A Criminal Magic (11 page)

A lukewarm shout of a warning comes from one of the prison guards in the corner. “All right, settle. Settle!”

But none of the guards have moved, and the D Street boys keep coming for me, a tidal wave in the distance approaching like a slow, steady roll.

Ronny lurches and thrashes against my grip, his hands snaking and jerking over his head, blindly trying to grab me and pull me off. I tighten my hold, pull him across the table, and throw him onto the floor at my feet.

For a second, my desire to use magic burns like an itch. I could conjure a spell quicker than this thug could blink, could
try to teleport a tray right into his skull. Better yet, conjure a force field around me and slip out of the mess hall. But I can't risk it. If a guard catches me sorcering a single trick, it would double my sentence.

Besides, I don't want the help of tricks.

I want it to be my bare hands that rip this guy apart.

I sit on top of Ronny's chest, tuck my legs under me as I straddle his stomach. And then I just start pummeling him. I bring my fist down, hard, against his cheek. He keeps reaching for me with both hands, but I've got the advantage of pinning him down, so I take another jab, then another, to his jaw. Blood starts gushing from his nose, and he's stammering, playing defense with wild arms and loose fists.

But before I can take another blow, I'm lifted off him in one fell swoop and thrown headfirst into the table. I hit the ground with a thud, my lungs slapping against the hard tile of the mess hall. I roll over, but all I see are legs towering over me, a shadow splayed across my features. I close my eyes out of instinct, raise my hands to block my face—

But then the shadow's gone. I scramble to the table's bench a few feet away to steal a breath.
Who had my back?
I grip the edge of the bench, steadying myself, and stand.

And then I'm face-to-face with my cell mate, Howie Matthews.

His hands are up like a boxer's, his brow stitched, and his mouth open mid war cry, and for a second I wonder if I've somehow managed to get double-teamed—that I have
both
D Street and the Shaws after me—but then Howie turns around and starts pummeling some dark-haired greaser behind him.

The fight has ballooned, at least ten, maybe twenty, men sparring and swatting at one another, the D Street boys who flew to Ronny's side, and yes, yes,
yes
, the Shaws to mine. I take quick stock of the scene, at the smattering of brawls—two young guns
locked together like wrestlers on the ground. A sinewy older man whaling on some lanky teenager. A fistfight at the nearby table.

The place is chaos.

“Goddamn it, you half-wits!” a prison guard shouts above the noise. He smacks my table with his baton, and a deep boom clangs through the mess hall. “ENOUGH!”

Everyone stops moving and turns to look at him. Everyone, except for Ronny. Ronny crawls off the floor slowly and stands. And then like a wounded dog that won't stay down, he lunges for me. I duck out of the way, as the guard steps in and shoves his baton into the thick of Ronny's stomach. Three other guards approach from my left side, guns and batons out. They surround our table, pistols drawn and pointed into the crowd.

And then you can't hear anything but deep breathing and the clanking of spoons from the mess hall workers in the nearby kitchen.

*    *    *

We're all filed back into our rooms, doors locked behind us, outdoor privileges forfeited for the day. I know I just painted a mark on my back for D Street's target practice, but I also know that it was worth it.

Because that night, for the first time, Howie speaks to me. He waits until we've both washed up and are in our separate cots.

“That was a hothead move, Danfrey,” he says from the top bunk, “taking on that D Street prick solo.”

My heart starts beating overtime.
He's talking to me. I did it. It begins
. I study the bottom of his bunk, trying to figure out the best way to play this, to use his comment as a wedge to prop open the door.

“Maybe,” I say as coolly as possible.
Bring it home, win him
over
. “But that thug was making claims he had no right to make. I don't owe D Street anything.”

I hear Howie's bed squeak above me. “Well, that's a damn wop for you. Invite him over for dinner, he'll try to screw your wife, then have the balls to stay for breakfast.”

I laugh, the laughter coming easy, a bubble of relief. “Isn't that the truth?”

