Free Dirty Magic by Jaye Wells Page A

assignment.”
    “Oh.” With that he put his headphones back on and tuned me out. So much for that sibling-bonding moment. I shrugged it off for two reasons. First, I wasn’t too keen on telling Danny I might be involved in a potentially dangerous assignment. And second, I wasn’t sure I’d actually get a permanent spot on the team, so why waste the breath?
    I leaned against the counter and eyed the back of Danny’s head. His hair was in the style his peers favored—meticulous messiness. I swear the kid took half an hour applying goo to his hair so it could look exactly like it had when he rolled out of bed. Shaking my head, I realized I sounded a lot like a mom. Or what I assumed normal moms sounded like.
    A car horn interrupted my ruminations. I went to the door and waved to Pen with the hand not cradling my coffee. She leaned out. “Looking hot!”
    “Thanks!” I appreciated the compliment even though we both knew it was a lie.
    “Give ’em hell today, okay?”
    I smiled and gave her a thumbs-up even though my stomach was churning with nerves. The clock over the stove beeped the half hour. Shit, if I didn’t hurry, I’d be late for my first day on the job. I grabbed a snack cake for the road and hopped in Sybil to go meet my destiny.
    Unfortunately, destiny had other plans. I stuck the cake in my mouth and the key in the ignition. Sybil made a sound somewhere between a cat coughing up a fur ball and a congested demon. “
Th
it!” I cursed through my mouthful of carbs.
    I considered trying to get under the hood and figure out what was going on, but traffic getting into the city was always horrible this time of morning. Any delay on my part would mean being late.
    Decision made, I gulped down the mouthful of food, hit a couple of buttons on the cell phone, and ordered up a taxi. Looked like destiny had just decided what I’d be using my first MEA paycheck to cover.
    * * *
    The address Gardner had given me led to a decrepit building on the outskirts of the Cauldron. Abandoned train tracks—relics of Babylon’s steel empire—lay behind it like rusty veins, and in the distance Lake Erie glowed in the smog-dulled morning sun. The scents of dead fish and a faint chemical odor warred with the acrid exhaust from the freeway a few blocks over.
    The cabbie pulled into a trash-strewn lot near two unmarked cop cars that screamed “Nothing to see here.” The taxi he’d picked me up in was one of those new potion-fueled jobs. I’d been in such a hurry to get there on time, I hadn’t given a second thought to getting inside. I had, however, seen Baba’s curtains twitch as we’d glided away from the curb outside my house. Considering I’d just poured the Sexy Juice she’d given me the day before down the drain, I had a little twinge of conscience over my hypocrisy. Still, potion fuels were clean magic and it wasn’t as if putting a potion into a car’s gas tank was the same as sticking a needle full of dirty magic into someone’s neck to help escape reality. Plus, I was pretty sure if I’d been late, Gardner wasn’t the type to accept excuses.
    Still, I had to admit the taxi was a sweet ride. The potion fuel made cars hover above the streets, so the government had given them special lanes on the roads. Being able to fly literally down the freeways meant we avoided all the gridlock caused by the Mundane vehicles clogging the asphalt. We’d sailed across the Bessemer Bridge with a few minutes to spare before I had to report for my new job.
    “We’re here,” the cabbie snapped as he threw the car in Park. A whirring sound accompanied the tires lowering to the pavement for landing. “Forty bucks, not including tip.”
    I grimaced. While the ride had been pleasant, the expense of the magic taxi left a lot to be desired. “Do you take credit?”
    “I guess.” His lips pursed like a schoolmarm’s. “There’s a service charge, though.”
    Forget having philosophical qualms about using a magical taxi. The