Trickster by Jeff Somers

the floor next to him. He had a thick head of graying hair, and a round, pink face with delicate lips. He looked like he’d been tortured by bullies at school and got his revenge on others in little ways, every day.
    I tried to control my breathing and pretended to fuss with the deposit slips and pens, waiting for the high sign from Mags. When Mags coughed twice, indicating the Mark had inserted his debit card and punched in his PIN, I muttered the spell and sliced open my arm, letting the warm blood run down to my hand.
    The pain was sharp and hot, and this was one of those moments I enjoyed it, a little, savoring the bright red way it ate into me. Nothing dripped onto the floor; I recited the spell fast enough to burn it off as it flowed out of me, disappearing, swallowed whole by the hungry universe.
    My vision swam and I felt dizzy as the spell finished, and I had to lean against the little table for a bit, breathing. I turned toward the Mark, who was staring at the ATM screen with a look of dreamy confusion on his face. I swayed a little, digging into my pocket for my crusty handkerchief.
    “Hey!” I said, feeling light and shivery. “How are you?”
    The Mark turned to look at me and smiled. It wasa slow smile, and looked completely out of place on his face. It twitched and shimmered a little, as if the muscles of his face were not used to holding this expression. “Hello!” he sighed. “How are you? Good to see you.”
    He trailed off into more mutterings, impossible to translate. I held out my hand and he took it, slowly but enthusiastically. Began pumping it. Up and down, up and down.
    The ATM machine began beeping, impatient.
    “Let’s get a drink, old buddy, it’s so good to see you,” I said cheerfully, slipping an arm around him and pushing him gently toward the door. “What do you say?”
    On the security cameras it would look like two old friends meeting by chance.
    “Oh, yes,” he said as I pushed the door open for him. “That sounds nice .”
    I walked him around the block, and he talked to me, a steady hissing escape of breath formed into words. He wasn’t such a bad guy. He told me about how disappointing his life had been since he’d left the band, taken the money and the desk job, and started eating candy bars all day, just unwrapping and chewing and unwrapping and chewing, no thought. He would glance in his trash bin before leaving the office and be amazed to find ten or twelve wrappers in there. He kept his arm around me and I could smell him, and it wasn’t so great: sour deodorant. By the time I got him to the Radio Bar, he was telling me a story about hisvacation, a trip on a cruise line to the warmer parts of the world, and he wished I’d been there to hang out with him.
    I suggested he go in, get us some drinks, and I’d be right in to join him. He gave me a happy look of damp joy at the thought, nodded. I watched him step inside and settle onto a stool at the bar like a zeppelin docking with a tall building, and turned away.
    I was feeling better physically, steadier, though my arm was throbbing again just as the other wounds had calmed down. A heavy depression was pushing down on me. I didn’t know what this guy was like in reality, but under my heavy dose of Charm he was a sad panda, and I felt guilty.
    Mags was on the corner, wide-eyed, looking in the wrong direction, his body language like a poodle who’d been tied to a street sign a little too long. He jumped when I appeared and then smiled, his big body going soft.
    “Two thousand!” he said. “In the account. But five hundred was the limit here!”
    I nodded. “We’ve got at least fifteen minutes. Let’s see what we can do.”
    We were not good people.
    We siphoned another fifteen hundred before the card went dead, and we just walked away, the ATM still beeping. It was enough, I thought. Nothing to get excited about, and I’d bled a little too much on the Charm, leaving me gray and staggered, but it was a decent