“Say what?” He narrowed his eyes and visually searched me for a weapon.

I tapped into the electrical current. My skin tingled with the familiar flow of foreign energy as I spooled electricity into myself. No time to be gentle about it, so I pulled fast. Lights flickered. The descending elevator groaned in protest. Within a couple of seconds, my body hummed with enough charged Heka to shock the guy pretty badly. But I’d have to get close enough to touch him. The concrete floor was a poor conductor.

“Let go,” I growled through gritted teeth, trying to shake Jupe off. He was gripping my jacket like death and if he didn’t let go, I couldn’t do this. Without a caduceus staff to even out the release, it was going to hurt all of us when I let go of the kindled Heka.

The garage elevator dinged.

The mugger yelped and swiveled wildly, searching for the source of the sound.

The elevator doors parted.

“Police are coming! Run!” Jupe shouted near my ear. I jumped in surprise, nearly losing control of the Heka.

Spooked, the mugger cried out incoherently, turned on his heels, and fled from Jupe’s nonexistent police in the empty elevator car. We watched in disbelief as he raced his own heartbeat up the parking garage ramp toward the next level. As he barreled around the corner, a large blue minivan sped down the ramp and slammed on squealing brakes when Methbrain ran out in front of it. The disconcerting thump of metal on flesh echoed through the garage. Then the man’s body jerked and he crumpled on top of the minivan’s hood.

Jupe gasped.

The doors to the elevator closed.

Unable to hold the Heka any longer, I shoved a shaking hand into my inner jacket pocket until my fingers wrapped around a pencil. I pushed Jupe away forcefully, then thrust the pencil into the concrete wall, releasing a substantial volt of charged Heka through the small graphite point. The wooden caduceus staves I normally used for magical work contained fat graphite cores that allow smooth releases of kindled energy. This puny pencil? Not so much. It immediately overloaded and shattered, wedging a yellow wooden splinter into my skin.

“Shit!” I stuck my injured finger in my mouth as a wave of post-magick nausea hit me and I swayed on my feet. The sound of car doors opening drew my attention to the minivan. Three people were running to help the meth head—but he popped up from the hood like an unkillable video game character, briefly shook himself, and tore off, further up the ramp and out of sight.

Jupe’s eyes were two brilliant circles of leafy green surrounded by white moons. “You okay?” I asked, putting my hands all over him like an overanxious soccer mom. Panicked thoughts of his needing another cast ran through my head.

“Whoa . . .” He was just shaken, but otherwise fine. His eyes darted between me and the minivan. “We almost got mugged.”

“Oh, God, Jupe. I’m so sorry.” I wrapped my arms around him. A dark laugh vibrated his shoulders. I released him to study his face. He wasn’t smiling.

“Do you believe me now?” he said. “I did that, Cady. Like I convinced the manager at the credit union.”

“Jupe—”

He shook his head, dismissing my lack of belief, then said firmly, “I just made that mugger believe the cops were coming.”

The bottom fell out of heavy clouds during our half-block trek to the bar. As rain poured from a dark sky, we dashed down the sidewalk with the bags of bruised fruit, darting through umbrella-carrying crowds. All I could think about was getting Jupe the hell out of that garage, dropping off the bar supplies, then hightailing it back to my house without anything else happening.

I’m not the only magician in town, so there’s likely plenty of warded places scattered throughout the Morella and La Sirena area, but only three that I trust: my house, Lon’s house, and my bar, Tambuku Tiki Lounge, where neither supernatural attacker nor crazy, meth-addled human mugger could get inside without setting off several protective spells. Safe as milk, especially when it was closed.

A short length of steps flanked by waist-high tiki statues led us down to the door of the underground bar. The neon signs were off. It was around noon, and even though we didn’t open until two on weekends, my business partner, Kar Yee, usually came in early to work on the previous night’s receipts in the back office. I pounded on the locked door and peered through iron bars into the stained glass. Its red hibiscus design obscured the view when the inside lights were off, so I couldn’t see much. Maybe she wasn’t there after all. Cold, pooling rain dripped from the thatched awning above the entrance. Jupe huddled next to me as I fumbled with my keys and got the door open.

“Your sign says ‘No One Under 21 Allowed,’” Jupe noted with a devious smile.

“If anyone asks, you’re on official delivery business.” I pushed him inside and locked the door behind us. The motion-sensor toucan that Kar Yee had recently installed by the front door chirped to announce our entry. Hearing the damned thing go off every minute during my shifts made me want to hex somebody.

A thick cloud of worry settled in my lungs and tightened my throat as the weight of the situation settled on me: we almost got mugged. I pushed away gruesome thoughts of Jupe dying in an ER from a dirty knife wound. Lon was going to freak when he found out. Maybe I could persuade Jupe to keep his mouth shut about it.

“It smells like pineapple in here,” he remarked cheerfully, as if the events from the parking garage were already forgotten. His head turned in circles as he strained to see the long, narrow bar in the diffused light shining in from the red window.