I snap, “Christ, How, it’s not my fault you’re the family fuckup.”
Howie stops moving, hell, it almost sounds like he stops breathing.
Shit. That just came out.
Howie lunges over the console, manages to box my ear with his palm. It doesn’t hurt, but it does the job, makes me mad too, and I reach out and box him back. At that, a gauntlet’s thrown, and he climbs around the front seat like he’s going to dive on top of me—
“Goddamn it, you two!” Win takes his thick palms and pushes our heads apart, thrusting me against the backseat, sending Howie flying against his passenger side window. Win sighs. “Howie, seriously, get out.”
Howie sits there, huffing and puffing, as I collect myself in the back. But I don’t look at him. Sure, my courtship of Howie was calculated—but that doesn’t mean what I feel for him isn’t real. That doesn’t mean I don’t rely on Howie as a one-man social life more than I care to admit.
Finally Howie kicks open the flap door on Win’s Model T. “Go suck each other.” He spits on the ground and closes it with a thwap.
I want to follow him, maybe even apologize. I want to somehow tell him that he can have this world—that I’m just wearing it to turn it inside out and destroy it.
But Howie doesn’t look back, and before I can figure out whether it’s childish for me to call after him, Win settles his car back onto the road.
And then my guilt gives way, slowly but surely, to something else.
Finally I have to ask, “Where are we going?”
“The Boss has heard things,” Win says slowly, eyes ahead. “He’s impressed. He wants to see you.” He locates a crumpled box of cigarettes inside his pocket, pulls two out and lights them, then passes one to me. The car immediately becomes assaulted with thick, toxic air. The kind of air where it feels like dangerous things might just crawl out of the mist. The kind of air that lies waiting to spark a fire.
I nod, trying to keep my excitement tempered, appropriate. But inside I’m practically bursting. All the work, the nights, the smuggling runs, the magic—all of it is to meet McEvoy, learn his sins, and confess them for him. “Where’s the meet?”
“Somewhere safe.”
Win turns onto 13th Street, follows it through town, until the homes become stores become warehouses, until the road all but peters out. He pulls into a large abandoned lot. “McEvoy should be here soon.” He cuts the engine and we both get out.
Broken glass dusts the edges of the gravel lot, and a sad, faded billboard stands tall amid the malnourished moonlit grass. The woman in the billboard’s picture sports a hole where her face should be. But it feels appropriate, right in line with the ambiance.
Because this lot? It’s the opposite of safe. This is a place where murders are committed.
We wait, leaning against Win’s car in the cold, tearing through the last of his pack of Luckies. After waiting months to meet McEvoy, a few more minutes shouldn’t rip me apart, but I can barely concentrate on the staccato small talk Win’s attempting beside me about Jack Dempsey’s latest fight.
Finally a black car pulls into the lot. McEvoy, I have to assume, emerges from the front seat and slowly walks toward us. He’s got a fedora pulled down low, a thick, expensive-looking gray woolen coat with the collar popped up. My pulse starts to quicken, and there’s a dull, almost sickening dread rising up from my core.
“Boss,” Win says, “this is the boy I was telling you about. Alex Danfrey.”
I gulp, trying not to choke. I wonder if McEvoy can sense it—that I’m here for him, like he’s here for me.
He looks like he does in the papers, early fifties, polished, intimidating, somehow bigger—and smaller—all at the same time. “Heard a lot about you, Alex,” Boss McEvoy says.
“Thank you, sir.” I take a sharp inhale. “I hope all good things.”
“You wouldn’t be rising up otherwise,” he says. “As it turns out, I’m in the market again for someone like you.” He smirks and nods to Win. “But if you’re going to have the honor of being my right-hand, my personal sorcerer, I need to make sure you fulfill all my needs.” Right-hand sorcerer. This is it. What the Feds planted me for, what all my work undercover comes down to. “Go on, Win, bring out a bottle.”
Win crosses back to his car, digs through his trunk, and removes a glass bottle filled with water—my best guess twelve ounces, what the black market has determined is the perfect amount for a sorcerer’s shine transference. Any less water, the stuff’s too potent, can cause a magic overdose. Any more, you’re not getting the best high. But I’m surprised my transference skills matter at all to this man. McEvoy’s king of the streets—he needs a sorcerer who can hide robberies, heists. Murders.
Win hands the bottle to McEvoy, who in turn hands it to me.
“Brew for me.”
It’s been a long time, way too long for my first brew back to be for the Boss. “It’s been a while,” I softly tell McEvoy.