A Debut Unpaid (San Amaro Investigations)

Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

At ten o’clock at night, there were only two kinds of people on the San Amaro buses. One was people who had just gotten off shift and had the glassy look of an incredibly long day. The second was people who were about to go on shift and either had a half-awake look or were flat out napping on their way to their jobs.

It was usually a quiet time on the bus. No screaming babies; daycare closed hours ago. No college kids yet, either — the bars didn’t close for another three hours.

In fact, there was only one person anyone was avoiding on the bus: me.

Shifting in the uncomfortable plastic seat, dirt dribbled out of the cuff of my pants, even though I had crawled out of my shallow grave almost forty-five minutes ago. I could feel the soft, fine grit that made up the hills of San Amaro in every pore and almost all of my orifices.

No one wanted to sit near me. Whether that was because I stank of sweaty panic or because I kept muttering about exactly what I was going to do when I got to my destination was up for debate. I wouldn’t want to talk to the filthy guy talking to himself in the back of the bus, either.

The upsetting thing was that usually I was a guy who dealt with weirdos and the things that made other people shiver. As the city’s top paranormal PI, I was the guy that someone called when they had a problem and the police wouldn’t help them.

The bus creaked as it pulled to a stop, the hydraulic brakes hissing. A woman in teal scrubs rushed to get off the back of the bus, glancing at me when I stood to follow her. She clutched her purse tighter when it was just the two of us on the sidewalk, the bus already trundling away.

She was probably the night nurse for some rich guy who still thought nurses should dress like they were pinup girls. Unfortunately for him, I was sure the agency she worked for had a uniform code which didn’t involve fishnets and high heels.

Her eyes were wide, and she looked around, but it was late at night and we were the only two people on the street. We were on the main road, which was flat. Stretching behind us in the dark hills were mansions so big they could probably fit my entire apartment building in their garages.

I could tell that she wasn’t going to move first. She didn’t want to give me the benefit of walking behind her, and possibly catching her unaware. After all, I was the guy covered in dirt with a bruise on his face that said a few hours ago someone had tried very hard to mess my pretty mug up permanently.

I didn’t want to touch the injury again, because every time I did I saw colors like I was sitting on the beach underneath the Fourth of July fireworks show.

“I’ll go first,” I said. “I’m not here for you.”

She frowned. “Are you okay?”

“Eh, I’ve been worse.” I offered her smile, but it must not have been very reassuring because she approached me like you might a wounded tiger.

She was the mouse, I had a thorn in my paw, and it was only in the fables that this ended in friendship instead of a very small appetizer for very hungry feline.

When she was close, she examined my face. “You need to get that looked at. Follow my finger.”

She moved her forefinger back and forth across my vision. Then she shook her head again. “You want me to call an ambulance?”

“Listen,” I said. “I get that it’s your job, but you probably want to go to work and forget you ever saw me, okay? You’re good people and what I’m about to do isn’t for good people like you.”

With that, I turned and began the hike up the street to Derek McCallum’s house. Maybe I did have a concussion, usually I wasn’t so chatty with people I didn’t know. Now she was probably going to call the cops, which was one thing I didn’t need.

Because, dirty or not, concussed or not, exhausted or not, I was going to murder Derek McCallum.

Derek McCallum lived in one of the recent additions to the Hills. His house bore the bland anonymity of a house built in the early ’00s which wanted to look modern yet not out of place from his more established neighbors. He was like some reptile who had snuck his egg into a bird’s nest and, as soon as the egg hatched, was going to eat all the chicks.

And he probably would get away with it, convincing the mother bird that he was harmless, scaly skin and all. After all, he’d managed to convince me that I should do business with him, even though if you’d asked me a few months ago, should you do business with Derek McCallum? My answer would have been never, no, and do I look like I want to end up in the harbor wearing cement shoes?

When I approached his house, I was surprised to see the lights weren’t on. McCallum didn’t seem like the kind of person who kept an early bedtime, but maybe he was out celebrating his victory. Champagne for the thug who’d killed the PI stupid enough to get into business with San Amaro’s most notorious crime boss.

