I hit the night air-humid and too hot for a Northwest summer-and headed into the city at a brisk walk. Evening was just coming on. Streetlights sputtered to life and cast an orange glow that only made the night feel hotter. I wanted some distance, like maybe half a city, between Lulu and me. I cut across a few streets, mostly to make sure no one was following, and ducked into a bar to use the bathroom. Only there, with the bathroom door closed, the overhead fan humming, and the lock set, did I pull out the photo.
It was not a dog in the photo, it was a woman. Maybe twenty years old with short, dark curly hair and a white, white smile against her maple-honey skin. She wore a t-shirt, looked as if she should be in college and wasn"t, and had Lulu"s eyes.
A sister maybe. Too old to be a daughter. She might be the roommate Lulu thought kidnapped the dog. But Lulu had said something about a man, about "he" already telling me something.
Let her be the roommate, let her be the roomate. I turned the picture over. Written on the back, in very small, very neat handwriting was a name: Rheesha Miller, her age: fifteen, and the last place she"d been seen: at a convenience store on Burnside.
A chill ran down my neck even though it was hotter in the bathroom than it had been outside. I"d seen this girl"s picture on the news. Missing person, no leads. Disappeared in broad daylight. One minute she was on the street. The next, she went into the store and never came out. The owners, an elderly Asian couple, hadn"t seen her come in, nor was there any trace of her on the store"s security camera. Strange, to be sure, but the Hounds who freelance for the police hadn"t picked up any traces of magical wrongdoing. It was a runaway or a kidnapping, straight up, no magic.
There was nothing I could do about this. Nothing.
I committed her face to memory, just in case, then tore the edge of the picture, intending to flush it down the toilet. A chemical and fertilizer smell rose up from the photo. I held very still. There was a trip spell on the photo. Maybe it was for tracking where the photo went. Maybe it was supposed to make sure the photo couldn"t be damaged. Or maybe it was set to trigger an explosion spell. d.a.m.n, d.a.m.n, d.a.m.n. I knew I shouldn"t have taken the photo. I knew I shouldn"t have gotten involved in this mess.
I took a deep breath and tried to think calm thoughts, because magic is a b.i.t.c.h and you can"t cast it when you"re angry. I whispered a mantra until I calmed down a little. Then, while carefully holding the photo in my left hand, I drew a quick Disburs.e.m.e.nt spell with my right. I"d have a migraine in a day or two, but at least I"d be alive. I drew upon the magic stored deep in the ground below the building and traced two spells, Sight and Smell.
Magic flowed into the forms I gave it, and my vision shifted. Like turning on a single light in a dark room, I could now see the traceries of spent magic and old spells hanging like graffiti in the air. And since I was a Hound, and good at it, I could smell even more than I could see: the too-sweet cherry stink of Blood magic mixed with drugs, the slightest hint of Lulu"s vanilla perfume, and something else-a subtle spell that stank of hickory and smoke.
I leaned forward until my lips were almost touching the photo and inhaled. I got the taste of the spell on the back of my throat, the smell of it deep in my sinuses. Not an explosive. A tracker. Someone had gone through an awful lot of trouble to know exactly where this photo was going-or maybe where I was going. This was a complicated spell. One that took a hard toll on the caster. And I knew the signature of the man who put it there. A Hound named Marty Pike. He freelanced mostly for the cops. I was pretty sure he was ex-Marine.
I let go of Sight and Smell, and the room settled back to normal. Except for the fact that I was sitting in the bathroom stall of a bar being tailed by an Hound who worked for the police, I wasn"t in any danger, hadn"t done anything wrong, and could still back out of this job by flushing the photo down the commode.
But here"s the thing. Lulu had said "he." And right this minute, I"d take bets that "he" meant Pike. There hadn"t been any real reason for Lulu to put the quiet on our conversation back at Mama"s, there hadn"t been anyone but a few regulars at the tables. If Pike thought she was going behind his back and hiring a second opinion on her sister"s disappearance, then I could see her wanting to keep it quiet. Cop Hounds don"t much like it when freelancers take a p.i.s.s in their sandbox. h.e.l.l, Cop Hounds don"t much like freelancers, period.
