Play Dead (3 page)
“If I tell you why I want to find her, will you help then?”
“It depends. Obviously.”
“It’s simple, really. She stole something from me, something important, and I want it back.”
“And what was that?”
“That’s not important, either.” I let that one pass.
“What happens to her if you find her?”
Jessie’s face hardened for a moment, and I got a glimpse of how she could be running a large operation.
“She’s a thief,” she said. “Worse, I trusted her. If she weren’t a practitioner, she’d go to prison. I won’t try to con you; she’ll be punished, and severely. Victor would do the same, would he not?”
“Probably.”
“But no, I won’t be draining her of blood or stringing her up from the ceiling fan.”
“Maybe a little play toy for Naja, though?” This time, Jessie wasn’t amused.
“Naja’s not like that,” she said, clearly angry. “She would never hurt another practitioner unless I was being attacked. She’s an Ifrit, for God’s sake, just like your Louie. She’s not some mindless instrument of revenge.”
“Sorry,” I said, and I was. That had been uncalled for. Jessie nodded, a bit wearily.
“I get a lot of that, just because she’s a snake. It gets old.” We sat for a moment in an uncomfortable silence.
“If I did look for this woman, there’s no guarantee I could find her,” I said, pretending the exchange had never happened.
“Of course,” she said. “I could put you on retainer, though. I know your reputation, and I know you’d give it your best shot.” She named a figure three times what I usually make working a job for Victor. “And of course a bonus if you do locate her.” She named another figure, significantly larger. She reached into the purse hanging from the chair, pulled out a photo, and pushed it across the desk toward me.
When she reached into her purse, I saw a small soft case inside, partly open. I just got a flash of it, but it seemed to contain a hypodermic syringe and some vials of liquid. What was that about? A diabetic, perhaps, but the syringe looked wrong, too long, and so did the vials. It’s also not a disease that practitioners normally develop. Drugs? Was she a secret Demerol junkie? I pushed it aside to consider later.
“This the woman?” I asked, picking up the picture. She nodded.
The photo was an eight-by-ten black-and-white, almost like an old studio glamour head shot. It showed a young woman, a light-skinned African American. Large gold hoops dangled from her ears. Her hair was thick and hanging free, massed like a puff of smoke.
“Quite an attractive woman,” I said.
“Yes,” Jessie said, with no inflection. “Isn’t she?”
I was tempted. Money’s not usually the overriding thing with me, but my rent had been raised, my van needed a major overhaul, and although gigs had been coming my way, clubs weren’t paying a whole lot these days.
But Jessie was a black practitioner. As I said, some of them aren’t so bad, but some of them are, and I didn’t know enough about her or the situation to judge which type she might be. I’d been joking about the draining-blood thing, but not entirely. I pushed the picture back across the desk, regretfully.
“Sorry,” I said. “It’s really not my sort of thing.”
Jessie looked at me from her seat on the other side of the desk and didn’t say anything. A slight flickering in her eyes told me she was running through a set of responses in her mind, trying to decide which one would work best.
“Think about it at least,” she finally said. “You don’t have to give me an answer right now.”
It didn’t add up. I got the feeling there was more to all this than she was letting on, and when you get that feeling it’s best to pay attention.
Why had she called on me, of all people, in the first place? She’d given a bunch of reasons, but they didn’t hold up when you looked at them closely. Finding people is not a particularly noted skill of mine, even with Lou to help, and since she’d done research on me, she must know that. I’m a musician, and the woman she was looking for was, too, but that was a tenuous connection at best. And although I don’t have a huge prejudice against dark practitioners, they’re not my favorite people, either. I should have just thanked her for her interest and walked away, but maybe it would be smart to keep my options open until I found out why she’d focused on me. Maybe I was just being paranoid, but it never hurts to be careful. And there was that money, after all.
“Well, okay, I’ll think about it,” I heard myself say. “I’ll let you know.”
