1

  The sun creeps below the horizon. I reach for the water bottle next to me. Even in the fall, it's warm from a day of sitting in the car.

  I bring it to my lips and, just as I'm about to drink, a blaring honk erupts from behind the truck.

  I squeeze the bottle, sending water shooting all over the interior.

  Ella growls and flicks her ears.

  "It wasn't my fault, girl."

  You said we would go for a walk in two minutes.

  "And we will." I wipe the droplets off my chin and drink the rest of the warm liquid as I survey the rearview. Considering I'm parked, there shouldn't be any reason to smash the horn.

  Unless you're Captain Victor Amato, of course, coming for an unscheduled visit.

  It has been two hours.

  "Since when can you read?" I glance at the clock. It would seem the husky is correct regarding temporal matters.

  I bite my lip and dig my shoulder blades into the seat as I re-check the rearview.

  Victor hasn't emerged from his Mercedes sedan.

  Maybe he's waiting for me to come to him.

  You promised. A throaty, rumbling noise starts welling up in the husky's chest.

  "Come on, not now."

  Her emerald eyes narrow into slits and she glares daggers at me, unwilling to shut up.

  I lean forward, resting my chin on the wheel, hoping that something will happen at the BBQ restaurant.

  But it’s the same today as every other week.

  A whole lot of nothing.

  The truck's raggedy interior rumbles as the husky continues her protest. I adjust the rearview, checking on Victor.

  He hasn't made a move.

  Then I see it.

  Movement across the street.

  A slight man, shifty looking, his neck swiveling like a bobble head's as he glances around the dusty street. The universal demeanor of criminals and people doing shady shit.

  He reaches for the door of the BBQ restaurant.

  I lean forward.

  Ella barks.

  "Quiet."

  But it's too late. The street is abandoned, one of those places in Ragnarok that died and never came back.

  Swivel Head turns toward me, eyes wide.

  We take that moment where there's a universal understanding.

  I see him.

  He sees me.

  Then I see him start to run.

  "Fuck." I fling the truck's door open and hit the ground running. Even in the fall, the asphalt simmers with signature California heat.

  I sprint toward the sidewalk, but seem to be losing ground.

  Dude doesn't look like much, but he can fly.

  That's when I see a gray and black blur from the corner of my eye.

  And Ella zooms past.

  "Wait."

  But the dog doesn't listen. She's just running on instinct and hours of pent-up car energy.

  Three seconds later, she cuts him off with a snarling bark.

  "Woah, woah." The guy holds his hands up and backs away toward me, deciding I'm the lesser of two evils. "Nice doggie."

  Ella growls deep enough to trigger an earthquake that would demolish the nearby rickety buildings.

  I jog to catch up.

  I caught him, Tessie.

  "Yeah. Good girl." I scratch her ears and size the man up. Tears in the shirt. Sunken eyes. Dirt under the fingernails. "What were you doing at the restaurant."

  "What, you a cop or something?"

  "Or something," I say. "The restaurant."

  "Hey, the door was open. I wasn't doing nothing." His eyes bounced around past me, looking for an exit.

  Then he catches sight of the dog again, and his eyes widen, as if he just remembered why he had to stop running in the first place.

  "Strange to just show up at a restaurant that hasn't been open in half a decade, isn't it?"

  He shrugs. "I don't have to tell you anything."

  "Okay, okay." I nod along. A little breeze whistles through the air, cutting through the heat.

  Then the guy's brow furrows. "Hey, do I know you?"

  "Just one of those faces."

  "Nah, I know you." He scratches at his wispy hair. "Yeah. That Senator has been talking about you."

  "And what Senator would that be?"

  "I just saw it on my phone while I was taking a shit."

  "Appreciate the mental image," I say.

  "Yeah, he doesn't like you at all." Guy rubs his chin, another thought somehow dawning on his single-watt brain. "Is it true what they say about you?"

  "Only the bad stuff," I say.

  "You can bring back bodies."

  "Something like that," I say. It's been great, having everyone in the world know my secret. Including this guy who, from our brief interaction, would have trouble using a toaster.

  It's entirely possible he just thought the place was open.

  "Yeah, yeah, that's cool." His head bounces around up, down, up, down.

  "Super cool," I say. "So the restaurant."

  "Oh, that."

  "Yeah, that. You know, the entire reason why we're talking."

  He wipes some snot from his nose and fishes into his picket. By instinct, my own hand gravitates toward the Glock at my hip.

  I can sense Ella tense, too.

  But the guy just pulls out a wrinkled note.

  "I just had to put this inside." He offers it to me with an outstretched hand.

  "Who gave it to you?"

  "Dunno. Online gig. Pick up the note, then put it in the restaurant. Thousand bucks." He shrugs. "Some people are just dumb with their money."

  "Unlike you, who's no doubt Warren Buffett." I unfold the tattered note.

  My blood chills to an arctic frost when I read the typed lines.

  Hello Tess. Nice of you to watch for me. Just know I'm watching for you, too. -Your Friend

  "You don't look so good, lady."

  I stare up at the dwindling sun and just say, "Fuck."

