“Been a hell of a day for you,” I said. “Hell, been a few weeks. One son goes missing, the other won’t pick up. When you finally contact one, your husband slugs him, you find out he has magic powers and is being evasive about everything.”

My mom nodded and took a step back, looking up at me with tear-strained eyes. “I’m trying to hold it together, but—but—“

“But I’m not making it easy,” I suggested.

She nodded.

“I’ll give you some context,” I said. “But I have to keep it brief because we’re Skid Row adjacent and I wanna make sure we aren’t here any longer than we have to be. In fact,” I said as I raised my head to look around. “We should probably find a working light to stand under for Guapo—“

I saw Alice had done exactly that. I pointed her out to my mom. “Let’s go stand with her,” I said. “I don’t feel comfortable leaving her alone over there, no matter how much ass she can kick.”

“What? She can fight?” My mom asked.

“She can shoot lightning,” I clarified. “No, yeah, I’m being serious,” I said to her wide-eyed look. “She lit up the night sky this time fighting a ninja cock-sucker that could teleport around by… ugh, I’m still fuzzy on the details. I had to kill him a couple—“ I almost said ‘million’ but didn’t want my mom thinking I was being hyperbolic. “—dozen times before we reached a kind of stalemate and he offered to fuck off if I stopped killing him.”

“You’ve gotten vulgar,” my mom complained.

“That’s what you comment on?” I asked, giving her an incredulous look.

She shrugged helplessly. “You were so polite! Now you’re talking about killing ninjas and shooting lightning and using the f-word!”

I laughed, but it had a bitter tinge. “I was polite because if I misbehaved, I’d get hit,” I said. As we approached Alice, she brought her phone up to her ear and began a subdued conversation. I could listen in but I was focusing on my mom. “If I had bad grades, I’d get hit. If I maintained eye contact too long, I’d get hit.”

With every word, my mom seemed to shrink in on herself. I sighed and got the conversation back on the rails. “Remember when my college had those disappearances? It was right when I dropped out.”

She frowned in thought. “Yes,” she said after a moment. “I had thought you were one of them, but then you were found passed out in a field or something. You said you had partied too much..?”

“A lie,” I said. “The kids that disappeared were my friends.”

Her eyes widened in horror. “Why didn’t you say anything? Oh, Liam!”

“Because they didn’t disappear,” I said. “They were murdered. By a monster. Who ate them and almost ate me.”

Her horror faded away into an uncertain incredulity. I nodded and pointed at her face. “And that right there is why I didn’t tell you.”

She looked hurt for a moment, then did a double-take at my finger. “Your hand!”

Shit.

I ran the offending hand through my hair, surprised at how much the nervous tic calmed me. “It’s not frostbite,” I said, which is what most people assumed was happening to my hand. The second most common assumption was a thorough full-sleeve tattoo, with painted nails to complete the look. “Look, forget the hand right now. There’s a point I’m trying to make.”

My mom made an effort to drag her eyes away from my hand and to my face. I smiled reassuringly.

“I made friends in college, Mom,” I said. “Actual friends. People I knew that weren’t going to disappear in a few months when Dad took us to another part of the country. For the first time in my life, I was happy, but more importantly, not afraid.”

I glanced down the street, not really seeing anything. “I wanted to spend as much time with them as possible because with Dad footing the bill, I was afraid the rug would be pulled out from under me. So when they started to get into Wicca, occultism, and the like, I dove right in. Then we accidentally stumbled onto real magic. We… As I assume is the case more often than not, bit off more than we could chew. Only I survived. And in surviving made an enemy.”

“I’m not the most… stable, person,” I left the ‘as you can imagine’ unsaid. “I didn’t handle losing the only friends I had ever had well. I made decisions that, in hindsight, were kinda fucking crazy. I accumulated power—“As I said this, I grabbed a nearby soda can from a pile of trash with my magic. I brought it in front of us, startling the shit out of my mother. I lifted my hand and made a crushing motion with it, crushing the can with my magic at the same time to illustrate. I let the can drop at the same time as my hand.

“Last year, I had finally calmed down enough—“ I paused and chuckled ruefully. “Or maybe just got complacent enough—that I took a break. I went on a cruise. That’s where my enemy found me.”

“I don’t like talking about that time,” I said. “So I’ll just say I had to do a lot of things that I’m not proud of, resulting in a lot of… loss.” This I said as I studied my ink-black hand. I pushed away the memories of them being covered in blood. I sighed.

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“This is all besides the point,” I said. “When I’m being evasive, it’s not because I’m trying to be a dick. It’s because I’m dealing with things that are very much not a part of the day-to-day life of the average person and explaining it would just take too fucking long unless you can accept it at face value.”

I grabbed her shoulders and looked into her eyes. “So this is the part where you need to be strong, okay? I’m going to be saying a lot of crazy shit that sounds impossible but you just need to roll with it. Because Conner is alive but someone who has abilities like mine is hiding him. We don’t know why and they haven’t contacted you, so ransom’s off the table. I’m scared that he got grabbed because of something having to do with me, and if that’s the case and he gets harmed because of it, I—“

I lowered my hands from her shoulders.

“I don’t know what I’ll do,” I said in a low voice. “But people will pay.”

My mom flinched.

I felt Alice’s attention on me and I looked at her. “Guapo’s looking for a parking space,” she said.

