Chapter 2
While Doris and Philip unloaded the hooch in a nearby warehouse, Alistair stalked to The Pride. Wanda needed to know what had happened.
Teresa was on door duty while Doris was gone; she swung open the heavy steel entrance and frowned at Alistair. “I don’t like the look on your face.”
“You shouldn’t.” He brushed past her, barely seeing the crowded tables and bar. Robin Savine, Wanda’s girlfriend, sang the blues from the small stage, but even her enchanting voice couldn’t shift his mood.
He passed through the swinging doors into the kitchen, where Teresa’s witch, Reinhold, worked the stove. Reinhold glanced at him, the side of his mouth not twisted by scar tissue opening in a greeting, then shutting again at the sight of his expression.
On the other side of the kitchen was a door into the private rooms in the back, including the office Wanda and Alistair shared. Wanda sat in her chair, staring pensively at the telephone, while their new radio played jazz tunes softly in the background.
“O’Keefe is dead,” he said without preamble. “Shot on his boat, point blank in the face.”
“Fur and feathers.” Wanda’s golden lioness eyes followed him as he went straight to his desk and pulled a bottle of whiskey out of the drawer. “What about the booze?”
“It was still in the hold. I’m guessing whoever bumped him off meant to come back and grab it, but either something happened to interfere with their plan, or we got incredibly lucky on timing. We loaded up the truck and high-tailed it out of there.”
“At least there’s that,” she said, frowning. “Shit. We need to find a new supplier. Again.”
“And fast.” He took a pull from the bottle, welcoming the familiar burn. “We’re in trouble. I know I’m the one who said we should quit buying from Camille Falke, but if we come crawling back, maybe—”
“Camille’s dead.”
Alistair froze with the bottle halfway to his mouth for a second slug. “What? Since when?”
“A few days ago. I thought you knew.”
“I didn’t.” Alistair put the bottle down on his desk and leaned forward, a queasy feeling settling into his stomach alongside the whiskey. “How?”
Wanda fitted a cigarette into her silver-tipped holder and lit it. “Shot in the head in her own apartment. No signs of a struggle.”
“And now O’Keefe has gone a similar way.” He didn’t like how this was adding up. “Someone is taking out the competition, even the smaller operators who’ve been left alone up until now. It’s got to be Sullivan.”
Sullivan, whom Sam now worked for.
“Maybe, maybe not,” Wanda cautioned. “He and Fabiano are at each other’s throats. It could be someone else taking advantage of the chaos to thin out the herd.”
Fur and feathers, why couldn’t anything ever be easy? “Whoever it is, they aren’t leaving us with many choices.”
Wanda blew out a long stream of smoke. “How tight is Sam with Sullivan?”
“Not very,” Alistair said quickly. “He’s at the hexworks all day. He knows to stay away from any of the really dangerous stuff.”
Wanda snorted. “His first job there almost got him killed.”
She had a point, but Alistair ignored it. “He got invited to some kind of dinner tonight—not one-on-one, though, don’t worry.”
“Hmm.” Wanda’s eyes narrowed slightly, but he couldn’t tell what she was thinking.
The jazz music on the radio abruptly stopped, and the announcer came on.
“Breaking news,” she said. “We’ve received reports of an explosion at The Silvervine cabaret.
It’s unknown at this time how many people are injured or the amount of damage.
Be sure to tune in for our complete news coverage tomorrow morning at… ”
The announcer’s words turned into a meaningless buzz in Alistair’s ears. His hands went cold and ice filled his stomach. “The Silvervine,” he said in response to Wanda’s questioning look. “That’s where Sam is having dinner.”
* * *
Sam found himself blinking at a ceiling he could barely make out, thanks to a combination of missing glasses and rising smoke. His ears rang and the stench of burning filled his nostrils.
He rolled onto his side, coughing. Though blurry, he could make out a floor strewn with blood and shards of glass. The host who had escorted him to the back room lay in a crumpled heap, unmoving.
There’d been some kind of explosion. A gas leak? Was the building going to burst into flames, or fall in on his head?
He forced himself to his elbows and knees, trying to avoid the glass, but it was everywhere. Turner sprawled a foot away, unconscious or dead. Sullivan lay draped over Turner’s legs; even as Sam watched, the gangster tried to lift his head.
