Free A Plain-Dealing Villain by Craig Schaefer Page B

Mack. “Is he doing something?”
    I tossed back the espresso in one long chug. The caramel-tinged coffee burned down my throat, carrying a caffeine payload spiked with raw magic. Nitrous for my brain.
    “Three words,” I said.
    They looked at me. My foot came down on the people mover track.
    “Cleared for takeoff.”
    The spell ignited.
    I walked, that’s all I did. To the tired tourists and road warriors lugging their suitcases, I was just another face in the crowd, walking briskly along the people mover. There was no magic speed-blur, no gust of wind, nothing out of the ordinary.
    And yet, in the space of two steps, I was somehow fifty feet ahead of Mack and Zeke. Two more, and I crossed the far end of the track.
    I heard Zeke shout. I didn’t look back. I strode, fast and free, toward the next people mover. Before I finished drawing my next breath, I stepped off the other side. A sign up ahead pointed toward an escalator down, leading the way to the baggage claim and the taxi line.
    Have to slow down
, I thought. My heart pounded against my ribs, pulse racing. Then I was suddenly at the bottom of the escalator, and I could hear blood roaring in my ears. I’d stolen too much of O’Hare’s magic, pushed the spell too far, and now my body was straining to keep up like an old junker racing on the redline.
    A cluster of hard plastic seats stood near a rent-a-car booth, about fifty feet away. I looked at them. Then I took a step and was standing next to them. Then I fell to the cold linoleum floor.
    I pushed myself up into the seat, put my hands on my knees, and squeezed my eyes shut. I visualized my heart as it pounded faster and faster, veins pulsing on the verge of eruption. Seizing on the memory of an old breathing exercise, a meditation on a Tibetan sorcerer’s mandala, I fell back into my training. As symbols and colors spun in my mind’s eye, I regulated my breathing with a careful rhythm. Four seconds to inhale. Four seconds to hold the breath in my trembling lungs. Four seconds to release. And again. And again.
    My heartbeat slowed.
    My mouth was dry and my hands trembled, but I’d surfed the spell’s wave until it broke against the shore. I pushed myself up on wobbly legs and walked, this time at a speed that didn’t violate space and time. No sign of Mack and Zeke. I’d lost them in the crowd and put some distance between us, but that didn’t mean they’d stopped hunting.
    A chill wind ruffled my hair as I stepped through a sliding glass door and onto the grimy pavement. A long line of cabs, most of them painted canary yellow, waited in a receiving line. High above our heads, a concrete shelf rumbled and the air whined with the sound of another plane taking off into the stormy sky.
    My watch said it was a little after three in the afternoon. Plenty of time to get some work done. I waited in line, jumped into the first cab that’d have me, and told the driver to take me downtown.

10.
    By the time the cab dropped me off on the edge of Millennium Park, the rain had turned to a slow drizzle drifting down from gray velvet clouds. The mist felt good against my cheeks, cool and clean, and the air smelled like fresh-cut grass. The
Cloud Gate
was the first thing that caught my eye: a giant curving sculpture of mirrored metal, like a kidney bean made of liquid mercury, reflecting the city back at itself.
    I walked the other way. Too much self-reflection can be bad for you.
    I waited for the crossing light, jogged across six lanes of traffic, then followed East Madison for a block. Chicago was cavernous, skyscrapers looming around me like art deco mountains, and the crowds on the sidewalks could give the Vegas Strip a run for its money.
    Money, again. The smell of it hung in the air, stronger than the rain. Back home, I was used to being the fastest thing on the street, moving like a shark through the packs of tourists in cheap sunglasses and flip-flops. Here, everybody had a little hustle in their step.