Part One

Eddie, the bartender at Club Flesh, set a shot of Irish at my elbow. “Look what the cat dragged in.”

I looked. “Another reason to hate cats.”

Lou Sandberg leaned against the bar, lifting his own shot glass, as if admiring the amber liquid. I knew better. He was staring past it at the mirror behind the bar. He was watching Nicole sway on stage two.

I drained the glass.

Lou took that as an invitation. He tossed his off, then came down and set his glass next to mine. He signaled for two more.

I shook my head. “You’re drinking alone, Lou. This one’s for the road.”

“I need your help, Trick.”

I checked my watch. “Seventeen seconds. New record.”

“Why do you got to be like that?” He patted his left breast, right over a gravy stain on his checked jacket. “This is serious, this time.”

With Lou, it was always serious. Small guy, except around the middle, swarthy, breath that could kill a moose. Had a face that would have looked better after third degree burns. Acne scars on his cheeks and neck, so he never looked clean shaven. Beard tough enough to fray all his shirt collars. Shopped at Goodwill, dressed in the dark—if anything matched it was his socks, and that was just luck.

I glanced at my watch again. “Spill it.”

“I need you to find my wife.”

“Back the truck up, Loretta.” Took a second for my jaw to rebound from the floor. “Wife?” Last I knew, the closest thing he had to a wife was his left hand.

He pulled a photograph out of his pocket. Irregular edges. He’d printed it out himself, probably on a department computer. Dog-eared. Two women. The blonde was the shorter one, curvy, nice smile. The other was taller, leaner, same rack though. Not supermodel pretty, but if she worked a bar as a paid-to-pose beer girl you wouldn’t have been disappointed.

He tapped the blonde. “That’s Irina with her sister, Svetlana. They’re from St. Petersburg. That’s in Russia.”

“I passed Geography, Lou.” I signaled Eddie for another whiskey. “Hell of a commute for love.”

“I’ve put in my twenty-five with the department. I’m looking at retiring. I’ll have my pension. Docs will invalid me out, so I get a bit more. It’ll be good enough to live on, but I don’t want to be alone, you know?”

I gave him the nod he wanted.

“You know me. I was never good with the ladies. You were. You had something I didn’t.”

Breath mints. Soap and water.

Lou shrugged. “So I started looking into mail-order brides. Economy sucks all over, worse in Mother Russia. Cute women want a home, some comforts, and they’ll put up with someone like me to get it. Not pretty, but Irina, she has a good heart. We corresponded.”

“How much?”

“I’m not hitting you for money, Trick.” He looked around the club. “It costs ten grand to bring her over. I was saving up. Then I got a call. Peotr Turpeluk. A month ago. Says he understands my situation. He will bring Irina and her sister over in exchange for a favor. He wants me to get a kilo of coke out of evidence. Says it will be easy for me.”

I sipped the whiskey. “Easy was always your style.” Lou had always been willing to trade a blind-eye for a hummer, and his spare tire came from all of the “community relation” free meals he accepted. Payoffs, too, I guess. Always chump change. He never thought big.

“No denying I took my share of favors, Trick.” He sighed, suddenly as tired as his jacket was worn. “This is different. This is a felony.”

“Report it.”

“Can’t.”

“Don’t want to risk an evidence audit?”

“Audits I can handle.” I don’t think I’d ever seen him look so woeful. “Homestead Park, a week ago. I saw Irina. She waved. I started running toward her. Two guys hustled her off. Two more intercepted me. Mr. Turpeluk introduced himself. Explained that the cocaine, which had become two kilos, was the only way I’d be getting my Irina. Two days later, I get a call, a tip. Dumpster down by the docks. The sister. Dead. She’s a Jane Doe in the morgue right now.”

“Okay, so that’s serious.” My eyes tightened. “What do you want me to do?”

“Find Irina, Trick. Get her away from this guy. He’s, you know, talented.”

Talented. He could work magick, same as I could. Lou was a snuff, so magick scared him. His only solution was wizard wars.

I shook my head. “Not really my problem, Lou.”

“He’ll kill her.” Lou grabbed my arm. “Dammit, Trick, you owe me.”

I almost blew him off. Lou had eaten off that fact for years. Drunk off it. Gotten rides in the middle of the night, tips, you name it. I’d done more than enough to pay off that debt. Anyone would think so. Maybe even Lou, if I gave him a balance sheet.

Anyone but me.

Lou had been my first partner in Homicide. The original lucky, hard-luck case, that was Lou. He’d have been busted down and out of the force years ago, but his bad luck always reversed itself at the end. One time we were chasing a serial killer. I raced after the guy, heading down an alley. Lou lagged behind since he was carrying three bowling-balls around his middle. The guy hid, I ran past him. He doubled back. Lou had collapsed in the alley, heard the guy coming. Tripped him up, then sat on him. Lou became the hero, got a medal.

I didn’t owe him for that. About a year later, around the time I’d decided he had to die, Lou stopped a bullet meant for me. Cop-killer round. Blew through his vest and half his heart. I killed the perp, then used magick to keep Lou alive. I’m good on cuts and bruises, soft tissue damage. I kept him breathing. Gave the docs time to repair a shredded ventricle.

When he got out of the hospital, the department put him in the evidence room. No more payoffs, no more feminine favors. It probably had been a long, lonely time for him.

I set my empty glass down. “Find her, huh? You got anything of hers? A letter she wrote? A lock of hair? A pair of panties?”

“Just email, and some pictures.” He pulled an envelope from his jacket and held it out. “These are copies.”

“Nothing she’s touched?”

“No.”

“You’re not making this easy.” I took the envelope. “I’ll find Turpeluk, talk to him, see what we can work out. Don’t go spending your ten grand. We’ll need it.”

“Thanks, Trick, you’re a lifesaver.”

Just like you, huh, Lou?”

“After this, we’re even.”

“After this, the only thing you get from me is an invitation to the wedding.” Lou smiled, cratered cheeks just piling up nice and thick. “I can’t thank you enough.”

“Moving far away will be a start.” I pointed to the door. “Go. I have work to do.”

Part Two

First order of business was checking out Lou’s story. Emails gave me an Internet domain. Lots of pictures—fantasy fodder. I figured half the “women” behind the pics were men doing a lonely-hearts scam. Translation services through the site weren’t cheap, either. Little more research turned up fairy-tale love stories and gruesome horror stories in equal proportion. Lou would have ignored the latter and dreamed dreams.

Irina’s English wasn’t bad. The correspondence had gaps in it. Lou had kept the mushy notes. Still, the woman seemed sincere. She’d found something about Lou to like. I’d never seen it, but then she’d never had to spend three days in a surveillance van with him and Mexican fast food. Kharma, kismet, whatever; they seemed like a match. Couldn’t begrudge the man a little happiness.

I also didn’t trust he was giving me the whole story. Lou sometimes left out details that I found important.

I headed down to the Morgue. The Medical Examiner, Cate Chase, is a friend of mine. She is everything the Jane Dostoyevsky wasn’t: alive, built like a linebacker, still sporting her natural hair color and talented.

She shook her head when I asked about Svetlana. “There’s a spy on that one.”

“Really?” My eyes tightened. “Who wants to know when the body’s looked at?”

“Came through as Lieutenant Hale.”

“Looks like Lou left out a big detail.” I scratched my head. “You call it in?”

“My secretary. I’m supposed to stall the interested party.”

“Okay, start stalling.”

She waved me down the hall to the cold room. “What’s the Rat Squad want with Lou Sandberg, or should I ask?”

“Nothing more than usual, near as I know.” When investigating an anonymous body, sometimes the cops will put a “notify us” tag on it. If someone comes into claim it, they want to be there. Lieutenant Hale was a pseudonym the Internal Affairs Division used when they thought the stiff had something to do with police corruption. In a perfect world, Cate wouldn’t have said anything to me, but the world’s not perfect, and she didn’t love IAD any more than I did.

She opened the drawer and slid the woman out. She unzipped the body bag and peeled it open to her navel. “She’s 25, give or take, gave birth at least once. Nose, chin, breasts are after-market. Eyes, too, to get rid of her glasses. Wisdom teeth and molars were pulled to narrow her face. Nails—finger and toe—were freshly done and at a nice place. Hair got a dye job in the same parlor. Upscale. The cause of death, well…”

“Yeah”. Her throat had been cut, nailing the carotid on both sides. It would have been really messy, and really fast. Whoever did it was strong, ruthless and dispassionate. What made it worse is that her death had been a signal.

Cate looked up. “All that work—she was incredibly vain, but…”

“Vanity isn’t a capital crime?”

“Nope. What some pay for it is.” She cocked an eyebrow at me. “She one of yours?”

“That’s as good a cover story as any.”

Cate shook her head. “Play that way? Okay. I figure she’s from Russia. The eye surgery—old school. Wasn’t bad, but you can tell. She’s been Stateside for a month. Last meal was a Happy Meal, vanilla milkshake.”

“Anything beside murder?”

“No struggle, no signs of abuse.”

“Thanks.”

“Thanks?” She crossed her arms. “You know anything you tell me isn’t going to the Rat Squad.”

“I know. And I don’t know much.” I sighed. “Her name was Svetlana. I’ll get you a family name.”

“What’s the angle, if she wasn’t a dancer?”

“A friend called a marker.” I smiled. “Cate, I’ll let you know what I learn, as I learn it. I think I know who. Just have to prove it.”

“Call ‘Silent Witness’ like everyone else, Trick.”

“Don’t have a dime.” I zipped the bag back up. “You stall long enough?”

“Do I care?” She pointed at the door. “Get out of here. I’ll buy you whatever time I can.”

Normally a visit to the morgue doesn’t leave me depressed, but I felt as if my flesh was lead. I got to my car and headed home to clean up. I hoped a hot shower would help me shake the mood, but that just wasn’t happening.

My grandmother had a saying, “But for the grace of God, there go I.” I felt that way about Lou Sandberg. Worse part was that I could have easily been in his shoes. And there are a lot of other guys who are.

No one would have ever considered Lou the pick of the litter. Like most guys, everything he was ever going to learn about meeting women he got in high school. His skills never progressed. He graduated into the military and got shipped off to foreign lands where the women were young, hot and whose eyes grew wide at the sight of a Yankee-dollar. No skills required. Then coming back here, he joined the force. That gave him some power. Women who wanted a man uniform—or wanted the man in uniform to forget how bad they’d been—made it real easy. Even though he had a face that could turn Medusa to stone, he still managed to get laid.

With Lou looking at retirement, all that would go away. Meeting the sort of women who wanted a guy to share their golden years with just wasn’t going to happen. He didn’t know where to go, how to approach them, and couldn’t have closed the deal if his life depended on it.

And, I guess, in his mind, it did. So he looked for a mail-order bride. It was a different power structure for a relationship. He had money and a country she wanted. Lou might have been less than perfect, but he wasn’t going to be smacking anyone around, so she was probably trading up. Couldn’t fault either one of them for going for that deal.