  2

  It's a good thing Victor is there, I suppose, because it saves me the trouble of calling him.

  After getting the guy's statement, Victor allows him to shuffle off into sunset.

  We both stare at the guy's retreating shadow as Ella nudges a rolled up hamburger wrapper in the street with her snout.

  "How many days has it been, Tess?" Victor asks. He adjusts his shades, still staring off into the distance.

  "Hey El." The dog looks at me with a guilty expression dancing across her features. "Cut that out."

  "Think that's what I should be telling you."

  "What?"

  "To cut this out." When he says "this," he leans on it until it almost breaks.

  But I still reply with, "I have no idea what you're talking about."

  "You know why I'm here?"

  "I can't let it go," I say in a raspy whisper through clenched teeth. "I know this fucker."

  "When did I say anything about letting it go?"

  I cock my head away from Ella, who listens about as well as I do to instructions, judging by the fact that the hamburger wrapper is now dangling from her teeth.

  "Now you have my curiosity."

  "You ever been to a magic show?"

  "If that's a request for a second date, I think that might be a pass."

  "So dinner last week was a date?" Victor's eyebrow raises behind the shades.

  "For Storm and Ella, remember?" In fairness, the yellow lab and the husky did become fast friends.

  "Right." Victor takes the piece of paper out of his pocket, now safely stored away in an evidence bag. "Misdirection."

  "Excuse me?"

  "A master magician is all about illusion."

  "I thought a master magician actually knew magic." That's what's confusing about this world. Some terms just still haven't adjusted, thirty years onward. Is Houdini a magician? An illusionist? Or maybe he was actually a wizard. Who knows.

  Victor ignores me and continues. "They have you looking one way to distract you while the real trick is going on."

  I glance at the dilapidated BBQ restaurant. It's not the body I can't forget. I can't get the text out of my mind. The fact that I know this person. Have sat across from them, maybe, at a table. Or had a casual conversation about the weather, or sports, or whatever it is people do.

  It's been awhile since I had that type of conversation. Everything recently has been interview requests, microphones jammed in my face, my voicemail filled with everyone wanting to know just what it means that Tess Skye can bring people back from the dead.

  Not exactly the domain of small talk.

  So I have a lot on my plate.

  "Whoever this is, Tess, they're yanking your chain. You can’t play their game."

  I don’t respond.

  "Tess?"

  "Just thinking things through."

  "Turning over a new leaf?"

  "Huh?" I swivel my head toward him.

  "I'm just saying, that'd be a change of pace," Victor says. "Thinking first, action later."

  "Maybe I'm hitting that part of my life where I'm growing." I bite my lip.

  "Well, there was another reason I came by," Victor says.

  "How did you track me down?" He gives me that look like, come on, I'm a cop, I predict what people are gonna do. "Fair enough, I guess."

  "There's a body," he says.

  "Of course there is."

  "Hey, you signed the contract." He shrugs. "I'm just here delivering the news."
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br />   "And where might this body be?" I ask.

  There's a pause. One of those pauses that's a little too long. Where the news is almost guaranteed to be something that you sure as hell don't want to hear.

  Even Ella feels it. The hamburger wrapped drops out of her mouth and she flicks her ears, watching us curiously.

  "Maybe you should just drop the dog off," he says. "Then I can fill you in on the ride over."

  "Or, I have another idea," I say, crossing my arms and standing my ground in the dying afternoon light. "You tell me right now, and then I decided whether or not I tell you to go fuck yourself."

  Victor runs his hand through his dense brown hair and pulls his shades off his face. The scar below his eye scrunches up slightly as he winces. "I think my version is better."

  "And I think you're stalling."

  "I think that sounds accurate."

  I want to know, Tessie! Ella bounds over and nudges Victor's leg.

  "Even the dog doesn't want to wait, dude."

  Victor rubs his face and lets out an exasperated sigh. "Have it your way."

  "We're still waiting."

  And then he comes right out with it and says, "It’s up in the Palisades.”

  To which I immediately respond, “Go fuck yourself.”

  3

  I'd ask how Victor knows about my dislike of the Palisades, since we've never spoken about it, but that would be insulting. He didn't rise through the ranks by coasting. Or needing the money.

  There's always that question about luck and success and merit. Except for him.

  He got here because he does his research.

  So I'm more curious about something else.

  "Who told you I hated the Palisades?" I'd never even told Javy about it.

  The California landscape turns from the warm, burnt amber of fall into a bleak, graying rocky hellscape as we get further and further outside of Ragnarok.

  Victor says, "I have my sources."

  "Catalina? Keiko?"

  "Like I said." He glances over. "I appreciate you making the trip."

  "Yeah, well." I don't have anything snappy to say. My phone buzzes. It's about "the pod" as Madison calls it. The Ice Queen chronicles have been steadily rising in popularity. A half dozen streaming networks want the rights. She's been doing just about every interview request from other podcasters.

  I watched one.

  They asked her what I was like.

