ALEX
“I’m hankering for the shine,” Howie says beside me. “Like bad. Look at my hands.”
I glance at Howie’s shaky, chapped fingers as he runs them around each other. “It’s just the withdrawal,” I say, and turn back to the water. The moon hangs over it low and bright, casts a long thread of spun silver across the dark ocean as we cut through it on our bare-hull boat, forty knots speed, engine as large as an airplane. It’s a beautiful night, an otherworldly night, the kind of night you want to be gazing at the vast, star-studded sky with a dame like Joan. Not with Howie. “If you power through it, you’ll be fine by tomorrow.”
“But maybe I don’t want to be fine. Maybe I want to be electric.”
“Take a break, okay, How? You’ve been hitting the shine hard all week. Relax.”
Howie pulls his thin coat tighter around him. “What are you, my mother?”
It’s dark, but I can still see the gray tint around Howie’s cheekbones, the dullness to his eyes. Back in training, the Unit taught us the long-term effects of a steady shine diet: how the stuff eventually steals the color out of life, dulls it until you can’t stand living without the polish of magic. But I don’t think I ever fully understood what that meant until I became attached to Howie’s side. Since we left Lorton, he’s only happy anymore when he’s high. Time in between he spends angry, restless—and clamoring for the next time he can steal a glimpse of a world that doesn’t last.
I’ve tried to tell him he survived shine withdrawal before, and that he’ll end up hollowing himself into a shell if he keeps going at this pace, but you can’t reason with him. And after so many times of trying, I started worrying that too much anti-shine talk might compromise my cover. So tonight I stay silent and watch the indigo water race by the rudders.
We’re several miles off the coast, on our way through the waters of the Atlantic. Win’s in the front as captain, and Howie and I are shivering on the bench in the back. Late November’s winds are brutal, breath-stealing, and while neither one of us is thrilled about snuggling, we’re huddled next to each other for warmth.
“Even a cigarette would help,” Howie mutters.
“Christ, How, why didn’t you buy another pack before we left?”
Howie shrugs. “’Cause you usually bring enough for both of us.”
And usually, I do take care of these little details, but I’ve been working overtime, exhausted. Howie’s clearly exhausted too. But that’s not the only reason we’ve been picking at each other, sparring like siblings vying for their parents’ affection. There’s a tension I haven’t been able to shake, a thick, persistent one lodged right between us.
“Seriously, can’t you do something about this?” Howie waves his hand above us to indicate the cold wind.
“It’s tougher when we’re moving, but I’ll try.” I focus, close my eyes. I picture a bubble of warm, soft air wrapping around us like a towel, command, “Envelop.”
After a minute, Howie stops shaking beside me.
Needless to say, we are definitely not, as Howie predicted when we first got out of Lorton, “partying until dawn.” If I’m figuring right, this is our twelfth straight night of running with Win—no nights off, no breaks. Since that first night, when things went south with Baltimore out at the warehouse, we’ve been on the road by the start of every evening for a trade, or a redistillery run, or some other clandestine errand for the Shaws. Sometimes I don’t come home until the sun’s up, and other than the few times Howie and I have lingered at the Red Den waiting for Win, we’re either on the road, or crashing. In fact, the couple of times I’ve managed to sneak out and call Agent Frain have been at noon, when I know the rest of my smuggling world will be sleeping.
We’re putting our heads down, as Howie says, not asking questions, showing we’re willing to pay our dues, get broken and rebuilt as slick, lethal Shaw boys. And in turn, edging closer to Boss McEvoy. But so far, the biggest Shaw fish has evaded me.
“We’re here,” Win calls back, interrupting my thoughts. He cuts the engine, and our boat gives a little jump, then sighs and floats a few feet more into the dark water.
Ahead of us, a long line of ships, boats, cruisers, and cutters blink and flash like stars peppering the black ocean.
“Wow,” Howie whispers, “it’s like a little city out here.”