She nodded, satisfied for the moment. When I got to my feet Lou immediately headed for the door, twisting his head back over his shoulder to keep an eye on the desk. Naja had made him very nervous. He didn’t relax until we were out of the building and back out on the street, and then he had the rain to deal with again. All in all, not a great day for him.
Or me, either. I had a splitting headache, and that’s rare for me. I hoped I wasn’t coming down with something. Maybe I was allergic to black practitioners.
TWO
PRACTITIONER SOCIETY DOESN’T HAVE ANY FORMAL structure; no one is officially in charge of anything. But there is a loose code of conduct based on tradition and peer pressure, which is usually enough to keep most practitioners in line and ensure that things run smoothly. That and a near-universal desire to keep a low profile and avoid the public eye. No one knew what the consequences might be if the existence of people and things magical were to become common knowledge, and not many were eager to find out. Change is not always for the better.
But occasionally practitioners do get out of hand, mostly in minor ways, but sometimes with deadly consequences. Some type of structure needs to be in place to deal with such people, and over the years a thoroughly unofficial group of enforcers has developed. Victor is one of those, and so am I, technically, since I work for him from time to time—mostly when I’m broke. I’m really not suited to the job, though.
So, much as I hated to involve Victor, it was probably a good idea to do so. A new black practitioner was in town,
one with a serious rep, one who even I’d heard of. And contacting me with an offer of employment, for rather flimsy reasons, was worth a closer look. It might mean nothing, but it also might mean quite a lot. Victor would probably be keeping tabs on her already; he has a lot of sources and isn’t often taken by surprise. But he wouldn’t know yet that she had contacted me. He might have a much better handle on why she had called me than I did.
one with a serious rep, one who even I’d heard of. And contacting me with an offer of employment, for rather flimsy reasons, was worth a closer look. It might mean nothing, but it also might mean quite a lot. Victor would probably be keeping tabs on her already; he has a lot of sources and isn’t often taken by surprise. But he wouldn’t know yet that she had contacted me. He might have a much better handle on why she had called me than I did.
When I rang him up and told him about my meeting, I expected him to rant on angrily about my not telling him before I went. One of the basic areas of disagreement between us is that he feels I should inform him ahead of time about anything I do that might possibly affect him, and I don’t. But he hadn’t ranted at all; only a slight pause before he said, “Interesting.” Another pause, and then he said, quite politely, “Why don’t you come over for breakfast tomorrow—say nine or so? We should talk about this.”
Something was not right. Victor seldom bothers to be polite to me; he feels it’s a waste of effort. So either he’d undergone a radical personality transformation in the last few days or he wanted me to do something for him. And as I’d learned over the years, when he wanted something, my own health and well-being was often not his primary concern.
Eli was already futzing around in the ground-floor kitchen when I arrived at Victor’s Ocean Beach Victorian next morning. Eli is often at the house, since he and Victor are usually working on some project or other. His day gig is at San Francisco State, where he’s a full history professor, which gives him some flexibility. But his convenient presence here just reinforced my suspicion that something was up. He gave me a broad smile and shook his head when he saw I was about to pump him for information. More confirmation.
Victor was brewing coffee, and Timothy, Victor’s current boyfriend, was busy cooking breakfast. The smell of bacon wafting through the kitchen almost threw Lou into a frenzy. He has a rather unhealthy preoccupation with food anyway, but bacon is his true weakness. It’s like crack for him; I almost think he’d abandon me for a stranger with a rasher of bacon, although he might feel guilty later.
Maggie, the gray Persian cat, was curled up lazily on a chair seat. She looked up as Lou came in and yawned sleepily. Yawning sleepily is what she does best; sometimes it’s hard to believe she’s an Ifrit like Lou. She rarely leaves the house, although she had helped Lou out once when we were all in danger. She does suit Victor, though—like her, he’s neat and self-possessed, and unlike myself, he doesn’t often need help. I’d be lost without Lou; he’s helped me out of more than a few tight spots.
Lou walked up and they touched noses briefly. In the past, they hadn’t got along at all, which is unusual for Ifrits, but of late they seemed to have arrived at an understanding. They weren’t exactly great friends, but they were civil to each other. Sort of like Victor and me, only the two of us aren’t always civil.
