Mob Rules by Cameron Haley Read Free Book Online Page B

change how I felt, and I couldn’t change what I believed. And the worst thing about not believing was that I always knew what I’d lost or what I’d never had.
    I was a gangster, and I’d done things for which even God couldn’t forgive me. But I was still human. I was still a woman. I wanted to believe in that fairy-tale love that little girls dream about, and I hated that I couldn’t. The cruelest joke of the underworld was that so many parts of fairy tales were true, but not the ones that really mattered.
    Adan made me want to believe. He made me want to believe all those wonderful, impossible things, and that he could somehow make them come true. He made me want all those things with him.
    Sorcery is just will and power. So is believing.
    Â 
    Later that night, I tried to contact Jamal again. This time, when the same Flash intro came up, I kept pumping juice into the spell from the ley line below my building in an effort to stabilize the pattern. The squall from the speakers intensified until I was sure it was loud enough to raise the dead, or at least wake my neighbors. My computer slowed to a crawl and the screen flickered dangerously, but the system didn’t crash.
    I poured more juice into the spell and the noise finally died down, to be replaced by sporadic bursts of white noise. In the intervals between the bursts, I heard voices. There were a lot of them and it was disturbing, like a party that had turned ugly. The cacophony of voices was punctuated by panicked shouts, terrified screams and despairing wails. It reminded me of live video footage I’d seen of a crowded Jerusalem restaurant in the aftermath of a suicide attack.
    There was no foreground or background to the noise—all of the voices were just mixed in together. Occasionally, though, one of the voices was isolated enough that I could make out the words. Most of it made no sense to me—names I didn’t recognize, languages I didn’t understand, mundane phrases so removed from context they had no meaning. The voices were garbled, warped, but a few did make sense, and that was worse.
    â€œI can’t find my leg,” a voice whispered.
    â€œI’m dead now.”
    â€œThey took my mommy.” A little girl’s voice.
    â€œI want to go, I want to go, I want to go, I want to…”
    â€œI know who you are.” The voice sounded like an old woman. She sounded pissed.
    â€œHelp me, Domino. Please, D.”
    â€œJamal?”
    â€œHelp me, D…help me.”
    I channeled more juice into the spell, straining until I thought my eyes would pop. I kept feeding the spell, but the juice kept backing up, into me, like blood in a junkie’s syringe. It was so cold it burned.
    â€œJamal, I’m trying. Talk to me. Just keep talking to me.”
    â€œI can’t…I can’t get back, D. I can’t get back. It’s just dark…ain’t nothing here, Domino…ain’t nothing but the dark.”
    â€œI know, Jamal. Keep trying. I’m here. Keep talking.”
    â€œDomino? Are you there, D? Please don’t leave. Domino, please don’t leave me here.” He was crying, but his voice was growing fainter.
    â€œJamal, keep talking. I’m here.” I ground my teeth and reached for more juice, but I had so much of the backwash in me I couldn’t push it through and I felt like I was drowning. “Fuck!”
    I tried again to force more juice into the spell, but now it was washing back into me faster than I could tap it from the line.
    â€œJamal! I’m still here. Come back.”
    Silence, then a few short bursts of static. Then nothing. I’d lost him.
    I shut down the computer and went to the kitchen for a beer. I was buzzing from all the juice I’d flowed. I was also shivering and choking on that grave-cold backwash I sucked down. I collapsed on the sofa and drained the beer.
    Whatever was happening with Jamal wasn’t