“I–” The two of us spoke at the same time. I motioned for him to go first.
“If you take this case to help the Nefesh community, our community,” he said, “I promise to treat you with the courtesy and respect you deserve.”
Priya returned with a steaming mug of coffee, her eyebrows raised at Levi’s words. She sat back down at her laptop, not even pretending to work. She sipped her drink and watched us like we were a mildly interesting movie trailer.
“Who would I report to?” I said.
“Me.”
Working directly for Levi. That oughta be interesting.
Nefesh had kept their abilities hidden for the first several hundred years. Witch hunt was an understatement. Not only was anyone suspected of having magic rounded up, tortured, and killed in gruesome ways, they took out the entire family for good measure. Eventually in the late 1800s the first Houses in Europe were founded. As a young country, Canada didn’t get Houses until after WWI. House Pacifica’s rule originally only included British Columbia, but during the latter part of the twentieth century, it expanded to include the Yukon, the Northwest Territories, and Nunavut, once that province was created in 1999.
Levi expanded it further in the first couple years of his leadership. He folded the weak House that governed Nefesh in the prairie provinces into House Pacifica, extending its rule from the west coast all the way to the Ontario border, where House Ontario took over, which ruled both Ontario and the maritime provinces. The third and final House in Canada was Maison de Champlain in Montreal, named after Québec’s founder, Samuel de Champlain. It governed all of Québec.
Geographically speaking, Levi was Head of most of the country, though he acted like he ruled the world.
Could I expense “body bag” as a line item?
“Let me be clear,” I said. “I am not your lackey or your employee. I am a free agent and not at your beck and call.” Modeling for Priya how to set boundaries.
He spread his thumb and forefinger slightly apart. “Little bit, you are.”
Pri smirked at me.
“Also, you’re going to train with me,” Levi said.
“Excuse me? No deal.” I wasn’t going to take a pounding from him on a regular basis. Argh. Phrasing!
“No? Call up your magic. Right here. Right now.”
“Okay, well. It requires blood.” I found a safety pin in my drawer and half-heartedly poked at my skin. Grimacing, I tried again. And again.
“I’m embarrassed for you.” Priya dug a letter opener out of her drawer. “Want me to try?”
“Hush you. Aha.” I managed the tiniest pin prick and then thought really hard at the drop of blood.
Nothing happened.
“The training is non-negotiable.” Levi put on his coat. “You’ve got powerful magic and no clue how to consciously control it. You hurt an innocent person and House Pacifica is on the line. Therefore, as the most powerful person in my House and the most capable of handling anything that goes sideways, I’ll train you.”
I opened a new tab on my computer, typed something in and spun it around to him. “Here. The definition of ‘respect,’ since you’re failing out of the gate.”
“I don’t want anything to happen to you either which is why I will personally oversee your training. Better?”
“Marginally.”
“That’s another thing. Don’t tell anyone about your magic,” he said. “Right now, it’s our element of surprise. I don’t want to blow that.”
“I signed the papers. My magic is going to be part of the House records as soon as one of your inspectors verifies it and determines how powerful I am.”
“And isn’t it too bad that the registration department has been swamped with a weeks-long backlog to process and who knows when that might happen?”
“Playing fast and loose with the rules? That’s so unlike you.”
“I do what I have to in order to protect my community. You in or not?”
“Fine. I’ll take the case.”
We shook on it.
“I’ll see you at HQ this evening at 8PM. And don’t be late.” Levi threw me a shark’s smile and gathered up his briefcase. “Welcome to House Pacifica.”
Chapter 7
After sharing half of the jelly doughnut with Priya, I set her searching for all missing persons’ records in the past six months across the country. If a pattern emerged, I could cross-check it against Nefesh heart attack victims and see if there was a conclusive tie.
Talia had left me a message saying that she saw me run out of the gala last night, that my entire behavior had been aberrant, and to call her. Fun as that sounded, my masochism quota for the day was filled by tonight’s training session.
I headed over to the youth shelter where Meryem stayed semi-regularly. It was a short walk away from the office, located in a drab concrete building in a part of the Downtown Eastside that had yet to feel the effects of gentrification.
The bright sunflower mural that greeted me inside the front doors didn’t make up for the eye-watering stench of burned coffee and wet dog. It was great that shelters like this existed and far better for the kids to be here than sleeping on the streets, but the line between this and slipping through the cracks once and for all was too damn thin.
The harried workers had little time to speak to me. Meryem had barely been missing a day, which in this world didn’t qualify as missing at all. These kids often weren’t seen for weeks at a time, plus this population was quite transient. I gave them my card and asked them to call if they heard anything.
