house, the likelier I was to be assassinated when that witch came back. Couldn’t stay there forever. Had to move.

  The fact that I got to my feet without falling over again suggested that I hadn’t broken anything too important. The crystal was shattered, though. Even a rock that size can only hold so much magic before cracking.

  I stumbled toward the door, pulling out my cell phone. I’d need the OPA to send over a cleanup team before the cops arrived—there was no way someone hadn’t called the cops. If we could wipe the magical mess before any mundanes saw it, we wouldn’t need to wipe any memories.

  Yet I didn’t dial.

  If I called the OPA to my brother’s address, I might as well turn him over to be arrested at the same time. I couldn’t risk linking him to the current investigation.

  I stood around thinking for too long.

  “What did you do?”

  I turned to find another woman standing behind me. The French doors leading to the back yard were open. She’d come through them silently, or else my ears were still ringing too loudly from the explosion for me to have heard her.

  I barely caught a glimpse of this new woman. All I saw was a flash of blond hair, a narrow face, a pig nose. Looked familiar. It wasn’t the witch who’d tried to blow up the house, though.

  Then she blew on her palm, blasting dust into my face.

  I passed out before her magic could even make me sneeze.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  I WOKE UP IN the trunk of a car.

  It was easy to figure out where I was even though it was too dark to see anything. The space was too cramped for me to stretch out and there were familiar road noises all around me. The driver was blasting pop music, making my bones pulse with muffled bass.

  My options were either a felt-lined casket being propelled by a four-cylinder engine or a trunk.

  I’d been abducted once or twice, but never stuffed in the back of a car. Just goes to show that there really is a first time for everything.

  My hands weren’t tied, so as soon as my head cleared of the magical fog that had sucked me under, I started running my hands over the inside of the trunk’s door. If it was a recent car, it would have to have a release lever. Mandatory safety feature. But I couldn’t find one.

  Abductions like this were typically personal, so it seemed that I’d managed to piss someone off. It wasn’t hard to imagine. I worked a job that didn’t make me popular among the city’s preternatural crowd, so it could have been anyone.

  Luckily, magic dust lady had been blue-eyed. That meant she probably wasn’t a succubus—which usually had black eyes—so she probably wasn’t working for the incubus mafia, also known as the Silver Needles. If I’d gotten abducted by those assholes, I’d be looking forward to having a really bad day.

  But hey, a blue-eyed lady. I’d bet she was a witch trying to get revenge for an earlier arrest. Maybe an ex-girlfriend seeking retribution for Black Jack? Someone I’d humiliated when I interrupted their spell, like the Pernicious Thirteen?

  Didn’t really matter. I’d have to escape first and figure out my abductor later.

  The car was moving slow. Probably going roughly twenty-five miles per hour, possibly in a residential zone. That was good—if we’d been going freeway speeds, I wouldn’t have been able to jump out without killing myself.

  I took a quick inventory. Jacket was gone, pockets empty. Didn’t have any of the OPA’s charms left. That was bad. Worse, I hadn’t been able to down more than one strength poultice that morning because my allergies were acting up. I had no magic, none of my usual strength, and a head cold weighing me down.

  Looked like I would have to escape using my brains.

  I banged on the trunk a few times, but my fists didn’t make as much noise as I wanted. I’d been hoping to make such a ruckus that they’d stop the car and try to silence me, but they probably couldn’t even hear me over Lady Gaga blaring at full volume. I stopped to search for something louder. A tire iron, maybe.

  Instead, my fingers came across a loop of stiff fabric. I toyed with it, tracing the shape, trying to visualize what it would look like if it were brighter. The loop was attached to the wall separating me from the passenger compartment.

  “No way,” I said.

  They wouldn’t have removed the emergency lever and left a way to drop the second row of seats…would they?

  One way to find out.

  I yanked on the loop, then pushed on the back of the seats.

  They lowered. The music
got louder. Light flooded the trunk. I winced at it, struggling to focus through the sudden brightness.

  I’d been wrong about being in a residential neighborhood. There were trees outside of the windows. Lots of trees. Maybe in the San Gabriel Mountains. The blond woman who’d dusted me was driving, and there was a male in the front passenger’s seat. Some guy with short red hair and glasses.

  Dropping the seats hadn’t made enough noise to catch their attention, either. The road was becoming winding enough that they were both looking intently through the windshield.

  I eased into the passenger compartment. It was hard to be quiet when the shifting car kept tossing me from side to side. But my captors were having a conversation too quiet for me to hear over the pop music; if I couldn’t hear them, then they probably couldn’t hear me, either.

  Undetected, I made a quick search of the back seat. I’d hoped that the kidnappers might be the type of people to keep guns in their car, but there weren’t any weapons at all. Not even a tire iron or a toolkit with a big, heavy wrench.

  But there was some trash on the floor of the back seat, including an empty beer bottle.

  My salvation.

  The mouth was small and round. Conveniently similar to the muzzle of a gun. And the best weapon is the one you never have to fire.

  I picked it up as I slipped forward, keeping myself small, trying to avoid motion in the rearview mirror.

  “Did you text him yet?” the driver asked. Now that I was right behind their seats, I could make out their voices over the music.

  “No, I can’t. No reception,” the passenger said.

  “Why didn’t you text him a few miles back? You know there’s no reception up here.”

  “I forgot, okay?”

  I pressed the bottle into the passenger’s side between the door and chair, where he wouldn’t be able to see it.

  The effect was immediate. The man shouted, tried to twist away from me. His shout alerted the woman, and the car swerved when she twisted in her seat to look for me. “Oh, holy shit!” She turned back to the road immediately, but moved the rearview mirror so she could watch me.