“Problem is, I don’t believe you,” Gunn taunts. “I think it’s time to remind you of your priorities. I think it’s time to remind you of everything that’s on the line here.”
Everything on the line? I almost scream. I know everything that’s on the line. I know my life, my family’s welfare, the future of this place all ride on whether I win or I fall. And you here, taunting me with it, having the gall to tell me who’s allowed in my room between the days and nights of sweating and bleeding for you, it’s too much.
Gunn’s studying me with that look again—the one that gives too much away, if only for a second. And all his veiled threats and twisted words, the cage he’s built around me with his secrets and warnings, I let myself forget it exists, just for now. Because I need him to feel what it’s like to be this trapped, to feel this small. “And that’s why you’re here at this hour? To remind me of my priorities?”
I take a bold step toward him, lift my chin, keep my eyes hard and unforgiving, like I’m showing him back himself. I add with a whisper, “Why are you really in my room, Mr. Gunn?”
Gunn doesn’t speak for a long while. Finally he takes a quick inhale, shakes his head. Then he snaps a disgusted, put-on laugh and briskly turns to leave—like he’s realized he’s shown his hand, when he’s supposed to have full command of our game.
But before I can breathe, calm down, regroup, he says icily, “Everyone has a blind spot, Joan.” He grabs the door handle and gives me that penetrating stare once more. “Don’t disappoint me. Don’t crash and burn because of yours.”
THE SKINNY
ALEX
What was I really expecting when I went to Joan’s room? A confession of her sorcery sins, right after she performed them for her gangster-studded audience? To convince her with a few words and kisses that she’s thinking about this all wrong? To get her to abandon her magic and jump into my arms, and together we’ll ride a white horse out of the Red Den?
Joan doesn’t want to be saved. She’s worked herself up the ranks, is now standing at the forefront of the Shaws’ sorcery troupe, with a dark unparalleled trick that will change the face of the underworld. Joan is Gunn’s right-hand girl, not a damsel in distress, but the fucking distress itself. And I know my charge, despite how much I’d give for it to be different, despite how much I wish to God it was anyone else conjuring that dark magic on Gunn’s stage.
Joan needs to be taken down, same as the rest of them.
Despite my feelings for her.
Despite her feelings for me.
It’s over—she made her decision. You know she can never really be yours.
I keep to the shadows of M Street, walk a block, take a right, walk another block, get as lost as I can in this dark city. I focus on my next move, on dialing the details in to Frain. There’s a monumental deal going down between two warring tribes for all of DC, and to top it off, Harrison Gunn is staging a coup, taking McEvoy down as he rolls out an unprecedented, shippable sorcerer’s shine. A product so unbelievable, so impossible, that I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it myself. But it’s real. And the magic behind it clearly needs to be contained, because according to Joan, it’s teachable. Shutting Gunn down won’t do the trick by itself. We need to arrest the entire troupe, before that spell ever sees the light of day.
I force myself to focus on how I’m closing in, how the score is near, and how I’ve exceeded my and the Unit’s expectations, instead of the girl I just left behind. The girl I already miss. The girl who’s still lying tangled up in those covers. The girl who brings on a sharp ache when I even think about losing her.
Don’t do this. You can’t lose something that wasn’t yours to begin with. Now. Let. Her. Go.
I duck into a red phone booth on the corner of K and 16th Streets, scan the roads to make sure I’m alone, and grab the receiver. I dial Frain’s home number. The phone cuts to static and then rings.
“Frain here.”
I let Frain’s voice be a calming spell, a reminder of what’s most important, what I’m doing all this for. “It’s Danfrey.”
“Did the demonstration happen? Did you get the details of the deal?”
I try to catch my breath, calm my nerves. “Yes, Colletto came in tonight, with some of his top D Street men. Gunn was there with the majority of the Shaw underbosses—Kerrigan, Sullivan, Matthews, O’Donnell—he’s won over most of the Shaw leadership.”
“So D Street and the Shaws are really working together?” Frain asks incredulously. “I almost—I can’t believe it. Gunn, going after D Street, after Colletto put a hit on his father? The man’s inhuman.”
“And the deal he’s attempting? It’s huge,” I breathe into the phone. “It divides up the whole city between the gangs. The Shaws will control street operations west of Fourteenth Street, D Street will run all gambling, racketeering, and other business to the east.”