I don’t know that Lou ever earned undying happiness in his golden years, but at least he was going for it. As much as I didn’t want to be part of his life, I guess I was. And as much as I wanted finding his wife to clear the books between us, I also knew it wouldn’t.

And, at least for now, I was okay with that. His association with me had broken his heart once. It was up to me to see that didn’t happen again.

You know, whenever you tell yourself something like that, God laughs.

And not in a nice way.

Part Three

Lou’s problem could wait for at least one night. Natalia Heron, a professor at a local college, had told me we were doing something special. She emailed me strict instructions on what I was to wear. Wasn’t my usual thing. Closest I got to shopping was hitting the club’s lost and found. Had my choice of a half-dozen shirts and even a couple pairs of slacks. Amazing what guys will leave behind when drunk and in love with every third stripper that passes their way.

I supplied my own black slacks. The black camp shirt I picked up had red inset panels and short sleeves. I didn’t mind that it wasn’t meant to be tucked-in. It was roomy enough I could have hidden a Vulcan mini-gun beneath it. Black shoes, bright shine, and I was good to go.

I got to her place and wondered if she had spies watching me. Talia’s small, blonde and has a figure that makes her gender deliciously apparent. She wore a little red dress with spaghetti straps that held her as tightly as I wanted to. Better yet, when I gathered her in my arms, my fingers found the zipper without much of a search.

Not that we’d not have enjoyed the search.

She kissed me, then pushed back. “Don’t you even think of tugging that zipper!”

“Not ever?”

Talia laughed, displaying the smile that had first attracted me. “You’ll have to earn it.”

“That could be fun.” I mirrored her smile. “Where to?”

“Do you trust me?”

“Talia?”

She hooked an arm through mine. “You’re driving. Take direction well and you’ll find it very rewarding.”

We got into the car and started driving. Talia knows what I do, so she doesn’t ask me how my day was. Not that she doesn’t care or isn’t interested. She just figures that if there’s something I want to let her know, I will. I like that. People who go at others like they’re an archeological dig bug me.

I debated for a half-second telling her about Lou. He was part of my life from before when I met her. I broke down and told her everything. Lou would continue to be part of my life, so she’d run into him sooner or later. Having her know what to expect was a good thing.

She listened attentively, then squeezed my arm. “What are you going to do?”

“See what I can learn on the Russian. See if there is angle on him. Try to reason with him.”

Passing streetlights flashed in her blue eyes. “What he did to the girl wasn’t reasonable.”

“It made sense in his world. She was merchandise. She had little value. He could spend her to make a point.” I shrugged. “She was the cost of doing business.”

“If I can help, Trick…”

I smiled, pulled her close and kissed the top of her head. “Thank you. If I can think of anything, I’ll let you know.”

“But the Russian is nasty and you’d be happy if he never knows I exist.”

“When’d you become a telepath?”

“I’ve been practicing.” She pointed off to the right. “There, with the neon. Park in back.”

She directed me to a club called Threeway. Long and low, looked like it had been built out of an old strip-mall. I think I’d been there once, years ago, when it still was a convenience store, drycleaner and pizzeria. Lots of neon and a valet station, but most of the cars in the lot were domestic and dented.

They hit us for a ten buck cover and that let us in the Aqua room. Blue lights everywhere, water sheeting down glass, a couple of aquariums. DJ pounded hip-hop loud enough to cover an air-raid. People crowded the dance floor. I felt like a chaperone at a high school dance.

Using hand-signals to communicate, we moved into the Green room. Think fern-bar ala Jurassic Park. Everything was overdone, and the dinosaurs stalking that place were scarier than any velociraptor. Old guys, shirts open to reveal white carpets and gold chains. Women whose faces had been lifted more times than I’d been shot—and I’d healed a lot better. Disco music and dancers more likely to bust a hip than a move.

I followed Talia from Green Hell down a long corridor. Shades of red up ahead had me thinking we were bound for an inferno, but worked out that was just some accent lights. The hall opened into a big room that had been dressed out as a Spanish courtyard, complete with fountain in the back, balcony on the left for the DJ, and a few decorative pillars separating the bar from the tiled dance floor. It looked like a movie set for some Zorro flick. Only the faint thud of bass music from the first room ruined the illusion.

Talia took me by the hand and lead me to the floor. “We’re in time for the lesson.”

“Ah, Talia…”

She gave me a stern look. “You said you trusted me. I like dancing. This lesson isn’t going to kill you.”

“Talia…”

“Hush, Trick.” She slipped in close and whispered to me. “Besides, some folks think dancing is just sex standing up. For the sake of science, I think we need to test that theory. Up for it?”

“Absolutely.”

Folks circled around the floor. A small, dark-haired guy introduced himself as Rick, and his partner as Tina. She was a smoking little Latina with a dazzling smile and smoldering brown eyes. They took us through a beginning Salsa lesson. They started with the basic step and tossed in a couple of turns.

Talia danced well. She’d clearly taken that lesson a number of times. As she rotated through partners, she greeted some men with a smile. Those same men flashed dark glances at me, so it was all good. She proved to be a popular partner, being light on her feet, and clearly enjoying every turn.

By the end of the lesson, she’d rotated back around to me, so I had her for the first dance after the instructors turned us loose. I took her through the turns we’d been taught. She smiled encouragingly. “You’re learning quickly.”

I winked at her, then tossed her through a turn we’d not learned. She came around, surprise on her face. A little bit of puzzlement in those eyes. It melted into delight as I spun her into a Hammerlock, and back out into a Cuddle. One more turn, then a dip as the music ended.

She came back up, her mouth open. Shocked. “You didn’t tell me you knew how to dance.”

“Went undercover in a dance school that was bilking old ladies.”

Someone tapped me on the shoulder. “Mind if I cut in?”

Talia shot me a glance. “Is it okay?”

My face closed. “It’s not you he wants to dance with, darlin’”

The man, tall, slender, dark hair and hard eyes, snorted. “We need to talk, Molloy.”

“That means you think I need to listen.”

“Outside.”

“And if I don’t want to go?”

RT Sullivan pulled out his cell phone. “Vice is waiting to sweep Club Flesh. They’ll find a kilo of cocaine. Management will be told you’re the one who squealed.”

Part Four

“Want me to come with you?”

I fell in love with Talia right then. It was the question, how she asked it. It wasn’t any tentative “should I call 911″ inquiry. She was ready to go out and kick the IAD cop’s ass.

“I got it, baby.” I kissed her. “Save me a couple more dances.”

“As many as you want.”

I looked at RT Sullivan. “Lead the way, Detective.”

RT Sullivan walked with a strut that made me want to sucker punch him in the back of the head. With a cinder block. Solidly built, clean shaven, shoulders about twice as wide as his hips, he had so little body-fat his skin looked like beige plastic wrap. RT wanted everyone looking at him, everyone thinking he was the definition of alpha male.

I hated him. He was one of the triumvirate out of Internal Affairs that bounced me from the force. RT was his nickname. I don’t even know what his real name was. He was proud of the initials. Thought they stood for Rat Trap, since he was the top catcher on the Rat Squad.

I always figured RT was for Rancid Turd.

And there I go insulting turds.

Outside, Sullivan headed for the alley. I stopped following.

He turned. “Afraid, Molloy?”

“Not on your best day, RT.” I folded my arms across my chest. “Just avoiding temptation.”

“You, keeping your nose clean? There’s a first.”

I glanced at my watch. “Getting in overtime?”

“What were you doing at the Morgue with the Jane Doe?”

“What did Doctor Chase tell you?”

He shook his head. “That isn’t how it works, Molloy. You must remember that much.”

I rolled my eyes. “A girl misses a shift or two, doesn’t answer her phone, they have me find her. Could be she’s hopped a bus back to Iowa. Could be she’s fish food. I bring Cate some coffee, she lets me see if I can solve any mysteries.”

“This one fit a girl you’re looking for?”

“Janice Dabney, used to dance as Bingo. Same build, same legs.” I shrugged. “Wasn’t her. We done here?”

“We’re done when I say we’re done, Molloy.”

I straightened up and drew my shoulders back. My spine popped in a most gratifying manner. “We’re done unless you stop with the games. She wasn’t a cop, so you’re thinking a cop did her, or was involved with her. Let’s get to the talent portion of the program here.”

He ran a hand over his jaw. “I understand you’ve been talking to Sandbag.”

Sandbag. That’s what jerks like RT started calling Lou after he stopped that bullet. “You think he’s dirty?”

“I know he’s dirty, it’s just the degree.” His eyes narrowed. “He talked to you in the club.”

“Yeah, he was tired of humping his left hand. Wanted to know if I could fix him up with any of the girls.”

“Did you?”

“I’m a bouncer, not a pimp.” I glanced down, letting him think I was hiding something. “If he said he had a score, I’m taking it he’s radioactive?”

“With a half-life of forever. What did he want you to do for him?”

“He wanted some talent.” I said it so RT would know I meant magick. “Diner he likes mooching meals from has a problem with some pests running a protection racket. Lou isn’t up to dealing with the collectors, so he wanted me to do it.”

“That’s not what he says.”

“Like he’s going to tell you the truth.” I shook my head. “Doesn’t matter. I blew him off.”

“After what he did for you?”

I pointed back into the club. “You see her in there? Hot, smart, has a career and medical benefits. You think I want to be dragging bits and pieces of my past out for her to decide to chuck me? I ain’t stupid.”

RT frowned. He was thinking.

The trick to dealing with the Rat Squad wasn’t keeping your mouth shut. It was telling enough half-truths that they lost themselves trying to make all the pieces fit. RT had seen Talia. He knew I wasn’t lying about her. My suggesting that I saw her as a meal ticket fit with his vision of me. He took that as the whole truth, and that meant I’d blown Lou off.

My comment also gave him leverage. He could report back to Talia what I’d said, and she’d ditch me. We both knew it. He liked having that power. He’d use it to punish me once he figured out how I’d lied to him. That was how the Rat Squad worked.

“Okay, Molloy, we’re done. For now.”

“Great.” I started back into the club, then turned and faced him again. “Oh, just so you know, that raid wouldn’t have worked.”

RT gave me a sneer.

“Seriously. We have contacts. The place would have been cleaner than a nursery school. The second your boys gathered, we got the word. And remember, I know where the vice squad would be looking, so anything worth finding would be somewhere else.” I winked at him. “Looks like finding that Vice mole would be a good job for the Rat Squad—if you have the time.”

I returned to the club. Talia waited at the bar with three suitors and a double Irish whiskey. I tucked myself into her and the liquor. It was nasty well Irish, but it worked to warm my belly. My drinking it also gave the swains a chance to evaporate.

She took the empty glass from my hand and kissed me. “Everything okay?”

