Magic to the Bone by Devon Monk

created a close-knit social network. Sure, I knew a few of the other Hounds—Pike, for instance. But I didn’t think an ex-marine who Hounded for the cops would put up with my whining. Other than Pike, not a single person came to mind.
     
     
    I had to laugh. There were times when being a sour, distrustful, jaded young woman didn’t make my life easy.
     
     
    I could call my dad.
     
     
    Not in a million months of never.
     
     
    Mama. Though I didn’t love the idea of ending up right back where I’d started the day, I figured she’d let me stay late at her restaurant, might even offer me a cot to sleep on if I paid her, or did dishes or something. Or maybe we could trade the Hounding job I did on Boy for a bed. Besides, I wanted to know if Boy was okay. Wanted to know if she’d called the police and what they were doing about the hit. They might even need to talk to me.
     
     
    I picked up the phone and dialed Mama’s number even though I knew she never answered the phone. Still, maybe this once. When the phone rang for the twentieth time, I gave up. If she said no, maybe I’d just get a cab to the bus station, and head out to Nola’s. Fresh farm air sounded good right now. It wasn’t a perfect plan, but it was a plan.
     
     
    I grabbed a backpack—a hideously pink and green thing with a cow on it that Nola had given me years ago—and packed a change of clothes, an extra sweater, my tennis shoes, a brush, deodorant, and toothbrush. I left the apartment and the building as quickly as my swollen feet could take me down the stairs.
     
     
    I caught a cab, told him to take me to the nearest ATM machine, and checked my balance while the meter was running. I was expecting maybe fifty dollars from Nola, but she had sunk three hundred bucks into my account. Maybe things were looking up.
     
     
    I knew she made pretty good money for selling her certified nonmagically grown alfalfa. The horse-racing circuit considered any magical influence into the sport—including spells for pest removal, mold retardant, or growth enhancement on the alfalfa that fed the horses—to be as illegal as performance-enhancing drugs. Still, it wasn’t like Nola was rolling in the dough. A hard rain at the wrong time could ruin a year’s worth of work on a field, and the nonmagic eggs she raised didn’t make up for those sorts of things. This was a generous gift and I owed her big-time.
     
     
    I pulled out a hundred and got back in the cab. I hugged my jacket closer around me and watched the city fall apart the closer it got to St. John’s. The ache in my head was getting downright migrainal. Even more fun was that I dozed off, or maybe blacked out. When the cab came to a stop I slugged out from under the lead blanket of sleep that weighed me down.
     
     
    ‘‘Here it is,’’ the cabbie said in a halfhearted stab at English. ‘‘I stop here.’’
     
     
    I rubbed my eyes and still had trouble focusing. It looked like the right part of town. The problem was, every time I blinked it felt like it took forever to open my eyes again. All the running around in the rain, jogging of stairs, and most of all, the stupid payback for not setting a Disbursement spell, were finally catching up to me.
     
     
    Either that, or Zayvion had poisoned my soup.
     
     
    ‘‘Sixteen bucks,’’ the driver said.
     
     
    ‘‘Sure.’’ I looked down at my hands, hoping for a purse or something, and realized I had a wad of bills clenched in my fist.
     
     
    Smart like a rock, I am. My hands were the color of steamed grape leaves. Nice bruise, that. Then the driver’s voice cut through the fog again.
     
     
    ‘‘Sixteen dollar. This is the end.’’
     
     
    And wow, that sounded really ominous, like if my life were a movie, this would be the part where the cabbie turned into a serial killer, pulled out the knife and hockey mask he kept in his glove compartment, and did me in. But not, of course, before he collected on his