We’ve reached a stretch of safe waters right behind coast guard territory called “Magic Row,” where dust sweepers and obi smugglers from overseas and the islands shuttle in their magic contraband, then wait for street runners like us to come trade and bring their products back to shore. Tonight we’re after fae dust—an addictive, paranoia-inducing, magic blue powder that the Irish boast they stole from another reality. No one knows what the stuff really is, or where it actually comes from, but dust causes a fierce psychedelic trip, and unlike shine, transports across the sea easily. And there’s a steady market for mobile magic, of any sort—even, apparently, if the high drives you crazy. My role in this smuggling venture: throwing distress signal manipulations up and down the coast, giving the coast guard false alarms to chase, as our boat evades their radios.
Win turns the boat engine on low again and we slowly churn through the waves to a two-story ship marked EMERALD JANE. Win turns the wheel, right, left, right, until we’re right next to the large ship like a sidecar.
“HO! What’s your business?” a man on deck calls down to us in a soft Irish lilt.
“It’s Win Matthews, with the Shaws,” Win calls up. “We’re here for the dust.”
There’s a pause, then a muffled discussion as the ship hand confers with his cronies. “All right, come onboard.”
Howie and I follow Win silently, each of us climbing up the rope ladder on the side of the ship. We clamber onto the deck, and we’re immediately surrounded by a five-man crew, all of them cloaked in thick, salty, musty layers. The stench of weeks at sea curls around and suffocates us.
“Been out here long?” Win asks what I’m thinking.
“Near a month,” the man with the lilt answers. “Long journey. Started up in Maine, if you can believe it. Heading to talk with buyers in Virginia Beach tomorrow.”
The Emerald Jane, dust deals up and down the East Coast, I repeat silently, and file it away. I’ve become an expert at taking notes without a pen, at remembering small details. Everything gets stored and saved for the next time I get to talk to Agent Frain: all the ways we might manage to hook the big fish we’re planning to fry.
“You have any trouble with the pigs?” the man adds. The rest of his team pats us down, takes our weapons, and puts them in a box on the boat’s far side for safekeeping.
“No, ride out was smooth. We brought our street sorcerer. He never fails.” Win nods to me in recognition, while Howie shifts uncomfortably at Win’s compliment. “You’ve got the dust?”
“A hundred ounces, like we promised. You got the cash?”
“One thousand.”
The smuggler nods, studies the water. “The sea has eyes and ears. Come, let’s break bread below.”
I swear, I almost follow them, invite myself right into the belly of this ship. My desire to find the beating heart of this underworld, so that I can wrap my hands around and destroy it—it’s become my own sort of addiction. Of course, it’s still about bringing down the types of men who broke apart my family. But there’s something more now too, I can’t deny it. The satisfaction of excelling at something very few people can do. The commitment to something real—something I might one day look back on and be proud of.
“You two stay here,” Win tells Howie and me, and then leaves us to keep watch in the frigid midnight air.
The rest of the crew returns to their nighttime duties—ship hands finish mopping the deck, a few start tying thick knots alongside the ship—as Howie and I turn to face the water.
“You look tired, Danfrey,” Howie whispers beside me.
I fake a laugh. “That’s ’cause I am tired.” I pause. “You’re telling me you’re not?”
“Nah, these runs light me on fire. ’Cause I want it, Danfrey, more than anything.” He turns to study me. “I’ve been thinking, you know. About you. About this.”
“Is that right?”
Howie rests his back against the boat beside me, then stretches out his legs, so he’s at a perfect forty-five-degree angle facing the ship’s interior. “Honestly, brother, I really don’t think this street work is for you. I see how it’s wearing on you.”
I don’t answer.
“There’s no shame in it, though, you know? Admitting you’re not hard enough for McEvoy’s street, for running with the big boys. ’Cause someone like you, Danfrey, you could have a whole bunch of futures. Hell, you could be one of those performers the crowds flock to see at the revamped Red Den every night.” He laughs. “You know, I haven’t thought about that before, but I have to say that’s a damned good idea. I hear Gunn managed to score quite a nice change purse to run the place. Could be a decent living. And a much safer one.”
