“Sounds to me like Marvin needs to be more careful about the company he keeps.” Morales elbowed my hand away and slammed the car into drive.
As he drove away, I cast a final, apologetic glance out the back window. Marvin was pulling himself off the filthy alley floor, clutching the bills in his hand, and watching our exit with eyes that glittered with hate.
Chapter Eleven
That night, I pulled Sybil into the driveway after picking her up from Joe the Mechanic’s shop. In the passenger’s seat was a bucket of chicken, a bag of groceries I couldn’t afford, and my shoulder holster. Part of me wanted to just hide out in the car and eat the extra-crispy in silence. But I’d already received two impatient texts from my brother demanding to know when I would be getting home with food. So I gathered my stuff and trudged toward the door.
Mez had been nice enough to drop me off at the mechanic’s shop after work. He drove one of those fancy, potion-fueled cars and spent the entire drive trying to talk me into buying one, too. I just smiled and nodded because I appreciated the ride, but I resented the hell out of the suggestion. The Jeep had been the first major purchase I’d made in my life that hadn’t been funded by dirty magic. It had taken six months of riding the bus, eating ramen, and forgoing any sort of luxuries to buy it from the fry cook at the diner I’d worked in after I left the coven. I mean sure, she was primer gray, needed enough repairs to put my mechanic’s kid through college, and the interior smelled like dirty gym socks, but she was mine.
According to Joe, the culprit of that morning’s no-go was a corroded battery that had eaten through all the surrounding connectors and terminals. Because I’d let the problem fester so long, the repair cost twice what it would have if I’d just needed a new battery. It would have cost three times that had I not also promised Joe to help Joey Jr. with his latest speeding ticket.
I used my foot to push open the kitchen door. The bucket of chicken was hot against my rib cage, and the groceries and holster were balanced precariously in my left hand.
Danny was doing homework at the table. “Hey,” he said without looking up.
“Grab something, will ya?” I asked.
He sighed and took the chicken from me. Instead of setting it down, he ripped off the lid and pulled out a drumstick. I grimaced at him and lugged the groceries to the counter. The sounds of him munching on that chicken leg made me want to claw my skin off.
“Oh yeah, Pen called. Said she wanted to hear about your new assignment or something.”
“I’ll tell her later at group.” I nodded and pulled a box of cereal out of the bag.
“Ah, shit.” Smack, smack. “Why didn’t you get the cinnamon kind?”
I pointed to the large ceramic jar set up by the sink. On it, I’d written CURSES $1. “Pay up, kid.”
He sighed and shoved the drumstick between his teeth. Then he dipped into his pocket and dug out a handful of change. With exaggerated movements, he dropped the coins in the jar. “Happy?” he said over his mouthful.
I nodded. “Now, back to your complaint. When you get a job you can pick the fu—” I caught myself just in time—“freaking cereal.” The box slammed onto the counter like a gunshot. “Now put that chicken down and help me put these away.”
His expression became the one teenagers had used on their parents for generations. The one that made you long to walk out the door and never look back.
He threw the chicken bone at the sink and wiped his hands on his jeans. “Jesus, what crawled up your butt?” He took a six-pack of soda from me and went to put it in the fridge.
I closed my eyes and counted to ten. Then twenty. Ah, hell—why not thirty just to be safe?
“Katie?”
When I opened my lids, Danny was staring at me with a worried expression. Guilt washed through me like an acid bath. Sure, his selfishness was annoying, but the kid was only sixteen. I’d overreacted and we both knew it. I sighed. “Sorry. I just had a long day.”
“Tell me about it,” Danny said with a sage nod. “Miss Bell gave us a pop quiz in calculus today.”
I snorted as I kicked off my pumps. After I spent my day chasing junkies down alleys and investigating the scum of the earth, coming home to someone so naive about the realities of the streets was nice. Yet another reason why I was determined for him to have a normal life—far away from the corrupting influence of magic.
“Yeah, that sounds pretty brutal.” My tone was sarcastic but not mocking. I barely passed statistics in night school and would rather face down a hexhead with a knife than a calculus test.
Now that I’d shaken off the bitch funk I’d walked in with, I refocused my efforts on putting away the groceries. The delicious scent of chicken was making my stomach growl.
We worked in companionable silence for a few moments. “So how do you think you did on the quiz?” I asked.
He opened the cabinet to put away a box of snack cakes—I’d finished the ones we had for breakfast that morning. “Pretty well.”
I lifted his backpack off the table. The zipper was open and a book fell out on the floor. “Crap.” I bent down to pick it up without looking at the title. “Anything else happen at school?” I started to shove the book back in the bag, but he grabbed it from me before I could manage it.
“I got it.” His voice was an octave higher than usual. Cue the police instincts.
“What you got there?” I said casually.
He froze and his gaze flicked to my face, which I purposefully kept clear of emotion. He tensed, as if bracing himself. “Nothing.”
I stayed quiet but raised a brow.
Finally, he sighed. “It’s a stupid book I found,” he grumbled, eyes focused on his sneakers.
The hair on the back of my neck prickled. “Hand it over.”
“Kate, it’s just a—”
I snapped my fingers, trying to keep a lid on my temper. I had a really bad feeling I knew what kind of book he had, but I wanted to see it before I boiled over. He handed it to me the way one might a piece of dynamite.
When I saw the title, I wanted to throw the book out of the window. No, that was too nice. I wanted to light it on fire and spread the ashes to the four corners of the earth.
In truth, the term “book” applied in only the loosest sense. Really it was a pile of mimeographed paper with a flimsy cover stapled along the spine—more of a pamphlet, really. A pamphlet I unfortunately knew by heart.
The Alchemist’s Handbook was the bible of the dirty magic underworld. Potion cookers, street-level spell dealers, and all manner of lowlifes referred to this piece of trash constantly for recipes, arrest-evasion strategies, and general criminal inspiration. Every cop who worked the Arcane beat knew and cursed the existence of the textbook for criminals.