The few kids hanging around the lounge eyed me suspiciously. I’d get no traction there.
I headed outside, looking around for the smoker’s hangout and some possibly more receptive–or bribable–kids, when I found something better: a small skatepark located a block over.
Vancouver had a fair number of these scattered around the city, though there wasn’t much to this one, only a couple of small skate bowls. Ignoring the riders pulling out their best moves, I scanned the edges of the park for a potential informant.
A kid squatted by a flight of stairs, a can of spray paint in hand. She had a partially shaved head, a short, stubby ponytail, and a giant Anarchy symbol sewn on her coat. Seemed like the kind of person who Meryem “Fuck the patriarchy” Orfali would be friends with.
I ambled over to her, watching her tag the stairs. “Malice in Wonderland. Clever.”
She filled in one edge, not bothering to look at me. “Fuck off.”
“I’m looking for my sister. Meryem Orfali. You know her?”
She stiffened, almost imperceptibly. “Nope.”
I squatted down next to her. “I get the whole freedom of expression angle and making art, but graffiti isn’t a victimless crime. It attracts other kinds of crime, makes residents feel unsafe, reduces property values, and drains tax dollars in clean up. It’s also considered property vandalism under Canadian law.”
She faced me for the first time. “What’s your point?”
I held out my hand for the can.
Scowling, she shoved it at me.
I shook the can, smiling at the familiar rattling sound. “Rusto fat cap, huh? You do a lot of bombing?”
Her eyes practically bugged out of her head. “Uh, yeah. It’s a pretty good nozzle for thickness and coverage.”
“Quicker fill-in, gets some nice flare on lettering.” I depressed the tip, falling back into the flow and strokes like I’d done this yesterday and not years ago. The fumes were both nauseating and comforting. “For me, it was about putting my mark on something. Leaving evidence that I existed.”
Everything I’d said about graffiti’s negative effects was true, and if I was caught, it could affect my P.I. license, but there were no cops around, and at the moment, the only thing concerning me was Meryem. If doing this got me my first lead, I’d risk it, because my gut was telling me that my missing person and these smudges were linked.
Besides, Levi could hire Graffi
ti Busters to remove this.
The rattle can was an extension of my hand, the letters blossoming into life.
“For me, it’s about leaving a message for someone else to know that they aren’t alone out there,” the girl said quietly.
“That too. I’d see someone’s tag and it was like getting a signal. So I’d answer back. Kind of a ‘hey, I’m out here.’” I lowered the can, nodding in satisfaction at my work: Baskervillain. The tag I’d gone by in my teens. A bit on the nose for a raging adolescent, perhaps, but subtlety was wasted on the young. This tag was a vast improvement over those first shaky ones and I puffed up at the form and ability that I displayed even after all this time.
But there was sorrow in viewing my work as well.
Tagging had been my way to connect to others in my dark years. I wasn’t sure how successful I’d been, because that anger and hollowness had lasted a long time, and maybe it never entirely went away. I was so lost in my thoughts I missed what the girl said.
“Sorry?”
“Meryem,” she said. “Are you really her sister?”
I shook my head. “I’m a P.I. Name’s Ashira.”
“Rebel.”
“Hey, Rebel. Good to meet you. I’m helping Charlotte Rose find her. She’s Meryem’s girlfriend.”
“The princess.” She shrugged. “Though she really cares about Mer.”
We sat down on a patch of grass, the spray can on its side between us.
“Did you see her last night?” I asked.
“Yeah. A bunch of us were hanging out here. Mer was killing time before she had to meet Charlotte Rose. Then this guy showed up. He was…” She frowned, struggling for the right word.
I gave her time, watching two dudes try and ride the rails, and wincing at their spectacular wipeouts. The sound of wheels over concrete was a soothing white noise. I’d never ridden myself, not with my leg, but I’d spent a lot of time in parks like this one.
“Intense,” Rebel finally said. “I’m used to dealing with pervs and druggies, but this guy was super focused. And he had a weird purple birthmark under his eye. Super creepsville.”
“What was he doing?”
“I dunno. Handing out flyers.”
“For what?”
“All-ages after-hours party he invited us to.”
“Did you go?” I said.
“Nah. We were chilling here.” She pulled a crumpled piece of paper from her jacket and handed it to me.
The flyer was written in crude marker and poorly photocopied. The only interesting part of it was a heart with a crown and scepter next to the words Queen of Hearts Productions.
“Was he ever around before?
Rebel shredded a few blades of grass. “Couple weeks ago? Pushing another party.”