I nodded. I stepped off to the side and lit up a cigarette, taking a long drag. I eyed the pack and made a face. Going to have to grab another at some point. I also took off my one glove and put it in my pocket. Having one glove on was kind of pointless.

A minute or two later one of the twins from the party jogged up holding a reinforced briefcase like you see in movies where they are transporting nuclear launch codes. I raised an inquisitive eyebrow at this. Alice waved him over and we started heading for my car.

“Sorry it took so long,” Guapo said, a little breathy. “They changed security procedures and I had to get Mom on the phone to scare them into letting me take it out.”

I glanced at Alice who nodded solemnly, backing up the veracity of the story. Apparently, Mama Martinez is a badass. We gathered around the back of my car as Guapo set the case on the trunk. I felt a tingle of magic as he did something, the latches popping open. He opened it with a little “tadaaaa” hand motion.

“A shit, it’s dark,” he said as he began to fumble for his phone.

“I can see fine,” I said as I held my hand above the item, seeing if my magical senses could pick anything up.

The item in the case looked like a Native American medicine stick, about two feet long and capped with elk—or more likely, deer antler. Turquoise beads were set in a spiral sequence from the antler down to the base, which was capped in a woven fabric that hugged the shape of the stick. As my hand hovered over it, I could feel a slight magical ambiance that suggested the item had an ongoing effect, rather than something activated.

“I forgot the Navajo word for it, but we call it the Blood Stick,” Guapo said with a shrug. “While holding it, you can use it to sense the direction of anyone related by blood within a half mile. It’s not a great search radius, but if there’s a magical defense that can block it, the family hasn’t found it in seventy years of use.”

“No, this is fantastic,” I said as I reached into the case and lifted the stick. I felt a tingle go up my arm and suddenly I was aware of my mom, sanding several feet behind us on the sidewalk. The sensation was odd. It wasn’t like I had a magic compass in my head pointing to her, but it… it was—Hmm. The nearest sensation I could think to liken it to was similar to living in an old house, and getting a feel for it. You just knew when someone was moving around because of the odd moans and clicks of the wood of the house. You knew someone was in the kitchen because the support beam outside your room groaned a bit. The stick imbued a similar sense of knowing. I didn’t know what exactly was telling me my mom was behind me, but I just knew she was there.

I put the stick back in the case. “Thanks, man,” I said sincerely. “I appreciate this.”

He slapped my shoulder. “De nada,” he said. “Give me your hand so I can key you to the case.”

I frowned but did as he asked. He touched my hand to the case, I felt another magical tingle and suddenly I knew the case would open when I wanted it to. Neat. He also didn’t react to my hand's odd coloration. Maybe he couldn’t see it in the low light?

“Look, if something happens to it, it’s not a tragedy,” he began. “But it is over three hundred years old and belongs to a family friend.”

“A family friend who hasn’t come to claim it in seventy years?” I asked.

“He could ask for it back any day!” Guapo replied good-naturedly.

I smiled. “I’ll take good care of it.”

Guapo held out his hand for a fist bump and I did so.

“What do you guys have planned next? Or are you turning in?” He turned to Alice. “Do you need a ride home?”

Alice looked at me, waiting for my response. I glanced at my mom.

“We’ll resume tomorrow,” I said after a beat. “It’s been a long day for Mom and I.” Plus I didn’t have any fucking leads.

Alice gave me a hug, startling me. “We’ll find him,” she said in my ear before holding me at arm's length, meeting my eyes. “We will.”

I nodded, not trusting my voice just then. She gave me a smile before heading off with Guapo. I closed the case and placed it in the back seat. We got in the car and I fired it up. My mom was silent as we merged into traffic.

I glanced at the clock. A little after nine. “Can you Google for a Best Buy or a Target near here? I need to pick something up real quick.”

“S-sure,” my mom said as she pulled her phone out of her purse.

My sure-fire investigative cheat didn’t work, and now I was floundering. Now that I thought about it, I didn’t know much about actual investigations besides what I saw on what little TV I watched as a kid and the cold case podcasts I listened to. I’d always just fondled evidence until I saw something that identified the killer and ran off.

Had that aura been designed to ward off psychic investigations? If it was as pervasive as it seemed, having an aura like that would basically be the magical equivalent of walking around firing a gun in the air while screaming through a megaphone.

Now that I thought about it, if someone went around with that kind of aura, it’d be super easy to track. It’d basically leave a magical/psychic furrow in the natural world until enough time passed to blow it away like tracks in sand. I’d need something to interact with it besides my psychometry however, I can’t risk passing out every time I touched something.

And then there were those two assholes. How the hell had they found me? How had my MOM found me?

“Hey,” I said to get her attention. “Do you have that PI’s contact info?”

“Yes,” she replied, glancing at me.

“Do you mind if I grab that from you when we get to the Hotel? I have a couple questions about Conner I want to float by him,” I asked.

“No, not at all,” she said.

I felt slightly better. Instead of no leads, I had some things I could do to narrow down the search. It wasn’t much, but it was better than the nothing I thought I had when I had parted with Alice and her brother.

Going to sleep felt like a betrayal, but I was ragged. With the anxiety of the doctor's visit compounded with the family drama on top of Conner’s abduction, I was surprised I wasn’t falling apart mentally. If I kept pushing through it, however, I knew there’d be a crash and then I’d be useless for days. I needed to pace myself.

For Conner.