Howie waits, as if he’s letting his idea settle in with me, but of course, I know the real reason for this “off-the-cuff” suggestion. Win’s been relying more on me these past few weeks, and Howie less—which obviously doesn’t sit well with him. Sure, Howie talks a big game, but in the end, he’s sloppy, often shined or coming down from a high when he shows up for a job. Plus, he forgets things. Like when he didn’t check all the rooms in a dealer’s house last week, and some dust-bunny dissatisfied with his high came barging down the stairs with a loaded gun. Or when he mixed up the address of a local shine redistillery, and we ended up driving around Hell’s Bottom for half an hour with ten gallons of newly lifted remedial spells in our trunk, looking for the right place.
“Besides”—Howie nudges me with his elbow—“there’d be other benefits.”
I blow into my hands. “What are you talking about?”
“Oh, you know who I’m talking about.” He arches one eyebrow, shoots me this exaggerated grin, and I can’t help but laugh, despite the tension. “I’ve seen the way you’ve been watching that hot black-haired Betty they’ve got working the place.”
“Who?”
“Oh, please, don’t ‘who’ me.”
He’s clearly talking about Joan, and I blush, as I hadn’t realized he was watching me, or rather, watching us. Sure, Howie’s right—every time we’re there, I try to catch her before she gets ready for her show and Howie and I head out the door. Never more than a quick flirtation, but it has me thinking about her from time to time. Joan’s a warm, welcoming distraction when I need to take my mind off things, something harmless and exciting of my own. I laugh to myself. “It’s that obvious?”
Howie shoots me an honest-to-God smile. “You might be a sorcerer, but you can’t trick me, Alex Danfrey.”
Win emerges from the boat and beckons us forward. “Howie, come on, grab the box,” he calls over the ship deck. “Alex needs to focus on getting us home.”
Howie’s face changes immediately at the barked order, the menial task. And then I can almost see it, the faint spark between us fizzles, until there’s nothing but cold, dull air. I offer to help Howie carry the goods, but that just seems to add insult to injury.
* * *
We spend the night near the coast, at some smuggler-friendly brothel-and-breakfast where I have to surround my room with a force field to sleep, considering the constant knocking bedposts and shine-induced singing blaring through the walls. Our entire next day is on the road, running our dust score to Win’s local dealers across DC’s sprawl, then a quick stop at the Red Den while Win shares a drink with Gunn. While Howie uses the chance to get shined in the bathroom, I manage to score a couple of minutes with Joan at the performance space’s bar. We sneak in a checkers game using a board she conjures, while she teases me about wearing last night’s clothes and smelling like a sailor.
When she’s not looking, I leave her a conjured starfish as a souvenir.
I’m so tired that I almost can’t see straight by the time Win takes us home. Still, I’m with-it enough to notice that Win makes a right onto 14th, instead of making a left up to my place. I sit straight up as we turn on F Street, drive through a neighborhood I’ve never seen, with shards of broken glass glistening on the curb like strange diamonds, sad row houses leaning on one another like shiners at the end of the night. We pull up to a nondescript building, three stories high, crumbling brick and mortar.
Before I can figure out what’s happening, Win mumbles to Howie, “I’ll stop by tomorrow.”
And then I’m chilled with the significance of this situation. Win’s ordering Howie out of the car. Which means that for some reason, I’m staying.
Howie steals a look back at me, then at his cousin. He laughs, the sound hard and brittle. “You two screwing each other behind my back or something?”
“I need your boy is all,” Win says. “Alone. Nothing personal.”
“Nothing personal,” Howie repeats. He grabs the back of his headrest and turns around to look me in the eye. “You been casting spells to make this happen, Danfrey? Working with me just to work my cousin, pushing me down so you can get ahead?”
“Easy, Howie, don’t be such a dame about it—” Win mutters beside him.
“You’d be nothing without me, you know that?” Howie cuts at me.
“Come on, Howie.” I try to calm him down, but he barrels over me with, “Just forget it. All you Danfreys are traitors.”