I nodded. “Probably. Lou’s playing me or being played. I’ll have to figure out which.”

“Want to go?”

I smiled. “Nope. We have some dancing to do, remember?”

“How could I forget?”

She hadn’t. Nor did she forget the experimentation we’d agreed to do for the sake of science. Lucky science. Conclusion? Not enough data. We’d have to do a lot more experimentation.

I love that repeatability is so important in the scientific process.

***

Morning came way too fast, after far too little sleep. The warm pleasures of the night before lingered. Despite RT having showed up, I was feeling pretty happy. I really wanted that feeling to last.

Despite my desire, and that little warning voice inside, I went looking for Lou’s wife.

Part Five

First thing I did was give Lou a courtesy call. He didn’t like hearing that RT had been asking about him, but he appreciated the head’s-up. “I’ll take care of him, Trick. You just find Irina.”

I made a couple more calls, this time to folks on the vice squad. They were having a bad day. IAD was all over them. I expressed my sympathies. Of course, none of them were the mole I’d mentioned to RT. You never buy a mole in a particular squad, you buy the mole in the Command and Communication division. They know what’s happening because they set up the connections, or are warned off making any. Far more efficient and their job is to listen for things.

Through Vice I got a rundown on Peotr Turpeluk. Born in the Soviet Union before its collapse, he moved to Canada with his mother in mid-teens. After the collapse, he went back, entered the family business: the Russian Mafia. Did some time in jail, then returned to Canada and headed down here.

The Russian Mafia was a lot tougher than the Italians—second only to the Tongs in ruthlessness. The Soviets weren’t afraid of taking drastic action. Back when some Lebanese terrorists kidnapped Russian diplomats, the KGB kidnapped some Lebanese, did some radical, life-altering surgery on them, and told the terrorists they were more than wiling to play even tougher. The diplomats were released, and everything was good.

Criminals operating in that sort of country, with secret police and Siberian gulags, learned to be efficient. Russian Mafia methods for dealing with snitches made the KGB look tame. Using a lawnmower to do a pedicure ranked as safe when compared with dealing with the Russian Mafia.

Political and economic circumstances made everything worse. Little Moscow had grown up around the original Russian Hill enclave. Most of the old White Russians had died off, and the empty churches welcomed the new refugees. They all still looked over their shoulders, not really buying that the KGB had died. Given the folks running Russia, who could blame them? All that made for an insular and suspicious end of town where I wasn’t exactly going to fit in.

Turpeluk had his fingers in everything, from pirated DVDs to drugs, women, hijacking and protection rackets. The ‘Brides of the Old Country’ deal that had ensnared Irina was actually a legit business. Ditto some restaurant, bakery and club holdings. The latter were largely to launder the money made doing nasty things. And as his treatment of Lou showed, he wasn’t afraid of mixing the two sides of his empire.

The guys in Vice were willing to tell me all sorts of stories about Turpeluk, but they didn’t have evidence to back any of them. If they had leverage, they weren’t sharing—and this led me to believe they had nothing. Vice guys like to brag, and the only thing they bragged on about Turpeluk was how frustrated they were. They were more than willing to kick funds to me if I wanted to be a confidential informant. That offer reeked of desperation. With my past, I’m an impeachable witness.

Of course, they were hoping I’d get in and find a reason to off Turpeluk. I was kind of hoping things wouldn’t get that far.

I needed to make an approach. I ruled out his nightclub, Strana. He was king there. I’d be an easy target, and the place would be loud enough to cover a bomb going off. Turpeluk also played ice hockey at a local rink, but confronting him while he had blades on his feet and a stick in his hands would not have worked well, either.

Down in the heart of Little Moscow he owned a small bistro. It didn’t have a name per se. Its address was 605 Russian Hill Road, so some folks called it 605. Tiny and old world, it served Russian fare to tourists who didn’t know it was Turpeluk’s headquarters, and all the mobsters who did.

I took the CRAWL down and got off the train at the base of Russian Hill. Two blocks up I parked myself at the Tea Shop across the street. I ordered lunch and sat on the patio so I could watch 605. I wasn’t really sure what I was looking for, other than an angle on Turpeluk. I wanted to get a feel for him, so I’d have an idea of how much wiggle room Lou had.

Halfway through my sandwich, Turpeluk arrived. He had strong features—not quite a Stalinist hero, but close. Blond hair worn very conservatively short, strong jaw, a nose that had been broken at least once. Definitely athletic. He topped six feet, but not by much, and had enough muscle that he’d rattle the boards when he checked you into them. I couldn’t see his eyes behind his sunglasses, but he did survey the street and the rooftops before he got indoors.

While he was doing his recon, I shifted over to magick to look at him. Most folks are black and white—mostly black. Talented folks show up in color. Turpeluk might as well have been the Oscar statuette come down from its base. Pure gold, all shiny and smooth, soft angles rendering him inhuman.

My heart sank. I’d seen powerful magickers before. I was no slouch myself. Turpeluk was about as tough as I’d seen. Could be he’d just had his Wheaties and was all triggered, but that wasn’t the sense I was getting. So, in addition to his being a stone cold sociopath, he had mondo-talent, too.

That changed things considerably.

I wondered if Lou knew just how nasty he was. None of the vice guys had even hinted. This was not leaving me feeling very good.

Two guys—two big guys—darted out of 605 and across the street toward me. I’d been made, somehow. I tossed a twenty on the table and started to get up. Right about then I realized the two guys from 605 had been distraction.

A hand landed on my shoulder.

“Mr. Turpeluk sends his compliments, Mr. Molloy. He begs you finish your lunch, then join him for after dinner drink.” My keeper, the one who completed the trio of henchmen, smiled. “It would please Mr. Turpeluk. Believe me, you wish to please him.”

Part Six

That they knew my name was not a good thing. I might not have a mole on the Vice squad, but Turpeluk apparently did. This meant he knew I’d been making inquiries. I’d not told anyone in vice about Lou’s connection, but it wouldn’t have surprised me if Turpeluk was good enough to connect some dots. Links between me and Lou weren’t exactly state secrets.

I tossed my napkin over my plate and smiled. “Trying to watch my weight.”

The waiter approached with my bill, but my keeper waved him away. I tucked a twenty under my plate.

My keeper frowned. “You are Mr. Turpelov’s guest.”

“And I’m a big tipper.”

“Da.” He smiled, then waved me toward the street. I decided to call my escorts Boris, Ivan and Nikolai because I needed a way to tell them apart. They formed a cordon around me. Not so much ready to stop a bullet, but they’d put one hell of a dent in any car headed in my direction.

605 turned out to be even more Old World than I’d expected. Dark because of all the woodwork, it had been decorated with antiques—and we’re not talking Soviet chic. This was all pre-Revolution, hard-core Tzarist stuff—icons and the like—save for a widescreen TV and a couple of Spartak banners. I expected to see the place populated by grandmothers huddled over tea.

And maybe a gypsy or two in the corner ready to read tea leaves.

Aside from my escorts and a sullen barman with a walrus moustache, Peotr Turpeluk was the only other person present. He rose from his table and offered me his hand. I shook it, feeling as if I’d been stabbed through the hand as our flesh met. Very talented, and very strong.

If anything good came out of that, it was my spotting a flicker of surprise on his face. He’d caught much of what I had. I waited for his eyes to narrow as he shifted to look at me. They didn’t. He was in his lair and in command. No fear, no curiosity.

He bade me sit, then turned and filled two glasses in metal cages from a samovar. I normally don’t like tea, but I didn’t figure I was in position to refuse. As he set both cups down, the bartender passed Boris a bottle of clear liquid. Turpeluk accepted it and smiled.

“You will join me, yes? We make our own vodka.”

“You are very kind.”

Turpeluk laughed, and his henchmen followed him. “This is not often said of me, Mr. Molloy. Especially by someone who has been asking about me. You must know I have resources. I must determine if you are threat to me.”

I held my hands up as he poured the vodka. “I’ve been asking about you, at the behest of a friend.” I thought about playing it coy, but someone at vice had already blown my cover. “Lou Sandberg is concerned after Irina.”

“He should be.”

“Cards on the table. The two keys you want him to steal wholesale at $20,000, maybe $25,000. That’s five times what it would have cost him to bring Irina over. It will also cost him the rest of his life in prison when he gets caught. Then there is the risk to you having the coke in your possession. Not a good business proposition. I’m here to ask if we could not, instead, pay the cash equivalent and call it even.”

The Russian leaned back and sipped his tea. “Mr. Molloy, your friend did not have the $10,000 needed to bring Irina over. Why would I believe he has five times that now?”

“He doesn’t. I do.” Collecting it would take my calling in a few favors, but I could pull it together. “I owe him my life.”

I watched Turpeluk closely. Most criminals would have jumped at the offer. He’d take my money and go after Lou for the cocaine anyway. I caught nothing from him. I occurred to me that he might have wanted specific kilos, so they couldn’t be used in evidence. He might even be being paid to get them. If so, things suddenly became very complicated.

He leaned forward, setting his glass on the table. “I am business man, Mister Molloy. I incurred cost bringing Irina and her sister here. I wish return on investment. I have set my price. Mr. Sandberg has gotten my message, yes?”

“He got it.”

“And yet he sends you to me.” The man frowned, both hands wrapped around his glass. “He needs another message.”

His tea bubbled and foamed.

I shifted my vision. What had been gold before had become incandescent, like looking into the heart of the sun. Tea or that vodka triggered him, making him that much more powerful. In an eyeblink I raised a blue shield to block any magickal attack.

The tea had been a diversion.

Ivan caught me with a punch to the back of my neck. I slammed face first into the table. As I rebounded, my shield fading, Ivan whipped the chair around and Boris kicked me in the stomach. Breath gone, I hit the floor.

Feet and fists pummeled me. Those boys knew what they were doing. Nothing broken, just soft tissue damage and a few bone bruises. I was message and messenger both. Muscles, ribs, they kept pounding me relentlessly.

They pounded me until all I could do was lay there crying.

Two of them dragged me out and dumped me in the alley.

I rolled onto my back, aching as never before. Somehow I fished my phone from my pocket. I flicked it open with a thumb and hit the red emergency button. For most folks that dials 911. For me it was a number I never called.

It was the number of last resort.

I just had to hope someone would answer.

Part Seven

I awoke slowly, comforted by the scents of tea and lavender. Nothing ached. The only discomfort came from where my cheek pressed against a lace doily on the couch’s arm. A crocheted blanket covered me. I could have easily dropped back to sleep.

“So, Paddy, this is what it takes to get you to come visit?”

I opened my eyes. “You know better than that, Grandma.”

The tiny woman sat in an overstuffed chair. Bony fingers wrapped thread around a crocheting needle, then ducked the hooked end in a silver flash. She wore a grey sweater and her hair pulled back into a bun. Flower-print dress. Sensible shoes. Half-glasses and rosy cheeks that made her the picture of health.

