Trickster by Jeff Somers Read Free Book Online

affection for our Mr. Vonnegan.”
    Mags smiled at him and shook his head a little, not understanding any of it. Hiram looked back at me. “So which is it this time, Mr. Vonnegan?”
    I sighed. I wanted to get off the street as quickly as possible. I was willing to eat all the shit Hiram had in store for me. Which, if memory served, was quite a lot.
    “I’ve got a body and a . . . a girl in the trunk of that car.”
    Hiram ticked his head to look over my shoulder, his sharp grifter’s eyes taking in the car. He looked back at me. “Which is stolen,” he said.
    “Which is stolen.” I took a deep breath, the oxygen feeling good as it burned into my thinned blood. I didn’t want to tell Hiram the next part, but I owed him at least a warning. “This involves . . . someone out of my league.”
    Hiram snorted, moving out onto the steps with us. “You have great ability, Mr. Vonnegan, and always have. You limit yourself.”
    I nodded. I was a purist. Hiram was not, though he usually insisted on volunteers for his bleeds. Most of the ustari, the mages of average ability, lacked even those scruples.
    “This is far out of my league, Hiram.”
    My gasam glanced at me again, then nodded. “Bring them in. Try not to make any noise. That means you, Mr. Mageshkumar. You make noise just standing there, did you know that?”
    •   •   •
    The girl kicked and struggled and was smeared in the Skinny Fuck’s blood, making her as easy as a greased pig to carry into Hiram’s house. Since Hiram was in no mood to do anything more for us, Mags managed a respectable Glamour that made anyone who looked out their window or passed by simply ignore us, cutting a ragged-looking slice on his forearm for the gas. Hiram watched in what looked like increasing horror as first the bloody, kicking girl and then the cold, pale corpse, were dragged into the house.
    “Put the dead one in the study,” Hiram instructed coolly, gesturing directions with one arm as if I hadn’tspent years in this house. “Bring the girl to the washroom. Neither of you speak for a while, yes?”
    I realized Hiram was furious. I’d been on the receiving end of his anger plenty of times when actively apprenticed to him and was in no rush to revisit my adolescence.
    We slipped the girl into the bathtub, which I immediately regretted, seeing her as the other girl, the very, very dead girl in the old apartment. They looked very much alike, which couldn’t be a coincidence.
    I didn’t say anything, though. The girl had stopped trying to scream and kick; just flashed her eyes at us, jumping from face to face.
    Hiram studied her for a moment, then sighed, unbuttoning one sleeve and starting to roll it up. “We’re not going to get far with her in this state; we need to calm her,” he said, reaching into his pocket and producing the pearl-handled straight razor he liked to use. Although Hiram’s face and neck were free from scars, the white flesh of his left arm from the wrist to the elbow was a highway map of puckered old wounds, ranging from the delicate, almost-vanished to one ugly gnarl of pink that ran for three inches, like a mountain range on his skin.
    Hiram didn’t mind bleeding others, but Hiram didn’t have the rank to attract Bleeders. He got by on his own gas a lot, just like the rest of us. When Hiram had a big spell to cast, he got some local rummies or a whore or two; people who would take money for anything.
    I closed my eyes and saw my first girl again. Her sneakers. The pink marker. She was shivering. She’dbeen skinny, with dark hair, too, but pale, skin like ice cream.
    I opened my eyes again. With a quick, masterful twitch Hiram drew a nice bead of blood and laid the razor in the sink. He spoke the Cantrip in just six syllables. Hiram was a master of the language, which had always been appealing to me. He had a knack for paring down every spell to maximum efficiency; some mages had to chant for ten minutes to get the same effect.
    I