Heat sears my skin, blood rushes to my temples, the word “traitor” slapping me back to my father’s trial. Those D Street rats on the stand, my father in cuffs, the headline PHARMA MOGUL BETRAYS HIS CAUSE as reporters swarmed us on the courthouse steps—“That was a shitty thing to say.”
I snap, “Christ, How, it’s not my fault you’re the family fuckup.”
Howie stops moving, hell, it almost sounds like he stops breathing.
Shit. That just came out.
Howie lunges over the console, manages to box my ear with his palm. It doesn’t hurt, but it does the job, makes me mad too, and I reach out and box him back. At that, a gauntlet’s thrown, and he climbs around the front seat like he’s going to dive on top of me—
“Goddamn it, you two!” Win takes his thick palms and pushes our heads apart, thrusting me against the backseat, sending Howie flying against his passenger side window. Win sighs. “Howie, seriously, get out.”
Howie sits there, huffing and puffing, as I collect myself in the back. But I don’t look at him. Sure, my courtship of Howie was calculated—but that doesn’t mean what I feel for him isn’t real. That doesn’t mean I don’t rely on Howie as a one-man social life more than I care to admit.
Finally Howie kicks open the flap door on Win’s Model T. “Go suck each other.” He spits on the ground and closes it with a thwap.
I want to follow him, maybe even apologize. I want to somehow tell him that he can have this world—that I’m just wearing it to turn it inside out and destroy it.
But Howie doesn’t look back, and before I can figure out whether it’s childish for me to call after him, Win settles his car back onto the road.
And then my guilt gives way, slowly but surely, to something else.
Finally I have to ask, “Where are we going?”
“The Boss has heard things,” Win says slowly, eyes ahead. “He’s impressed. He wants to see you.” He locates a crumpled box of cigarettes inside his pocket, pulls two out and lights them, then passes one to me. The car immediately becomes assaulted with thick, toxic air. The kind of air where it feels like dangerous things might just crawl out of the mist. The kind of air that lies waiting to spark a fire.
I nod, trying to keep my excitement tempered, appropriate. But inside I’m practically bursting. All the work, the nights, the smuggling runs, the magic—all of it is to meet McEvoy, learn his sins, and confess them for him. “Where’s the meet?”
“Somewhere safe.”
Win turns onto 13th Street, follows it through town, until the homes become stores become warehouses, until the road all but peters out. He pulls into a large abandoned lot. “McEvoy should be here soon.” He cuts the engine and we both get out.
Broken glass dusts the edges of the gravel lot, and a sad, faded billboard stands tall amid the malnourished moonlit grass. The woman in the billboard’s picture sports a hole where her face should be. But it feels appropriate, right in line with the ambiance.
Because this lot? It’s the opposite of safe. This is a place where murders are committed.
We wait, leaning against Win’s car in the cold, tearing through the last of his pack of Luckies. After waiting months to meet McEvoy, a few more minutes shouldn’t rip me apart, but I can barely concentrate on the staccato small talk Win’s attempting beside me about Jack Dempsey’s latest fight.
Finally a black car pulls into the lot. McEvoy, I have to assume, emerges from the front seat and slowly walks toward us. He’s got a fedora pulled down low, a thick, expensive-looking gray woolen coat with the collar popped up. My pulse starts to quicken, and there’s a dull, almost sickening dread rising up from my core.
“Boss,” Win says, “this is the boy I was telling you about. Alex Danfrey.”
I gulp, trying not to choke. I wonder if McEvoy can sense it—that I’m here for him, like he’s here for me.
He looks like he does in the papers, early fifties, polished, intimidating, somehow bigger—and smaller—all at the same time. “Heard a lot about you, Alex,” Boss McEvoy says.
“Thank you, sir.” I take a sharp inhale. “I hope all good things.”
“You wouldn’t be rising up otherwise,” he says. “As it turns out, I’m in the market again for someone like you.” He smirks and nods to Win. “But if you’re going to have the honor of being my right-hand, my personal sorcerer, I need to make sure you fulfill all my needs.” Right-hand sorcerer. This is it. What the Feds planted me for, what all my work undercover comes down to. “Go on, Win, bring out a bottle.”
