Chapter 8
8
“ I don’t like this, Alistair,” Wanda said.
She crossed her legs in her chair, frowning at nothing but her own thoughts. The Pride would be opening its doors soon; the sound of Reinhold preparing the kitchen echoed faintly through from the kitchen to the back hall.
“I’m not happy about it, either,” Alistair shot back. “Should I go to Cicero and see if I can find this Zywarski character?”
Wanda rubbed at her eyes. “Not without Doris to go with you. Actually, maybe we should all go.”
“If we all go, Fabiano is going to think we’re making a move on her territory.”
“Damn it.” But she didn’t argue. “I’d hoped things would settle down once Ursino was out of the picture, but they might be more volatile than ever.”
“What is?” Sam asked from the doorway.
Relief flooded through Alistair. In a moment, he was on his feet, arms around his lover. Sam smelled like ink and paper, and something slightly dusty.
Sam squeaked in surprise, then hugged Alistair back. “I’m glad to see you, too.”
“Honestly, Alistair, he hasn’t been off to war,” Wanda said, sounding annoyed. “How did things go, Sam?”
Alistair didn’t want to let Sam go, but he did so reluctantly, though not without a quick kiss. A part of him wanted to drag Sam into his bedroom next door and go over every inch of his skin, make sure that he was really okay.
Maybe it was an overreaction. But in his experience, people left and they didn’t come back. His parents went for a boat ride and drowned; his adoptive parents brought him to “visit” the orphanage and then left him there; Forrest walked away to die alone.
“Fine, I guess?” Sam said. “Did you know Mr. Sullivan has a free milk program?”
“Yeah, he runs some soup kitchens, too.” Alistair shrugged as he sat back down. “It’s all a ploy to get the public on his side.”
“Even if it’s a ploy, people still end up with full bellies who wouldn’t have them otherwise,” Wanda pointed out. “What about it, Sam?”
“Nothing, I just didn’t know.” He took the empty chair Alistair pushed at him, perching on the very edge. “He sent me to an old brewery to meet Vic Nagorski.”
“Doesn’t ring a bell,” Alistair said, but Wanda nodded.
“I’ve heard of him,” Wanda said. “Not much, but he’s a familiar who runs the hexmaking arm of Sullivan’s outfit.”
“He seemed, well, impressed? By me?” Sam ended every sentence like a question, as if inviting them to disagree with him.
“I’m sure he was,” Alistair said staunchly.
Sam flushed a bit. “Anyway, he asked me to work in the lab. They have a bunch of old hexes from some place in Paris, and they’re trying to figure them out to recreate them. It’s fun, actually.”
The blood drained out of Alistair’s head. For some reason, he’d expected Sullivan only meant to have Sam work as a regular hexman, copying out whatever hexes the syndicate needed. But this…
It wasn’t a position he could easily quit.
“I managed to ask Glenda and Luke—they work in the lab, too—about Bobby.” Sam bit his lip uncertainly. “Apparently he came to the lab a lot. Luke thinks he wanted to bond with Vic, but Glenda seems convinced Bobby was trying to get a look at what they were doing.”
“Fur and feathers.” Alistair scrubbed his hands down his face. “That makes perfect sense.”
Sam perked up. “It does?”
Alistair briefly outlined what he’d discovered. When he was done, Sam’s expression had become one of concern. “Vic said Sullivan is interested in magic. The place is huge; he must have a hundred hexmen and women just copying hexes. And Fabiano is also interested in magic…”
“The illegal hex business has always been big,” Alistair said. “I’d say it’s booming now more than ever, thanks to prohibition. If you’re running a criminal enterprise anyway, might as well expand out from alcohol.”
“Not to mention the Anti-Hex League is following in the steps of the Anti-Saloon League,” Wanda added. “They want to have hexes of any kind prohibited. If that happens, it will go the same way as alcohol—the trade will explode. People stand to make millions.”
It all made sense. “So either Bobby got too greedy or inconvenient and Fabiano rubbed him out, or Sullivan did.”
“But the missing body makes Sullivan look bad, at least that’s what Luke thinks,” Sam objected. “And why would either of them use poison? Wouldn’t Fabiano just have Zywarski do it?”
“Unless she isn’t ready to kick off a war with Sullivan.” Wanda lit a cigarette and took a thoughtful drag. “And even then, why steal his body? It would just draw unnecessary attention. If Alistair can find out what Bobby was up to, Sullivan will too, eventually.”