McCallum had a gate, and I was sure he had wards, but I was so angry that pushing through them only felt like the prickle you’d get touching something that came out of the dryer snapping from static electricity. The fence was a bigger problem, as I was tired after having dug myself out of the dirt and then walking several miles until I found a bus stop.

Magic bled from me, like sweat coming off a race horse. The job I had done for McCallum had me using magic almost nonstop for weeks. If you had asked me several hours ago, I would’ve said I was tapped out. But desperation and fury meant that my reserves were back at full capacity.

I couldn’t work with the metal fence. This angry, there was no way I could even attempt to finesse the metal. Moreover, metal is almost impossible for me to work with. On a normal day, I might test to see if I could manipulate it, but I didn’t want to waste time trying, in case I was wrong.

No, I needed an alternative route into McCallum’s house. Walking around the fence, I saw where some lazy groundskeeper had let a few branches of a shrub grow just over the top of the black-painted wrought iron, complete with sharp, stabby points at the top. I could work with that.

The fence was easily ten feet tall, and I had no desire to test how my knees would take a fall from that height. I could probably do it, but the last thing I needed was to hobble myself on top of the concussion I was almost positive I was sporting. What I really wanted was for the bush to grow all the way down the opposite side of the fence so that it would be just like climbing a ladder down the other side.

Approaching the plant, I reached out a thread of magic and waited until I felt the shrub wake.

It was curious, uncertain about me. I’d never felt that from another spirit before, but then again, I’d never been four hours past a murder attempt before. Taking a deep breath, I reigned in my anger until I was able to speak without it sounding like a werewolf’s growl. There was no sense in scaring the bush back to a seedling.

“Hey there,” I said. “Look at your leaves. I don’t think I’ve ever seen leaves like that before, they’re so… green.”

Luckily, the bush didn’t have eyes, because it didn’t see me wince and smack my own head with the heel of my hand. I immediately regretted the action, because I’d gotten slightly too close to the bruise from McCallum’s muscle. Spots of light exploded across my vision, like my head was a giant disco ball in a roller rink.

“I think you’re the tallest one here. You’re way taller than the other bushes and you grow in your own shapes, unlike them .” I jerked my thumb at the matching row of bushes every seven feet along the fence. “ They need some gardener to prune them and show them how to form interesting shapes, but you . You’re special . I bet, if you wanted, you could even grow down the fence. You would be like an arch. Usually they have to train a bush for years to get it to do that, but you …”

I could already see the tendrils growing, climbing and supporting each other as they began tentatively moving down the other side of the fence. Plants aren’t usually meant to grow down, it’s not in their nature. They grow towards light; they grow up . They can grow sideways, and if you train them right, some will grow along an archway, but growing downward …

Well, I had the magic to help the bush-turned-ladder, even if my charisma was still at freshman-trying-to-explain-anime-to-a-girl-he-liked level. I reached inside me, but took a moment to calm myself before feeding the plant more magic. I wanted to end up with Jack’s beanstalk, not the three magic beans. If I fed the plant the magic that was currently swirling around inside of the vessel in my chest, there was no way it was going to do what I needed. It would take one hit from me and shrivel up in fear.

Normally, I don’t think too much about my magic. It’s always there, it always feels like me, and it always feels like a warm summer day.

Four hours post waking up in a shallow grave and realizing that by some miracle I wasn’t actually dead, my magic wasn’t gold like I was used to seeing. It didn’t have the warm precious metal hue of Summer magic. Instead, it was red, my anger tainting it, my need for revenge so strong that it overwrote the magic’s natural balance.

I was wrong. The plant wouldn’t be afraid of this magic. If I fed the plant this magic, I’d end up with man-eating plant from Little Shop of Horrors. The next gardener that came by trying to prune it would end up screaming when the thing ate his arm and then went for his leg.

I took a slow breath, calming my heart rate, and listened to the low hum of spirits around me. They weren’t angry. They existed, they were part of the flow of reality, each taking its own place, each with its own wants and needs. I was part of that, I reminded myself.

My need to murder Derek McCallum was just another want among an entire planet full of them. The small patch of ornamental daisies a few feet away were getting too much water, and wanted drier soil. The delicate Japanese maple was desperate for more shade. As I listened to the low hum of the surrounding garden, I realized that Derek McCallum also needed to hire a better landscape company. Whoever took care of his garden right now was leaving a lot of plants wanting.

