"Hey, I
like
cutting hair!" Moira exclaimed. "
Most
of the time. That little brat today . . ."
Marbann finished his pizza and reached for another, but there was only one left.
"Don't you even think it," Moira said, eyeing the piece. "I've only had three."
Marbann looked hurt. "Well, I've only had
two
, madam," he said, then his expression softened in evident surrender. "But since I am a gentleman . . ."
While Marbann and Moira discussed the fate of the last piece of Dominique's, the piece glimmered momentarily, then vanished from the tray. They stared at the empty space for several long moments, then looked around.
"Okay," Moira said, accusingly. "Who swiped it?"
And as one, the elves turned to their King, who proudly held up his sausage and Canadian bacon prize.
"I think our King is starting to remember his magic," Marbann said with a hint of pride in his voice.
Samantha had also turned back to Sammi McDaris, the human lady cop. "And now, young man, it's time for you to go to bed. You have a busy day ahead of you," she said, urging him toward his bedroom.
"Aw,
Mom,
" Adam said, half in jest. He was tired and had been ready for bed for the last half hour. That screw-up with the levin bolt happened because he was tired. After a full night's rest, he knew he would control one better, if not perfectly. Learning one element of magic had triggered some recall of the other forms. "Do I have to go to bed
now?
"
"Yes, you do. Now turn around and march," she commanded. "Moira and I will tuck in the rest of the Folk in the attic."
Adam paused at his door. "Good night, everybody. Sleep as late as you want.
I
have to be at work tomorrow."
The young elven King flopped down on his unmade bed and promptly fell asleep.
Daryl figured he must have zonked out for a few minutes, since he woke up from a sound sleep on the ruins of his bed. The hangover was better, nearly nonexistent; he had energy and his head didn't threaten to explode as he stood up. He stripped and climbed into his shower, turned it up as hot as he could stand it, and spent a good half hour luxuriating in it. By the time he emerged, he was ready to go out on the town and party all over again.
Standing in the bathroom doorway, drying himself off with a towel, he surveyed the wreckage of his bedroom. Despite his mother's partial attempts to keep the place picked up, the room looked like a bomb had recently detonated. Clothing, some of it actually clean, covered the floor, forming a mound capped by his waterbed. The bed itself was a nest, with clothing and blankets arranged around a vaguely Daryl-shaped cavity. Having already made good use of it, he was up again, ready to go out.
"Where you goin'?" Justin, his little brother, said brightly from the hallway. He stood there, shirtless in a pair of jeans, much as Daryl had been most of the day. Justin had found a recent musical interest in, of all things, the Alan Parsons Project, which had begun cutting albums around 1975, years before the kid was even born, for crissakes.
Justin's only fifteen.
An instrumental cut from the
I Robot
album flowed in from the other bedroom. Little brother had unfashionably long blond hair and stood almost as tall as Daryl, having grown nearly six inches in the last year. His voice had stopped cracking, and could with effort be as deep as Dad's. Daryl had even caught him shaving one morning, and it wasn't make-believe. Uncertain why, Daryl found his recent growth spurts distantly threatening.
"Nowhere," Daryl replied shortly. "Not tonight." Ignoring Justin, he approached the sink and fumbled for the hair dryer.
Justin followed him into the bathroom. "Yeah, you are. I know that look on your face." Daryl glared at his brother's reflection, his additional height distressingly evident as Justin looked down from behind his right shoulder. The blow-dryer roared to life, but wasn't loud enough to drown out Justin, who seemed determined to talk to him no matter what. "You don't bother to get cleaned up unless you're out looking for
punta.
"
The word took him by surprise. "For
what?
"
Justin grinned and shut the bathroom door behind him. "You know,
punta
. Piece. Girls."
"Oh, that," Daryl replied. Sex was, oddly enough, the last thing on his mind until Justin mentioned it. Lately his member had become so shriveled with cocaine use as to become almost useless for anything but urination, but the mention of girls made him twitch a little. Now, the prospect added a rosy glow to his plans.
And Justin would only get in the way. Sorry, kiddo . . . If you tag along, there'd be no chance in hell. No way.
Justin said, "Can I—"
"No!"