  Fucking, like, intense was her answer. And then she went on from there. We have an agreement. I keep doing this pod, I keep the golden goose going, and she keeps riding it for as far as it'll take her as long as she just talks about me.

  Friends, family, off limits.

  Which has worked for them. But form, I just keep getting bigger and bigger.

  Which is delightful to her.

  The phone buzzes again.

  "You need to get that?"

  "It's a text."

  "Good news?"

  "The pod just beat Joe Rogan."

  "Congrats," Victor says. "Lifelong dream of yours, I take it?"

  "How do you know me so well?"

  "I do my research," he says.

  "Some girls might find that a tad concerning," I say.

  "Well, I stopped after Storm and Ella's date," he says.

  "That seems like the wrong move."

  "Making wrong moves is part of getting to know someone."

  Aw, what a hopeless romantic. But it still doesn't answer the question. "Catalina?"

  She's the most likely to spill.

  "It's in your file," Victor says.

  Maybe I'm having some trust issues with friends. After all, when one of them ends up being a serial killer, you start seeing movement in the shadows everywhere.

  I stare at the desolate landscape. The Palisades is a chunk of land that was once used for magus testing. After the Great Reveal, there was an influx of government research and private company research into magic.

  Everyone wanted a taste of the new gold rush.

  And that had some...occasionally deleterious effects. Such as when they blew up a magus vein and generated a crater about two miles wide. The shockwaves flattened any living thing in about a ten mile vicinity.

  Luckily it was out in the middle of nowhere. But the funny thing is, nothing has grown back in the years since. It's almost like all the wildlife got the message that the place was bad news.

  The company who owned the magus vein, after years of getting their asses sued into oblivion, eventually sold off the land a couple decades later.

  And that's where I enter the story.

  Or at least do indirectly.

  "Who died out here?" I ask as C-Class bounces over pitted asphalt.

  "The broma."

  "Oh."

  "Yeah." A silence settles over the car. "You have jurisdiction out here?"

  "Technically."

  "What does that mean?"

  "It means that no one gives a fuck what happens out here," Victor says. The landscape around is somehow getting bleaker, like a post-apocalyptic hellscape. Tell you what, they ever need to film an end of the world flick, they can save a lot of cash on special effects by just coming out here and shooting the whole thing on location.

  "Gave a fuck."

  "Excuse me?"

  "I mean, you track me down at the BBQ restaurant, drag me out here, the past tense seems appropriate."

  The light of recognition does not light up in his eyes.

  Then again, it's always hard to tell with the shades.

  I think he wears them because of that. I doubt he gives a fuck about the scar. But they make him hard to read.

  I lay it out for him. "You give a fuck, boy scout."

  "Is that what you think of me?"

  "Tell me I'm wrong."

  "You know what they say about football?"

  "Don't watch much myself," I say. We zoom past a decrepit sign with a hand-painted green landscape announcing Welcome to the Palisades, the community of tomorrow.

  Up ahead, a smattering of lights twinkle in the dusky sky. It's a miracle they've even made it this far with the electricity.

  Both of my feet bounce as we roll closer.

  "Well," I say, as the lights bear down on us. "Don't keep me in suspense."

  "It's a show me league."

  "Which means?"

  "Talk is cheap," Victor says. The words sound ominous, like at some point I'm gonna see a side of him that I don't like at all.

  Not the chewing with your mouth open or has dumb political opinions type of shit, either.

  Like something actually dark.

  "I don't believe you," I say.

  But I do. I really do.

  He says nothing, and a silence drops over the car, other than the unrhythmic tap of my knees bouncing against the dash.

  "Can I give you a piece of advice, Tess?" Victor says. He doesn't turn toward me, does that thing where people just glance out the side of their eye because they can't stand the heat of looking right into the fire.

  "As long as I don't have to accept it."

  "You only get one family," he says. "Make sure you don't have any regrets."

  "Does getting in the car with you count?"

  He smirks. "I can't talk to my old man any more. Just saying, you might want to take the opportunity while you have it."

  "You're right."

  "About?"

  "Talk is cheap," I say. "And I'm done buying your bullshit."

  And the rest of the ride continues in silence.

  4

  We roll beneath a wooden archway, not unlike what you might expect to see in an old west town, and just like that, after twenty years I'm back in a place where I never wanted to be.

  The Palisades in general has that feeling of an old mining town. Which makes sense, given that the magus mine was nearby. And most of the things in this place that are actually functional are courtesy of the mining company.

  When the vein exploded like a powder keg, 89 people died.

  Kind of. There's no such thing as zombies, but this was about the closest thing to it. They were dead, but the magus kept them as animated husks. Mindlessly propelled onward in their duties.

  Which, since they were miners, was working.

  Suffice to say, when the place came up for auction, the bids didn't exactly come pouring in.

  My heart skitters. Except when this particular asshole came bidding.

  "We have a welcoming committee." I try to make the words stoic, no emotion, but even I can hear the wobble.

  "I can talk with him first," Victor says. "If you want."

  "I'm not a child." We pull in behind a row of beat-to-shit pickup trucks and late 90s sedans. A dust storm kicks at my ankles as I step outside.

 

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