They needed to get out. Sam looked in the direction of the twisted metal that was all that remained of the front door. Thick smoke drifted between them and the outside, but he didn’t spot any flames. They might be able to run for it.
The smoke stirred and swirled, as though someone was moving through it, though Sam couldn’t make them out. A cough sounded from that direction, though, lifting his hopes of rescue.
“We’re over here!” he shouted.
More coughing. The smoke outlined a figure, though again Sam couldn’t see them without his glasses. Whoever it was got the coughing under control, but didn’t call back.
Instead, his only answer was a click, like the sound of someone pulling back the hammer on a gun.
Sam acted on instinct. A crumpled length of metal that had once been part of the doors lay inches from his hand. He grabbed it up and flung it as hard as he could toward where he thought the figure stood.
He missed, of course. Sam couldn’t even throw a baseball straight, much to the despair of his father, and that was on a clear day with his glasses. The metal soared through the air—then bounced off the wall behind whoever was in the smoke.
They spun and fired in the direction of the noise. The distraction wouldn’t last long—but it was long enough.
Through the ringing in his ears, Sam made out the squeal of tires outside. The smoke swirled again, followed by more coughing that faded as the assassin fled.
The fire was dying already, contained by the building’s fire suppression hex, but the smoke grated in Sam’s throat like he’d swallowed steel wool. Sullivan sat up and reached out, grabbing Sam’s arm. A moment later, Bellinowski appeared.
“Boss!” he shouted.
Sullivan let the man help him up. “Check on Lenny,” he ordered, then helped Sam get to his feet.
Sirens sounded, and they limped outside, leaning on one another. The other gang members rushed from inside, surrounding them, and they were both bundled into Sullivan’s car, out of sight of the police and the reporters bound to descend on the scene.
“Sam!” Alistair shouted in his head.
Sam started badly. He still wasn’t entirely used to the witch-familiar bond.
Most people thought of the bond in terms of magic. Familiars were the source, but could only use it to shapeshift. After bonding, a witch could draw on their familiar’s well of magic, channeling it into a hex so it could be used.
In other words, familiars were the wellspring, the witch the garden hose, and the hex the bucket that held the magic.
But there was another upside to the bond: when a familiar was in animal shape, they could look out through their witch’s eyes and speak to them mind-to-mind.
Sullivan noticed him jump. “Are you hurt?”
“No. I mean, I don’t think so. It’s Alistair,” he said aloud. Then, through the bond that glowed like a warm coal behind his heart, he said, “I’m all right.”
Relief flooded through the bond and into him. “Fur and feathers. Are you still at the cabaret? I’ll be right there.”
“No—I’m with Sullivan. We’re both all right.” Well, mostly. He was becoming aware of aches in his body, the pain of glass shards embedded in skin. “Some cuts and bumps, nothing more.”
“Where is Sullivan taking you?”
“I don’t know. Give me a minute.”
“Sorry,” he said to Sullivan. “I guess he heard about the explosion somehow.”
Sullivan’s pale skin was streaked with soot and ash, a slice under his eye bleeding freely. “How?”
“How did you know there’d been an explosion?”
“It was on the radio. I guess someone called it in.”
Sam relayed the information to Sullivan. As he did so, the driver’s door swung open, and Bellinowski leaned in. “Turner’s alive but unconscious—he needs the hospital. None of the rest of our guys are hurt.”
“There was an assassin,” Sam said, voice scraping in his raw throat. “He was going to shoot us, I think. Did you see him run out?”
Bellinowski shook his head. “No, but with the smoke and the fire…shit.”
Sullivan seemed to have regained his composure, not that he’d lost much of it to begin with. “See that Lenny gets the best care possible. Then take us back to my house, and get word out to the sub-lieutenants to meet me three hours from now.”
Bellinowski nodded, then leaned back and spoke to some of the gang members crowded protectively around the vehicle. Two of them rushed off, and he climbed into the driver’s seat and glanced back at Sam.
“What about Choirboy here?” he asked.
Choirboy—what Turner had called him. Turner who might be dying even now.
Sullivan put a hand on Sam’s shoulder. “He’s coming with us.” No doubt reading the look of confusion on his face, he added, “You saved my life. Don’t worry, Sam. I’m going to take good care of you.”