42.
Never underestimate people’s willingness to accept an obvious lie if it means they don’t have to think or work too hard. How had Earl Harding managed to slip his cuffs, overpower a gunman, steal his rifle, and kill at least six assailants without being shot? Because he was a goddamn hero, that’s why. Why did two of the bodies have .357 rounds in them, when the rifles were loaded with steel-cased 7.62? Silly question. You might as well ask why one of the corpses had his throat torn out and another was found with his chest ripped open, his shattered ribs bent outward like the bars of a broken cage.
Or better yet, don’t ask at all. Especially when the police commissioner, the mayor, and six hostages all recited the same story. Anyone who poked around beyond that would get a very firm, very brusque phone call from city hall. At the end of the day, one thing was clear: people who wanted a long and happy career didn’t ask questions, and people who toed the line got a nice, discreet bonus with their next paycheck.
My phone didn’t ring that night. Or the next day, or the next night. Teddy had just seen some impossible things, and he wasn’t ready to talk about it. I didn’t call him because…I want to say I don’t know why, but that’s not true. It was the realization that I’d managed to endanger his life just by brushing up against it.
We’d been out of each other’s worlds for over twenty years, and the day after our reunion, I put him on the Network’s radar. Now they knew I had blood in town, they knew he was leverage, and they’d shown they weren’t afraid to use him. They’d do it again if I gave them the chance.
So I couldn’t give them the chance.
The first thing I did was call up some of my Commission buddies and swap a few favors. From that moment forward, Teddy and his family were under a discreet twenty-four-hour watch by hard-eyed guardian angels with guns. I couldn’t kid myself into thinking that would be enough. If I wanted to keep Teddy clear of the Network, I had to go after them head-on. Tear the whole thing down, or at least convince them that crossing me was the most expensive mistake they could ever make.
Two days later, I got a chance to send a message. It came courtesy of Pixie, who had been tearing into Elmer Donaghy’s computer with a pair of tweezers and a microscope.
“Still haven’t cracked their messaging protocol,” she told me, “but I’m getting closer. Need more samples. I did get something, though. Right before he left his hideout, Elmer was doing some online banking. He had a discretionary account, tied to the waste-management company.”
I leaned in over her shoulder and nodded my admiration. “If it leads us to another Network front, we might just get that data you need.”
“Oh, it led somewhere, all right.”
She rattled a few keys, showed me what she’d found, and a light clicked on.
* * *
“Sir? Sir, you can’t go in there. Sir?”
I ignored Harding’s receptionist and pushed my way into his office with a smile. He had a wall of awards, a folded flag under glass and another standing proud in the corner, and a credenza littered with photographs of him glad-handing every celebrity he’d ever coordinated a security detail for. He pushed himself up from behind his cluttered desk, scowling at me.
“I just want to shake the hand of a hero,” I said. “You know this man saved my life? He’s a national treasure.”
“It’s fine, Dottie.” Harding waved her back. “He can come in. Briefly.”
The door swung shut behind me. He took his seat. We didn’t shake hands.
“I don’t know what kind of deal you’ve got going on with the mayor,” he told me, “and I don’t want to know, but get this straight: do not show your face around here. The last thing I need is anyone seeing us together.”
“Sure,” I said. “Under present circumstances, especially.”
His brow furrowed. “Present circumstances?”
“You really are a hero. I hear you’ve been getting phone calls. Today wants to have you on the show. Might even get a five-minute spot on Jimmy Kimmel if you play your cards right.”
His smile was more of a smirk. Tiny and mean.
“Well, I did fight off a gang of terrorists and save the day. Hell, I’ve got people asking about the movie rights. Might have to hire an agent.”
“You know, it’s funny,” I said. “In the aftermath, once the smoke settled, I started thinking. And there was one thing, one…little detail that just didn’t ring right. You ever speak to a man named Mr. Smith? He’s a fixer for the Network.”
“Never heard of him,” Harding said. The sudden shift in his eyes told me something different.
“He’s dead now, so I can’t introduce you. But, see, when he told me I could trade my life for my brother’s, I asked him about trading for you and Mayor Seabrook too. And he told me that Seabrook was going to die, nonnegotiable.”
