Page 4 of Playing with Fire

A little after one in the morning, I trudged home. Thanks to the late hour, it took four buses, and I staggered to my door in Queens at a little after three. All in all, I couldn’t complain. It could’ve been worse—a lot worse. I had run into only one drunk, and he’d been more interested in a leggy blond, who had enjoyed shocking the shit out of him with her Taser a little too much.

In the relative safety of my apartment, I flopped on my battered, flea-market couch and dug out Magnus McGee’s phone. “Who could you possibly want that you’d pay me so much to hunt him down for you?”

To add a bit of extra icing on my day, the asshole had locked the phone. I glared at the prompt. “Seriously?”

Blocking the info behind a passcode meant he either wanted a little revenge or meant for me to earn my keep. Fine. Two could play at his game, and a four-digit passcode wouldn’t take too long to hack, especially if I pulled out all the stops. First, I’d try random bullshit luck. I’d save the hocus pocus for later, when I was frustrated enough I wouldn’t care if I broke the phone.

I took a few minutes to test the device to make sure it was the real deal. A few swipes of the screen brought up the expected menus, and I even turned on the flash out of curiosity. Maybe after I got paid for the work, I’d buy my very own cell phone. I was probably one of ten people in the entire city without one.

It took me until five after six to brute force my way in. The device clicked, the screen flashed, and it displayed a list of icons showing one missed call. It also clicked and gave an electronic buzz. Before I could do more than suck in a startled breath at the unexpected sound, the device detonated. A cloud of vapor, dust, and glass shards burst in my face. The sharp bite of shrapnel tore into my skin, and my eyes burned with the fires of hell.

With tears streaming down my cheeks and blinding me, I staggered to my bathroom to flush my eyes. I cursed every painful moment I spent splashing my face with water. When I could finally see again, reddish droplets stained my white sink and had splattered on my mirror. I squinted to make out my reflection. The whites of my eyes had turned an angry red, but by some miracle I refused to question, none of the shards had cut me anywhere important. Being blinded would’ve really put a damper on my day.

I picked out the fragments with tweezers. It was a good thing I hadn’t started life all that pretty, as my new collections of scars would ensure no man looked my way twice. At least I didn’t think I needed any stitches.

Who the hell turned a phone into a miniature bomb? Magnus McGee, apparently. The dust gave my skin and clothes a greenish cast, and after a few exploratory sniffs of my shirt, I picked up a faint trace of wet earth.

Gorgon dust.

No one in their right mind made the stuff, not even gorgons. Not only could it turn its victims into stone, they ran a chance of becoming a gorgon, too. The authorities refused to give a percentage on how many were turned, but I suspected it was high, as handling the stuff required a top-level permit, one I possessed thanks to my immunity.

The truly insane dosed themselves with it on purpose. McGee hadn’t just tried to kill me. He had meant to make me a monster—one who’d never be able to look anyone in the eyes ever again.

“That son of a bitch!” Had I been anyone else, I would have been transformed into a statue, easy pickings for anyone who came into my apartment. Petrifying someone was a great way to get rid of them—or cart them off before reversing the petrification with neutralizer. Spitting mad, I went to work purifying my apartment, tears pricking my eyes. It hadn’t been my fault McGee’s sister had cheated on her husband. What kind of idiot left someone like Chief Quinn for a college kid?

Audrey McGee, apparently.

At least I had everything I needed to neutralize the gorgon dust thanks to working with the police. They provided me with a new batch of neutralizer every call, and I kept every last pinch of it. After mixing the powder with some water, I’d be able to spritz everything and vacuum the pale residue when it was dry.

Two hours and one thoroughly cleaned apartment later, I collapsed into bed and dreamed of wringing Magnus McGee’s scrawny little neck.

Chapter Two

Choices, choices.

I dragged myself out of bed at noon and spent an unreasonable amount of time glaring at the mangled ruins of McGee’s phone. Even if there was data on it, there was no way I could access it without exposing someone to the gorgon dust inside. Even after bathing it in the neutralizing solution, I worried someone would be petrified and possibly turned into a gorgon.

I had two choices: I could assume Magnus McGee had lied to me or I could take a walk on the wild side and perform some magic to learn the truth. Choices, choices.

Ah, hell. Hocus pocus it was. Until I got a new job, I needed something to do to fill the time. I’d do another round of spraying to make certain all the gorgon dust was neutralized, too. Thankfully, since I didn’t have any real friends, no one came to my apartment without good reason. In a day or two, my place would be safe.

It’d take a lot longer than a day or two to get a reply from my job applications. It took me ten minutes to update my resume to reflect my work at Faery Fortunes and add a few lines to include my certifications. The hard part would be submitting to jobs, but I’d manage.

I always did.

After three frustrating hours, I gave up and decided to get my hands dirty. If McGee had a legitimate job hiding behind his stupid exploding cell phone booby trapped with gorgon dust, I’d find out. Either way, I’d make him pay for every last cut inflicted on me.

To hide my magic so my talents weren’t classified, I used rituals and spells to make it appear like I was a harmless practitioner. Without tools, practitioners couldn’t work any magic, placing them firmly in the vanilla human category. Given the right tools, enough determination, and time, they could accomplish just about anything. Pretending I needed tools to tap into magic would keep me off the radar—mostly.

Ideally, no one would ever find out there was something more to my ability to find what others didn’t want found.

I really needed to sit down and have a chat with Magnus McGee about his exploding cell phone. Thanks to the wretched device, I’d have to do a lot of coverup work to stop anyone from realizing there was something more to me than I wanted them to see.

To make my special brand of hocus pocus work, I needed two components: a piece of paper and some ink. Everything else I gathered, ranging from a big bag of marbles to a light bulb, served as props to trick anyone who might be watching. A little caution never hurt anyone, and I never knew when the walls might grow eyes. Magic worked in mysterious ways, and mine was a little more mysterious than most.

I wasn’t even sure how it worked. It just did.

Since the phone was the largest contamination risk, I’d put it in a plastic bag, which I set in front of me along with the paper and ink. I scattered everything else around me in a haphazard circle in a mockery of a practitioner’s ritual. Crossing my legs and resting my hands on my knees, I closed my eyes. Maybe one day I’d figure out how my magic ticked and learn to control it so it wouldn’t find some way to bite me in the ass.