Bum’s Rush: White Lightning Series, Book 2 Read online

  With the illusion focused on just one person, she could really expand energy in making it realistic to all the senses. Hattie smiled. “What do you want me to create exactly? Someplace we’ve been before? Eating? Playing with kittens?”

  “I dunno. Make it nice. Nothin’ nightmare-like.”

  She nodded, then collected herself. Okay, she’d have to pinch light around the two of them affecting all senses. That would be expensive, on a magical level. But that was the other half of the training—it wasn’t only about reducing reaction time. It was also about feeling out her limits. What could she do before she got too sick to keep the illusion going?

  “Sure you’re ready for this?” she asked.

  Raymond took a breath. “It’s just illusion, right? I can’t get hurt?”

  She snickered. “No, I’ll be the one getting hurt.”

  He waggled a finger at her. “Not if you do it right.”

  Hattie kicked away some gravel from around her and took a seat on the ground, crossing her legs. Raymond followed suit, plopping down a few feet away.

  The sense of Raymond’s nearness helped propel her into the illusion. She pictured Raymond sitting at some slumped posture, his eyes deep set in his dark brown, sweat-beaded face. Then she spun a thought in her head—a thought she dwelled on with the full bore of her powers.

  She pinched light, and that pinch was a massive theater around the two of them. Hattie stitched together every detail she could muster of Raymond’s home. The wood plank floors. The weathered kitchen table complete with the tiny gashes Nadine had sliced with her paring knife as she made a Sunday feast. The little baby, Douglas, resting in a bassinet in the corner, cooing away to himself in his soft cotton clothes and bedsheets.

  The smell drifted around them—a vegetable soup of sorts, with some crab meat. Raymond sat at the table, watching his wife as she stirred the pot. She peered over her shoulder at Raymond with a smile.

  Raymond cleared his throat, and Hattie could feel a tug on her illusion. Something had happened. He’d fallen out of it.

  She opened her eyes, sucking in a long breath and shaking off a wave of nausea. That wasn’t cheap magic, but it had been glorious to create something so detailed and exact.

  “So? What did you think?” she asked.

  Raymond shifted on the gravel. “That was…unsettlin’.”

  “What was wrong?” she frowned. Had she not gotten the table right? The soup? Douglas’s little baby noises?

  “Nothing. I mean…it was good. Like home. But…”

  “But what?”

  He shuddered, then gave her a sheepish grin. “Nadine don’t look at me like that.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah. Kinda was like there was another woman in my kitchen wearing her clothes. That felt all kinds of wrong.”

  She nodded to herself. It was always a gamble, trying to recreate the life of another person. Hattie had enjoyed more than a few dinners with Raymond’s family, but there were private glances, cues, shades of posture that could only be shared between two people. It was an ambitious pinch, and though Raymond dropped out of it, Hattie took solace in the fact she’d immersed him in something so involved.

  She ran a finger underneath her nose, wiping a tiny trickle of blood from her nostril. “Worth a try, at any rate.”

  Raymond’s brow wrinkled as he stared at her nosebleed. “Maybe that’s enough for today?”

  “Enough? We’ve hardly begun. Besides…” She eyed the front of the warehouse. Tony’s car was still there.

  Raymond sighed. “S’pose we ain’t got nowhere better to be, huh? But still, you shouldn’t be pushin’ yourself too hard. That’ll get you sick.”

  She wiped her finger on her pants. “That’s the point, though. I need to train myself to work through the sickness. Build up a resistance.”

  He shrugged. “Okay. So, what’s next?”

  She thought about it for a moment. “Hmm. I tried your world. Let me try mine.”

  Raymond nodded as Hattie closed her eyes and pieced together the intimate details of her home. And as she opened her eyes, rather than an empty lot she found her own kitchen. Raymond stood across from her table, eyes wide.

  “Now…that’s somethin’,” he gasped.

  An illusion of Alton stepped through the kitchen. “Morning, ’Attie!”

  Raymond stood aside to let Alton pass, then grinned. “That is somethin’.”

  Hattie held the illusion tight and controlled, though it had already begun tugging at her guts.