It's a while before Howie speaks again. “So you really severed all ties with the D Street Outfit? 'Cause I might've thought, like father like son, even after those lowlifes sold him out to the Feds—”

“I don't care if it was a couple of no-names or Boss Colletto himself who gave up my father,” I interrupt, my excitement getting the better of me. I regroup, add more quietly, “It happened under Colletto's watch, so as far as I'm concerned, it's Colletto's wrong. I'd never work for him. D Street's a big fat hole on my map.”

Howie laughs—the kind of long, deep laugh I've heard him belt out in the mess hall when he's around friends. And I take it as a good sign. Not a sign to let my guard down, but a sign that things are moving in the right direction. “Hell, I understand. When someone wrongs me, I never get over it.”

“Some two-bit fogey who plays lapdog to Colletto tells me that I owe them a cut of what I run?” I add. “If I had my way, each and every D Street wop would be dead.”

Then there's silence for a long while. But I can hear Howie breathing.

In a panic, I wonder if I've blown my chance—I actually meant what I said, but it sounded almost pompous, and way too hard. Maybe I've laid it on too thick, and the door to the Shaws is closing just as soon as I've managed to prop it open.

But then Howie whispers, “I think certain people would like to hear that, Danfrey. Powerful people. People who could get
your back like I did, and more, if you'd be open to it when we get out of here.” I hear him shift again above me. “Boss McEvoy, my cousin, and the other Shaw underbosses—they've been sworn enemies of the D Street Outfit for years, since Colletto took out McEvoy's cousin, Danny the Gun. You knew that, right?”

“Not sure my father ever mentioned the bad blood,” I say carefully, “and these days, I'm working alone.”

“Well, you ever hear the phrase, ‘If two people have the same enemies, they should team up'?”

I think Howie's going for “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” but clearly, now's not the time to correct him. “I take the point; it's wise advice.”

He clucks above me on his cot. “'Course, the only guy I've got a real
in
with is my cousin, Win—but he's high up, helps run McEvoy's smuggling operation. Besides, Win promised me. He said if I took the fall on our last run, denied how I got the dust shipment in from the coast—and let the big boys walk—he'd hook me up when I get out.”

Then Howie goes silent again. And I can sense it: he's waiting for something. Maybe for me to meet him halfway—some sign that I'm interested, that I need him, just like I did in the mess hall.

“You think they might be looking for other young guns on the smuggling side of things?” I say, trying to keep my voice noncommittal.

“Depends.” Howie looks down at me from his top bunk. There's a bit of a glimmer in his eye. “You got any other assets, other than being a hothead?”

I give him a smile, an honest one. This feels like the right time. We're alone in our cell, no guards on rotation, and they've already done their nightly room-to-room check. Besides, I'm surprised that I'm near electric over the idea of showing my magic to this chump.

Because this time the magic's for a reason.

A good reason.

Bringing all these gangsters down.

I turn away from Howie and focus on our cell door. I home in on the steel slats of the jail cell wall—twelve bars, each a few inches apart. Then I focus on the world behind those bars, the empty hallway, the flickering ceiling lamps that hang down above it, the row of other prison cells on the opposite side of the corridor.

I mumble the words of power, “
Replicate, protect
,” and in seconds, there appears a carbon copy of the jailhouse scene I've been staring at, right in front of the real one, an exact two-dimensional replica posing as a facade. My attention to detail is perfect, my father always boasted, so Howie probably doesn't even realize I've created this manipulation. In fact, the only way he'd be able to tell is if he got up and walked into it.

But I'm attempting something even trickier. A stacked trick—a trick layered on top of another trick. I return my focus to my manipulation, the jailhouse scene replica, and I imagine erasing the bars. “
One by one, erase
.” And then, the bars of the cell disappear, flicker and fade one after another, like they're long beams of light turning off.

“What the hell,” Howie whispers above me. “Wait, can we”—I hear his gulp from here—“can we actually get out?”

