Chapter 10 – Board Business

Laz

FATHER: Eat at home.

That’s the whole text. It came in at six this morning, which means he watched a video of my car parked outside Fang & Sons and decided I went down there hungry, looking for someone to bite.

Gordon had every copy of it scrubbed by midnight. As far as my father’s concerned, the matter’s closed. He didn’t think of Per once, and I hate how grateful I am for that.

I ate at seven, off the house donor list, like a good son. Which means that right now, sitting outside a laundromat at half past three in the afternoon, waiting for Hallowell, I can’t even blame the hunger.

The dean’s email came at nine. Marcus Bell’s friends won’t come in to talk to the board, so the dean’s sending the two student reps to them, on the theory that they’ll open up to people their own age.

Nobody seems bothered that one of us lives in the house the body was found behind.

The door beside the laundromat opens, and Hallowell comes out with his hands shoved in his pockets. He sees the car and stops dead. His heart jumps so hard I can hear it through the glass.

He walks straight past me.

I roll the window down. “Get in, Hallowell.”

“I’ll take the bus. I’d rather sit next to a guy eating tuna out of the can than ride anywhere with you.”

“The bus takes an hour, and the dean would like us both there at four.”

“Then I’ll be late.”

“Then I’ll be alone with Marcus’s friends for an hour, asking whatever I like and writing down whatever I decide to hear.”

He stops on the sidewalk, and I can practically watch him do the math. He yanks the passenger door open so hard I wince for the hinges.

“I’m only getting in so you can’t put words in their mouths.”

He folds himself into the Havana brown leather and stares out the windshield. He smells like laundry soap and nerves, and his pulse thuds away under the ink on his neck, close enough to touch.

I know I’m not hungry and I want my mouth on his neck anyway, which is its own special hell, because I’ve got no excuse to hide behind.

He lasts almost twenty minutes before he cracks.

“Where’s your rabbit?”

“His name is Rory, and he’s in a lecture, being a person.”

“Tell him I’m still sorry about the fries. My anger wasn’t aimed at him.”

“He’ll make you a card. He’s a puca, he gets attached to people who are nice to him.”

I change lanes so I don’t have to look at Hallowell.

“He’s a rabbit when he’s scared. He was a horse once, when he was twelve, and he still won’t tell anybody why.”

“What scares a puca into turning into a horse?”

“I don’t know. If I ever find out, I’m going to kill it.”

He looks at me then, properly, like I just took my shirt off. I didn’t mean to say that out loud, and I can’t tell what my face is doing.

“How much warlock blood did you have to sell to pay for this thing?”

“None. It cost twenty-three million Swiss francs, and every cent of it came out of my trust fund.”

“Of course it did. A couple hundred people think I’m dealing to you, thanks to that video.”

“The video’s gone. Fisk took care of it.”

“Screenshots are forever, Laz.” He settles deeper into my seat. “Must be nice, though. Your family makes a video disappear, a lawyer shows up, and a dead kid behind your house goes away.”

“Careful. You’re sitting in my car.”

“Or what? You’ll Pull me?” He laughs right at me. “Oh, wait, you can’t.”

I want to wipe that grin off his face. I know exactly which words will do it, because my father’s been handing them to me for years.

“It’s ironic that you’re sitting here accusing me of underhanded dealings when my family paid your mother better than anybody ever had, and she still sold us out the first time somebody waved a bigger check at her.”

The dashboard dies.

Both little screens go black at once. The speedometer needle drops to zero, and every light on the console goes out. The engine keeps running, which is the only reason we don’t end up in the back of the bus he wanted to take.

Hallowell doesn’t even glance at the dash. He’s gone white, with his hands knotted together in his lap so hard the ink on his knuckles stretches.

“Don’t you fucking talk about her,” he says furiously. “You don’t know a single thing about my mom.”

He turns and looks right at me.

“Your family took everything she had. Then you made her the bad guy, so none of you ever had to feel like shit about what you did to her.”

His heart won’t slow down. I did that to him with one sentence, and I meant every word of it when I said it.

I wanted it to hurt him. It did, and now I feel like I just kicked Rory.

He started it.

* * *

Marcus Bell’s friends live on the third floor over a nail salon, in an apartment that smells like weed and boiled hot dogs.

There are two of them. The one who opens the door is a warlock in a hoodie with his eyes rubbed red, and the one on the couch is human and so high his heart’s ticking like a lazy metronome.

“You guys want to sit?” the hoodie asks.

“I’d like to keep this suit,” I tell him. After ten minutes in this smell, it’s going to need a priest to exorcise it.

“Ignore him,” Hallowell says. “He’s a dick who’s allergic to anything that isn’t one-of-a-kind, custom-made, just for his extra special little self.”

It’s a dig, and it’s also the first time he’s opened his mouth since the dashboard died.

He sits on the arm of the couch, right next to the guy who’s high.

“I’m sorry about Marcus,” he tells them. “He lent me a pen in wardcraft. I’ve still got it.”

He says it like it matters, and apparently to these dimwits it’s enough to create rapport.

“Marcus was selling,” the hoodie says. “Everybody knew. He needed money for textbooks. All he ever told us was rich guys. Vampires obviously, but we don’t know who.”

The music’s off, so the room’s quiet enough for me to pick out the hoodie’s heart. It stays steady from start to finish, so I believe him.

The couch guy has been squinting at me the whole time, and now he points.

“Wait. Kron?” He starts laughing. “Like, Kron Kron? Dude, your brother was here every weekend before Marcus-”

I’m across the room with my hand around his arm before he finishes. I haul the stoned little bastard into the hallway and shut the door behind us.

“Go to bed,” I tell him, and I put everything I’ve got into the Pull. “You’re done talking for today.”

He nods, delighted, and wanders off toward his room.

Every weekend, my brother was hanging around a dead warlock’s friends, while Marcus was selling. If the board hears that, Per’s name goes in the minutes. Then the police have it, then my father, and he finally has the excuse he needs to ship my brother off where I can’t help him.

I’m coming back here tomorrow without Hallowell. That kid is going to tell me every single thing he knows about my brother.

And Hallowell was sitting right there when that kid brought up Per.

When I go back in, he’s on his feet. He doesn’t ask what happened out there. He just watches me, and I’m pretty sure he thinks he’s finally found something.

* * *

It’s dark when I drive him home, and the dashboard’s still dead.

“Your brother used to buy Sugar from Marcus,” he says quietly. “And you made his friend stop talking.”

“Shut up. You don’t know the first thing about my brother.”

“I know he was at Marcus’s place every weekend. I know Marcus was selling.” He turns in the seat to face me. “And you’ve sat on that board asking who he sold to like you didn’t already have a pretty good idea.”

The gall of him. Three months ago, he was pouring Per drinks, and I still don’t know what else went across that bar.

I know I didn’t kill Marcus, but Hallowell may have been getting rid of the competition and now he’s doing a damn good job of pretending innocence so he can point the finger at me.

“Did you kill Marcus?” he asks pointedly.

I keep my eyes on the road, ignoring the question.