Magick Rising (33 page)

“An enhancer?” He contemplated the word. “You mean a drug?”

She nodded. “We call it Glue. Without it, I can only maintain for

minutes. But with Glue, I can stay in face longer and with virtually no pain.”

Thoughts swirled in Jon’s head. Up to now, all he ever wanted to do

was rid himself of his talents and the urges to use them. Alcohol had blunted

both the desire and ability, but maybe things had changed.

He wasn’t a freak or an anomaly.

Or alone.

A new purpose flared inside him. Find out more. Learn from the

others. Starting with this . . . enhancer.

“Maybe I ought to try some Glue and see if it’ll—”

“No!” She spoke so loudly the waitress at the counter looked up from

her tabloid and spared them a disinterested glance.

“No,” Laila repeated more softly. “You’re better off without it. It’s a

narcotic. You get hooked and have to have it. You can’t change without it.”

Her hands started shaking, and she reached into her purse, pulling out a

small, brown plastic pill bottle and fumbling with the cap. “Sinema may look

like a classy joint, but we’re still glorified prostitutes. The only way we can

get the drug is to earn it. We do what they want, or we don’t get it.” Her

hands shook as she battled the bottle. “And we can’t live without it.”

“Let me.” Jon took the vial from her and opened it. He understood all

too well about chemical dependency. But in his case the struggle with the

bottle was to avoid the temptation to shift. At least that’s what he told

himself.

She snatched the open container from him, shook out a tablet, popped

it in her mouth, and chased it with Jon’s cold coffee. She shivered, squeezed

her eyes closed for almost a minute before relaxing. “That’s better.”

He picked up the bottle, examining the contents. “A narcotic that helps

you to shift without pain. Remarkable.”

She leaned her head back, eyes still closed. “Before the pill, it took

everything I had to shift and hold it for more than a minute. Now I can keep

a shape well over an hour. Sometimes almost two.” She opened her eyes, her

face devoid of emotion. “How about you? How long can you hold it?”

“Longest was four hours. But luckily it was getting dark so no one

noticed that my control was weakening there toward the end.”

She gasped. “Four hours? Think what you could do with Glue.” Her

look of astonishment changed in an instant, her cheeks flooding with color.

“What am I saying? I wouldn’t wish Glue addiction on my worst enemy.”

She leveled him with a stare. “You’re not my enemy, are you?”

He met her gaze head-on. “No. All I want to do is find David Worth.”

“Him? More like Worthless,” she sneered. “He’s the club’s manager

and the sorriest piece of shit. He treats us like cattle, expects favors in return

for our meds, shortchanges our pay. He knows we can’t complain to

anybody. We can’t live without Glue. Literally.” She gave Jon a dubious

once-over. “What do
you
want with him?”

“His wife needs his signature on some papers.”

“Wife? God, what idiot would marry an asshole like him?”

Jon picked up the bottle from the table and shook the remaining tablet

into his palm. Serenity Worth’s troubles could wait. He squinted at the

off-white pill that looked definitely homemade. “What’s in this stuff? You

ever gotten it analyzed?”

She released a sigh. “I never had a spare dose until now. Worthless

miscounted the last time he doled them out.” Her expression darkened.

“I’m saving it for an emergency. Sometimes he threatens to withhold our

meds. You’ll agree to almost anything when you’re hurting for a fix.”

Jon returned the odd-shaped tablet to the bottle, capped it, and placed

it in the middle of the table. “If you let me have it, I’ll take it to a friend

who’s a chemist. There’s a good chance he can figure out what’s in it and

how to manufacture it. Then you’d never have to rely on getting it from the

club ever again.”

Hope lit her stolen features. “Then we could all be free.”

“In a manner of speaking. You wouldn’t be free of your addiction, but

you’d at least be free from the sort of
quid pro quo
it takes to get the stuff.”

“Why are you doing this? You don’t know . . .” Her expression

changed in a flash, and she released a giggle that caught him by surprise. “I

bet that’s what you tell all the girls,” she said, her voice a bit too loud.

It only took him a second or two to catch on. “Someone from the

club?” he said under his breath.

“Uh-huh,” she said, not moving her lips.

“How many?”

“Two.” She shot him a brilliant smile and leaned forward as if to

whisper something provocative. “Change back into David Worth.”

Panic flared in his gut. “Don’t I look like him right now?”

“You’re fading.”

He closed his eyes and willed his features to cooperate, but there was

only empty pain. He’d reached the limits of time and his abilities. “Been too

long. I can’t.”

Although Laila continued to smile, her eyes sent an entirely different

message. “They’ll kill you for talking to me,” she whispered, reaching across

the table to grasp his hand. “Take this.” She deposited the last pill in his

palm.

“But—”

“It’s your only chance. One dose isn’t enough to hook you.” She looked

beyond his shoulder and tried to retain her smile. “Hurry. Not much time.”

He hesitated. Unknown drug. Unknown woman. It could all be a scam.

At his hesitation, she added an urgent, “Please.”

He had no time to figure out all the angles. All he had was his intuition,

and every instinct he had screamed that she was telling the truth.

Jon tossed the pill in his mouth, closed his eyes, and swallowed.

Laila’s voice cracked. “They’re coming.”

The pill dissolved in his mouth immediately, but how long would it take

to enter his system? Seconds? Minutes? No matter, whether it was

psychosomatic or otherwise, he felt stronger. More in control. He opened

his eyes and saw Laila was studying his face.

“It’s working.”

“It can’t be.”

She shushed him, looked up, and smiled at someone who was

approaching them with inordinately heavy footsteps. “Harley, Krantz. Out

for a late night dinner?”