  “This it? Your home?” Raymond asked.

  “Aye,” she wheezed.

  “You okay?”

  Hattie nodded. “This is too easy. I know all this. I need to involve your other senses.”

  She peered at the kitchen window, then squinted. With a tiny lift of her fingers, she dropped the outside world of her illusion into darkness. Nighttime. Moonlight sifted through the window.

  Alton’s illusion said, “Atta girl.”

  Raymond reached out for the table, then paused to give Hattie a glance.

  She nodded for him to touch it.

  As his fingers pressed against the wood of the table, he laughed. “I’ll be damned. Feels like it’s right here!”

  As he pushed on the table, the illusion doubled in complexity. New sensation—touch, not just sight and sound.

  Hattie conjured a bowl of fruit onto the table. Her favorite—apples.

  “Give it a try,” she said, balling fists to maintain focus.

  Raymond plucked an apple from the bowl gingerly, then lifted it to his lips. He took a tentative bite, snapping away the flesh with a tiny spray of juice. He chewed it, then nodded.

  “Tastes real,” he mumbled around the flesh.

  The complexity of the light pinch doubled yet again, hammering down onto Hattie’s brain with every chew.

  But she kept it all held together.

  Alton absentmindedly reached around Raymond to snatch a tea cup Hattie had just stitched into the illusion. A tickle on her lip called attention to the fact that the cost of this illusion was growing dangerously expensive.

  Raymond dropped the apple back onto the table, where it disappeared. “You’re bleedin’ pretty good there, girl. Best pull this all down.” He swung his hands around him. “I still can’t believe none of this is real. That we’re in an empty lot surrounded by crates and lumber beside a warehouse right now!”

  As the words escaped his mouth, Raymond’s mind probed deeply into the illusion, as if reminding himself that it was all only a dream. His moment of clarity tore through her, threatening to pull down the entire pinch. The illusion snapped taut around Hattie, like a noose around the neck of a body in freefall from the gallows, and she gasped.

  Raymond disappeared, dropping out of the illusion.

  Hattie clenched her fists so tight that her nails dug into the flesh of her palms. She squeezed her eyes shut, shouting against the sudden weight of reality trying to flay apart her illusion.

  And then it stopped.

  She opened her eyes to the sunlight. But there was no gravel. No warehouse. No Raymond.

  Alton remained in the kitchen, leaning over to read a paper on the table. He looked different. Younger. The kitchen seemed brighter, and she took a long look around at the freshly cleaned cabinet doors, the sparkling floor tiles, and the glass in the windows which was smooth and clear. Wait, this wasn’t her kitchen back home, this was someplace else—someplace that had only ever existed in her imagination.

  Her father nodded to himself as he ran a hand through his hair. It was thick and full, a light chestnut brown without a hint of gray. His face was lean and firm, filled with youthful vigor. He was a handsome man in his mid-thirties, by the look of it.

  “Alton?” a voice called from the living room. “Give us a hand, here?”

  Hattie stepped aside as the young version of her father swept past her with a smile blossoming on his face. She followed him into a living room, and gasped at the
sight of her mother.

  Branna was younger as well. Her round face sat beneath a mop of reddish-blonde hair, spilling out from a loosely gathered bun. She peered up at her husband with glittering emerald eyes and gave him a warm smile.

  On the floor between Branna’s knees crawled a tiny baby.

  “She needs changing,” Branna declared. “And I’m due for a whisky.”

  Hattie released a snicker as her mother gathered the tiny infant to hand her off to Alton. Whisky? When had her mother ever partaken of spirits?

  But even as the young woman eased around her husband to plant a kiss on his neck on her way to the sideboard, Hattie knew anything was possible in this illusion. It wasn’t a view of the past. It was simply a version of the past that Hattie had created in her mind.

  Unlike Raymond, however, knowing this was a dream did nothing to pull her out of it. She lingered in the doorway to the kitchen, watching her father cradle the baby, whispering to it as he reached for a folded diaper on the chair nearby.

  “Hey there, little ’Attie! We’ll get you sorted.”