When I was sure my head was in the right place, I checked in on my magic. While it wasn’t the pure gold I was used to, it also wasn’t the color of blood and fire. It was more like a rose gold, some new Apple product designed for women with Hermès handbags and matching pooches to go in them.

I unspooled magic from inside myself, feeding it to the receptive shrub.

The plant grew like it was one of those sped-up videos in science class, the frames sliding by until we were watching a year’s worth of development in a few minutes. There was my ladder.

The thing had even bothered to create distinct footholds for me that were stronger branches. Even I was a little surprised. This was the sort of work that would get the plant put in honors class, if plants went to high school and cared about things like college admissions.

“Wow,” I said. “That’s… you really are incredible.”

I withdrew my magic slowly, giving the plant the magical equivalent of a pat on the back before I squared my shoulders and climbed over the fence. I could feel the moment I hit McCallum’s second wards. But something about them was strange.

Instead of sending me spinning, or hurting me like I expected them to, they just felt uncomfortable for a moment as I pushed my way through. I had expected to have to take them down by force, to have to use my pool of magic to shatter them. If they kept out people who wanted to harm McCallum, I definitely fit that bill.

But instead, it was mere discomfort, as though they no longer held the primary directive of keeping McCallum safe. Maybe I was reading too much into it. Maybe his wards didn’t have the clause that said, “keep this guy from getting his head blown off,” because McCallum had too many people who wanted to see him dead.

I couldn’t imagine being in business with so many people who wanted me six feet under that I didn’t even bother with wards to protect me from that very thing.

When I got to the house, I kept myself low enough that I wasn’t visible from the inside. I crept along, hoping that someone had left one of the ground-floor windows open so that I could sneak in. By the time I reached the backyard, I realized I was out of luck and I would have to make my entry forcibly.

I picked up one of the decorative rocks near McCallum’s patio and glanced inside the French doors leading from his pool deck. It was dark, and I didn’t see the flicker of a television or any movement. With my magic, I reached out, but all the spirits inside were still, asleep.

Taking a deep breath, I pulled back the rock, ready to smash it through the door, but then thought better of using my hand to do it. Moving backward two steps, I hefted the rock like a baseball and threw it directly toward the door.

The sound was so loud there was no chance I hadn’t alerted people inside the house. I moved to the side, ready to take on whoever came out first. Hopefully would be the muscle who had brained me, because I was looking forward to showing him how it felt. No one came.

Was the house empty? Was I right, and they were all out at some party or dinner?

The idea of setting a trap, one that McCallum would walk right into, made me grin so broadly I was glad there was no one around, because I must’ve looked demented. I grabbed one of the pool towels from the supply cabinet that ran along the exterior wall. Protecting my hand, I reached through the broken glass and unlocked the back door. Inside, my feet crunched over the remnants of the window and I dropped the towel on the countertop. I had walked into some sort of game room, complete with a bar that looked like it was from the set of Cheers. A pool table, foosball, even a dartboard were all arrayed around the room.

The image of McCallum playing darts struck me as bizarre, but the idea of him playing foosball … I imagined that if he played with his henchmen, he always won. He probably didn’t even notice, because he was so used to winning.

Walking through the house was unsettling in the dark. I’d only been there a couple of times, once when McCallum and I discussed our original agreement, and the second when I was dropping off his property. Both times, there had been so much security that it might as well have been the White House. Every room had been lit, as though McCallum didn’t care at all about the electricity expenses.

McCallum’s taste ran towards nouveau riche. He hadn’t met a giant painting that he didn’t want to display on his giant walls. The furniture was modern, except in his office where it looked like he had kidnapped the set designer from Citizen Kane and demanded that they re-create a 1900’s oil tycoon office. All wood, massive furniture and a bookshelf that was filled with tomes he never read.

I picked my way through the house, not wanting to trip on any of the uncomfortable Scandinavian furniture. Standing in the entryway, I glanced around. If I set my trap in the entryway, McCallum wouldn’t have time to defend himself.

Before I could decide how to ambush McCallum, something hit me solidly from behind.