So I could either believe that Pike didn"t want Lulu going behind his back, or maybe that he was counting on her to do just that. To hand off the picture to some sorry sucker-say me, for example-and that I"d... what? Find something he hadn"t or couldn"t find? Come up empty-handed? That didn"t make any sense.
Well, screw this. I was not going to be used for anyone"s patsy. I kept the photo and headed out into the bar. Tracking spells don"t work over great distances, so Pike should be close by. I scanned the crowd, a humorless bunch of hard drinkers who were watching the game and ignoring everything else. It was a small enough place there wasn"t anywhere for Pike to hide.
Plus, I couldn"t smell him.
Outside then. I made a point of leaving the door open nice and wide and stood there for a couple of extra seconds, just so he"d know I knew he was following me. Sure enough, the familiar short and shaved figure of Pike emerged from the shadows between a couple of parked trucks and started across the parking lot toward me. I"d heard from someone down at the city that the cops had nicknamed him Mouse. That was before his first case with the police. It was a high profile situation, and b.l.o.o.d.y. He saved a couple of guys on the force and did some other medal-worthy things that fell into the above-and-beyond-the-call category. Ever since then, the cops just called him Pike.
I still couldn"t smell him-he"d been standing upwind, the clever boy.
I walked down two steps and out into the parking lot, my heels making a solid, staccato sound.
"Allie." His voice was low and carried the hint of a prior life spent in the south. His hair was gray, buzzed, and in better light his eyes might be brown instead of black. The lines on his face made him look angry without even trying. This close, I could smell his aftershave-something with a h.e.l.luva lot of hickory overtones.
"Pike. You lose something?" I held the picture out for him.
He was wearing a long-sleeved b.u.t.ton-down shirt, which seemed odd in the heat of the night. Both his hands were in the front pockets of his jeans, and he did not move to touch the photo.
"Lulu talk to you?" he asked.
"You know the answer to that."
"No, I don"t. I haven"t seen or heard from her in three days."
Wasn"t that interesting? If he didn"t know where Lulu was, then he couldn"t have been the one who put the tracker on the photo. But that spell had his signature on it. You can"t fake a magical signature. It"s just like handwriting. Every caster has his or her own unique style.
And if he had put the spell on the photo, then he knew where Lulu was. He could have followed her around twenty-four seven and still had time for an ice cream cone. Not that Pike looked like the type who ate frozen desserts.
I found myself not so much caring what part Pike played in this but why the h.e.l.l the girl, Rheesha, hadn"t been found yet.
"What"s going on with this girl?" I asked.
"Did Lulu hire you to find her?"
"No."
"She was just handing out pictures to strangers when you happened by?"
"Has anyone ever told you you suck at sarcasm?"
"No."
Yeah, that was probably true. "You know what?" I said, "I don"t have to tell you anything, but here"s the truth. I"m out. Good luck finding Lulu and Rheesha. I want nothing to do with it." I held the photo out for him again. He kept his hands firmly in his pockets.
"It"s too late for that," he said.
"For what?"
"Backing out. You"re a part of this, Beckstrom."
"Really? Since when?"
"Since you touched that photo. They"re looking for you now. And they"ll find you."
Then the b.a.s.t.a.r.d turned around and started walking away.
Oh, no. h.e.l.ls no. He was not going to leave me with some cryptic statement and fade to black. I caught up with him. "You know I haven"t ever gotten in your way-on a job or any other time."
"So?"
"So level with me. Tell me who"s looking for me. Tell me why. I know how to lie low. This is your job, Pike. I don"t want anything to do with it."
He stopped next to a beat up Ford truck and opened the pa.s.senger door. "Get in. We"ll talk."
"What about..." I held up the photo.
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 h.e.l.l 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 h.e.l.l 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 pa.s.sed 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-s.h.i.t 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, f.u.c.k.
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 b.i.t.c.h 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-bulls.h.i.t att.i.tude 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 h.e.l.ls, 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 h.e.l.l 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 cla.s.s and go to the shooting range.