I still couldn’t smell him-he’d been standing upwind, the clever boy.
I walked down two steps and out into the parking lot, my heels making a solid, staccato sound.
“Allie.” His voice was low and carried the hint of a prior life spent in the south. His hair was gray, buzzed, and in better light his eyes might be brown instead of black. The lines on his face made him look angry without even trying. This close, I could smell his aftershave-something with a helluva lot of hickory overtones.
“Pike. You lose something?” I held the picture out for him.
He was wearing a long-sleeved button-down shirt, which seemed odd in the heat of the night. Both his hands were in the front pockets of his jeans, and he did not move to touch the photo.
“Lulu talk to you?” he asked.
“You know the answer to that.”
“No, I don’t. I haven’t seen or heard from her in three days.”
Wasn’t that interesting? If he didn’t know where Lulu was, then he couldn’t have been the one who put the tracker on the photo. But that spell had his signature on it. You can’t fake a magical signature. It’s just like handwriting. Every caster has his or her own unique style.
And if he had put the spell on the photo, then he knew where Lulu was. He could have followed her around twenty-four seven and still had time for an ice cream cone. Not that Pike looked like the type who ate frozen desserts.
I found myself not so much caring what part Pike played in this but why the hell the girl, Rheesha, hadn’t been found yet.
“What’s going on with this girl?” I asked.
“Did Lulu hire you to find her?”
“No.”
“She was just handing out pictures to strangers when you happened by?”
“Has anyone ever told you you suck at sarcasm?”
“No.”
Yeah, that was probably true. “You know what?” I said, “I don’t have to tell you anything, but here’s the truth. I’m out. Good luck finding Lulu and Rheesha. I want nothing to do with it.” I held the photo out for him again. He kept his hands firmly in his pockets.
“It’s too late for that,” he said.
“For what?”
“Backing out. You’re a part of this, Beckstrom.”
“Really? Since when?”
“Since you touched that photo. They’re looking for you now. And they’ll find you.”
Then the bastard turned around and started walking away.
Oh, no. Hells no. He was not going to leave me with some cryptic statement and fade to black. I caught up with him. “You know I haven’t ever gotten in your way-on a job or any other time.”
“So?”
“So level with me. Tell me who’s looking for me. Tell me why. I know how to lie low. This is your job, Pike. I don’t want anything to do with it.”
He stopped next to a beat up Ford truck and opened the passenger door. “Get in. We’ll talk.”
“What about…” I held up the photo.
Pike shrugged. “Keep it. At least we’ll know where they’ll be: right behind us.” Then he gave me a sideways glance. “You might be useful after all, Beckstrom.”
Comforting. I tucked the photo in my pocket and climbed into the cab. I wanted to know what Pike knew. Or at least enough of it to keep myself alive.
I half expected his truck to be loaded with secret military gear, but I didn’t see anything unusual, unless you counted the bobble-headed dog on his dash.
“Cute.”
“Grandkid gave it to me.”
He started the car and headed out of the parking lot, which was fine with me. I had no idea Pike had a family. For that matter, I had no idea he had a life except for Hounding. Hounds tend to be loners-the kind of people who work nights and dull the pain of using magic with pills, needles, and booze. Not exactly white picket fence compatible. Still, watching Pike in the sliding light from the street gave me a sort of morbid hope. He was not a young man, and he seemed to be holding up okay.
“How long you been Hounding Portland?” he asked.
“About a year.”
“Before that?”
“College. Don’t you read the headlines? Billionaire Daniel Beckstrom’s Daughter Drops Out of Harvard.”
He glanced at me. He was not amused.
“Why did you come back here?”
That was a question I’d asked myself almost every day for a year. Maybe because Portland and the Northwest were familiar to me. Home. Or maybe because I wanted to succeed on my own terms, right under my father’s nose.
Yeah. Mostly the second thing.
“Family ties,” I said. Then, before he could ask anything else: “Who’s looking for me, what does it have to do with Lulu and Rheesha, and where the hell are we going?”
“Do you know Lon Trager?”
“No.”
“High-end dealer. Blood magic mostly. Owns a place down Burnside. Likes to make the rich come begging him for it.” He turned a corner and we were heading down Burnside. About every other streetlight worked, and there were an awful lot of people leaning against buildings for this late at night.
Pike turned down a side street and into the neighborhood a bit. He parked and turned off the truck engine.
“You any good at lying, Allie?”
“No,” I lied.
That almost got a smile out of him.
“Good. Here’s what you’re going to say. You want to see Trager. Tell them your name-they’ll know who you are, because they’re the kind of people who do read headlines.”
“Wait. I am not going into the office, drug den, or whatever the hell it is, of a known Blood magic dealer. I wanted out of this, remember? I wanted to lie low.”
Pike just sat there and stared at me. Then, in a voice devoid of inflection:
“The cops think she’s a runaway. There’s no evidence of kidnapping. None. There’re no lines of magic to sniff down. But I know she’s in there. And you know why I’m not going in after her? Trager and I have history. Bad history. For all I know, she’s already dead. It’s been two weeks. Two weeks.” He stopped as a car passed by. I had the strangest feeling he wasn’t talking to me, that he was looking across the cab of his truck and staring down demons I could not imagine.
“I can’t get in there short of blowing up the building,” he finally said. “There’s no proof. No evidence. The cops won’t push for a search warrant on a teenage runaway. But you fit Trager’s clientele.” He nodded. “Rich, young, looking for a good time. You can walk right in there. And the best thing? Trager doesn’t know you’re a Hound. If the girl, if Rheesha’s in there, you’ll know. You can get her out.”
Okay, this had just gone way out into holy-shit crazyville territory.
“Listen Pike. I’m not a cop, a private detective, or a secret agent. I have no military training. I’m just a Hound. I can track magic better than anyone out there, but I have no idea how to rescue kidnapped girls. I don’t even know how to shoot a gun.”
That got through to him. He blinked, and his eyes cleared. I knew he was looking at me. Right at me.
“Rheesha’s my granddaughter.”
Oh, fuck.
My mind started working through all the things that one statement meant.
“Lulu?” I asked.
“Her half-sister. She’s-” He took a deep breath and let it out loudly. “She’s not the girl she was before the drugs and Blood magic. I think she sold Rheesha for her debt, for her fix. She doesn’t know I suspect her. I haven’t told the cops. Yet. I can’t-I just can’t. Her mother is all I have.” He laughed, a raw bark that sounded more like a sob. “You still want to be a Hound, Allie? Want to become a sorry son of a bitch who’s too afraid to save his own granddaughter?”