Trailer Park Trickster, page 1
Praise for Trailer Park Trickster
“Slayton crafts a setting rich in grit and grime and Americana
kitsch that’s as much a character as gay warlock Adam Binder
in this, Trailer Park Trickster, the exciting follow-up in the
Adam Binder Novels.”
—C. S. Poe, author of the Magic & Steam series
“In Trailer Park Trickster, David R. Slayton doubles down on
everything that made his first book great: a complicated world,
dangerous magic, a likable protagonist, dark family secrets, and,
of course, authentically painful (or is that painfully authentic?)
love. I can’t wait for more!”
—Gregory Ashe, author of the Hazard and Somerset mysteries
“[A] thrilling, well-crafted sequel to White Trash Warlock…
The interweaving of Adam’s and Vic’s quests builds satisfying
tension on the way to an unresolved ending that sets things up
nicely for the next installment. The result is an emotionally
rich page-turner.”
—Publishers Weekly
Other Books by David Slayton
White Trash Warlock
Copyright © 2021 by David R. Slayton
E-book published in 2021 by Blackstone Publishing
Cover design by Sean M. Thomas
All rights reserved. This book or any portion
thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner
whatsoever without the express written permission
of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations
in a book review.
The characters and events in this book are fictitious.
Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental
and not intended by the author.
Trade e-book ISBN 978-1-0940-6929-6
Library e-book ISBN 978-1-0940-6928-9
Fiction / Fantasy / Contemporary
Blackstone Publishing
31 Mistletoe Rd.
Ashland, OR 97520
www.BlackstonePublishing.com
For Anitra,
world’s best mom, friend,
and general badass.
1
Adam
The wards were down. That was how he knew, really knew, that she was dead.
The plastic flamingos and homemade wind chimes remained, but the warmth of Sue’s presence, the thing that said she’d always be there for him, that Adam had a home here, was gone.
Still, the lights were on and a television buzzed somewhere inside the trailer.
Someone was home.
Adam tasted the rain on his lips. He’d driven as fast as he could. The adrenaline that had flooded him when he’d torn out of Denver had long faded.
He’d left without a word, leaving his mom and Bobby to mourn Bobby’s wife, Annie, and likely question Adam’s sanity again.
Now too much gas station coffee buzzed in his veins. He should eat. But first, he had to know the details. And he had to know who was living in Sue’s trailer.
He took the steps in twos, raised his fist to pound on the door, but it swung open before he could knock.
Jodi.
Adam’s cousin was twenty-one, just under six feet, and pissy. They’d never gotten along.
Her black-and-purple hair was pulled into pigtails. It contrasted with the pale, thick foundation she wore to mask her pimples and acne scars. Or maybe they were crystal craters, meth sores. Either way, the sight of her made Adam glad he’d outgrown the goth look.
“What?” she demanded.
Behind her, a television flickered and boomed with some cop show. Adam’s relatives probably thought it good research for getting away with crime.
“I’m here for my things,” he said.
“You don’t have any things here,” Jodi spat.
Adam could almost hear the twang of a banjo in her drawl.
“I have clothes. Books,” he argued.
“All gone,” Jodi said with a dismissive shrug.
“Where did they go?” Adam demanded.
He caught a whiff of something nasty when he tried to push past her, like cat urine mixed with nail polish, but she stuck her booted foot against the door.
“Mom took everything to town,” Jodi said. “Sold or pawned it.”
Adam clenched his fists.
“Sue’s rings? My clothes?”
“Everything,” Jodi stressed.
Adam took a breath, let it out. He didn’t trust Jodi, and he trusted her mother, Noreen, less. They were liars and cons. Sue had hated them both.
“You’re lying,” he said. “Let me in.”
“No.”
“What about Spider?”
“Who?”
“Sue’s cat. Where is he?”
“That’s a dumb name for a cat,” Jodi muttered. “There wasn’t a cat.”
Adam squeezed his eyes shut. Noreen and Jodi hadn’t even cared enough about Sue to know about Spider. He would take it as a blessing. Who knows what they would have done to the poor thing. Still, there was that smell.
“There had to be,” Adam said. “He was old. He didn’t go out.”
“No cat. No books. No clothes.”
“Will you at least tell me what happened to Sue?” he asked.
“Heart attack. She was old. It happens. Go cry about it somewhere else.”
Jodi slammed the door in Adam’s face.
He sighed. He had a key. He could try to force his way inside, and—what, physically fight off Jodi and her mom? The thing was, he didn’t doubt that Noreen would have sold everything the moment Sue passed.
Noreen was Sue’s daughter, so technically a cousin, but she was more like an aunt in age. She was perpetually broke and by Sue’s account, addicted to any number of things, which probably explained the smell. Her habit was worth more than anything to her.
It was dark. Adam looked across the trailer park. He didn’t have anything here. He didn’t really know anyone either, not well enough to ask for a place to stay. He could look for Spider, not that the cat would come. Spider had only loved Sue. And yet he’d shown up in Denver, warning Adam that something was wrong before disappearing like he’d never been there.
