Free We Are Not Good People (Ustari Cycle) by Jeff Somers Page B

second Mags moved, Hiram brought his hand out of his pocket, straight razor extended, and in a well-practiced move slashed it down across his own palm, a superficial, wet wound. Blood welled up and Hiram hissed out a spell as he spun away, and Mags froze in midleap, one foot the only part of him touching the floor. Without a sound, he toppled over, holding the leaping position.
    The spell would last a half hour or so, and Mags’d come out of it without any permanent damage. Hiram and I locked eyes, and then he was out the door. I ran after him, cursing. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do—I didn’t have enough strength to start throwing spells at Hiram Bosch, and Hiram had fewer scruples than me. And played dirtier.
    “Dammit, Hiram!” I shouted as I chased him down the hall. “I came here for help! ”
    “You ungrateful shit, I am helping you!” he shouted back, stopping in front of the bathroom door. He reached forward with his bloodied hand and turned the knob, pushing the door inward . . . and then stood there.
    I almost crashed into him, then turned to look through the doorway.
    The window was open, a classic image of the drapes fluttering in the chill wind blowing in. The tub gleamed with the shiny kind of clean that only a constant, unhealthy obsession could purchase; the one sign that anything had happened in here at all was the slick of blood Hiram had left in the sink.
    Claire Mannice was gone.
    To my surprise, the old man put his arm around me. He smelled like pipe smoke and liquor. “Well, my boy—the girl has spirit, doesn’t she? Not my best work, perhaps, but I haven’t had someone shrug off one of my spells that easily in years .” He sounded admiring. “And she’s killed us all!”
    I stared at the window and thought of her, bound and gagged, kicking and screaming, her eyes flashing. Thought of her calm andquiet, answering our questions. Thought of the runes all over her body.
    And I smiled.
    Keep running, I thought. Don’t look back.

7. I INSPECTED THE BROWN PAPER bag Mags had left on the dresser and frowned. “Jesus, Mags,” I said over my shoulder. “All you bought was liquor. Liquor,” I added wearily, “is not groceries .”
    He didn’t say anything. Mags was in a pissy mood because we’d been cooped up in the motel for three days, smelling each other’s farts and acting like sunshine burned. I pulled the bottles from the bag and inspected them, wondering what the nutritional value of cheap booze was, how long we had before we turned yellow and our teeth fell out.
    “That was our last forty bucks,” he said from the bed. “I didn’t want to waste it on food.”
    I closed my eyes and started twisting the cap on the off-brand bourbon he’d brought in. Going underground wasn’t easy. It sounded easy, but cash was a dying breed, and the world that mattered at the moment was wide-awake, watching out for assholes like us. Cal Amir and his boss didn’t need electronic receipts and surveillance cameras to find us. Mika Renar would slit a half-dozen throats and fucking materialize in the room, thunderbolts in her withered old hands. Hiram had made fun of me for even suggesting going into hiding.
    “My boy,” he said, shaking his head, “if your name comes up connected to this, where will you hide that an enustari cannot find?”
    This encouraging bit of mentoring had occurred while we were dumping the body of the Skinny Fuck, whose name I still didn’t know. No one thought their names. I had a fading impression of him, his inner monologue, everything that had been him, but he’d never once thought his own fucking name. Everyone was I in their heads. We’d puthim in the river and Hiram had bled for thirty seconds, muttering a spell that would keep the body in the dark water forever. I’d swayed next to him, ready to pass out, wishing for a cigarette.
    I almost hadn’t noticed Hiram palming the Udug, getting past his fear of the Artifact easily enough. I didn’t need