“Afraid not, my friend.” I don't want Howie's wheels turning over whether I can try to unlock door after door, defeat dozens of guards, only to stage an escape from a place I've worked hard to get
in
—so I release my manipulation. The fabricated scene I've just conjured dissipates like dust in the wind, and then we're both staring at our locked cell door again. “But I've found these types of manipulations come in handy too, from time to time.”

Howie matches my whisper. “So . . . you can sorcer, just like
your old man?” His tone is breathless, childlike even, like everyone else when confronted with magic.

“A little bit.” I downplay it. “I've got a couple of tricks.”

Howie shifts in his bed above me. “God, I've always loved magic. My mother was a sorcerer too. I know how rare the magic touch is and everything, but I'd always hoped that she'd give me the gene.”

“You're right, it is rare,” I say softly. “Odds are over one in a thousand. And I read somewhere that there's no rhyme or reason to who inherits the magic touch.” I didn't read this—I actually heard it, in my Sorcering Basics class at the Unit. Firstborn, last-born, second cousin—it's a crapshoot—all we know is that sorcery
is
genetic, and that about three times as many males as females get the recessive trait.

“I heard that too,” Howie says with a sad laugh. “Guess I've got to settle for being ordinary.”

“What you did for me in the cafeteria back there? It definitely wasn't ordinary.”

There's a long, long pause. Finally Howie says, in a different voice, “I've had to fight with my fists for everything, Danfrey.”

His answer warms me, encourages me. Maybe I might actually be cut out for this line of work. Hell, maybe I'll survive undercover. Because all the little things I can't help but read into: all of people's tiny gestures and comments, their looks, their sideways glances? Now I've got a reason to put them to use. And it's beyond obvious to me what Howie wants right now. What he always wants, I've gathered, from listening to him in the cafeteria.

“It shows, Howie,” I say softly. “You're quite the fighter.”

He laughs, full and warm, and it bubbles over his cot. “Well, you ain't so bad yourself, Danfrey. That POS was almost twice your size.” He waits another minute before he whispers, “You know, Boss McEvoy could probably use a young street sorcerer
somewhere in his outfit. Especially a guy like you—guys like me and you. Scrappy guys willing to put their time in, and work their way up the ladder,” he says. “I'm hell-bent on doing it. One day, I swear, I'm going to be sitting at McEvoy's table.”

Howie leans over the edge of his bed once more, steals a peek at me, like he's making sure that I'm still down here. “And I'm just saying, we didn't make a bad team back there.”

“You're right.” I smile up at him. “We didn't.”

“And there could be an opportunity for you—for both of us, if you want to team up on the outside, too,” Howie says. “It's something to consider.”

I don't want to seem too eager. But my heart is pounding, practically beating out of my chest. I nod at his upside-down face and his greasy hair hanging straight from his head like a patch of wet weeds, and I give him my most confident Alex Danfrey smile. “Then I'll consider it.”

Howie rolls back onto his cot. “Good.” He gives one of those long laughs again. “Christ, you're an animal, Danfrey. I mean really, who knew? Damn near got yourself killed by that half-brained guinea.”

His laughter dissolves into a chuckle, and I chuckle along with him. Because I know I've just received the highest form of compliment from this lowlife.

And I also know that I'm on my way in.

BRICK BY BRICK

JOAN

The four of us are nestled deep into the woods, away from the clearing, like many days these past few weeks. Grace and I stand farther into the forest, fifteen feet apart from each other, with our other allies Ral and Billy situated closer to the clearing, fifteen feet away from us, and from each other. The four of us form a perfect square. We're in the middle of running a series of magic immersions in what Ral calls our “sanctuary”—a boxed space in the forest enclosed by a sorcered protection wall on each side of our square. Each protection wall works like a mirror, reflects back the dense, tangled wood, so that someone approaching our sanctuary would assume there was nothing but forest ahead. We use the space to try out new magic, perfect old tricks, and hide the little bumps and setbacks we don't want the other sorcerers or Gunn to see.

