Hexed

tunnels running from their shops right into the ruined Five Points and Unicorn Lane, where the magic ran wild and no sane cop would follow them. Now the Underground was a place where you could buy anything if you were desperate enough.
    “Is there any other way?”
    My mother shook her head. “Don’t even think about it. You can’t go to the Underground.”
    I exhaled, blinking. “We don’t have any choice.”
    My mother made a short cutting motion with her hand. “No!”
    “Yes. We need to buy the snail.”
    My mother drew herself to her full height. I stood up and did the same.
    “No, and that’s final.”
    “You can’t keep me from doing it.”
    “I am your mother!”
    Jim opened his mouth. “Mengapa?”
    Oh my gods.
    He spoke Indonesian.
    My mother’s eyes went wide and for a second she looked like a furious cat. “He speaks Indonesian!”
    “I know!”
    “Why didn’t you tell me he speaks Indonesian? This is a thing I need to know!”
    I waved my arms. “I didn’t know!”
    “What do you mean, you didn’t know? You just said you knew.”
    “I meant I didn’t know that he did and then he did and I went ‘I know!’ because I was surprised.”
    “Ladies!” Jim barked, standing up.
    We both looked at him.
    “You’re speaking so fast, I can’t understand,” he said. “Why does Dali need to go to the Underground?”
    “You explain it to him,” my mother said. “I will make tea.” She went into the kitchen.
    I pointed at the chair. “Sit.”
    He sat and lowered his voice. “What happened to your mother’s accent?”
    “We’re past that now,” I whispered to him. “Her little Asian lady act is just for show. She has a master’s in chemistry from Princeton.”
    Jim blinked.
    “Well, where did you think I got my brains?”
    Jim shook his head. “Explain the Underground thing.”
    I sighed. “How much did you understand? And since when do you speak Indonesian?”
    “I’ve got the idea that something is seriously fucked up and it seemed like an interesting language.”
    “Interesting language? Really? So what, you got up one day and said, ‘Hmm, I think I will learn Bahasa Indonesia today’?” He was up to something.
    A green sheen rolled over Jim’s eyes. “Dali, the Underground?”
    There was no easy way to say it. “Something is feeding on your soul.”
    “Explain.”
    I leaned closer. “All people generate magic. Some can use it, some can’t; some generate more than others, but all of us are magic engines: We absorb it from the environment and emit it back out. That’s why we can shift during technology: We store enough magic in our bodies to allow us to change shape. Let’s take Kate.”
    Jim’s voice betrayed a quiet warning. “What about Kate?”
    Kate used to work with Jim in the Mercenary Guild. Kate was gorgeous, funny, and she could kill anything. I hated her. She could say anything to Jim and he would just needle her back. I was so jealous of her I used to have to leave the room, until I realized that Kate crushed on Curran. She was now mated to him, and since he was the Beast Lord, that made her the Beast Lady and not interested in Jim. Kate and Curran had some seriously rough time with an ancient goddess who blew into town, and now Kate walked with a cane and Curran was barely three weeks out of a coma.
    “Ever notice how when Kate gets stressed out the phones stop working?”
    “The phones are unreliable as a rule,” Jim said.
    I shook my head. “No, it’s Kate. She generates so much magic, she short-circuits tech if she isn’t careful. I do the same thing, except I control mine better. She can’t shoot a gun either. I’ve watched her practice and it either goes wide or doesn’t fire at all. And she has no clue. Watch her sometime: She will stomp in, grab the phone, make that growly noise, and walk away. Ten minutes later you can order takeout on the same phone. It’s the funniest thing.”
    “What does that have to do with my soul being drained?”
    “You’re magic, Jim. You absorb and consume magic, emanating it into the environment. By doing so, you modify the environment to be more suitable to your existence. It’s like the evolutionary loop: A species is shaped by its environment, because those with the mutations most suitable to the environment survive and reproduce, but a species also modifies its environment to make it more suitable to its survival.”
    Jim sighed. “Give me the short version.”
    “Something is