They all fell silent for a moment, contemplating. “Could the missing body really just be a prank gone wrong, like the newspapers said?” Sam asked at last.
“And whoever took it panicked and dumped it somewhere when they found out who it belonged to?” Alistair let out a long breath. “Maybe. I can try to see if Johnston will accept that, or at least point him at Fabiano and away from us.”
“Track down Zywarski and see if he’ll squeal,” Wanda decided. “Take Doris with you when you go. Sam, are you all right where you are?”
“Me? Yes, of course.”
She nodded. “All right, then. Let’s see if we can get ourselves out of this mess that Bobby put us in.”
An hour later, Alistair and Sam sat at a table near the very back of The Pride’s public room, chairs pushed together and Alistair’s arm slung over his shoulders. It felt strange for Sam to just sit here, under no obligation to bus tables or answer to customers.
“I should help out,” he said.
Alistair tightened his arm, as if he meant to physically restrain Sam in the chair. “Zola’s cousin is doing the job,” he said. “Relax.”
Easy for Alistair to say. The cousin looked barely out of school, his thin frame unsteady beneath the weight of the plates and glasses. There were two empty tables needing to be bused, and three more with customers who had empty glasses scattered about waiting to be taken away. “I could just get one of those…”
“Sam.” Alistair turned to him, amber eyes glowing in the dim light. “You already put in a full day’s work. Relax.”
“It didn’t feel like work,” he protested.
Alistair cocked his head, eyes fixed on him. He was the first person who’d ever really listened to Sam, it seemed, the first to actually notice him. “How so?”
Sam hesitated, uncertain he could explain. “I mean, the morning wasn’t great, being interviewed and tested and all that. But the lab…you should see it! Every kind of ink, and equipment for testing, anything we need to analyze hexes so we can try to take them apart and understand how they were made.” He told Alistair about the hidden laboratory beneath Paris, the complicated hex on the broken stone that he, Glenda, and Luke had spent the afternoon poring over.
“A look-away hex that strong, huh?” Alistair asked when he finished. He lifted his drink to his lips and took a sip, watching as the band made their way to the stage after a short break.
“We need to not just figure out the hex itself, but how to counteract it,” Sam explained. “After all, you don’t want the people who are supposed to see it not be able to. Usually that’s another hex, but it could be a phrase. I have some ideas, but we’re not at the stage to test any of them yet…why are you looking at me like that?”
Alistair’s expression had softened, his lips curling into a gentle smile. “Because I love it when you’re passionate about something.”
Heat flooded Sam’s face. “I know it’s not interesting to everyone…”
“But it’s interesting to you.” He leaned in and kissed Sam gently. “Though I do worry what Sullivan means to do with a hex like that. Would the effect hold even if what it was hiding was in motion?”
“I…don’t know.” Sam blinked. “I assume he wants to use it to hide booze from the prohibition agents.”
“The few that actually do the job, yes.” Alistair grimaced. “I didn’t mean to sound like that—we all depend on the prohees being happy to be paid off, just like the police and the politicians. I’m thrilled they don’t mind turning a blind eye for the right price.”
Sam felt as though he should disagree, say corruption was wrong…but he’d be quite the hypocrite then, wouldn’t he? He certainly didn’t want any of the Gattis going to jail for selling alcohol.
The corruption of the city, his parents would say. This was what hexes, alcohol, and jazz did to a soul.
He looked around the room. The people here were just hoping for a good time, some fun at the end of a long day. People danced, and smoked, and laughed as they drank cocktails hexed to send up plumes of sparks, or turn different colors as the booze got closer to the bottom of the glass. After everything—the war, the flu—didn’t they deserve a chance to cut loose?
“Hey.” Alistair stroked a finger along his cheek. “I didn’t mean to make you think so hard. God only knows what Sullivan’s up to, and in the end it doesn’t matter so long as we stay on his good side.”
“Do you really think he might have killed Bobby?”
Alistair sighed. “Could he have done it? Yes. Would he have done it the way it happened? No. I don’t think so, no matter what that prohee says. He would have done it in such a way as to send a message to anyone else who might be thinking about betraying him.”
It made sense. Sam opened his mouth to ask another question, but Alistair leaned in and silenced him with a kiss.
“Enough about Sullivan,” he said. “All of this can wait until tomorrow. Right now, I’m on a date with the man I love.”
Happiness fizzed like bubbles through Sam. “A date, is it? At the place where you work and can get free drinks?”
Alistair grinned and leaned in to kiss him again. “Only the best for you, sweetheart.”