“I want to work on our performance transitions,” Ral says. “Let's run through the seasons.”

Billy groans. “My God, I can't do the seasons again.”

“Our timing's off, you know it, and Grace says the end's coming soon.”

“I said I got a
sense
this whole trial of Gunn's is ending soon,” Grace corrects Ral. “Gunn's still tougher to read than a German paper.”

“That's why we should be working through new tricks, bigger and better manipulations,” Billy presses. “
That's
what Gunn wants to see.”

“No, I think Ral's right,” I pipe up softly, across the sanctuary. “Our transitions should be flawless. The group performance has always been what it's about for Gunn.”

Billy grumbles, “Fine, whatever. Just know that I can make it snow in my sleep.”

Ral shoots me a quick smile, then settles into his grassy corner. He whispers his words of power, raises his hands, and a collection of thin trees erupt out of the ground in the center of our performance sanctuary. The spindly trunks sprout into a mass of branches, then a kaleidoscope of fierce orange, deep red, and yellow leaves. Just as quick, the trees begin to kiss the leaves good-bye, sending them on a slow dance to the ground.

I'm not exactly sure when Ral passes the reins of the manipulation to Billy, but the pass-off is without a stutter. Ral's autumn trees begin to grow darker, brittle, shrink under the touch of a light, soft, falling snow. The dusky gold sky of our sanctuary hollows into a crisp, clear white, as the piles of leaves around the tree's roots wrinkle and blacken into dark corpses, and soon become buried by the thick-lying snow.

Grace steps in, and with a few whispers, she softens the sky into a light blue, rises a magic-made sun over the trees, and Billy's snow begins to melt. Green vines twist slowly out of the ground, extend their full length, and burst into bright tulip flowers.

My turn. I whisper, “
Glisten
,” as I focus on the sky over our sanctuary, watch it deepen into a piercing, brilliant shade of blue. “
Fly and sing
,” and the chirp of birds fills the space with the sweet tune of June. And then, just because I've been practicing tactile manipulations the past few evenings, I infuse a honey-scented, heavy moisture into the air. I feel it press against my skin like a warm cloth.

“Wow, Joan,” Ral says.

I break my attention to find all three of my teammates staring at me. “All right?” I say hesitantly.

“Better than all right,” Grace answers quietly.

But that's all. We move on. Because this isn't about any one of us, it's about all of us. Because there isn't any time to stop for praise.

Ral pinches out our manipulation, and the trees, flowers, and birds all crumble, whirl into a fine dust, and fade into nothing. Then he conjures a stone altar—identical to the one back in the clearing—that rumbles up from the ground. We file around it, two on each side, as Ral passes each of us a bottle of water from the crate we brought out to the sanctuary. “Begin,” he whispers.

We've brewed sorcerer's shine every evening since we've teamed up, but each time I touch my bottle, images of Mama's final night threaten to cripple me—her remains swirling into dust, me slicing my arm open in a desperate attempt to perform a blood-spell and banish my magic. So every time I brew, I have to close my eyes and just surrender to my magic, the magic that's always hungry to make something, do something,
be
something more. Heat surges through my fingertips, and a strange cross between adrenaline and euphoria floods through my veins, rushes to where my skin touches the glass. Sure enough, the water inside starts sizzling, churning, before it relaxes under my grasp. Then, only then, do I release my bottle and take a look around.

Four bottles of shine now rest on the top of the stone altar. If you mixed them up or drank them, you wouldn't be able to tell one from the other. Rosy, glowing, sparkling, powerful. I've got no idea what the other sorcerers outside of our foursome are brewing, but they've got to be killing it to match what we're putting out.

“God, I could use a hit of this,” Billy mumbles. “Been a long day.” He touches the top of his own bottle. “Hell, every day here is a long, backbreaking day.”

Without a word, Ral reaches over the altar, grabs Billy's bottle, and dumps its contents onto the ground.