  A tear fell from Hattie’s eye as she watched, a smile creasing her cheeks. There was such warmth in this scene, such a sense of family—and of safety. There was no fear that someone would knock on the door and shatter their lives. There was no planning for how they might need to leave in the middle of the night with little notice. There was just love.

  Alton cooed to the child, “’Attie. ’Attie.”

  Behind her, Branna coughed against the whisky. It was a choking cough, as if she’d swallowed too fast and inhaled some of it.

  “’Attie. Hattie. Hattie? Hattie!”

  More coughing. Choking.

  Gasping for air.

  The kitchen faded into bright sunlight, and the coughing erupted from Hattie’s throat.

  Raymond loomed overhead, his hand rubbing the sides of her cheeks.

  “Hey, baby girl! Come on, now! Breathe! Breathe!”

  Hattie sucked in a long gasp, then coughed hard. A spray of blood rose into the air, pelting the side of Raymond’s face. Her lungs felt as if they’d been torn apart. Every breath bubbled with blood and bits of tissue. There was not enough air. She couldn’t get enough air.

  Hattie, panicked, clutching at Raymond’s hands as she tried to sit up. She had no strength. Only the trickle of blood flowing down her windpipe and filling her lungs.

  Dying. She was dying.

  Raymond rolled her onto her side, pounding on her back. “Hattie, breathe!”

  She pawed at her chest, tugged at her blouse, pulling it low nearly to the point of ripping stitches. Her fingertips landed against a tiny, hard lump tucked into her brassiere. She pulled it out between heaving gasps, and held it up for Raymond.

  He cocked his head at her as he examined it. “What’s this?”

  His voice was fading, his face blurring as he knelt close. She held up a finger, and tried to drag air into her blood-filled lungs. “One…drop…”

  Raymond fumbled with the stopper, his meaty fingers growing misty as she watched him struggling to unscrew the tiny cap. Finally, it came loose, and he lifted the stem and bulb into the air. The bright blue liquid gleamed in the sunlight.

  Hattie closed her eyes, trying not to panic at the notion that she was rapidly suffocating on her own blood. Then she tasted something cold and sharp on her tongue, something that shot through her like a bolt of electricity. She closed her mouth and swallowed, trying to hold the precious liquid down along with all the blood in her throat.

  Her head spun—but not with the usual nauseating vertigo of magic sickness. It was as if everything was being sucked back to a state of order. The shattered remains of her lungs flew into place with a wave of a Cosmic hand. The blood stopped tickling her throat, easing back into its rightful place with a gentle thump. Her stomach gurgled—that single hunger pang one gets when bacon hits the griddle in the morning. Her fingers tingled, stretching out to run against sharp bits of stone.

  She took several calm breaths, then sat upright. Hattie ran a hand under her nose, pulling it back to show it was still bloody. Her nose, her shirt, Raymond’s shirt, the gravel around her. It looked like someone had slaughtered a chicken in their midst, but in spite of the mess, she felt fine.

  Raymond stoppered the tiny dram and gripped it like a hand grenade. “You…uh, you okay?”

  She nodded. “Aye. But that was close.”

  Close. That was more than close. If she hadn’t had that bottle on her, if Raymond hadn’t been here to administer it, she would have died.

  “What happened?”

  She reached for the bottle, and he handed it back to her. “I think I got lost.”

  “Lost?”

  “In my own pinch. Hell of a thing, it was.”

  He shook his head. “How do you get lost in your own magic?”

  Hattie stretched her neck and held out a hand. Raymond helped her to her feet, and she raised her arms to stretch out her back. “It was a fantasy from my imagination, something I didn’t want to end.”

  “Well, if it didn’t end, it would’a killed you, so, don’t do that again!”

  She tucked the elixir back into her top and nodded. She’d never tried Leon’s potion herself, determined to save every last drop for her father. It was as potent as he’d promised, and once again she sent out a silent thanks to the water pincher for his generosity.

  The warehouse door squealed open, and Tony emerged from the dark interior to snap his hat onto his head. He ducked into his car, started the engine, and drove off at a casual pace. Lizzie stood at the opening watching as the car disappeared around the bend. Then her eyes found Hattie and Raymond in the vacant lot. She approached with an impatient glare. That glare became panic when she spotted the blood on Hattie’s face and clothing.

