Page 90 of Outlaw Witch

Need a distraction so we can bring in our latest shipment of knock off merchandise? I’m your guy.

Need someone to look like a dickhead opening a door that’s not a door so they wind up smacking straight into a wall? Been there, done that so many times, I couldn’t even count them for you.

But I’m not the one you go to if you need a diplomatic response to an issue. Or if you’re politicizing and need to whisper in a few ears to make things happen—that’s more my uncle’s style. He and Fab’s dad have always been more interested in what they call the ‘higher end’ cons. Whispering in the right ears, greasing the right wheels.

They left more and more of the lower level stuff to the three of us. Only once we’d proved ourselves capable. Worthy.

Not that I feel either of those things right now.

All I seem to do is meet up with bigwigs from the other side of the city and discuss how we can come to mutually beneficial arrangements. By that, I mean that they turn a blind eye to a few of the dodgier dealings from our district, and we push a boatload of cash their way.

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been crammed into the least comfortable suit imaginable, hobnobbing with the Archarcans over in their fancy-schmancy mansions. You’d think that handing over a bunch of cash would be quick and easy, but it seems not. Instead, we have to go along with this whole song and dance, acting like it’s a real meeting where we have agenda points and other shit that my brain literally cannot process before it starts showing me clips of cartoon monkeys playing cymbals.

We knew things were going to be a tightrope walk while Fab’s been sick. He’s usually the one that deals with all this shit. He’s also the one that somehow keeps everybody working for us in line, mostly because they’re shit scared of him cutting off the supply of blood to their brains in their sleep.

Fab’s not a scary guy to look at. He’s also not violent at all. But some of the shit he can do with his magic makes evenmystomach turn and I’ve been his bestie for nearly all our lives.

It seems that without having him present to scare people into submission, our district is turning into a shitshow. It seems like all the traitors that have been working for us for years are creeping out of the woodwork and showing their true colors. Not just that, we also have a bunch of people who haven’t ever been involved in any of our dealings trying to sneak onto our turf and undercut us right under our noses.

Traitorous bastards, the lot of them.

Z and I have spent the whole day meeting with the scouts and informants that we know are still loyal to us. Learning more details about what’s been going on while we’ve been distracted by my uncle’s obsession with us meeting with the Archarcans, and the minor matter of Fabian’s curse.

It made for depressing listening. And now I’ve got to let Fab know the full extent of our failure to keep things running smoothly while he’s been laid up with a curse eating away at his insides.

Which is another thing we’ve totally failed at, finding the sick shit that infected him in the first place. Turns out that punching a bunch of vamps in the face was not conducive to gaining information from them. Even though we had eyes on the nest where the guy was seen last, no one knew anything.

Urgh.

Fuck.

Even worse, he looks like absolute shit and I wind up blabbing the full details in front of baby Nightshade and Silver. As if I didn’t feel enough of a tool already.

Probably should have checked to see if his room was clear before I started talking, but my brain didn’t engage before my mouth.

“The vamps and a bunch of sneaky little snakes from our street teams are joining forces. We first got word of there being something afoot a couple of weeks ago, but a bunch of our guys confirmed it.”

Fab blinks a bunch of times, like he’s struggling to process my words. Yeah, I guess I could have sugar-coated things a little more. But once again, my brain worked against me.

“What... Can you start from the beginning? Talk me through what’s going on.”

“We got a call from Gordo from our shipments team a few weeks ago. He said that the last three times they should have had a shipment in, it’s turned up half empty or hasn’t shown up at all. Me and Z and a couple of our guys managed to track down the supplier, and he told us we’ve been undercut.”

Gordo’s one of the loyal scouts we’ve got on the street. He oversees most of the stuff we bring into the city. The guy’s an asshole and a taskmaster, as well as being a teeny bit psycho. If people are willing to piss him off, the deal these sneaky snakes are offering must be crazy good.

“Shit,” Fab says. He looks pale as hell, but that’s nothing new.

“There’s more,” Zeph grunts, nudging me in the ribs. I nudge him right back since I know exactly what he’s talking about and I don’t want to get into it now.

But I guess we can’t keep hiding how shitty things have gotten recently, especially over the past few weeks.

Just when we could do with some free time and a bit of slack, things have seriously started to heat up.

Right now, the entire district is a clusterfuck of epic proportions.

Z’s a pessimist and a grump at the best of times. He’s convinced the entire business might crumble if we let things get too far.

“That was just the first example,” I say. “We also met with a couple of our club guys. There’s a bunch of new drugs coming through as well. Purple Haze and Rapture, both of them are causing big waves. One of our guys said that they’ve had people so strung out, they barely know they’re alive. They keep finding people in the alley out back of the club, covered in blood and with no idea of how it got there.”

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