I ring the bell next to her head and she startles awake almost falling out of her chair.
“Whoa, hang on,” I say. “All good. I’m not gonna eat ya, or anything. I just need to get a room.”
“A room? Oh. Yes. A room.”
There aren’t many cars in the lot, so I doubt there are a lot of people here. She probably hasn’t seen anyone in hours and probably never does this time of the morning. I pass her a handful of peso notes. “Preferably near the elevator. On a floor without a lot of people on it. Better yet, no people on it.”
She rubs sleep out of her eyes and counts the notes. “This is too much.”
“Think of it as a tip.”
Money talks no matter what country you’re in. She pokes at a computer terminal behind the counter. “There’s nobody on the third floor.”
“That would be perfect.” She codes a plastic keycard and hands it to me.
I can feel her staring at me as I cross the lobby to the elevator. I give her a big smile as the doors close.
Like the lobby, the third floor is clean, but shabby. Cheap carpet, cheap light fixtures. This place is so new there are no ghosts. Nobody’s died here, yet. I can feel a few Wanderers outside, and the ones that have been following me since Tijuana haven’t caught up with me, yet.
I retrieve a can of red Krylon from my bag, give it a shake and spray a large, circular rune on the floor of the elevator. I press my hand to the floor and send some power into it. I do the same on the outside door, the stairwell door, a couple of spots down the hall and finish up with a few inside the stairwell itself. I paint the same one on the landing that I put on the elevator floor.
If anybody steps onto this floor through the elevator or the stairwell, I’ll know about it. And if I don’t like their look I have a nasty surprise waiting for them.
I find my room and unlock it with the key, but I don’t go inside. I’m not going to stay in it. I just want the computer at the front desk to register my using the key. Instead I pick a room at the end of the hall across from the stairwell. I open the door with a spell that pops the lock, but shouldn’t alert the system.
It might just be paranoia, but my first night in Tijuana some locals decided I looked like an easy mark and busted into my room. Started shooting up the place. It was annoying more than it was dangerous. I took them out easily enough with an electricity spell I know that’s kind of like a big ass Taser. I left them lying unconscious and twitching on the floor of my room.
That would have been fine if it hadn’t happened again in Hermosillo, only with half a dozen men armed with assault rifles. I think they were trying to kidnap me, or something. That didn’t go so well for them, either. I shot three and gutted the rest with a straight razor. I left an extra big tip for the cleaning staff.
Ever since then I’ve been taking extra precautions wherever I stay. I always use runes, glyphs and wards near wherever I’m staying, but they’re all low level spells to keep people from paying attention to the room. That doesn’t work so well when you’ve already grabbed somebody’s attention and they tail you to your room. So I’ve added some really unpleasant ones, started sneaking into different rooms, setting traps. Whatever it takes.
Inside the room I put up other wards, but these ones are less for intruders and more to keep the ghosts out. They’ll show up eventually, and having the Dead watch you while you sleep isn’t nearly as fun as it sounds.
I sit on the edge of the bed and take stock. I’m so goddamn tired I don’t know what to do next. I need a shower. I need a shave. I need to get into some clothes that aren’t spattered with Bustillo’s blood.
The shower’s water pressure is almost non-existent, but it’s hot. I let it wash away the grime, sweat and blood. My body is shot through with jade. My chest, stomach, left thigh and down both arms to just past the elbow is a deep, sea green, dull and waxy. It crawls up my neck with thin tendrils and down my legs like varicose veins. My tattoos shimmer in the bathroom light, their colors muted in the stone.
I have one tattoo on my chest, a circular pattern with three circling crows. They move around inside their prison, shifting position. Looking too closely at them gives me a headache. In a pinch they can be released from my body, pecking and clawing at an enemy in a swarm of black feathers and razor sharp beaks. They’re not real, of course. They’re phantasms, constructs of magic locked away inside my chest.
Lately, they’ve changed. More menacing somehow, though honestly I didn’t think that was possible. But now I can feel them inside my skin, angry, wanting blood, wanting to be released. That’s never happened before. They’ve always just been another spell.