She glanced up. “Your medicine’s there on the table. Mind not to spill.”

I sat up carefully, but didn’t have more than a touch of lingering stiffness. A small teacup and saucer, both featuring red roses, had been filled with an amber liquid. I knew better than to think it was tea.

Those who are talented require three things to work magick. First thing is your trigger: that stimulus which opens you to magick and powers it. Mine is Irish whiskey, which my grandmother knows and thoughtfully provided me. I sipped. It was some very good stuff—the remains of the bottle that helped me heal from three gunshot wounds.

The second thing is the channel through which magick manifests. Most of us only have one: fire, water, glamour, charisma. My grandmother had several, and a number of those were as rare as her multiplicity of channels. She’d even mastered of the least common channels: healing. She’d never brought anything back from the dead, but it was said her grandmother once did—and my grandmother was better than she by all accounts. My feeling almost normal marked her skill.

The last thing was the capacity to actually work great magicks. I was pretty high in power level, but Turpeluk was that much more powerful when triggered. Working big magicks was like running a marathon, and most folks had a hard time crawling. Properly triggered I might have been able to keep pace with the Russian, but I was thinking he’d have the burst of speed to finish the race.

As I mentioned, my grandmother was a bit unusual. Tea was her trigger, but different varieties and strengths gave her access to different channels. She’d somehow worked it all out. Her pantry held more kinds of tea than I even knew existed, and she brewed them with the skill and precision of a research scientist.

I set my cup back on the saucer. “Who fetched me?”

She gave me a glare. “Now, are you suggesting, Paddy, that I was needing any help?”

“No, Grandma, but I know you’d not be driving down to Little Moscow all by yourself. You have more sense.”

“More sense than you, Padraig.” She set her lace down and drank some of her tea. Identical cup to mine, save the roses were yellow. “Seems you were making someone very angry.”

“Trying to do a favor for a friend.” I drank a bit more of the whiskey. It burned going down, but spread warmth and power through my limbs. “This is one I may not be able to do all by myself.”

“Perhaps you should be asking that woman you’ve been seeing for some help.” Little bit of hurt in her voice. “I like to know your friends, Paddy. I’ve liked them all, save for the one.”

“And I’ll be bringing Natalia around to meet you, I promise.”

She arched an eyebrow. “Is she the one you’re helping?”

“Lou Sandberg.”

“Oh, I remember him. A nice boy. He arrested your uncle Tommy, didn’t he?”

“He didn’t have a choice, Grandma. Tommy knocked over a Krispy Kreme. Right in front of Lou.”

My grandmother nodded. “Yes, Tommy never was fiercely bright, was he?”

“No.” My uncle had been on the way to rob First Federal, but was hungry. He figured that as long as he had a note already written out, he’d rob the donut shop till and get a half-dozen donuts to snack on at the bank.

I pulled the afghan off and folded it. “Is he here, Grandma?”

“You don’t want to be bothering him, Patrick Molloy.”

I shivered. When she uses both halves of my name, she is serious. If she’d tossed in my middle and my confirmation names, it would be a decree with the weight of a fatwah. I had a narrow chance to convince her to let me speak to him.

“I don’t want to be bothering him, Grandma, not at all. The guys who beat me up, they have Lou’s wife. They want Lou to steal cocaine for them in exchange. I know it’s going to go badly, but I owe Lou. He saved my life.”

She took a deep breath. “You don’t understand, Patrick, what this does to him.”

“Oh, I do, Grandma. Please.” I stood. “He’s up in the spare room, right?”

“If he tells you no, it’s no. You understand that.”

“I do.”

“You can go then.” She looked up at me. “And you’ll be bringing your Natalia by very soon, yes?”

“Count on it.” I crossed, kissed the top of her head, then smiled. “And, thank you, I feel great.”

“Finish your medicine, then see your cousin.”

She wasn’t just being polite. I drained the cup and almost asked for the rest of the bottle. Most men wouldn’t want to meet Loki Molloy sober.

I didn’t want to see him untriggered despite the fact that, last I knew, he liked me.

I took the stairs two at a time, but slowed as I approached the upper floor’s front room. I knocked very softly, then opened the door slowly. No noise. No surprise.

My cousin Loki is one of those guys that folks are inclined to like at first glance. Painfully handsome, but not vain. Tall, slender and elegant, if he was an actor they’d cast him as James Bond and it would be “Sean who?” Great tenor voice, too, and loves swapping jokes. My age, and when we hit high school, half the girls and a dozen of the teachers had crushes on him.

For a year it was paradise.

Then he discovered his talent.

He sat in a big chair wearing flannel pants, a Cashmere sweater and fuzzy bunny slippers. The room itself had a cloying sweetness about it—half herbal sachet, half Thomas Kinkaid painting. A diabetic walking into the room would have keeled over.

Only modern things in the room were the television and DVD player. Cartoons were showing. Warner Brothers, Disney, lots of bright colors, but nothing too exciting. Which was good. Last time I’d been here it had been a steady diet of Teletubbies.

“How you doing, Loki?”

He didn’t bother to look up. “Get out of here, Trick.”

“I need your help.”

He shook his head slowly. “Can’t help you.”

“The Russian is the nastiest piece of work I’ve ever seen.”

“Present company excepted?”

I squatted down. “You came and got me.”

“Grandma made me some tea. Even so, finding you was easy. Getting away was the hard part.”

I opened my hands. “This one you can take your kid-gloves off.”

He half-smiled. “You don’t listen. Taking ‘em off ain’t the problem. Getting ‘em back on is.”

“Loki…”

He met my stare with eyes full of despair. “No, Trick. I can’t. You understand?”

I didn’t want to, but I did.

I turned to leave.

My grandmother was there with a cup of tea. I let her past, then closed the door on the last chance for Irina.

Part Eight

Lou took the news better than I expected. We met at a little café mid-morning. They’d just put the tables out on the sidewalk. We sat there, two men of the world, drinking coffee, watching traffic go by.

I gave it to him straight. The whole deal, from meeting to beating. I left Loki out of it.

He shrank a little, but shrugged. “I kind of figured it would come down to this. Hey, no, Trick, I know you did your part. It just wasn’t going to happen easy.”

I didn’t meet his gaze. “If there was any other way.”

“Hey, Trick, look at me.”

I did.

He gave me a weak smile. “It’s like the Good Book says. You reap what you sow. You know, I made some choices in my life. I can look back. I took the easy choices. Never applied myself. Know why I caught that bullet for you?”

“That wasn’t a choice, Lou.”

He laughed. “No, but you know what? I’d seen that skell before. He was walking down the street with two bags of groceries. I could have popped him. I knew who he was, but I was eating lunch. If I’d been a bit more active, you know…”

Lou glanced down. “And I know I haven’t been fair with you with that whole thing. I’ve been trading off it for too long. This was the last time, Trick. I’m not coming back to this well again. You’re off the hook.”

I shook my head. “We have a difference of opinion there.”

“Yeah, but you won’t have to answer if I don’t call.” He poured more cream into his coffee and stirred. “Turpeluk wants his coke, he’ll get it. Stealing it isn’t hard.”

“You can’t do that, Lou. You have the Rats already watching you.”

“Don’t you worry about them.” He leaned toward me. “I saw how they did you, the Rats. I started wondering ‘who watches the watchmen.’ Easy for me to do in my position. So I have them handled. I have a ton of dirt. When I retire, I think I’m going to make you a gift of it. I got everyone, including your buddy Prout.”

I sipped my coffee. Bitter. “You have to think about this, Lou. Turpeluk isn’t going to stop here. Once he has you on the hook, he’ll play you forever. He probably won’t give up Irina.”

“I know that, too.” He twisted his chair away from the table and hunched toward the street. “As long as he has power over me, he might be willing to give her up. If I can get her, we can make a break for it. I’m just afraid she’s already dead.”

I scrubbed a hand over my jaw. “There might be something we can do. Split second timing and all.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. You’ll call him, tell him you have the coke.” I pointed to a Hallmark store across the street. “You go over there, buy some stationary. You tell Turpeluk you need Irina to write you a note, in her own hand, using a phrase you give him. Once you have that as proof she’s alive, then you arrange the drop.”

Lou frowned. “No guarantee he won’t kill her anyway.”

“Except that you just gave him a low risk way to keep using her. Every job, he’ll give you a note like that.” I smiled. “But once I get my hands on the first one, I have a guy who can use it to locate her. I put together a crew and we spring Irina. You get Turpeluk busted with the coke, he goes away, you vanish.”

Lou looked at me, a smile heralding a sense of relief. “You know, that will work.”

“I think so.”

A young man in a jeans jacket passing by on the curb stopped. “You guys got the time?”

Lou shot his left wrist forward faster than I did. “Yeah. Quarter to eleven.”

Lou stopped speaking before he ever said “eleven.” As we glanced at our watches, the pedestrian drew an automatic pistol. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Four shots. Belly, breastbone, throat and forehead. The last bullet blew through Lou’s braincase. Sprayed the table behind us. Spattered the café’s window. Shell casings arced smoking. The first tinkled to the ground.

The shooter swung the pistol toward me. I was luckier than Lou. I wore my watch on the inside of my left wrist. To check the time I had my hand moving toward the guy. I reached up and grabbed the pistol, jamming the slide back. I hooked a finger through the trigger-guard and held on dearly.

That’s the thing about automatics. Slide’s back, the gun won’t fire. The shooter knew it. He hauled back hard, trying to wrench it from my grasp. I let him pull me to my feet.

I swung his arm wide and smashed my forehead into his face. His nose shattered. Hot blood gushed. His left hand covered his face, and my right hand went low, clawed.

I grabbed his nuts. I wanted him to hurt, sure, but more importantly, there are all those nerve endings there. With a whisper, I pumped him full of magickal energy. It was as if I’d applied a taser to his dangly-bits.

All of his leg muscles tightened, springing him into the air like a Jack in the Box. He came down. His legs collapsed. I followed him down, driving a knee into his gut. He groaned. I hit him twice with a fist, matching his jaw to his nose. A couple teeth ended up in the gutter.

I yanked the gun from his hand, then stood. “Someone call 911.”

I turned to look at Lou.

I wanted to check for a pulse.

No need. Even Grandma at her best, sucking down an oil-tanker of tea, couldn’t have helped him. Bits of bone and brain slowly slide down the café’s window.

And the worst part was, his mouth still had that hopeful grin.

I knew one of the uniforms answering the call. He tucked me into a booth in the café’s deserted interior and got me a whiskey. He bagged the gun and draped a table cloth over Lou.

That didn’t help much. He ghosted there in the bar’s mirror, slumped down, his hands hanging free from the shroud. A wedding band glinted on his left hand.

I hadn’t noticed it before.

I called Talia. We’d been planning on getting lunch, but I wasn’t going to make it. I didn’t want to tell her why, but it kind of just ran out of me. She listened, then suggested an early dinner. I wasn’t thinking that I wanted to be alone, so I accepted.