“Hey, what the hell!” Billy protests. His shine hits a patch of grass at my feet, corrodes the earth into a shallow hole, and dries with a thin sheet of sparkling dust.

“We never drink it,” Ral says solemnly.

“I
know
that, I was just messing around.”

“Really?” Ral sizes Billy up. “I've caught you eyeing Stock, Rose, and Tommy at the warehouse these past couple nights, when they're riding their own shine-highs, looking all wistful.”

Billy averts his gaze. “I'm just taking notes on the competition.”

“I'm serious, Billy. We can't afford to get weak, not now.”

“I'm tired is all, okay?” None of us can protest or argue with that. He adds with a huff, “Christ, Ral, you're like my mother.”

We dump the remainder of our shine into the grass, release our four-sided sanctuary, and trek back through the thick woods to the clearing. We've practiced every day as a foursome, sometimes in the clearing, and sometimes out here in the woods, since the day after I first arrived. Grace had a strong sense that she and I would work well with Ral and Billy, after Gunn forced the pair to demonstrate their magic for the rest of us. Grace pegged them as hardworking, open, prone to collaborate—and as usual, she was right. She approached them that night at dinner, while I hung back in the clearing, trying to tease my magic into something more, and offered them an alliance. I think to both Grace's and my surprise, Ral and Billy accepted.

And we work pretty darn well together. We've found our rhythm. Ral's the closest thing we've got to a ringleader, which is a natural fit for his big-picture magic, and his role as family
man back home. And for as brutish and one-way as Billy can be as a human being, he's a sensitive sorcerer, who keeps our magic stitched together when Ral's grand ideas have a couple holes in them. Grace, a master amplifier, is of course our details specialist, embellishes our magic and ensures that our manipulations sing. She also has a habit of keeping mental tabs on us, making sure we all feel heard and respected.

And me? Somehow I've become a strong jack-of-all-trades. The fact that I practice every minute I can—every chance I get to forgo sleeping and eating to make sure I'm as strong as I need to be, for Ben and Ruby, for whatever Gunn has in store—well, that sure as heck helps.

We've become a well-oiled machine, a quartet of sorcerers whose magic is more than the sum of its parts. Just like Gunn said.

We cross into the clearing, where the other two factions of sorcerers are also winding up for the day. We're down to eleven sorcerers. Besides losing Mark and Peter during Gunn's demonstration our first day in the clearing, we lost a young guy named Carson Jameson from Tennessee a couple weeks back, a loner type, to an ambitious vanishing-reappearance trick gone wrong (flying swords that disappeared and then reappeared in unfortunate places). The other, one of Gavin's Carolina Boys crowd, perished soon after. I didn't see the trick, but Grace said that Gavin forced his team to try a time-space manipulation of the clearing, some kind of elaborate “folding” of the field in half, so that taking a step forward on one end would promptly put you on the other side. But the trick combusted, and one of their members became forever lost in the fold.

Eleven sorcerers, to become seven. Our foursome, the four Carolina Boys, and Stock's trio, which consists of him and the strange brother-sister-questionable-lovers pair, Tommy and Rose Briggs. We've been like this since Carson died—three islands of
sorcerers, with no bridges between us, and Gunn never giving any indication of which seven he wants to see win. The choice, apparently, is up to us, and we're at a standstill. There's an inherent distrust between Stock and me, and Gavin has a beef with partnering with women.

Grace, Billy, and Ral now plow hungrily into the clearing. Out of habit, I lag behind.

Ral sees me hesitate. “Joan, you don't need to do that anymore. You're running yourself ragged with the extra practice.”

“Grace'll sneak me dinner after, she always does. Trust me, I need to keep up, stay on top of my game.”

“Keep up?” Billy gives a sharp heckle. “Kendrick, I'd bet at this point, you might well be stronger than all of us put together.”

