Page 31 of Hex and the City
“Salamat,” he said again. “Thank you. For saving my ass, back at Naranja Plaza.”
I gave him a small smile. “It’s nothing. You’re welcome.”
This man was literally speaking my language, and fuck if it wasn’t the most charming thing. How could I go so quickly from wanting to kick him in the nards to wanting to blow him right from the passenger seat?
“Now try the word for what I am. A male witch.” I sat up straighter, oddly still very proud of my not-quite nickname. “Witch Boy. Try it.Bruho.”
“Bruho,” he repeated, doing his very best.
“No, no, it’s like you just called me a ho.Bruho. Shorter vowels. Um, think the name Bruno, except, you know, with the letter H instead.”
“Bruho.”
“There. You got it right that time. A plus. Gold star sticker for you.”
He smirked. “So how’s that different from abruja? With a J, I mean.”
“Same word,” I said, shrugging, “just from a different part of the world, a different tradition. We took the Spanish word for witch, made it our own. There’s a lot of magic we made on our own. Some of it, you learn to make in the kitchen. You have to make do with what’s available.”
“Oh, hey.” Max smacked the steering wheel, his safest version of expressing an epiphany. “That’s a lot like witchcraft, too. A cauldron is really just a cooking pot. A chalice is a wine glass, or a cup. An athame, a ritual dagger, that could have been a kitchen knife. And all the bottles and phials for potions and lotions.”
“For all our differences, we’re really just the same,” I said, grinning. “Gross. Cheesy. But it’s true.”
“I respect that. There’s something to learn from every magical tradition, I think. Personally, I stick to my style.” He raised one hand, karate-chopping the air to enunciate every phrase. “Discipline. Structure. All part of the program.”
“You gotta lighten up, man. Play it loose sometimes. Alcantara magic, it’s kind of like jazz. I just go with the flow, follow the impulse. Let the magic break free when it wants to.”
I caught myself in time, clenching my fist when I realized what I was saying. No. That wasn’t meant to be permission for Tiamat to Emanate. Warm flame tickled at the back of my brain, a grotesque reminder that she was always there. Waiting, lurking, a coiled serpent in the dark.
“Nope,” Max said. “No way. Like I said, I respect it. But to me, magic is all about routine and repetition. Drilling the same spells day in and day out, perfecting them. No margin for error, none of that improvisation stuff. If you have a plan, you’re far less likely to mess up. It’s all about precision.” His teeth gleamed as he smiled. “Mathemagic.”
“Oh my God, I get it now.” I placed a hand on his arm. “You’re a giant nerd.”
He shook my hand off, but playfully, for once, letting out a friendly laugh.
“So what can you do?” I asked. “I showed you mine. Time to show me yours.”
The knowing half-smile he gave me should have melted my entire body into a puddle of wax on the car seat. And then he threw in a wink, too, the handsome bastard.
“Maybe later.”
We pulled into a parking lot across the street from Atomica, Max’s car rumbling to sleep as he turned off the engine. The perfumery was just one of many shops and boutiques in an upscale part of town, a commercial district that catered to those with very deep pockets and a taste for luxury goods.
Most of the shops on either side had already closed, leaving Atomica as the single bright white haven in the darkness. A place of worship for those truly in the know about matters of the nose, according to Max and Roscoe.
You’d think that the snazzier side of Dos Lunas wouldn’t be the type of place where someone would have to worry about walking around with deep pockets and luxury goods. Wouldn’t that be nice? But I was a finder, and not an especially wealthy one, either. Traveling around the network in California, I’d seen all kinds of people working the profession.
I’d labeled Max a leather jacket on sight. Gruff, seasoned, with an established career and enough cash to blow on a matching motorcycle or muscle car. Generally as dangerous as they looked, depending on their particular skill set. Generally brooding and damaged and wildly attractive, too, or maybe that was just my type.
Sometimes they had sexy, grudging half-smiles, too, and great hair, and ridiculous bodies hiding under said leather jackets. Or maybe that was just Max.
And then you had people like me, the denim jackets, the threadbare rascals, making do with what little magic and resources we had. Often very cute and charming, too. I was the tatterdemalion sort of finder, the ragamuffin, the rapscallion, all these polite ways to basically say “shabby and poor as dirt.”
This guy, though? This guy who’d seemingly appeared from out of the darkness, wielding a gun, eyes wild and sinister? This guy was just plain bad news. Forget leather and denim. Straight up straitjacket.
“Hand it over,” he barked, motioning with his gun.
Max crossed his arms and scoffed, unimpressed. “Handwhatover?”
