Free Magic to the Bone by Devon Monk Page B

lady?’’
     
     
    I opened the back door and got in. ‘‘Fair Lead Apartments,’’ I said.
     
     
    The cab pulled out into traffic, and no matter how hard I looked out the rain-fogged windows hoping to catch a glimpse of Zayvion, he was not there.
     

 
    Chapter Four
     
     
    M y apartment building is a dump. When it rains, it is not just the appearance of the building that reeks. It is also the walls.
     
     
    I was halfway up the climb to my fifth-story apartment. With each step the smell of old magic got worse. Thirty years ago, when the technology was being developed to harvest wild magic, people thought all it took was a lightning rod—well, a Beckstrom Storm Rod—and some copper tubing to channel the magic throughout the city.
     
     
    That could not have been further from the truth. Channeling magic through anything but iron, lead, and glass pipes that had each been carved and molded with very specific kinds of glyphing and holding spells made the channel useless, rotten, and dangerous.
     
     
    This old building was lousy with rotten magic. The useless copper tubing was set inside the walls, as was the fashion thirty years ago. The idea was people wouldn’t want to live in a building that looked like a birdcage. The result was having to tear the building down to access the tubing and not only reglyph the holding spells, but also replace the copper with something expensive and patent-permit laden. The owners of the Fair Lead didn’t go out of their way to replace lightbulbs. So we dealt with the smell that always got worse when it rained.
     
     
    By the time I reached my room on the fifth floor, I had to hold my hand over my mouth to keep from smelling, and worse, tasting the wet, rotten magic seeping out of the walls. It was a health hazard, I was sure of it, but if a few cockroaches could be ignored by greasing the right palm, then so could old magic. Even though it’d been thirty years, the law hadn’t caught up with the use and misuse of magic.
     
     
    I walked down to my apartment, put my key in the lock, and opened the door. The smell was twice as bad here. So bad that my eyes started watering.
     
     
    Great.
     
     
    A small flash of green halfway across the room told me there was a message on my answering machine. I crossed the room and pressed play.
     
     
    ‘‘Hi, Al!’’ My best friend in all the world, Nola’s warm, happy voice piped out of the machine. ‘‘Happy birthday! When are you coming out to the farm to visit me? I sent you a birthday present. Check your bank balance. There should be enough there for you to come out for a week. Leave a message at this number and let me know if you take the train or bus, and I’ll meet you. I mean that. Oh, and Jupe says hi!’’
     
     
    The machine beeped and the sudden silence, along with the heavy smell, was just too much.
     
     
    This birthday sucked.
     
     
    But it was still my birthday. Three o’clock. I rubbed at the back of my neck. If I weren’t feeling so bad, I’d go out, see a movie, maybe take some of Nola’s gift money and treat myself to a pedicure. But it would be at least the rest of the night before the magic stopped hurting in me, and despite Zayvion’s insistence that I go see a doctor, I knew a nice long bath and ten hours of sleep would get me through the worst of it. And that wouldn’t cost me money I didn’t have. But the smell in the house was unbearable.
     
     
    Come on, Allie. Time to think smart and find a warm, odorless place to sleep for a few hours.
     
     
    My hand hovered over my phone. Who could I call? Nola’s farm was in eastern Oregon near Burns, a town almost three hundred miles away, at least a five-hour drive from here, so that wouldn’t do. Who else did I trust? Ex-boyfriends came to mind, but there was a good reason each of them was an ex. I hadn’t kept in touch with anyone from college, and being both unemployed and doing freelance Hounding jobs, usually at night, hadn’t exactly