  “What in all hell have you both been doing out here?”

  “Butchering chickens for supper,” Hattie teased. “You two finally done in there or should Raymond and I go home for the day?”

  Lizzie flushed and grumbled something incoherent before leading them back to the warehouse to clean Hattie up. As she followed Liz, Hattie’s mind spun with notions. Two of them, to be precise.

  First, that the Aqua Vitae was a more useful potion than she’d originally imagined. Not only could it be used to heal her father’s lung ailment, it could also be used to right the effects of magic sickness. That removed the upper limit to what Hattie could do. One drop, and she could stitch her wrecked insides back together again and start over. In a moment of desperation, that elixir could prove to be the difference between life and death.

  And second, she now had a new weapon in her magical tool bag. Beyond illusions to draw attention away or toward, she could capture someone in a full-world light pinch. How long would it remain in someone’s mind once she withdrew her magic? What if she created a world that someone didn’t want to leave? Would it be like a prison? A den of opium sapping the body of the will to break free? Or would it be like an iron maiden, closing in with spikes of metal dressed in fond memories?

  These were dark thoughts, but in times such as these, Hattie took comfort in the notion that she had something as powerful as a Tommy gun, should the need arise.

  Chapter 4

  “You need the car tonight?” Vincent asked Lefty. “Mind if I take her for the evening?”

  Lefty shot him a perceptive glance. “Sure. Might walk over to Hudson’s on the water, but that’s it. Spent too many hours today in this jalopy with your sorry hide.”

  Vincent grinned. “I’ll leave you at the old folks’ home. How’s that grab ya?”

  Lefty showed him a finger as he stepped out of the car and onto the curb in front of his home. Then he pointed at the car. “You scratch this, and you’re floating in the Patapsco by sunrise.”

  Vincent nodded. “Fair’s fair.”

  He watched as Lefty fished a key from his vest pocket to unlock his door. Once he was inside, Vincent hammered down the gas pedal, h
eading up the street to change for his evening.

  Sunday night. Should be music at the Old Moravia. And he knew Ermanno was running the kitchen, so the food would be better than good. He sprinted up the stairs to his second-story apartment and showered off before putting on his charcoal gray suit, the one with pinstripes up the vest. It was an outfit he rarely found a use for. Once the cufflinks were in his sleeves, and he’d combed his hair into a raven wing, he snatched his fedora and trotted downstairs, trying to ignore the knot in his stomach.

  He’d never had enough free time to consider having a steady girl, his relationships tending to be with women who made their living entertaining members of the opposite sex. It was easier that way. Vincent never had to explain missing a date because Lefty had shown up to whisk him away for a job. He never had to explain long absences or lie about what he did for a living or cover up the nature of his magic.

  But Fern had grown up around the famiglia. She knew he worked for the Baltimore Crew, and that he was a pincher. After she’d tracked Vincent down and thanked him for sticking his neck out when Cooper had been hitting her, he’d thought maybe he’d found the perfect woman.

  But that was months ago, and tonight was their first date. He’d had no idea the hoops he’d need to jump through, the permissions he’d need to secure just to take the ex-girlfriend of a member of the famiglia to dinner. And in the time it took to get the Crew’s blessing, that spark he’d felt when they’d talked at the Fontainebleau had long faded, making this feel like an awkward date with a complete stranger.

  After all the trouble he’d gone to in securing the necessary approvals, it seemed rather uncouth to cancel, so here he was, driving Lefty’s Alfa Romeo, and feeling more like he was going to his execution than to dinner with a beautiful woman.

  Several blocks uptown, Vincent parked in front of a white columned home overlooking Druid Hill Lake. This wasn’t the two-bit row house he was used to, this was a house built on avarice. Most of the supervisors and managers along the waterfront took up their residence along this avenue. These broad, boxy mansions stood as resolute as a hunk of Sparrows Point steel, in defiance of the rest of the East Coast, in defiance of the old money. The American nobility. This was recent wealth that built angry monuments to its own cupidity.