Win crosses back to his car, digs through his trunk, and removes a glass bottle filled with water—my best guess twelve ounces, what the black market has determined is the perfect amount for a sorcerer’s shine transference. Any less water, the stuff’s too potent, can cause a magic overdose. Any more, you’re not getting the best high. But I’m surprised my transference skills matter at all to this man. McEvoy’s king of the streets—he needs a sorcerer who can hide robberies, heists. Murders.
Win hands the bottle to McEvoy, who in turn hands it to me.
“Brew for me.”
It’s been a long time, way too long for my first brew back to be for the Boss. “It’s been a while,” I softly tell McEvoy.
“I’m not a fan of excuses.”
I give a little nod and wrap both hands around the glass.
I’m sure brewing shine is a little different for every sorcerer, but this is how it used to go for me: I imagined something mounting inside me—taking all my rage, desire, passion, fear, my magic—and I visualized it flowing through my veins, as tangible and real as blood. And then I pictured slicing my fingers open, letting all that pour out of me and bleed into the water inside the glass. And after it was done, for a while anyway—I actually felt wiped clean.
Sure enough, it begins. The glass starts to warm between my palms, and the water starts to boil. Sharp bursts of trapped lightning start crackling inside the bottle, sending the water crashing and swirling into something glistening, dark and red.
“Give it here,” McEvoy says. He studies my sorcerer’s shine, and then he smiles and hands it to Win. “Let’s have a royal taster for the king.”
Win looks hungrily into the bright sea of liquid rubies inside the glass. “Bottoms up.”
He takes a sip of it, careful not to take more than an ounce. McEvoy and I both shift uncomfortably, waiting for the magic to settle into Win’s veins, for the shine to take hold of him.
A minute later, Win gasps, “Holy . . . shit.” He stumbles to sit on the ground, then flings himself on his back, his arms splayed out, his legs stretched at odd angles. And then, like he’s seven, he starts making snow angels in the gravel as he lets out a childlike laughter. If I wasn’t scared out of my mind, I’d laugh with him. I’ve never seen the man even remotely out of control.
“It’s so bright,” Win whispers as he stares up at the lone streetlamp in the lot.
McEvoy gives me a smirk. “Impressive.” But then he turns away from me, begins to pace, like a restless tiger in a cage. “But there’re a lot of impressive people in this world,” he says. “And while sorcery is rare, I can afford to be choosy.”
He takes a quick step toward me. Thanks to the streetlamp, I can see every detail of his face—the pores dotting his nose, the small capillaries around his eyes, the deep wrinkles etched by time and anger.
“I’ve been in this game a long time, Alex—and that’s what it truly is, a game of power. A game that can transform people, just like magic, a game that can turn them inside out. It can make people do stupid things, dangerous things, especially if power is all they’re after.” Despite his aging face, McEvoy’s eyes are clear, sharp, and wolfish. Like a jackal. The same Jackal who reportedly gunned down ten D Street thugs, execution-style in the street, in revenge for them killing Danny the Gun. Who runs through sorcerers almost as fast as cigarettes. Who wouldn’t hesitate to skin me alive if he knew why I was really here.
“In my time leading the Shaws, I’ve come to understand the rules of this game intimately, Alex. And a man after nothing but power in this world is a man you can’t trust.” McEvoy nods at Win, who’s still lying on the ground, shocked still, looking up at the streetlamp like it’s the bright birth of the world’s first angel. “Take Win over there. Above all else, he’s working for his family.” McEvoy turns his attention back to me. “That’s something I’d bet the farm on. That’s a man you can trust.”
He cocks his head. “But my last sorcerer, the one who lasted all of a few weeks?” A gash of a frown cuts across McEvoy’s face. “I could see right through him. Little prick thought he was smarter, more powerful than me, hid secrets. Thought he was tricky enough that I wouldn’t find out.” He stares at me, those eyes cold and piercing. “You understand what I’m trying to say to you?”