"—go with you?"
Daryl finished drying his hair and went into the bedroom. Justin followed him, and Daryl continued to ignore him as he rummaged around for some jeans. He found some 501's that were mostly clean and slid them on.
"Why not?"
Daryl frowned. "Sorry, you're on your own. You shouldn't have any trouble scoring. Hell, you're almost as big as I am. And it's Monday night. Nothing's going on Monday night."
"
Monday?
" Justin looked like he was about to laugh. "Monday was yesterday, you dolt! You don't remember anything, do you?"
Daryl fixed what he hoped was a hard, cold look on his brother, but in the past several months this had become next to impossible.
How can you stare down someone who's taller than you?
"You passed out on the stairs. Good thing I carried you in here. Dad would've shit if he saw you."
He's just screwing with my head,
Daryl thought, glancing over at his clock. It read five P.M. About the time it should.
"You slept all night and day," Justin insisted. "Mom went out. Dad went to work this morning and hasn't been around since."
"Tuesday," Daryl said distantly. "It's fucking
Tuesday.
I'm still going out. Alone."
Justin frowned, but even at his advanced age it still looked like a pout. "Okay, then, how 'bout—"
"No!"
"—turning me on to some pot?"
This question, too, took him by surprise. Suddenly Daryl's little brother had grown up overnight, while he wasn't looking. Little brother had no more of the baby fat, was now lean and wiry as a whippet, with a washboard stomach starting to form. Only yesterday, it seemed, they were staying up all night playing D&D, drinking Pepsi, no drugs, not even weak beer.
That was only a year, or a few years, ago. When's the last time we played D&D anyway?
And now, Justin wanted some of the action Daryl had learned to take for granted.
"You're too young to be doing that stuff," Daryl said uncomfortably, searching the floor for a shirt. He found a black KMFDM shirt he'd whacked the sleeves off of, and slid it on.
His brother was staring at him.
" 'Too young?' Oh, gimme a break."
"You're only fifteen!" Daryl said, debating whether or not to tuck the shirt in.
Justin looked hurt. "No, brother. I'm sixteen. I turned sixteen
last week.
"
Daryl looked away. "Oh. Guess I forgot. Well, still, you're
too young.
"
Justin started pacing. "Oh, come on! Why don't you ever turn me on to some pot or something? My friends can get their stuff from
their
brothers!"
They were getting loud, and Daryl held a finger up to his lips. "Shut the fuck up!" he whispered. "Dad doesn't need to hear this conversation."
"Dad isn't here, and if he was, he wouldn't
give
a fuck. You know that! That's why he didn't go get you from the Wintons' yesterday."
Daryl stared at a bare patch of carpet as his body surrendered to a cold shiver.
Oh, yeah. Steve's. The cops. Sammi. Steve, the girls, the others . . .
The entire grisly scene surfaced from the fog of semiwakened mind, focused, and presented itself with morbid clarity.
He had almost forgotten the waking nightmare at the Wintons', and he wondered if he would have remembered it if Justin hadn't said anything.
"You know about that?" Daryl demanded.
Justin laughed. "Who doesn't? You know Mikey. His brother died over there last night, and I knew Colm, the one they took to Parkland. He didn't make it, by the way."
"Colm. Oh, Colm. Christ, I thought he was already dead."
"Yeah, well, word's gotten all around. What was it, some bad coke or something?"
"I don't know."
I'm alive because I didn't find out.
"You didn't do any of it, did you?"
He didn't want to go into detail about how he'd gone and passed out in the backyard in his skivvies. That would present an uncool image. By the same token, he didn't want to become his brother's dealer.
Hypocrisy. Isn't like me.
Seeing his little brother on drugs felt wrong, wrong, wrong. He was suddenly grateful he hadn't taken Justin along to the party. His little brother would have probably died along with the rest of them.
"Forget it," Daryl said. "You're too young to be fooling around with that stuff. Any stuff. You can't handle it."
Justin sulked off to his room, slammed his door, and turned the stereo up as high as it would go. Somehow,
I Robot
turned up didn't have the same violent effect of, say, Nine Inch Nails, Daryl thought as he started down the stairs.
