Free Mercy's Magic by P. J. Day

don’t know how you’re going to pull this off, but I’ll make the potion. Give me a day—two, tops. And I’ll watch Terra, of course.”
    “Thank you, Lily. And remember, not a word to my aunt, unless completely necessary. Which it won’t be, I know it.”
     
    Chapter Twenty-One
     
    The next morning found Mercedes Cruz already impatient for the potion Lily was putting together. She went through the whole mission in her mind, how she would approach the man, how she would act, what she would say—what she would wear, even. A tiny part of her—intuition, Itzel would have said—wondered if the plan was viable or if it was one of those ideas born of insanity, sparked by stress. But, try as she might, Mercy couldn’t think of an alternate plan.
    Mercy had to start from scratch. Joe had informed her, right after Lily and her had their boisterous discussion, that the mysterious man and his operation were now long gone. She had to find where the plant had moved. So there she was, at the train tracks trying to find the guy that almost choked himself to death last time they met, digging around for the ultimate clue: where the mysterious man and his operation had moved to.
    She approached the abandoned train station where she’d originally met with Jim. The station was now being utilized as a hub that managed the signals and tracks. Outside the station, Mercy saw another man tinkering with an opened electrical box and approached him casually. “Excuse me, sir?”
    “Yes?” He turned his head, surprised that someone had approached him at his usually desolate workplace.
    “Is Jim working today?”
    The man’s eyes darted toward the area behind the shack. He continued his wiring work and responded unkindly. “I don’t know who you are lady, but Jim and I are in the middle of an important job. And if you’re that strange lady he was telling me about the other day, I’d best be moving along.”  
    Mercy didn’t say another word and walked away from the workstation, disappointed, because she had a lingering feeling that Jim knew what she was looking for. In fact, before the crazy idea of the love potion came to be, she felt Jim was the right man, the only man who could provide her with the information she needed. At times, Mercy even had suspicions that Jim might be some type of vessel.
    On the way back to her car, defeated, Mercy passed an empty row of train cars. She found a young man sitting on a train car’s hitch, muttering to himself, obviously strung out on something. A burst of inspiration struck her or maybe a calculated transmission from afar.
    “Hey, kid,” she called out. He looked up, immediately on guard. Mercy understood. This wasn’t Beverly Hills.
    “Yeah?” the kid asked, nervously.
    “I’m not going to try and kidnap you or anything,” Mercy said. “I just... I need to find someone here and deliver a message. You want to make...” She fumbled through her purse, “A few bucks?”
    “Uh, I don’t know,” he said doubtfully, scratching an incessant itch on the back of his neck.
    “It’s legal,” Mercy offered. “Just a note. A piece of paper. You find this guy, he works here, and give it to him. Ten now, and twenty when you get back. That’s all I want.”
    “Why can’t you do it yourself?” He was smart, too, actually probably just overly cautious after life had beaten him down more times than he’d remembered.
    “Because...the man...uh, he might not want to meet with me. And I don’t want to be pushy with his coworker being there and all. But I need some information from him.”
    The kid came closer, eyes on the bills in Mercy’s hand.
    “I’m a private detective,” she explained to him. “I don’t even want to know your name. Okay?”
    “I don’t know, lady,” he said. “Are you some type of narc, or something? I just want to be left alone, you know?”
    “Look, all you have to do is go find a guy named Jim. Let him read this note, and then come back and tell me