I was pretty sure Grandma would like her.

Then Winston Prout showed up. He dressed in white from head to toe, including a fedora. Our mutual hatred went back years, having started before he got me tossed off the force. That he went from the Rat Squad to my place in Homicide just made me hate him that much more.

“So, Molloy, what’s the deal? Why’d you do him?”

“Do him? Do Lou?”

“Murder weapon has your prints all over it.”

I tossed off my whiskey. “You have a dozen witnesses that saw what went down, Prout. You have the shooter in cuffs in a squad car. If I’d wanted Lou dead, I’d have let him bleed out years ago.”

“What were you and Sandbag talking about?”

I decided to skip the part of our dialogue where I’d refuse to answer and he’d threaten me if I didn’t. That game wasn’t going to satisfy me. And it would delay me. I just went straight to lying.

“Lou called me. Said he had evidence of corruption in Internal Affairs. He wanted to know what I thought he should do. He even wanted me to do some legwork for him. He thought if I helped out, I could get back on the force.”

Prout’s face purpled. His blood pressure was up to the national debt over the trade deficit. Thoughts ricocheted around in his skull. He didn’t know which was worse: corruption in his beloved IAD, or the idea that I might return to the force.

I stood and went nose to nose with him. “As for how Lou Sandberg died, it went down like this.” I raised my voice for the sake of a reporter coming in through the café’s back door. “We were having coffee. Shooter came up, was gunning for me. Lou took the bullets for me. He died a hero, Prout. Be sure you put that in your report. A hero. Don’t suppress the truth, the way you usually do.”

The word suppress flipped the reporter’s switch. She made quick notes, then closed to question Prout. I left him screaming at her and crossed to the bar. I poured myself another shot of whiskey.

I raised it to Lou’s reflection. “I owed you a life, Lou. Your widow just inherited that debt.”

I drained the glass. It was time I did something. I wasn’t sure what it would be, but I did know one thing.

Some Russian gangsters were going to die.

Part Nine

Turned out the shooter was a nobody. He’d had a history of minor scrapes with the law. His jacket had a psych eval that suggested he was dumber than a hubcap. Either he’d be judged incompetent and get hospitalized, or go to prison and spend time with the brother and uncle already there. He’d have to go away because he’d killed a cop, but he’d be back in seven to ten.

His lawyer spun the story that Lou had harassed him and the kid lost it, stalked and killed him. It would become an abuse-of-power thing. That would be a sexier story than Lou’s being a hero, but the hero thing would play for a bit.

I hoped it was still playing when I freed Irina.

I had a couple of choices on how to approach Turpeluk. The first was straight up: I still wanted her because Lou was a friend. He’s dead, so there’s no coke. Name a price.

In a perfect world, that might work. Problem was, Turpeluk already knew my upper limit. He’d look to get his hooks in and use me. The price would get too high, and no friendship was worth that, especially friendship with a dead guy.

And, of course, Turpeluk knew I’d kill him to avenge Lou. This really narrowed the chances for success.

The second avenue got a bit trickier. Vice didn’t have anything on Turpeluk, so they couldn’t move on him. The local Syndicate, on the other hand, didn’t like the Russians. Nudge here, shove there, and I could ignite a gang war. They do each other, and I pull Irina out of the ruins.

Problem with that idea was that gang wars tended to have a lot of collateral damage. Merchandise is merchandise. You hijack it or destroy it—neither of which would get Irina in the clear. The fact that the local Syndicate had recently lost its boss and was engaged in some nasty downsizing during the successor wars made focusing them on the Russians more difficult.

Vectoring in on Turpeluk was the hard part of the problem. I explained all that to Talia over dinner. She indulged me, letting me lay everything out. And when I got frustrated, she reached out and squeezed my hand.

“Trick, I hope you don’t mind. From what you had said before I figured this would happen. Not the shooting, but…”

“The lack of access.”

“Right. I think I have a solution.”

“Really?” I guess my voice conveyed utter disbelief.

“I didn’t get all those letters piled up after my name by being stupid.” She gave me a hard look. “I’m a sociologist, remember? I study societies, how they function.”

I nodded. “Sorry. I just don’t think of you and criminal minds at the same time.”

“That’s okay. I wasn’t thinking about criminal minds, either.” She sat back, smiling slowly. “I had a friend in the IT department at the college take a look at any accounts that accessed the Russian bride site your friend used. The survey turned up a number of hits. I did a little checking. Doctor Quincy Fairfield is in the music department. Mid-fifties, widowed, brilliant violinist, but very introverted. He’s been out of sorts lately—last month or so. He was very happy before that. I think your Russian is doing to him what he did to Lou Sandberg. He’s brought the girl over and is holding her for ransom.”

“Asking for money the man doesn’t have.” I nodded. “We supply him with the money, use Sniff to trace it and find Turpeluk’s warehouse. Long shot, but doable. We’d have to explain how Fairfield got the money, but I have an angle on that. You think Fairfield will go for it?”

Talia smiled. “I have an inkling he might. That’s why we’re meeting him for coffee in an hour. I told him I had a friend who could help him out.”

I frowned. “Did you meet him face to face, or talk to him on the phone?”

“I went to his office. The music department is just across the green. We’re meeting at the Student Union.”

I took her hands in mine. “Talia, I can’t thank you enough for this. You’re brilliant, and brave.”

She lifted our hands and kissed my fingers. “My pleasure.”

“One thing, darling, and this is really important.”

“Yes?”

“After this evening, you never see Fairfield again—at least, not until this is all over and Turpeluk is gone, got it? If something goes wrong, and the Russians trace this back, they’ll hurt you badly.” I shook my head. “I don’t want that to happen.”

“Trick…”

I tightened my grip. “Promise me.”

“Trick…”

“No, Talia. I know you’re a big girl. I know you can handle yourself, but these guys, they’re not from your world. Promise me.”

“I promise.”

I smiled. “Thank you.”

***

I’m not sure I ever had a mental image of what a violinist should look like, but Fairfield fit. Someone had cobbled his skeleton together out of toothpicks. His hands weren’t that big, but his fingers were long and strong. Reminded me of spider’s-legs. Too much nose, not enough chin or hair. Not sure he ate much. He’d not eaten recently. An M&M would have made him look pregnant.

He dressed well, however, and fit the Professor stereotype. Three piece suit, white shirt, ascot from King’s College, no jewelry. He used a pocket watch. His only concession to fashion was his driving cap, but creases on his pant’s right cuff indicated he rode a bicycle to the meeting.

He’d arrived before we had and had ordered tea. I left Talia to sit with him while I fetched coffee. I let the java-jerk gunk it up with chocolate and whipped cream. It was dessert, technically speaking.

The faint attempt at a smile cracked the lower part of his long face. “Doctor Heron tells me you may be able to help me, Mr. Molloy.”

“I hope so, Doctor Fairfield.”

“Very good.” He reached into an old buckle-down briefcase and produced a bulging folio. He opened it and selected a photograph. “This is her. She’s with her sister.”

He sighed. “Her name is Svetlana, and she is the love of my life.”

Part Ten

Quincy Fairfield reluctantly passed the picture to me. “I don’t know what I’d do without her.”

Talia shot me a glance.

I shook my head.

Fairfield looked up, from one of us to the other. “What is it?”

“Nothing really, just a friend of mine said the same of a woman he met the same way” I nodded. “Svetlana is a very pretty woman.”

“It’s true, she is, but that’s not why I love her.” He pushed the folio in my direction. “I have copies of her letters in there. Her sister did the translating. She’s a very loving and humble creature. She desperately wants to have children and said she thinks ours will be beautiful. I’m not sure I could…”

Talia squeezed his forearm. “I’m sure you’ll make a wonderful father.”

“Thank you.” He smiled. “Truth be told I spend more time reading her notes than I do looking at pictures. She will be a wonderful mother, and that is what is important. I’ve actually started taking Russian classes here, through the college, and will enroll her in ESL once her debt is paid off. Can you help me, Mr. Molloy?”

I stared the man straight in the eye. “I’m not going to sugarcoat this for you, Doctor. The people she is involved with are dangerous. She’ll be safe as long as they think you can pay them off. I will do my best to make sure she’s in no danger, but nothing is certain, do you understand?”

The man nodded solemnly. “I do.”

“When was the last time you spoke with them?”

“Ten days ago. I said I needed a little more time. When the housing bubble burst, my mortgage left me… I cannot take a loan on the house.” He picked at a fingernail. “I still have no money…”

“That’s not going to be a problem.” I slipped the picture back into the folio. “Tomorrow morning you’ll be awakened with a phone call letting you know you’re this year’s recipient of the Patterson Prize for Music Education. It’s $125,000. It will be in the papers. You will call them and tell them that you have $5,000 now, and will get the rest to them in a week, once the award is funded.”

Fairfield frowned. “I have never heard of that prize.”

“Trust me, it’s out there.” I tapped the folio. “I’ll need to borrow this.”

“Please. They are just print-outs of emails and pictures.”

“You’ll let me know when and where they want you to drop the money. I’ll provide you with the cash. You won’t touch it, you’ll just hand it over and walk away. I’ll call you when the operation is finished. Do you understand?”

“Svetlana’s in no danger?”

“I said before, nothing is 100% certain, but I won’t do anything to hurt her.”

The gangling man sighed. “Thank you, Mr. Molloy. I feel as if a great weight has been lifted from me. Until Doctor Heron called me, I had a sense of disaster. Now I have hope again. I cannot ever repay you.”

“You don’t have to, sir.” I stood and shook his hand. “I’m just glad I can help.”

He shook Talia’s hand, then wandered off, his head held high.

Talia looked at me and shivered. “How could you lie to him so coldly?”

I sat down and took her hands in mine. She tried to pull away, but I hung on. “Without that lie, Irina is dead. Learning that Svetlana is dead will tear Fairfield apart. Could have been now, or after Irina is free. The lie buys time.”

I looked off to where the old man was getting on his bicycle. “And maybe it bought him a little happiness, a little hope.”

“Silver lining in a very dark cloud.”

“Yeah.”

Her face rose, her blue eyes icy. “Will you ever lie to me like that?”

“No.”

“Even to protect me?”

I squeezed her hands. “Here’s what I promise you, Talia. I won’t lie to you. If I have to protect you, I’ll tell you what needs to be done. It’ll be your call.”

She arched an eyebrow. “No discussion?”

“Not if you’re in danger.” I shrugged. “When your life is on the line, it’s not time for games. But you know that.”

“Is the reverse true, Trick?” Talia placed her other hand on mine. “What if you’re in danger? Will you do what I tell you to do?”

“I’ll listen to you, but I’ll have to make the call, same as you will. Fair?”