Adam gave one of the porch posts a kick and stalked back to his car.
Climbing in, he laid his forehead on the Cutlass’s steering wheel.
Noreen and Jodi.
Sue had kept her daughter and granddaughter at a distance. She’d hated their willful ignorance, the constant begging for money she didn’t have, and the visits from the sheriff’s deputies asking Sue and Adam if they’d been in contact. Sue hadn’t even invited them to Christmas, and Adam suspected she’d been shielding him from them.
Sometimes Adam thought being gay was a blessing. It kept him from being like his father’s extended family, like most of the Binders, just like having magic had kept him from being like his mother and brother.
Noreen and Jodi would lose their minds to know Adam was dating a Mexican cop. He couldn’t decide which part of Vic—Mexican, bi, or cop—they’d take more offense at.
“Dammit,” Adam said, throwing his head back against the seat’s headrest.
He’d left Denver without a note, without calling Vic or explaining. He’d driven straight to Guthrie like his ass was on fire.
Adam unlocked his phone, started to text or call, but he was still seething. The red in his chest was a nice contrast to the deep black and purple, the heavy surety that Sue was gone.
He didn’t want to be an emotional wreck when he talked to Vic. He wasn’t ready to go back to Denver, not until he found out what had happened to her, if it really had been a heart attack. Then there was Spider, poor old cat. Would he have come to Adam if magic weren’t involved? Was it just concern for his mistress or something worse?
Adam squeezed his eyes shut and opened them when cold filled the air, sweeping over the car like a sleet storm. The scent of rotten blackberries and battery acid surged.
He knew this magic, knew its greasy flavor, its cloying, clinging stench.
“No,” Adam said, casting about for the source.
The power pulsed once, quick. The lights across the trailer park went out. Adam opened the Cutlass’s door and was halfway out when Sue’s trailer exploded.
The heat washed over him. Glass pelted the other trailers as every window blew. Smoke, black and noxious, bloomed into the air. The fire lit the night.
Adam choked, swallowed hard on the damp air, and ran for the burning trailer.
“Jodi!” he shouted. “Noreen!”
He’d almost reached the porch when a second blast went off. Adam threw up his arms, put his hands in front of his face, and felt his magic rise as it tried to shield him. The hair on the back of his hands singed.
The chemical smell of the burning trailer grew thick and acrid as the rain sizzled against the flames.
Adam circled, trying to find a way in. The trailer had burst open. Flames licked at the corner of the roof where Sue’s bedroom had been.
The front door was his only option. Adam pulled his jacket over his head, gathered what magic he had, hoping it could help, and jumped inside.
The fire was everywhere, but it hadn’t yet filled the
“Jodi!” he screamed.
No answer. Adam’s heart sank and pounded at the same time.
“Noreen!”
Adam choked on the smoke. It sent a wave of dizziness through him. He pressed his shirt sleeve to his mouth, breathed through that, and kept his jacket over his head.
There, some movement in the corner.
Adam kicked the coffee table aside.
Noreen lay beneath a blanket, one of Sue’s crocheted afghans. She wasn’t moving, but she took a wheezing breath when Adam pulled at her arm. He lifted her as much as he could.
“Jodi!” Adam shouted.
Noreen stirred at her daughter’s name. She staggered to her knees with Adam’s help.
He didn’t know if she was high, drunk, or just overwhelmed by the fumes.
“Come on!” Adam shouted, pulling her to her feet.
Together they staggered to the door, him coughing, Noreen wheezing.
He wasn’t going to make it. He was going to pass out.
A shadow filled the doorway, a man wreathed in leather straps and a faded black hoodie. Adam couldn’t make out his face through the smoke that filled the room. He held a charred skull in his open palm. Frost coated it despite the fire and the heat.
“Who are you?” Adam tried to shout, though it came out choked.
The figure didn’t answer, but Adam knew. This was him, the man he’d been hunting.
Whatever he was, terrible as he was, he emitted a cold that pushed the heat back.
Adam forced himself to carry Noreen toward him, away from the licking flames and rising smoke.
They were almost to the figure. Adam spied two eyes, blue like ice, inside the hood. Adam would knock him aside if he had to.
The figure vanished as Adam stumbled into him.
Carrying Noreen, Adam fell out the door and into the rain, lungs fighting for clearer air.
He cast about, looking for the figure who’d blown up the trailer. The dark druid, the warlock who might be his father.
2
Vic
Vic grunted at the sudden pain and pressed a hand to his heart.
He’d been feeling weird all day, a combination of blue and black that said Adam was deeply upset about something. But now Adam was hurt, maybe physically, and he wasn’t picking up his phone.
Vic dialed his brother.
“Baby bro!” Jesse said. “What’s shaking?”
“Hey, have you heard from Adam?” Vic asked.
“He’s not with you? He didn’t show up for work. I figured you two were all cuddled up.”