My heart is a hummingbird right now, fluttering in my chest. I swear McEvoy’s so close he must hear it. “Yes, sir,” I manage to say evenly.
“So I need to know, Alex, right now. What else are you after in this game? You obviously had other options, thanks to your father.” He smiles, but it just makes him look even more like a wolf before it lunges. “Why are you and I here tonight?”
He’s so close, I swear he can reach in and grab out what I’m thinking. I stop breathing, try to stand taller, refuse to let him see anything but what I want him to see.
“I want to serve you.” Flattery, a knee-jerk instinct. “I think I can learn a lot from a man like you.”
“Lie,” McEvoy snaps.
“No sir, I want to be near you,” I correct quickly. Christ, I hear the desperation in my own voice. “I want to be safe, to know I’ve got a bright future by your side.”
“I smell bullshit again,” he cuts in, slowly encircling me, sizing me up. My eyes dart to Win, who’s still tripping on my magic. McEvoy could take that gun I see poking out of his holster and put a bullet in my head, right here, right now. And no one would save me. Hell, no one would even know he did it. Maybe I could manipulate the gun, the bullet—maybe I could save myself, take him down instead.
But what then?
Take out all the Shaws?
Take out the Feds?
“Alex”—McEvoy brings me back—“don’t fuck with me. I’ll ask you one more time. Why are you after me?”
I freeze at his word choice, after me. But that’s not what he means. He can’t know. There’s no way he can know.
I close my eyes, try to think, but time keeps moving forward, and fear is crawling up my spine, stealing my breath, my words. I hear a sigh, and then the sound of metal on leather, a holster—
My eyes fly open to see McEvoy’s gun trained inches from my forehead. Then he says softly, and not unkindly, “Afraid time’s up, Alex. Pity.”
Say something. Save yourself, my mind shrieks. But it’s my body, my magic, that finally steps in—
A flat wall of stone erupts out of the ground in front of me, ten feet long, ten feet high, rumbles fast and furious as McEvoy’s bullet sounds, the hungry pop of his gun echoing through the cold air and cracking against the rock.
The wall saved me, stopped the bullet just in time—
In an odd, dissociated moment, the first thing I feel is a pang of pride for quick magic. And then I double over. My magic only did what it had to because McEvoy almost killed me he wanted to kill me—
“ALEX!” McEvoy barks.
I hobble to stand, sick and twisted behind the wall. I almost run, but I force myself to focus, to remember the endgame. Keep going you can do this you’re almost there—
I walk around my protection wall, approach McEvoy slowly to stand by his side. I need to give McEvoy the truth—at least, the version of the truth that I’m able to give him.
So I keep my eyes trained on my stone wall manipulation, the one that now cuts the parking lot in half. And then I reach down inside, channel everything I’ve got left, and perform a stacked trick, by conjuring a two-dimensional image of a man right onto my wall. A man I loathe—the man I know that McEvoy hates more than anyone for killing his cousin in cold blood—perhaps the one person who does bind McEvoy and me together, despite everything else.
I can draw the gangster from memory. The dark hair, large figure, creased face—
And then McEvoy’s standing, gun in hand, face-to-face with a replica of the D Street boss, Boss Colletto. McEvoy gasps and raises his gun higher on instinct.
“The real reason I want to work with you?” I say beside him, and then I force myself to finish the trick. I look back to my fabrication of Colletto on the stone wall and imagine the entire wall glass, and my mind shattering it with a hammer. The replica and the wall burst into a million shards, break against the night sky, and finally swirl away like dust. “Revenge,” I say numbly. “Simple as that.”
McEvoy wrestles his gaze away from the last flickers of my shattered manipulation. He glances at Win, who’s on the ground, dumbfounded, unsure whether what he just witnessed was a dream or real. And then Boss McEvoy lets go with a sharp cackle of a laugh, the caw of a crow across the empty lot.
“Oh, Danfrey.” He slaps me on the shoulder, once, his grasp heavy and possessive. “We’re going to work out just fine.”