She thought for a moment, then nodded. “Fair. Which is why I have to tell you, I think you’re in danger here. I know you want to avenge your friend. I know you want to save Irina. It’s the White Knight Syndrome on steroids. I get that. But I think you should walk away.”

“I think you’re right.”

“But you won’t?”

I shook my head. “But you knew that. That’s why you found Fairfield. You found me a way in that gives me a chance at survival. Thank you.”

I stood and pulled her to her feet. “And, my dear, for that you deserve a reward. Up for a quick trip downtown?”

She smiled half-heartedly. “Dancing?”

“Maybe later.” I slipped an arm around her shoulders and guided her toward the parking lot. “I have an errand to run. And I want you to meet my grandmother.”

Part Eleven

Talia peppered me with questions on the way over to grandma’s house. She chatted anxiously, and I think part of that was genuine nervousness about meeting my family. Part of it was dealing with what I’d done to Fairfield. That would come back to haunt me.

If I’d told Fairfield the truth, he’d have gone up into some church tower and fiddled his anguish out for an hour or three. Then he’d have done a header. Sure, that might still be in his future, but his future bought me time to give Irina a future.

What I’d done bothered me a bit, too. Not that I’d done it, but that I’d done it so quickly. Lying to perps to get them to confess was part and parcel of being a cop. I used to have a program on my PDA. I’d have a perp put his thumb on the screen and I’d ask him a question. The screen would go red and beep, then the word “Lie” would flash in black. It was all driven off a timer, but they never knew that. The machine knew they were lying, so they just stopped.

It’s easy to rationalize away doing that to murderers and rapists. Fairfield was just a sadsack who’d gotten into a bad situation. I needed his cooperation. I couldn’t compel it. He wasn’t the sort of guy who I figured would be vengeful—and the last guy I wanted going into a fight with guns blazing.

Hell, he probably couldn’t even lift a gun.

And I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. He might have agreed to help to free Irina, but I didn’t think he could carry it off. He had to believe Svetlana was alive; and he never could have hidden his knowledge of her death.

But all that was rationalization, too. I put my needs before his. I was letting the ends justify the means. Talia would have to come to terms with that.

So would I.

My grandmother greeted us warmly and immediately ensconced Talia in the guest chair. Grandma made tea—using good china and better tea—and sent me off to do my errand. “Us girls will get to know each other, Padraig.”

I headed upstairs. The room Loki had used was dark and empty. Aside from a quick glance to confirm that fact, I ignored it and kept going down the hall. Second door on the left, just past Grandma’s bedroom. Small room, bookshelves everywhere, wall to ceiling, and full. It had always been referred to as “the Study.” The implication was that it was my Grandfather’s study. I’d never seen him in the room. Nor had I ever seen him with one of the countless books in his hands.

I pulled out a copy of Sagittarius Rising and one of the bookshelves swung away from the wall with a click. I came around and dropped to a knee, reaching for the first of four wall safes hidden behind the shelf. I spun the dial, then opened the safe. Bunches of documents, two pistols, and a rectangle wrapped in brown paper, secured with rubber-bands. I retrieved the rectangle.

Other grandmothers get their grandchildren ponies. Mine got us each a safe. Money left with her was secure. It didn’t earn any interest, but grandma didn’t need federal bailouts or retention bonuses.

The bag contained five grand. I closed the safe, put the shelf back, then pulled out my phone. I punched up a number and waited four rings.

I started right in when I heard the click. “You’re going to give a $125,000 Patterson Music Genius Grant to Doctor Quincy Fairfield of Coast College. He’s a violinist. Press releases need to go out now, so they hit the paper in the morning.”

“This number will be disconnected, Mr. Molloy, the moment we hang up.”

“I’m calling in a favor here.”

“When people ask a favor of me, it never goes for so little. You underestimate me.”

“And you don’t like being underestimated. Life’s a bitch.” I smiled. ” I need it done now. Two people are already dead, and I’m trying to make sure there’s no trifecta.”

“Really?”

I gave Alfred Wayne Patterson a quick rundown on the situation. I lingered on what I’d done to Fairfield. Patterson manipulated everyone in his life, so I thought he’d appreciate my handiwork. Don’t know if he did, but it caught his attention.

“This will not burn one of the favors I owe you, Mr. Molloy. I will do this. Then I will ask you to do something for me in return. Something of commensurate value.”

“Deal.”

“You realize I will need to endow more prizes and make this an annual thing.”

“I figured you needed a hobby.”

“And I shall need an advisory board.”

“I don’t play well with others.”

“No, you don’t.” He chuckled lightly. “Your Doctor Heron does. She will find it a great honor.”

A chill ran down my spine. I’d wanted to play him, and he let me know he was up for the game. “She’ll be great at it.”

“I’m sure. Good evening, Mr. Molloy.”

I closed my phone and tucked it away. What should have been a simple problem had become very complex. I’d be paying for the complications for a long while. At least, thanks to the late Lou Sandberg, I’d have the time.

We spent a little longer with my grandmother than I wanted, but she and Natalia really hit it off. Grandma actually invited her to visit any time, with or without me. That was a first. And I didn’t get that look which said, “Padraig, you can do better.”

Talia remained quiet on the trip to my place, which I put down to the contentment of good tea more than emotional turmoil over what had happened with Fairfield. As I drove I caught her looking at me, with that half-smile women have when they’re intrigued and have decided to start loving you. Pretty much, in the past, that had been the sign for me to break things off.

I led her to my bedroom, then opened the money packet. It was all hundreds. I spread it over the bed.

Talia raised an eyebrow. “That’s never really been a fantasy of mine.”

“That’s good.” I smiled. “I have a friend who can track the money magickally, but he needs strong impressions to do so. Money is anonymous. It needs to be linked to someone and something. You game?”

She started unbuttoning her blouse. “Will this take long?”

“If we want to do it right, you bet.”

“Good. Tell you what.” Talia smiled. “Let’s go for perfect.”

Part Twelve

By the time we woke up, things were coming together. Talia had a text message from Coast College announcing the Patterson Award recipient news. The announcement missed the local rag’s print edition, but headlined the website. It was mostly a cut-and-paste job from whatever Patterson’s people had put together in a press release. I’d given him twelve hours, his people came up with twenty years of awards.

I gathered the money up and repackaged it. I dropped Talia off at her place, then came to campus. I met Fairfield, coached him on his spiel, then gave him the money. He made the call and the Russians were very happy about getting the money. They agreed to meet him in a very public place, and accepted that this was just a down payment.

I didn’t watch the exchange. I was halfway across town with Sniff, preparing to follow the money. If Sniff isn’t the ugliest human being on the planet it’s only because anyone uglier turned to stone when they caught their own reflection in a mirror. Short, squat, he looked like a toad in serious need of a wax-job. Voice to match.

Thing with Sniff is that his talent runs to psychometry. Give him an object and he reads its history through the vibes it’s giving off. He all but creamed his jeans when I handed him four of the bills we’d prepped. “Damn, Trick, you have a future in adult entertainment.”

“Pay attention here or your future is over.”

Sniff shivered, then bent to work. He clipped the four bills to the corners of a city map. He closed his eyes and let his hands float. Kinda looked like a guy playing air-piano. Then a finger stabbed down. “It’s here right now.”

I looked. He’d tagged the meeting site. “That’s a start.”

“I got it covered, Trick.”

“Make sure you do.” I handed him a bag full of high-end chocolates. “All the detail you can muster.”

He took readings every fifteen minutes for twelve hours. We put markers on the map, using different colors for the strength of impression generated. Green was really faint. That was petty cash spending. Yellow was payoffs to aides. Red would have been his stash, and Turpeluk made the rounds before hid the money away.

Talia got in touch with her IT guy at the university. He used some programs to show us the neighborhoods around Turpeluk’s red hits. The Google gave us a good look. Then he found the websites for local restaurants that delivered. He hacked in and pulled their usage data. He then expanded things and tagged local groceries that delivered, too.

Three sites emerged as places where food got ordered-in on a regular basis. Only one of them had grocery deliveries: lots of bread, peanut butter, jam and feminine hygiene products. I put that one on the top of my list and did some field recon.

I had to be careful, but Turpeluk made that easy. The site had been a small warehouse, now abandoned. Chainlink had surrounded it, save for the lot’s northwest corner where fencing had vanished. No visible cameras in the area. I didn’t see any vice squad surveillance crews either. Maybe the cops didn’t know about this place, or they just didn’t think it was very important.

I made several drive-by peeks, using cars I borrowed from the girls at Club Flesh. I promised them no dents and a full tank of gas, so they were happy to let me test-drive their cars. They were under the impression I was looking to trade up. One, Nicole, wondered if that was in the girlfriend department, too; but she let me use her car despite my disappointing her.

On one run I saw a pizza delivery. Kid just rolled up, delivered the pies, got paid at the door. I thought about debriefing him on what he could see, but his ratting me out was a risk I didn’t want to run. Besides, Talia’s IT guy pulled the Water and Sanitation records for the warehouse. Statistical analysis suggested ten people, which broke down into three guards and seven prisoners, based on the pizza and grocery orders.

One of those people had to be Irina.
***

I decided to go in at 3 AM, which meant I had plenty of time to kill. I went through the folder Fairfield had given me. He’d been formal when they started to correspond, but opened up as Svetlana poured her heart out to him. He’d been seeing himself as the proverbial frog, and she was a Russian princess all set to kiss him. He was kind of a still-waters-run-deep guy. Based on what I read, I wanted to hear him play the violin—that being the other passion in his life.

Svetlana surprised me. Her openness and honesty really didn’t match the vanity suggested by her body mods. She didn’t mention that she’d already had a child, but there could have been any number of reasons for that. What she did make clear is that she was madly in love with Fairfield, and loved her sister dearly, and would do anything necessary for either of them.

Telling Fairfield the truth would utterly destroy him.

And I wasn’t thinking it was going to do much for me, either.

I forced myself to concentrated on the task at hand. I didn’t figure the guards would be asleep no matter when I went in, but at 3 AM the women would. The guards wouldn’t have to work so hard. They’d get sloppy, and I could exploit that. I had Sniff orbiting with a van, so once I got the women free, I’d hit him with a call, and he’d ride in to the rescue.

Hollywood would have had me making a frontal assault. I’d have strapped a gallon jug of Irish to my back, be sucking it in as I went, and just blasting everything with magick. Doors would explode, fires would start, bad guys would roast and I’d free the women in a heartbeat. The problem with that approach is simple. Hollywood’s grasp on magick is second only to its grasp on history as far as accuracy is concerned.

Magick can be detected unless the user is really good and can tightly control what he’s doing. Only spell I know well enough to keep on a tight rein pops locks. That spell got me into the building through a side door.

The warehouse had a small office in the far corner with big windows. Big TV, a half-dozen naked people writhing together in high-def. At least the jamokes had the sound low. Backlight showed me three heads. Probably Boris, Ivan and Nikolai.