“Anyone take him up on his offer?”
“I think Gabe did. Not sure. I haven’t seen him around since then.”
“Gabe usually pull disappearing stunts?”
She popped the lid on her spray paint can and shoved it in her pocket. “I’m not his babysitter.”
I waved a toonie, a Canadian two dollar coin, so that its edges glinted in the sunlight. Rebel’s eyes flicked to it. That’s right, look at the shiny and answer my questions. “How soon after Birthmark Man was here did Meryem leave?”
“About twenty minutes?”
Easy enough for him to have stuck around waiting for one of them to peel off on their own. His presence could be a coincidence, but I didn’t believe in coincidences when something bad was going down. Not coupled with Rebel’s sense of him and that rumor of Charlotte Rose’s about the pot-smoker being snatched. It could be an urban legend, but what if there was a grain of truth to it?
“You really think she’s missing?” Rebel said.
“I hope not. But if she is, I’ll find her.”
After I bought Rebel a hot meal, and snapped a photo of Baskervillain which I sent to Priya along with the message “amazed I didn’t choke on my own sense of cool,” I grabbed Moriarty and drove over to the party space, which was a glorified term for this rundown warehouse. Oddly, the lot was surrounded by security fencing with signs proclaiming that the grounds were patrolled twenty-four hours a day.
What was in here?
I strolled casually around the block sussing out any cameras. There weren’t any, though there was a freakishly tall guy in a jacket with West Coast Security emblazoned on the back. I couldn’t see his face, because his baseball cap was pulled low, but given his rigid stance, I’d bet he was ex-military.
Curious and curiouser.
Since I didn’t want to attract attention, I crossed the street to the grimy convenience store selling long distance phone cards and bongs, spending long enough browsing the chips display to note that the guard completed one circuit, including a walkthrough of the warehouse, every six minutes.
What a yawn-fest of a job.
As soon as the guard began the loop once more, I scaled the fence on the opposite side of the building in the alley, a three minute timer on my phone running. Half the loop. My leg barely even twinged climbing the chain fence thanks to the summer I’d spent breaking in to an outdoor public pool after hours.
By the time I hobbled across the yard to the back door of the warehouse, I was down to thirty seconds. The guard would be rounding the corner any second now.
I tugged on the warehouse door but it was locked, so I ducked behind a particularly odiferous dumpster, the hand that was clamped over my mouth and nose a futile gesture.
Seconds later, there was the jangle of keys and the creak of hinges. I waited until the last second to catch the door before it locked. Holding myself still until I heard the faint slam of the front warehouse door moments later, I slipped into the dim interior.
Spent glow sticks and discarded water bottles littered the floor with a couple of sagging couches in one corner. Between them and the grimy bathroom, they promised an interesting variety of STIs. I quickly moved to the small office with some battered office furniture. It didn’t contain a computer and the top drawer only had paper clips and a couple of loose orange wristband tickets. Printed on them was “A Night in Hedon,” with an H in a circle.
It teased out a half-buried memory of one of my parents’ rare fights. I’d been hiding in the shadows on the stairs outside my bedroom, listening to my father convince my mother that this trip to Hedon was absolutely necessary.
Mom had protested that it was too dangerous, but had finally acquiesced. Dad had come back missing a rib and Mom had given him the “told you so” silent treatment for a week. One thing about Dad, he could have gotten his way right from the start but he never used his Charmer magic on either of us.
I stilled. What if he had? Was he simply a Charmer running petty cons, or did he charm us into believing that’s all he was doing because there was something bigger at stake, like my magic? Was that why he’d disappeared? Was it because of me?
He wasn’t here to ask and now wasn’t the time to spiral out in guilt.
I blinked myself out of my stupor.
That had been the first time I ever heard of the Nefesh black market, but it wouldn’t be the last. Now it was my turn to visit Hedon and connect the dots between these parties and the black market itself. They could be merely borrowing the catchy name, but I doubted it.
A door slammed. Shit. The guard was back. Jamming the wristband into my pocket along with the flyer, I hid behind the office door, praying he wouldn’t come in and find me. His footsteps grew louder and louder, his boot heels echoing off walls.
Did my breathing always sound like Darth Vadar’s?
The footsteps paused directly outside the room.
I peeked out through the crack in the doorframe and stuffed my fist in my mouth to stifle a scream. Not only was he taller than I’d pegged–almost seven feet–the guard’s face was all wrong. His features were simplistic carvings in a clay face.
I fumbled for the switchblade in my pocket. Flicking it open, I pushed up m
y sleeve and nicked my forearm. