As though any human had a chance of outrunning him.
He exploded into motion, limbs stretching to their full. The assassin’s scent turned sour with fear as he tried to flee, and for a moment the incongruity of seeing nothing threw Alistair off.
So he simply closed his eyes and followed his nose.
He took the gunman down with ease, sinking his claws in so they couldn’t get away. A body thrashed under his and he snarled, showing his fangs. The form under him went stiff with fear, and the smell of piss stained the air.
“Stay still!” Reinhold yelled. “And if you know what’s good for you, end that spell right now.”
Sobs filled the air, and Alistair opened his eyes. Doris, Philip, and Teresa all came bounding up in cat form, crowding around and growling menacingly at…
For a moment, the magic held, and he simply could not look at what he was holding onto without his eyes sliding away. Then, with a sob, a man said, “Let me be seen.”
The hex ended. Alistair’s claws were snagged in the legs of a pale man with gray in his hair, a man he had met once before, the day Fabiano’s people shot up the original hexworks.
Sam’s co-worker, Luke Gallo.
13
Hours later, Sam followed Paladino into a dingy speakeasy along the Chicago River. His mind ran in circles, but his main thought was that it was all some kind of mistake. Luke hadn’t been using magic to go around killing people—that was impossible. Luke was his friend; he’d never do something like this.
He’d been shocked when Alistair reached out through the bond, telling him what had happened and asking him to call Sullivan and have someone pick up Luke. At the time, he’d been sure it was a case of mistaken identity—Alistair had only met Luke once, for a few seconds.
But when Sullivan ordered him to come here an hour later, that certainty had been badly shaken.
Doc hadn’t been pleased to be sent home, but he’d gone without protest, no doubt keen to separate himself from whatever was going down. Paladino spoke briefly on the phone with someone, then ushered Sam to a car that some third party had dropped off on the curb outside. He’d been tense the whole drive over, which set Sam’s nerves on edge as well.
The speakeasy had a real bar and a jazz band—not always the case, according to Alistair—but clearly wasn’t one of Sullivan’s more upscale properties. The low lighting went a little way to concealing the stains on the floor and the cracked plaster on the walls, but the drinkers didn’t seem to have come for the ambience anyway. They were a hard-bitten lot, caps pulled low over weathered faces as they played cards or clustered around the three pool tables.
No one paid them any mind as they crossed the floor, slipped behind the bar, and went through a door. Steps led down to the basement, which was mostly empty except for a few unmarked crates that probably contained alcohol.
Luke sat in the middle, tied to a chair, a yellowed light bulb above his head providing the only illumination. Bellinowski stood beside him, his hands encased in driving gloves. Lenny Turner was there as well, along with one or two others Sam recognized as soldiers in the gang. Alistair leaned against one wall, and despite everything, Sam’s heart rose to see him.
Sullivan dominated the scene, looking utterly out of place in evening wear and a fur-trimmed coat. His mouth was turned down into a frown that seemed mild enough, until you saw the raw fury in his eyes.
The tension in the air was so thick Sam could barely breathe. For a moment, he felt a terrible desire to curl into himself, hunch his shoulders and wait for the shouting to be over. Just like with his family back in Gatesville.
But this wasn’t Gatesville, and there were a lot worse things than shouting.
“Mr. Cunningham,” Sullivan said, the formal address suggesting this was Business with a capital B. “Your man here has double-crossed us all. I thought you’d want to help question him.”
Your man. Sam started to protest, say he was just a supervisor and barely that. But it wasn’t true, was it? No matter how much he’d deceived himself.
He moved in the highest circles in the gang. Called Leonard Turner Lenny for God’s sake. Sat at Sullivan’s own table at the cabaret, then at Sullivan’s mansion.
The gravity of what he was accepting hadn’t truly occurred to him when he took the job running the hexworks. It did now.
“Sam,” Luke pleaded, his voice shaking, “Sammy, it’s all a misunderstanding. You’ve got to tell them. You know me.”
He didn’t look good—bandages wrapped both thighs, soaked through with blood, and he had the beginnings of a black eye. The ropes were secure enough to hold him, but not so tight as to cover the fact he was shaking head to toe.
Sam’s eyes were drawn to the bandages. “What happened?”
“I was just taking a walk, I swear, and then your familiar—he got confused, that’s what happened! Mistook me for a killer, clawed me up—and I don’t blame him,” Luke added hastily. “Mistakes happen, and we’re all friends here, right? Forgive and forget.”
It didn’t sound like the sort of mistake Alistair would make, but Sam badly wanted it to be true. “Alistair?” he asked.
Alistair dug out a cigarette and lighter. “You remember the other night at dinner with Mr. Sullivan, when Wanda told him we had a meeting with Ross Brown?”