“No,” Vic said, feeling himself blush as he walked toward his car. Jesse teased Vic any chance he got, especially about Adam. “Just remember that I didn’t ask you to hire him.”
Jesse hummed agreement. “Yeah, well, Wonder Bread is a wizard with engines.”
And a wizard in other ways, Vic thought, though he didn’t say it aloud. Adam was, for example, a very good kisser. He could also see spirits and astral project into their world. In their brief acquaintance, Adam had completely upended Vic’s reality.
“If I see him,” Vic said, “I’ll tell him to call you.”
“Aight.” Jesse hung up.
Vic started the car and drove south.
He considered himself a patient man. He’d taken getting shot in stride. He’d dealt with the idea that Death herself had picked him to be a Grim Reaper as calmly as possible. Now he was driving across town to check on a boy who wasn’t returning his calls. And damn if Adam Lee Binder didn’t test Vic to the point of cursing out loud and wondering if he should stick to dating girls.
Vic didn’t know what he and Adam were to each other. Boyfriends sounded immature, but Vic didn’t hate the term. There was an intensity between them that Adam said was just the magic that bound them together, but Vic disagreed. It ran deeper than that, at least for him. It was all very come here, go away—which wasn’t how Vic wanted this relationship to go.
Things were just starting to settle down.
He’d just gotten back to work, assigned to desk duty. His captain wasn’t in any rush to see Vic back on the beat after his partner had put a bullet in Vic before killing himself. To make it back to active duty, Vic had to make it over a fence. He could, but wasn’t supposed to be up for that yet, not so soon after being shot, so he faked it and waited.
Thinking about it still made him shudder. His entire life had changed in a day.
He’d learned magic was real. He’d become a Reaper, and he’d been saved by a frustrating boy whose ass he currently wanted to kick.
“Adam,” Vic whispered, reaching for the line inside himself, the magic that connected the two of them.
It had gotten fainter as Vic had gotten better, but sometimes it still thrummed.
Right now it felt cold, not cool or distant, just . . . blue. Adam was sad, heartbroken even.
Something had happened, something bad, and Adam hadn’t told Vic about it.
Vic kept his eyes on the road and tried to call Adam again.
Adam didn’t answer.
Vic drove to Dr. Binder’s house. If something were wrong, Adam’s brother might know what.
The problem was that being a Reaper hadn’t come with a manual or any kind of instructions. Vic couldn’t tell if Adam was just hurting for some normal reason or if something supernatural was up.
Adam didn’t feel scared or hurt, he was just grieving, deeply grieving. Vic knew it well. He’d gone through it with his dad’s cancer.
He’d had his job, something fresh to throw himself into.
Now, work was work, but being back, he’d started noticing things he hadn’t before, little things around the station that made him question if the force was still right for him. Vic couldn’t say if it was the shock of being shot or another side effect of finding out the world wasn’t what he’d thought.
At least this drive gave him something else to focus on.
Vic arrived in Highlands Ranch, a suburb he didn’t spend much time in. He’d been to the house for dinner once and over for a few other things. He liked Adam’s mom, probably more than Adam did.
Adam still held something against her, but Vic hadn’t pried into it yet.
Vic was trying to be careful, to go slow, but he wanted something to shift soon. He wanted some sign that he wasn’t alone in this. Vic hadn’t been dating much before Adam, and they’d all been girls. He could definitively say that no one else had his interest right now. The problem was that Adam thought all of the intensity and intimacy was about the magic. Vic didn’t agree.
Vic would normally feel like showing up unexpected was out of line, but Adam had skipped out on work. Jesse said that “Wonder Bread” was always on time like a good employee, so Vic felt justified in dropping by Dr. Binder’s house. He parked on the street.
Adam’s mother sat on the porch, a cigarette jabbed in her mouth, overseeing her little domain of perfect green lawn and suburban bliss like it didn’t impress her much.
Tilla smiled at Vic as he came up the walk.
She bore all the marks of a hard life, like the constant Oklahoma wind had ground her down, giving her a weathered dammit, I’m still here look.
Tilla’s hair had been dirty blond once, like Adam’s, but it was mostly gray now. Her eyes were brown where Adam’s were a rich blue that reminded Vic of the ocean on a sunny day. At least they did when he was happy. They darkened with anger or sorrow. Vic wondered what color they were right now.
The smoke from Tilla’s cigarette hazed the air. Vic had been more aware of scents and smells since he’d been shot. He wondered if it was the near-death experience or some side effect of becoming a Reaper.
Vic wouldn’t have minded having superpowers. It wasn’t like his new job required him to walk around in a black cloak carrying a scythe. The Reaper part of him was a lot like his connection to Adam: nebulous, down in his blood, like a root he had to dig for. He couldn’t turn it on at will.
“Mrs. Binder,” he greeted.
“Vincent,” she said, dropping her cigarette butt into a coffee can.
It wasn’t his name, but something about Tilla Binder made Vic feel like a nervous teenager, so he didn’t correct her.
