Magic Burns

Page 82

 

 

 

drifted our way. Julie pulled out her dagger and gave the pickpocket a hard look. The girl reversed her course.

 

The crane groaned. The cable snapped taut, and a huge fish tail reared above the crowd, followed by a serpentine body covered with turquoise scales bigger than my head. The scales glistened with moisture.

 

Something about that fish looked familiar…I couldn’t recall where I could’ve seen a three-story-tall fish.

 

Not exactly a sight I would likely forget.

 

“What is that?”

 

A balding middle-aged man with a teamster badge on his leather vest turned to me. “The Fish Market Fish.”

 

“The bronze sculpture in front of the Fish Market?”

 

“Used to be bronze.”

 

“How did it get here from Buckhead?”

 

“There was a river,” a woman on my left said. “I saw it from the window.”

 

“The ground’s dry,” the teamster pointed out.

 

“I’m telling you I saw a river. You could see clear through the waves. Like it was made out of ghosts.

 

Never seen nothing like that.”

 

The teamster spat into the dirt. “Yeah, well, we’ll see worse before the flare’s over.”

 

We stood to the side, away from the crowd, and watched the fish being hoisted up.

 

“You can’t leave me,” Julie declared.

 

Considering our earlier conversation, I would’ve thought she’d jump at the chance to get me out of her hair. “I want you to think back to when the reeves came.”

 

She paled.

 

“The reeves are out there. They want you for something and they won’t give up. Put yourself in place of your mom. Would you let your daughter tag along with some weirdo woman who is going out to hunt reeves or would you want your baby to be safe?”

 

Her face fell. “You’re not my mom. You can’t tell me what to do,” she said finally, but her tone signaled the end of the argument.

 

“I’m a substitute mom,” I told her.

 

“You’re more like a crazy aunt who only gets called when somebody needs bailing out of jail,” Derek said.

 

I pointed my finger at him. He grinned.