“Not surprised,” he grunted. “These people are crazy.”
“The odd thing is,” I said, “he didn’t mention you at all. Then this morning, one of my people found a paper trail originating in a Network-linked bank account. Ten payments over the last three months, four thousand dollars each time, to a newly formed political action committee.”
I leaned in and laid my hands on the edge of his desk.
“The Committee to Elect Mayor Harding,” I said.
His head tried to bury itself in his neck, and his eyes landed anywhere but on me.
“Can name a PAC anything you goddamn want,” he said. “Sounds like they’re trying to set me up.”
“Come on, Earl. Give it up. You gave the order to call away the police convoy. You were in on the entire plan. And who could blame you? You’ve got your sights on the throne, or maybe it’s just a step stool to even bigger ambitions, but we both know Seabrook’s welded to her seat. With her polling numbers, it’d take one of two things to get her out of office and out of your way: a massive scandal or a convenient death.”
He held his stubborn silence until it crumbled in his hands. I waited, patient as a spider.
“You want to know what’s funny?” he asked me. “This worked out even better than it was supposed to. Plan was, Seabrook would eat a bullet and I’d get some public sympathy points for losing my dear, sweet friend and colleague. Now? You said it: I’m a hero. Hell, I can probably run against her and win clean, if I keep my momentum.”
“You can,” I said, “but you won’t.”
Harding locked eyes with me, squinting hard. He might have had the law on his side, but he carried himself like a back-alley thug.
“Think real careful before you make any threats.”
I showed him my open hands. “Hey, quite to the contrary. I’m here to extend an offer. You want to be the next mayor? We can make it happen for you.”
His anger gave way to suspicion. And the tiniest sparkle of greed.
“You’d stab Seabrook in the back?”
“What’s she done for us lately?” I said. “I can’t even get her to put a little weight on the Board of Liquor and Gaming. Not even a phone call. If you’d be more willing to play ball, well…we can make things happen for you. Fast.”
I had him now, a fish on a line. “How fast?”
“One well-timed tragedy, some backroom pressure in the right places…you could be Mayor Harding by this time next year.”
He made a show of taking his time. He drummed his fingers on the desk and licked his lips.
“Ground rules,” he said. “I’ve built my entire career on being a hardliner. Integrity, you understand? You never come here again, and we never meet in person. When we have to talk, we use third-party cutouts.”
This wasn’t his first tango. I wondered just how many dirty little secrets the commissioner had buried in his backyard.
“Of course,” I said. “And hey, just to prove my friendship and good intentions, I’d like you to accept a small token of my regard.”
I slid a gray velvet box across the desk. He took it, suspicious again, and popped it open.
“A tie clip?” He turned the box from side to side. The diamonds along the platinum glittered in his eyes. “These real?”
“Absolutely. Go on, try it on. Live a little, Earl. You earned it.”
He fumbled with the gem-studded clip, prying it from the case, and clipped it onto his tie. It looked garish on him, but he nodded with smug approval.
“Not bad,” he said. “I could get used to this kind of thing.”
Then he winced. He pressed one hand to his belly.
“You okay, buddy? Doing all right?”
“I just—” He shook his head and pushed his chair back. “I think I ate something I shouldn’t have.”
He stumbled to his private bathroom as beads of sweat broke out on his ruddy cheeks.
“Breakfast burritos, Earl,” I called after him. “They always seem like a good idea at the time, but one hour later—”
The bathroom door slammed shut. I shrugged and circled his desk, jotting a note on his legal pad. Then I ambled out of his office, pausing just long enough to have a word with his receptionist.
“Hey, Commissioner Harding says not to disturb him for a little bit. He, uh—” I pitched my voice low. “He’s got some intestinal issues.”
She slapped her pen down on her desk. “He ate dairy again, didn’t he? I tell that man, every single time—”
“He did,” I said on my way out. “Terrible. Do not go in there, and when you do, bring air freshener.”