“Cheese omelette?” asked Victor as I came in, civil as all get-out.
He’d lately reverted to his beard of sharp, thin lines, giving up his recent full-coverage look. He seemed to have put on some weight as well—muscle, not fat. A pot-belly on Victor would have been as unthinkable as—well, I can’t think of anything that impossible. Maybe he thought he needed more strength, since he’s a short man, but I’ve seen him fight, and more strength would be an embarrassment of riches. Timothy interrupted his cooking long enough to hand me a cup of coffee.
“The condemned man ate a hearty breakfast,” I muttered, too low for Victor to hear.
Timothy was looking a bit scruffy these days, but not in a bad way. He’d quit his tech job at a startup a couple of months ago, relying on the reputation he’d built up in the tech world to make it as a freelance consultant. Ironically, as the economy worsened and layoffs became the norm, he was doing better than ever. A lot of places could no longer afford a full-time IT staff, but they still ran into problems they couldn’t solve from time to time—so they called Timothy. And the worse the problem, the more in demand he was. He’s a regular savant when it comes to removing malware, tracking who’s done which changes to what strings of code, and basically all things computer-related. I’ll bet he’d been a serious hacker as a teen, before growing a conscience.
Timothy is a good-looking guy, dark hair, a ready smile, and rows of tiny gold hoops in one ear. But he’s always had something of the geek about him. Now that he was on his own and more relaxed, he’d loosened up. Low-slung tight pants with rolled-up cuffs, tan canvas shoes—he was beginning to look more like the stereotype of a musician or a Mission hipster than a computer nerd.
He expertly flipped the omelette he’d been making onto a plate and shoved it in front of me. Eli looked at it longingly, before settling for a small cup of nonfat yogurt. He was still on a strict diet, and had already trimmed his normal two sixty down to two twenty-five or so, close to his college-football-playing weight. That was the pre-steroid era, of course. He looked good, but I could see he was suffering. He likes his food.
But this wasn’t about food, anyway—it had more the feeling of a strategy session than a friendly breakfast. Or maybe Victor had decided on an intervention over unknown transgressions. One never knows.
Timothy tossed a couple of bacon strips to Lou and started in on another omelette. The rest of us sat around the old scarred kitchen table. Victor’s kitchen, unlike the rest of his house, is a warm and plain and comfortable refuge, a far cry from the expensive antiques and ornate furnishings that he otherwise favors.
It would have been polite for me to wait until everyone had got their food, but cold eggs are no treat at all. I’d polished off my omelette before Victor even started on his. When I poured myself a second cup of coffee and leaned back in my chair, Victor gave me a friendly smile, indistinguishable from the smile he gives to a hearty breakfast plate. I looked back at him more in resignation than suspicion. Timothy was a good cook, and the cheese omelette had put me in a comfortable mood, which of course was exactly the point.
Timothy didn’t know that; he was just having a good time cooking up breakfast for his friends. He’s the only one in our circle who isn’t a practitioner, and that sometimes provides a welcome balance and some common sense as well. He’s very fond of Victor, naturally, but has no illusions about what Victor’s like. Still, he doesn’t really get just how manipulative Victor can be. Which is fine; if you can’t turn something of a blind eye to the faults of your significant other, what’s the point of a relationship?
“So,” Victor finally said as I sipped my coffee, “you met Jessie. And how is she these days?”
“How do you know her? I thought she was new in town.”
“She is. But we’ve crossed paths from time to time in other places.”
“She’s . . . impressive,” I said.
“She is that. Always has been. Did you meet Naja?”
“Oh, yes.” Victor’s mouth quirked into a bare smile.
“Gave you a bit of a turn, I imagine. And what exactly was it she wanted from you?”
“Well, it seems that a woman in her employ stole something from her and then went missing. She wouldn’t say what. She wanted to know if I’d consider trying to find her. She offered me a ridiculous amount of money to take it on.”
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