A deep voice rumbled from behind Jon. “You shouldn’t skip out of the

club without telling someone where you’re going.”

Jon turned around and faced two of the biggest bouncers he’d ever

seen, and judging by their expressions, they were shocked to see David

Worth sitting there. Jon could only pray that Worth wasn’t the person who’d

sent them.

One of the earliest rules of impersonation was realizing that looking

like the mark was only half the job. He had to act and sound like the mark.

However, having never met the man, the best Jon could do was bluff. He

picked up the coffee cup then he glared at them over the cup’s rim. “You’re

disturbing us.” When he lowered the coffee and scowled, the two men

shrank visibly.

The taller and uglier of the two spoke first. “Sorry, boss. We didn’t . . .”

His voice trailed off, and the other man completed his sentence. “. . .

know she was wit’ you.”

Jon continued to stare. People always filled the silence if you let them.

The taller one shifted uncomfortably. “We was told to bring her back,

pronto because . . .”

Again, his partner finished the sentence for him. “. . . there’s a special

client waiting for her, and he’s I’ impatient.”

Jon stared at the duo, trying to ignore Laila who was fumbling under the

table, probably hiding the empty pill bottle.

“Then I better be going, Mr. Worth.” She stood. “I mean if that’s okay

with you.”

Jon dismissed her with a wave of his hand.

She shot him a look that suggested their conversation would continue

later. If there was a later.

The shorter of the two men gave Jon a hard stare. “You comin’, Mr.

Worth?”

The last thing Jon wanted to do was go back to the club and run into

someone who might see the differences between his David Worth and the

real one. Or worse, run into the real thing.

He looked down at his uneaten dessert. “Gonna finish my dessert.” He

shoved his fork into the pie, managing to break off a chunk.

The two goons nodded, wrapped their sausage fingers around Laila’s

arm, and pulled her toward the exit. As she stumbled along with them, she

turned back toward Jon, her expression a mixture of fear, loathing, and

something else.

Once they were out the door, Jon counted to ten, grabbed his check,

and walked up to the cashier. Paying for his four dollar pie with a twenty, he

pushed the miscounted change back across the counter toward the waitress.

“This is yours if you’ll show me the back door.”

She scooped up the money, stuffed it into her cleavage and nodded

toward the kitchen behind her. “Straight back. Watch out for the garbage.”

Jon pushed through the swinging doors and sidestepped a sleeping

cook perched on a stack of crates, a lit cigarette dangling from his lips. The

rear exit emptied onto an alley which smelled ten times worse than the one

behind the club. The rats and other vermin of the night scurried away as Jon

invaded their territory. He got only a few steps away down the alley when a

deep voice echoed around him.

“Another rat, eh?”

The blow came out of nowhere, landing in his stomach. As he doubled

over in pain, a second blow crashed down on his head. He landed face first

in the alley muck and tried not to breathe in the filth. As he flipped over,

someone picked him up by the lapels, but sludge ran down into his eyes,

obscuring his vision.

“She was supposed to be mine. You promised, but you lied.”

Another blow slammed into his midsection. But this time, he rolled

with the punch and managed to land a few blows, himself. However, they

bounced off the rock-hard torso of his attacker.

The man slammed him against a large dumpster, but Jon managed to

hang onto consciousness. If he passed out, he knew he’d be at the mercy of

someone who probably couldn’t even spell the word. As blackness loomed,

the punches stopped. He heard two men yelling, the sound of running

footsteps and more shouts. Hands helped him up, but his knees buckled.

Someone helped drag him out of the alley and put him into a car.

He heard words, but they didn’t register. He was too wrapped up in the

fire and pain.

“Take him home to his wife. She’ll know what to do.”

GROGGY, SERENITY strained to identify the noise that perforated the

thin veil of sleep. Was it her bickering duplex neighbors, having yet another

knockdown, drag-out fight? Or had some kid wrapped his lowrider around

the car-eating tree at the intersection?

She closed her eyes and listened, hearing a car door slam and the sound

of footsteps on the sidewalk just beyond her window. A moment later, she

heard the telltale creak of her front step, taking a small measure of relief in

the fact that she’d dead-bolted and chained the door.

With phone in hand, she got up and peeked out the front window

overlooking the steps. The porch light revealed a burly man closest to the

window, supporting a second man.

“What do you want?” she called through the window.

“You’re . . .” There was a pause as if he was consulting something or

somebody. “. . . Mrs. Worth, ain’tcha?”

“So?”

“I was told to deliver this guy to you.”

“Who are you?”

“Taxi driver. That’s my cab parked at the curb.”

Sure enough, a taxi sat in front of her apartment. Unlocking the

deadbolt, she allowed the door to open to the full length of the security

chain. The cabbie held up another man—David—bloodied, dirtied, and

barely conscious.

“I think he got rolled in some back alley. Some guys flagged me down

off Melrose, paid his fare, and told me to deliver him here.”

Serenity clenched her jaw. If this was Jonathan Craft’s idea of delivering

on a promise—by beating beat David nearly senseless and sticking him in a

cab—then she was going to have a very serious discussion with the man.

In broad daylight. In a crowded, public place.

“You gonna let us in?”

Although logic said yes, something inside her was screaming, “
No!
I

kicked him out for a reason.
”
But if she refused now, how long would it take to

find him again?

The cabbie released an exasperating sigh. “Listen lady, either you let us

inside or I’m leaving him here on the porch. Make up your mind.”

Make up your mind!

She didn’t worry that she’d fall back in love with him. That ship had

sailed long ago. But just because she didn’t love him didn’t mean she wished

him harm. Or got a kick out of his predicament. Even after he’d raised his

fist to her, she hadn’t wanted retribution.