Technically, I was misusing my cursed gifts from the knighting party, and I was probably committing some gross breach of court etiquette. Tough. Sitri knew I was a rebel when he hired me. Besides, I could always steal the tie clip back later. It’d be with the rest of Harding’s personal effects, down at the morgue.
I needed to send a message, and a simple bullet wouldn’t have done the job. Harding had been working for Elmer Donaghy, directly or through a middleman, and eventually his gruesome fate would filter up the ranks. So would the discreet note I left on his desk, the one that simply read, “Your move.”
I had one more job to take care of today, and it didn’t involve killing anybody. I was actually going to do something nice for a change and make somebody happy. So of course, I was sweating bullets.
* * *
“Don’t make me regret this.”
Emma punctuated her words with a hard poke at my shoulder. Then she stood, a stony sentry at the edge of the conference room. The lower floor of Winter wasn’t all fun and dark games; the nightclub sported a pair of meeting rooms—sleek, modern, with warm lighting and ergonomic chairs—for handling court business.
When someone like Melanie ended up in here, it was usually to have a chat with Caitlin. Not the good kind of chat. The two of them were sitting at the end of the beechnut table, Caitlin silently staring, Melanie looking like she was about to slide out of her chair and try to tunnel to freedom.
“I really don’t know what I did,” she said.
“Are you absolutely sure about that?” Caitlin asked her.
Caitlin’s lips curled in the faintest of smiles. Then she giggled, the sound coming out in a tiny sputter.
“I can’t,” she said. “Melanie, you have this delicious frightened-rabbit affect that makes me want to terrorize you, but I just can’t keep a straight face.”
Melanie looked from her to her mother to me and back again.
“What is going on here?” she whispered.
“What’s going on,” I said, “is that the three of us had a long talk, about you and…things, and…so, uh, did you still want to learn magic?”
I was not prepared for the scream of joy. Or for Melanie to bound from her chair, race at me, and jump. I suddenly had a hundred and twenty-five pounds of teenager hanging around my neck and squeezing for dear life.
“There are rules,” her mother announced, but she was glaring at me when she said it. I gently extricated myself as best I could.
“There are,” I said. “First and foremost, you’ve got to keep your grades up. School comes first.”
“Totally.” Melanie’s head bobbed like it was on a spring. I could have told her she’d have to walk a tightrope across the Grand Canyon, and I would have gotten the same answer.
“And,” Caitlin added, “I expect I won’t be receiving any more disciplinary reports. You’ll be on your best behavior at all times and comport yourself as a dignified representative of our court and our prince.”
I looked her way. “Which one of us are you talking to?”
“Both of you.”
That was fair.
“Okay,” I told Melanie, “that’s it, then. Report to the Scrivener’s Nook tomorrow after school, and we’ll get started. You’ll need two pairs of black shirts, two pairs of black pants, one pair of combat boots, two pairs of black socks—”
“Wait, wait!” Melanie grabbed her phone, tapping with both thumbs as fast as she could. “I need to write this down, start over.”
“No, I was quoting a—” I blinked at her. “I mean, have you never seen Fight Club?”
She looked up from her phone. “You do know that movie came out the year I was born, right?”
“Subconsciously, I think I must have realized that on some level, but pointing it out really drives home how old I am. Thanks for that.”
“Anytime.”
Emma folded her arms and met my gaze.
“Welcome to my world,” she told me.
Maybe Jennifer had been right, back when this whole mess started. Maybe I was having a midlife crisis and my search for a legacy was just a symptom. But I couldn’t shake the hunger to make some kind of a difference, some kind of an impact before I was gone, and I hadn’t been too good at it lately.
I had tried to help Harry Grimes and show him a better way. In the end, all I could do was put him down like a rabid dog. I held out my hand to Fleiss and she slapped it away.
But here was someone who needed a hand, who needed the skills I knew I could teach. The only thing holding me back was Desi’s ghost.
And the only one keeping her alive was me. Besides, I think she would have liked Melanie if they’d ever met. And if anyone would approve of me getting back on the horse and taking on another student, it was Desi. She would have kicked my ass for waiting this long. It was time to let go of the past. Learn from it, yes, but let it go. And try again.
This time, I’d get it right.