I found the missing chainlink fence off to the right. They’d used it to fashion a couple of cages. Eight girls, two of them on the small side, four to cage. Blankets on the floor, bucket-latrines in the corner. Everyone appeared to be asleep.

The trio of guys being together presented a problem. I had a stun-gun and zip-ties. I was hoping I could pick them off one at a time, but that clearly wasn’t going to happen. Unless…

I checked the layout again. The only bathroom was in the corner nearest the office. His and hers, cheap wood walls. They shared a sink on the outside. Staying low, I crossed toward the facilities, then crouched beside the refrigerator.

I gauged the distance to the office, then opened my right hand. Two little golden sparks drifted toward the men. They passed through the glass wall. Ivan scratched at his ear as one sank into his skull. Nikolai burped when he got hit. Each man shifted in his chair, but never turn away from the screen.

Satisfied, I started looping zip-ties together and waited.

Part Thirteen

I didn’t have long to wait. Pizza and beer metabolize fast and not always well. The magick I used kicked some extra life into the bacteria in their guts. Nothing explosive. They got the bloat. Loosen the belt, rip a fart that could kill a buffalo, then decide your guts need attending-to.

Nikolai and Ivan got up and practically raced for the toilets. Ivan had to use the women’s side. Didn’t matter. They closed the doors and I used the zip-ties to bind one door-knob to the other. When they finally decided to emerge, they’d be thinking someone was playing a joke on them.

Boris was intent enough on a pneumatic blonde in the video, that he never even noticed me slip into the office. Stun-gun to the neck took the fight out of him. He rolled to the floor. I zip-tied his hands and ankles together, gagged him and used two zip-ties to keep the wad of napkins in place. I hit him with another jolt. It helped keep him down, and because I wanted to.

I did owe him, after all.

I crossed back to the cage and picked Irina out from the women huddled on the floor. Magick made quick work of the padlock. I opened the gate and woke her by clapping a hand over her mouth. “Quiet. Lou Sandberg sent me. Let’s get out of here.”

She smiled against my palm.

I pressed a finger to lips. “Wake the rest of them, keep them quiet, and get them ready to go. I have to open the other cage.”

Again, she nodded and then set to work. I got out and reached for the other lock. Blue light flashed from my palm. It filled the lock, squirting out through the plate seams, then the catch released with a click.

I smiled.

That would be the last time I smiled for a good long while.

Turpeluk sucker-punched me. I caught the itch of talent a heartbeat before a stream of golden fire slammed into my back. The force smashed me into the fence. My forehead bounced off a post. I rebounded and started to fall, but got my left hand under me.

My right came up, dropping a blue shield between us. He hit that hard, hard enough to pick me up and drive me into the fence again. The chainlink rattled but held and didn’t hurt, except where his first attack had melted my shirt onto my back.

I came down on one knee, shrank the shield and strengthened it, then flicked my left hand forward. Four silvery disks arced out and slashed at his legs. One missed. He blocked two. The last one cruised through his left knee. His leg buckled. It hurt like sin, and pissed him off.

Good rule: don’t piss off a guy who is triggered to the gills and is obviously badder than you are. I’d had that lesson drilled into me before. I’m a slow learner.

Turpeluk was a hell of a teacher.

His next shot shattered my shield and forearm. I flew back into the fence. Felt like I was in a blast furnace. Then a fist-sized golden sphere spun down. Caught me in the temple. That was all she wrote.

Consciousness faded before the pain ever did.

I woke up when the bucket of water hit me. The shock gave me a moment of clarity before pain became my reality. Turpeluk had used my zip-ties to secure me to the cage wall. Ankles together. Arms out straight. He hadn’t bothered to set my right arm. Just stretched it out good. Hurt like the devil. He’d locked a chain around my waist. I wasn’t going anywhere.

Neither was Irina. She’d been crucified with zip-ties, too. Tears wet her face, dotted the medical smock she’d been given to wear. She was trying to be brave. Turpeluk discouraged that, and really didn’t care how he did it.

Nikolai and Ivan had dragged Boris out and left him at Turpeluk’s feet. Boris’ eyes were almost all whites. Turpeluk stood there, one foot on his neck, as if the great white hunter with a prize.

“Mr. Molloy, you are very annoying. I use you as message, but you do not understand that. You are tenacious. This is good trait, but not in enemies.”

I think he expected some sort of wiseass answer from me. I didn’t oblige him.

He extended his right hand, stiffening the fingers. A golden glow rose from within his hand, then became a blade. He reached down and stroked it very lightly over Boris’ neck. A thin line oozed blood.

“I want you to understand what will happen to you—to you and Irina. You are liabilities. Boris is liability. Because of him, I must find new location for girls. And Irina must die to show others rebellion is foolish.” He studied me. “She dies because of you. You know this.”

“And?” I would have shrugged, but that would have hurt too much.

“You do not care?”

I was in a lot of pain. My back, roasted. My arm broken and bearing a lot of weight. The rest of me feeling grossly sunburned. My head pounding. Still, the one thing I knew was that if Turpeluk believed hurting Irina would hurt me, he’d hurt her very badly. She was dead. So was I. No reason to make the dying unpleasant.

“I was paying a debt.”

“To man who is now dead.”

Irina gasped. “Nyet!”

“Da.” Turpeluk smiled. “Very dead.”

“You should know. You had him whacked.”

“His death was tragedy. Yours, on other hand, will be pleasure.” His hand swung lower, but did not slow at all. The magick edge sailed through flesh and bone. Boris’ head lolled to the side, then spun on an ear. He stared at me, his jaw working for a bit.

Turpeluk stepped over the dead man’s thrashing body. The golden light on his hand shifted, fragmenting. For a moment little golden blades sheathed every finger. Then the energy shifted again into a scintillating ball of lightning bolts. His hand became a Tesla coil arcing off all sorts of crackling energy.

He closed with me and held his hand up before my face. Ozone filled my nostrils. “This will hurt, Mr. Molloy. Very much.”

I looked him in the eye, but said nothing.

Then he punched my broken arm with his other fist. Bones ground. I screamed. I had no choice. Pain jolted through me, then pulsed angrily from my arm. I gasped for breath, barely able to catch it.

Turpeluk chuckled. “Before I am done, you will cry out for your mother, then beg to die. And, if I am amused, I may grant your request.

Part Fourteen

Generally it’s a good thing when someone enjoys their job. Turpeluk did. It showed in his work. He used spell that must have been something the KGB came up with in the old Soviet days—enhanced interrogation techniques. They didn’t just hit the pain receptors, they hit everything. When he raked a hand over me, pain was the furrow, but heat and cold came fast on after. A stripe would be broiling, another freezing, pain would just jet through me.

Not only did Turpeluk like his work, he knew it well. He could tell when I was faking exhaustion. He could tell when I was truly there. The first he’d reward with pain stabbing so deep I wanted to claw my belly open to rip it out.

And when I was about to pass out, he’d have one of his boys hit me with more cold water.

Then he’d go to work on Irina.

A lot of what he did on her was psychological. Lots of Russian spoken quickly. Then a magick lash. He’d let her cry, then get control before he started in again. While he waited he’d take hits off a bottle of clear liquid—that homemade vodka—which I guessed was his trigger.

He’d have broken me down a lot faster, but he’d given me a shield. He wanted me to beg for my mother. No way. I hated her more than I hated him. Not by much, mind you—and he was moving up the charts really fast. But what he’d done for hours, she’d done for years. I wasn’t going to call for her.

Hell, if I did, she’d show up.

And she’d start giving him pointers.

So I had hatred, and then I had pain. I remember a freelance healer Lou and I once hauled in for fraud, telling me that one had to be “present” to pain for it to hurt. I needed to be a “silent witness” to my pain. If I did that, he explained, then healing energy would flow.

He’d offered that advice to make up for one of his aides having dented my shoulder with a crowbar.

The whole silent witness thing never worked for me. Saying, “Ow, ow, ow-fricking-ow!” defeated the whole silent part of things.

Turns out the silent witness thing didn’t work for the healer, either. Clumsy fellow. He had a habit of walking into walls, falling down stairs, and bumping his head on the squad car. Made a lot of noise.

But we made sure there were no witnesses to his pain.

My pain, on the other hand, had one big witness. Me. It ground on me. It was like I’d been wading for years through lava, breathing sulfur and sweating shrapnel. My broken arm felt the best. That was honest pain. The magick stuff played hide and seek. No anticipation, just ambushes. I couldn’t even shiver, so dead was my body.

Screw being a witness to my pain. I was my pain. I’d stopped being me.

Turpeluk recognized that fact. The look on his face wasn’t surprise. It was pure knowing. If there was a hint of curiosity, it was that I’d taken so long to get to this point. And yet, the disappointment told me others hadn’t been so easy.

I coughed. “How much longer?”

“Until I kill you?” He shrugged.

I shook my head. “How long ’til I set the record?”

He laughed, but his henchmen were too afraid to join him. “My time in gulags, Molloy, I saw much. You’ve not even lasted as long as I did.”

“Go for it.”

He shook his head. “Pity, but we cannot. Sunrise. We must end this now.”

He thrust his right hand against my chest. The lightning bolts sank into my flesh. They curled like ivy around ribs, then tightened, slowly crushing them. The vines pushed on, wrapping my heart. It beat furiously, trying to escape. One pulse, one tensing, and he’d burst my heart.

And the pain…

Every muscle in my body fired. I arched away from the fence, bound at wrists, waist and ankles. My right arm warped. That pain vanished in the background. My body burned. I opened my mouth to scream. Pain paralyzed my lungs. I began to suffocate.

Then the door exploded in off its hinges, whirling like a playing card. Nikolai never saw it coming. His top half flipped lazily above it. His legs flopped below. A thin, pink, tissue rope connected them. Ivan, who had providentially been tying his shoe, looked up and vomited.

“I think, lad, you want to be leaving Patrick alone.” Loki, silhouetted by the dawn, stood in the doorway. “Let’s not make it harder on you than we must.”

Turpeluk gave me an extra jolt, then backed away and recovered his bottle. He drank. He laughed. “Do your worst.”

I let out a low laugh. “Look at him, tovarish.”

Turpeluk blinked his eyes, then his mouth slowly gaped. Seen through magick, Turpeluk looked like molten silver. Loki, on the other hand, burned dark and cold. Power radiated off into unseen frequencies.

I twisted my right arm, wringing more pain from it.

Loki’s image sharpened intensely. “That’s enough, Patrick.”

“You don’t know this clown.”

“Don’t need to.” Loki smiled as he walked into the warehouse. “Drink up. That being your last, after all.”

Turpeluk drained the bottle, then threw it at Loki. My cousin let it sail past. Turpeluk used the momentary distraction to launch his first attack. He used that same fire-jet he’d hit me with. All golden and hot, it geysered at Loki.

