“That’s what he wants, Kate.”
“That’s what he wants now.” I held her gaze to let her know my concerns wouldn’t be dismissed so easily. “I know everyone thinks I’m too strict about magic, but I’ve already compromised a lot, and look where it’s gotten us.” I waved toward the house to indicate tonight’s current predicament. “I let him become Mez’s apprentice, and now I find out they’re sneaking behind my back. How am I not supposed to wonder if I made the wrong decision now? How can I trust that letting him go down this path won’t lead him to the darker sides of magic?”
She leaned forward and put her hand on my knee. “No parent knows that about their kids. He’s sixteen, not six. You have to let him make some decisions for himself. And then you have to let him learn how to pick himself up if he makes a mistake. But this controlling approach you have is just asking for him to rebel against you.”
I leaned my head back to look up at the sky. Babylon’s light pollution made it impossible to see more than a couple of weak stars. If I were a superstitious woman, I might have wished on one of those stars for some guidance. But I didn’t see any stars, and besides, the only person I wanted guidance from was dead.
“I’m missing my mom tonight.” The thought came from out of nowhere. It wasn’t the kind of thing I’d admit to just anyone, but Pen was the closest thing I’d ever had to a sister.
“I know it’s hard, honey. You want the best for him, but if you think about it, she didn’t have much more mothering experience than you do. And, all due respect to the dead, but you’ve provided a lot more stability for Danny than she gave you.”
I dragged my gaze from the sky. “Huh, I guess you’re right.”
I’d been seventeen when she died, and Danny was now already sixteen. The difference was she’d been raising a teen daughter who was following in the family business, which happened to be cooking and distributing illegal and addictive dirty magic potions. Danny, who I’d raised on my own since he was six, was a solid B student who rarely got in trouble. Mom had been a prostitute for a sex magic coven. I was a detective who busted people like my mom for a living.
“Be that as it may,” I said, “sometimes I wish it were her dealing with these conundrums instead of me.”
“This is going to sound terrible, but do you really think you and Danny would have been better off if she’d lived?”
After so many years thinking of my mother as some sort of saint or martyr, it was disorienting to think of her as the total opposite. It was only about six weeks earlier that I’d found out that it hadn’t been a potion I’d cooked that caused her death. I’d carried unnecessary guilt around for a decade until John Volos finally admitted that my Uncle Abe had been the one to order the kill of his own sister. Obviously, finding that out hadn’t done much to endear me to Volos, but getting that weight off my conscience had let new ideas in—like the fact that I was managing to be a better mother than she’d been, which made me feel both proud and terribly guilty at the same time.
“You want to talk about what you’re feeling right now?” Pen said softly.
I blinked away the sting in my eyes and opened the third beer.
“Damn it,” I said after I’d downed enough to wash away the sting in the back of my throat. “Tonight was supposed to be about cheering you up.”
“No, it was about us being together,” she corrected. “I’ve missed hanging out like this. It’s done me more good than you can imagine.”
“That’s good. Me, too.” I smiled. A new idea sprang up in my mind. “Hey! Have you thought about applying at the Conservatory? I bet they need counselors.”
Her smile was pained. “Yeah. I checked. They only want Adept faculty and staff.”
“Shit,” I said. “That sucks.”
She nodded. “Trust me, I’ve gone to every school in a fifty-mile radius. They’re all either not hiring or they’re friendly with the stiffs at Meadowlake and won’t touch me.”
“I’m sorry, Pen. What about going into private practice?”
“I don’t have the capital to start my own, and most of the existing ones require clinical experience I don’t have.” She picked at the edge of the bottle’s label. “I’ve been thinking maybe about trying something else. A nonprofit or something.”
“That would be cool!” I enthused, trying to encourage.
“We’ll see. In the meantime, Rufus called and said he needs some help organizing some Arcane Anonymous events. It’s a volunteer gig, but it’ll get me out of the house.”
Rufus was the leader of the AA group Pen and I had belonged to for years. I quit AA the previous year because my work in the MEA required me to use magic, but Pen still went to meetings religiously. She’d been the one with the actual addiction to potions in college. I’d only gone to meetings to remind myself of the cost of making those potions on human lives.
“That’s a fantastic idea,” I said.
“Still, I need something to turn up soon. I’m almost out of my savings.”
Because she’d quit her job at Meadowlake, she hadn’t been eligible for unemployment benefits. “Listen, if you need help—”
“Nope.”
“Pen, don’t—”
“I said no,” she said in her best and-that’s-final voice. “If something doesn’t turn up soon, I’ll get a part-time gig or something, but I’m not about to take a handout.”
“Don’t be silly. It’s not handout if it’s from family.”
“In my family, it was and they’d never let you forget it.”
“Fuck them,” I said. “They’re not here now. I am. And what’s mine is yours, no strings. Got it?”
She opened her mouth to say something, but my phone buzzed with an incoming text. I figured it was Morales checking in, so I didn’t pick it up.
“Anyway,” I said, but the phone rang. I glanced at the screen and realized it was Gardner. “Shit, hold on.” Into the phone, I said, “Prospero.”
“You need to get to the morgue.”
“What’s up?”
“Franklin’s got a couple of bodies. Something about maybe they’re tied to the Valentine case.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Morales with you?”
“No.”
“Huh,” she said. “I assume you know where to find him?”
My situation with Morales wasn’t a secret, but Gardner had never actually spoken to us about it. At that moment, I wasn’t real excited about discussing with my boss that he planned to come over for a booty call soon. “I can probably rustle him up.”
“Uh-huh. I’ll expect an update first thing in the morning.”
“Yes, sir.”
When I hung up, Pen was already gathering her things.
“Sorry, that was—”
“Work, I know,” she said. “Why don’t you head out. I’ll clean this up.”
“No, I can do it. You go on.”
She shook her head. “I don’t think I’m ready to go home yet. I’ll probably just hang out with Baba and watch TV or something.”
I hesitated. “Are you sure?”
“Of course!” Her smile was forced, but I didn’t have time to do anything about it. I had to get in touch with Morales and arrange to either pick him up or meet him at the morgue.
I pulled her in for a quick, hard hug. “I love you. Everything’s going to work out.”
She sighed and relaxed into me a little. “Love you, too.” She pulled back, her smile more genuine now. “Now git on with you. I got some episodes of the Blue Devils to catch up on with Baba.”
Chapter Four
We arrived at the morgue an hour later. I’d picked Morales up from the sports bar in my Jeep, Sybil, since he’d gotten a ride there from his buddy and it was on my way.
“Well, well, well, look what the cat dragged in,” Franklin called.
“You got any coffee?” I asked. It was almost one a.m. and any night that ended at the morgue was bound to be a long one.