“I still don't have Ral's self-sustaining magic down. Like how he creates a tree manipulation with enough magic to bloom on its own,” I say to deflect the compliment, but I don't meet Billy's eye. Because I'm not telling him the truth: that practicing magic has become something of a compulsion, a superstition. That if I keep putting in my time, learn and master as much as I can, I earn the right to stay here. I earn the right to win.

“Forget the trees. Billy's right, Joan. You're the last person I'm worried about,” Ral says, as Dawson shouts over the clearing, “
Supper time
!”

Stock, Tommy, and Rose, followed by the Carolina Boys, trek like hungry lumberjacks into the woods for supper near the warehouse. Our crowd moves to follow, but Ral extends his arm, holding us back. “But I
am
worried about fleshing out our ranks to seven . . . before someone else does it first. We need to figure it out, and soon.”

Before any of us can answer him, we spot Gunn and Dawson watching us from the border of the forest, and we fall to a hush. Gunn signals for Dawson to go back to the truck without him, and then he crosses the clearing toward us.

“Damn it,” Billy whispers. “Can't stand being close to Gunn.”

Ral scolds, “Quiet, Billy.”

“You all have a good day out in the woods?” Gunn says curtly, his shiny brown loafers crunching over the grass. “I didn't see you out there.”

We all shift uncomfortably, until Ral answers, “That magic enclosure was my idea, sir. I hope it wasn't in poor form. We were practicing a dangerous trick, a new magic. Didn't want to risk putting anyone else in jeopardy.”

Gunn smirks. “How thoughtful.” Then he adds, “And a truly impressive manipulation.”

Despite how Gunn keeps all of us tight, tense, and small, I feel a distinct surge of pride at his compliment. I'd bet money that the rest of my team does too.

Gunn looks at me suddenly. “And are you gracing us with your presence tonight, Ms. Kendrick? Or are you spending another night out here alone?”

I feel four pairs of eyes on me. This is the most attention Gunn's given any one sorcerer, at least since he forced Billy to be a part of his “work-together” demonstration that first day in the clearing.

“I was going to practice, sir,” I say slowly. “If it's all right with you, of course.”

Gunn looks at me intensely, curiously, like he's sizing up a car, trying to figure out its make, its model. “Come to dinner, Joan,” he says. And then he walks away.

As soon as Gunn turns into the trees, Billy says, “Looks like someone's been noticing where you go, Kendrick.”

I shrug him off, though I'm surprised too. Most times, I get the distinct feeling that we're all still interchangeable to Gunn. “He keeps tabs on all of us.”

Billy stands tall and rigid, leans in with an exaggerated glare. “But he wants you to
come to dinner, Joan
,” he fake-barks, in
Gunn's flat, even cadence. “Not sure any of us have ever gotten such a warm invitation.”

Grace and Ral laugh as I give Billy a little punch to the arm.

I walk lockstep with them through the clearing and try to relax, to block out everything else and just enjoy the night off with my team.

*    *    *

After supper, we head back to the warehouse. There's no electricity, so once the sun goes down, our only lights are cigarette butts shared around the room. It looks like a field of fireflies, glowing embers blinking and burning through the wide, long space. Our days are long,
hard
, so soon after supper, most of us hit the sack, then rise along with the sun glaring through the tall warehouse windows.

But some nights, like tonight, there's a restlessness in the air—a collective charge of electricity, magic—and folks'll stay up chatting, scheming in corners, some of the shine drinkers even brewing a quick batch of sorcerer's shine with a water jug they smuggled from dinner, in an attempt to ease themselves into sleep. Me, Grace, Billy, and Ral—we play cards with Grace's faded, dog-eared deck by the light of candles we conjure for these types of occasions. As usual, we're playing poker, the only circle of ours where magic's not allowed. Found that out the first night, otherwise you're in for a tying game of royal flushes.

“Hate to bring it back to business,” Ral leans in and whispers, “but we really need to figure out our next step.” He looks at Grace as they exchange three cards. “You get any better sense of when the end of Gunn's ‘experiment' might be? And what's in store after?”