My cousin didn’t raise a shield. Didn’t dodge. He just gestured. A dark tube raced back along the shaft, engulfing the fire. Chased it right back to the source. The ebon cylinder closed over Turpeluk’s left forearm. Flames licked at the Russian’s elbow.

Loki’s hand convulsed into a fist.

The tube contracted into nothing, then evaporated.

Taking Turpeluk’s forearm with it.

I don’t think the Russian had time to feel the pain before Loki opened his hand again. A wrought-iron spherical cage blossomed at the Russian’s feet and caught Turpeluk up. He grabbed a bar with his good hand, then screamed. It came away bloody. Long metal splinters wholly transfixed his hand. He stumbled back into other bars. More metal quills punctured his back.

Then the sphere began to spin, tumbling Turpeluk. He bounced around inside it, needles piercing his flesh. The ball sped up gradually, flicking him around more forcefully. Shredding him.

Loki glanced at me. “Patrick, I can’t control it.”

I looked at him through magick. Every scream, every whimper, made Loki’s outline stronger. Burning more darkly.

Burning more intensely than I’d ever seen before.

“Patrick, do something!”

Aching, spent, all but dead, I really had nothing to give him. Loki, I learned long ago, had the same trigger as he had channel: pain. The more he inflicted, the stronger he got. He was a magick breeder-reactor. The pain from the beating I’d taken earlier had been controllable. Now, with me and Irina and Turpeluk all burning out of control, we were talking a firestorm of pain. Loki’d inflict more and more, getting drunk on it, the cycle building. Me, the women, the neighborhood. No one would escape.

“Loki, control it. You can.”

“I’m losing it, Patrick. Help me.”

There it was. That note in his voice. The same note I’d have sounded if I’d called out for my mother. Utter desperation. Complete hopelessness. Surrender to that which will destroy you.

The resignation echoing from a well of pain that shouldn’t be inflicted on anyone.

And yet, to stop Loki, I had to inflict more.

Loki absorbed pain the way we all did: through nerves. I reached down inside myself and found the last traces of magick. I teased out a slender green thread, and wrapped it around every shred of agony coursing through me. I tied it up all in a nice little package. And as the cage peeled Turpeluk’s flesh from his face, I pumped it full-force into my cousin.

Magick might make you incredibly powerful, but it doesn’t change your basic physiology. I hit Loki with as big a dose of pain as I could deliver. One big flash, all at once.

I pushed it into his chest, and lit it off.

Only so many ways a man can react to that much pain.

His body stiffened as mine had, but he wasn’t chained to a fence. Arms and legs shot out. He leaped up a little, fell back. Smacked his head hard on the floor, then rolled onto his side. His knees came up to his chest, fetal. Blood on his lips from biting his tongue.

That much pain, the body can’t take it. Like staring at camera flash: all of a sudden he was blind to the pain. Since pain was fueling him, blindness cut him off from his trigger. He couldn’t connect. The thing driving him vanished.

Abandoned, he lay on the floor and twitched.

And what was left of Peotr Turpeluk drained past him and into the sewer.

Part Fifteen

That last burst of magick took it out of me. I sagged from the zip-ties. I tried to straighten my legs and take the pressure off my arms and shoulders. My quads screamed in protest. The attempt hurt more than everything else, so I just gave up and probably passed out.

Next thing I saw was another cousin, Malachi, kneeling beside me. I was on the floor, free. He held my head up and raised a bottle to my lips. Tea, with a dollop of my medicine. I drank. It helped. Then the world went black.

***

My next wake-up came at my grandmother’s house. I’d been tucked into cot in the basement. When one of my cousins was on the lam he’d get the room. It smelled of cedar and mildew. Formica floor, cheap wood paneling. My grandfather had done the build-out, proving once and for all that he wasn’t a carpenter.

Talia sat in the corner chair—a nice one that had been moved down from the living room. She was reading a book on Post-revolutionary influences in the Paris Arts Communities, 1865-1910. In French. Engrossing stuff. She didn’t notice I was awake.

That’s okay. It let me study her face. Those eager blue eyes darting. The smile. The little frowns as she worked something out. The way her hair glowed and lips glistened, very kissable.

“How are you doing, Talia?”

She smiled and marked her place before closing the book against her thighs. “I’m supposed to ask you, that. And make you drink this.”

I took the mug from nightside table. Tea and whisky, more of the latter. “She must think I’m really hurt.”

“She loves you, Trick.”

I sat up to drink. I felt stiff, but my skin felt better. “How bad was I?”

“Black and blue, here and there.” She nodded toward my splinted and arm. “I want you to get that x-rayed.”

I took a hefty slug from the mug. “Let’s let the docs deal with folks who need their help. I’m pretty used to dealing with broken bones.”

Talia looked away for a moment, then nodded. “You were straight with me, weren’t you, when we first started to get involved? You knew there would be things I’d not understand, and things I’d not want to see.”

I nodded. “But you figured you could handle it.”

“I did.” Her eyes tightened. “Your grandmother called to say you were okay. I insisted on coming. She tried to talk me out of it, but I insisted. I didn’t know what to expect.”

“Feel like running yet?” I tried to make the question light, but it twisted my guts to ask it.

“Not yet.” She smiled. “I’m still exploring. There’s more treasure to you than you think, Trick Molloy.”

She set her book aside. “You’re going to want to get dressed. We have an appointment.”

“Yes?”

Talia nodded solemnly. “There’s something you have to make right.”

While I pulled clothes on—fresh clothes I suspected Malachi or his daughter shoplifted for the occasion—Talia brought me up to speed on what had happened. When I’d not called Sniff, he got worried and went home. Loki apparently started picking up on my pain and reached out to Grandma. She called Talia, who told her about what we’d done with the money. Grandma then called Sniff, who got his van, and guided her with Loki, Malachi and another cousin, Barnabas, back to the warehouse. Barnabas drove. He likes driving, but doesn’t like heavy lifting.

Figured the rest of it was easy. Loki came to me like a moth to a flame, then torched Turpeluk. Loki’s much stronger than me but, so far, I’ve been able to shut him down. Malachi freed the girls and me, piled them into the van—excepting Irina. She came back to Grandma’s house with me and the crew and was upstairs.

We went up.

Irina was a wreck. She’d recovered from her physical injuries, but pretty much figured her life was at an end. Lou was gone. Her sister was dead. She was in the country illegally, so she’d be heading back to Russia. Her dreams were DOA in the USA.

My grandmother had been sitting with her and had calmed her somewhat. Irina looked like she could have used a lot of my medicine. She looked at me hopefully sometimes, then angrily, which made sense. I’d tried to save her, but my appearance led to her learning that Lou was dead. If I’d been inclined to place a bet, I’d have put money on her hating me for the rest of her life.

The doorbell rang, and my grandmother directed me to answer it. Talia stayed with Irina. I went downstairs and pulled the door open without thinking.

Quincy Fairfield stood on the stoop.

Another one who will hate me.

He smiled. “Oh, Mr. Molloy, I did not expect to see you. I should have known. You have good news, yes?”

“Come in, Dr. Fairfield. Please, sit down.” I guided him to the couch I’d recovered on days before. He sat on the edge, knees together, face expectant and hopeful.

I didn’t know what to say. I froze.

My grandmother came in from the kitchen with a hot cup of tea. She said nothing, as if she was a servant. Fairfield thanked her. The two of them, so courteous and cordial. I was going to shatter the man’s heart.

The print-outs had said it all. He loved Svetlana fiercely. She loved him in return. There really had been a connection there, a solid one. A deep bond.

And it was over. Sure, folks will tell you that love is eternal. Lots of crap about the dead looking down on us from heaven. They say it because they’ve got nothing else to say. And it’s not much comfort to someone who’s just lost the only shot at love he thought he’d ever have.

And yet I didn’t have anything better to go with.

I pulled the ottoman over and sat before him. “How much do you believe in miracles, Doctor?”

The old man smiled. “I am not terribly religious.”

“But sometimes, playing music, you touch something greater, right? Something that is more than you figure your effort and instrument could create?”

“I have had that experience.” The man’s expression soured. “Please, Mr. Molloy, I feel you are trying to deliver bad news. I can handle it. I am not as frail as I seem.”

“I don’t take you as being that way, sir. I just, um, I gotta do it this way, okay?”

Fairfield nodded indulgently. “I owe you that much.”

“I’m going to tell you a story. There were once two women. Sisters. Russian. They hated their lives and wanted to escape. The older sister and the younger made a plan. A pact. They would get away together, do whatever it took.”

“You are speaking of Irina and Svetlana.”

I held a hand up. “So the older sister found herself a man to be with here. That man was a friend of mine. He saved my life once. Irina was willing to come to him because she had found a wonderful man for her sister. She’d found you.

“My friend, he asked me to rescue Irina, and he got killed because of it.” I hesitated. “The people who were holding Irina and Svetlana wanted my friend to steal drugs for them. They were very bad men. My friend, he refused. So they sent him a message.”

Words failed me.

Fairfield figured it out. He bit his knuckle to keep an anguished cry trapped in his throat. He sank back against the couch, turning his face from me.

I didn’t know what to do.

I didn’t need to.

Irina appeared from the stairs and quietly came to the couch. She sat and gathered Fairfield into her arms. They clung to each other, united by the pain of Svetlana’s death. And more.

I retreated to the kitchen, giving them privacy as the truth dawned on me.

Cate hadn’t been wrong. Svetlana had been vanity on two feet. She had the depth of a pie-plate. She might have agreed to leave Russia with her sister, but anyone willing to abandon a child wasn’t going be someone who could understand the passion in those letters.

Svetlana’s letters hadn’t been translated by Irina, they’d been written by Irina. While Irina was romancing Lou, she actually fell in love with Fairfield. She so loved Svetlana that she was willing to live with a man she didn’t love, so her sister would be well cared-for. I didn’t know how long it would take Fairfield to figure out the truth, but he would. The two of them would blossom in each other’s company.

Talia slid a hand up my back. “All’s well that ends well.”

I shook my head.

She laughed. “You can’t argue with Shakespeare.”

I turned and pulled her into my arms. “That’s saying the ends justify the means. They don’t. Ever.” I frowned. “What I did to Fairfield was wrong. Inhumanly wrong.”

“But you saved Irina.”

“There are other ways I could have done that. Maybe Fairfield would have been part of it. Maybe not.” Hushed voices came from the other room. “Maybe it worked out this time, but never again. I’ve spent a long time wrapped up in myself. I’m coming out of it. Maybe. But to make sure I don’t go back. I have to draw a line. I can’t cross over.”

Talia took my face in her hands. “I love you.” And she kissed me. Good and hard.

And I hung on to her for a long time. And kissed back. Good and hard.

Talia smiled against my lips. “I could enjoy this for a long time, but it’s not polite when we have company.”

“No, no, I guess it’s not.” I smiled. “And I could enjoy it for a long time, too.”

And I meant it.

That other thing would just have to wait.