A Criminal Magic by Lee Kelly

Author:Lee Kelly
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: SAGA PRESS

RIGHT-HAND

ALEX

My focus should be trained on McEvoy’s gun, which is aimed at the goon who’s kneeling on the side of the Jefferson Davis Highway, but I can’t stop thinking about Joan. I replay the two of us at the Den together in the hall yesterday evening, surrounded by my magic, hidden together inside that gazebo without another care in the world. Birds chirping, a magic sun shining on her raven hair, her laughter and relief that I helped coax right out of her. I picture us a motion picture, black and white. I run the reel again in my mind, and then watch it once more in color.

I want her. And not in the way I’ve “wanted” other women before, when I know I have them—when I’ve gotten some vague sort of satisfaction as their eyes reflect interest, then fascination, then hunger. Joan’s different. She’s easy and tough in all the right ways. Smart. Beautiful.

In a strange way, I almost find myself needing to see her. Not just her, I guess, but the way she sees me—as someone to know, maybe even someone to trust. After my blowup with Howie, working around the clock on the street at McEvoy’s side, I sometimes feel less than human. I’m so far in, so committed to playing this figment-gangster Alex Danfrey, that I’m starting to feel like a manipulation myself.

“Alex,” McEvoy snaps. “Where the hell are you right now?”

“Right here, sir.” I banish the daydreams away, the spell Joan’s starting to have on me, and focus back on the sad thug McEvoy’s got at gunpoint on the side of the road.

“Your story doesn’t add up, friend.” McEvoy bends down, so that he’s eye-to-eye with John, some low-level gambling bookie for the Shaws, and the latest object of McEvoy’s wrath. “If Sullivan forced you to tell our contacts the wrong winner, that means Sullivan is lying to me.” McEvoy smiles a wide, taunting smile. “Do you think my underboss would lie to me, John?”

John is shivering, convulsing, and I have to look away. Traffic whizzes by on both sides, the Jefferson Davis Highway bumper-to-bumper with weekday traffic coming in and out of the city, but no one will spot us. From either side of the road, we’re protected by my sorcered walls. The passing cars see nothing but a thin grass shoulder.

“Don’t have all day, John—”

“No, sir, I mean, I don’t know, sir.” John gasps for air. “I just do what Mr. Sullivan tells me. He was the one who heard the sorcerer’s forecast about the horses, and I passed on what he told me to the list of Shaw clientele.”

McEvoy nods at me, my cue, and I cast my gaze away from John’s pleading eyes. I hate days like this. I have nightmares about days like this. I wish there was a way to obliterate all magic on days like this.

I whisper, “Knife and slice,” and a knife no larger than a switchblade appears right above John’s left hand, and slashes itself in one hot burst right across the top of his knuckles before it vanishes.

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