A blast of humid, Texas heat greeted him outside, and Daryl soon discovered his 'Vette was now an 'Oven. The black seats burned through his jeans, toasting his backside and exposed shoulders, but once he got the car started and the aircon going, the temperature began to drop. He slapped a Ministry CD in the player and put the car in reverse.
Daryl loved his 1994 Chevy Corvette. For him, this was the only car to drive. Dad had a Corvette when he was in college, and in a drunken stupor had gone down and bought this one for his son and paid for it with a cashier's check. The gesture struck Daryl dumb. Dad had never bought him something so lavish before, but he was not going to argue. But when Dad came to after the blackout, he had forgotten about buying it himself and accused his son of stealing it, then of selling drugs for it; it wasn't until Daryl persuaded him to call the dealership that he realized that he had indeed bought the car, lock, stock and barrel.
Dad threw his arms up and said, "What the hell, you might as well enjoy it. Since I've made such an ass of myself, I'll even get the tags for it."
He bought the tags, but not the insurance. Normally the tag agency wouldn't issue the tags without insurance verification, but with the hundred-dollar bribe, the criteria became unimportant. Nevertheless, Daryl knew he would need insurance, and other things like gas and maintenance, and started looking for ways to make money. Big money, quick money. Meanwhile, he drove the car around uninsured. He had no other choice.
It was a perfect car, except for the goddamned dent the Mustang put in it back at the Winton mansion.
The owner deserved to die,
Daryl seethed with satisfaction, feeling little else.
His coke stash was gone. He used up the last of his crack at Steve's party, and that was not one, but
two nights ago.
His palms, formerly dry, began to sweat, making the steering wheel slippery.
Was I supposed to pick something up today?
he thought in a panic. He didn't remember. Seemed like there was something important to do today, but he had no idea what.
He drove for fifteen minutes before he remembered.
Now I know. I'm supposed to go over to one of the safe houses to talk to Presto. He's supposed to line me up with some product to deal.
It was three in the afternoon, and he had to meet him at four. He wiped sweat off his forehead as he changed lanes, hopped the expressway for Presto's spare apartment.
Daryl had sold small amounts of coke and crack for Presto at school; lately the demand had swung more toward crack, which was cheaper and smaller and easier to get rid of in a hurry. But it never amounted to a whole lot of money, just enough to keep him supplied with his own stash. Since school was over, his number-one market, impulse purchases in the hallways, was gone. He had been hoping to reestablish his clientele at the party, being the birthday boy and all, but the evening had gone horribly wrong. He didn't want to work for some of the other dealers, and wasn't "big" enough to try to move in on someone else's turf without it being a suicide mission, so he'd stuck to Presto, hoping something would come through. Perhaps something had; he was on his way to find out.
I need to sell quantity,
he thought.
That's the only way to make any money. None of this nickel and dime bottle bullshit. I've been driving this Corvette for the past three months without insurance. If I get pulled over for anything, it's over.
Presto hated the 'Vette and made no secret of it.
"Get rid of it," Presto had said. "If you're going to work for me, you drive the bug."
The comment stung. Daryl was proud of the car, even though it had been handed to him on a silver platter. He couldn't deny the 'Vette screamed "Drug Dealer," but he didn't care. Girls paid attention to him, and he'd gotten laid strictly because of the car at least five times since he'd started driving it. Steve Winton, who had always wanted a 'Vette for himself, had envied him for it, so much that he threw the lavish party for him when his parents were away. For the first time in his life, he was popular, all because of a hunk of metal and plastic.
But Presto hated the car. "I've seen more people busted because of a flashy car. Busted with
quantity.
And besides driving what they were driving, they'd done nothing wrong. Obeyed the rules. Went by the book. And now they're doing time because they attracted attention to themselves when they should have been invisible."
Daryl told him he'd get something else, something bland, like a station wagon, but just hadn't gotten around to it yet.
The safe house was an apartment in north Dallas, just off Highway 635. It was a large, wealthy place, with two huge pools and lots of expensive cars. Daryl pulled his 'Vette up between a Lexus and a Dodge Stealth, wondering what the fuss was over
his
car.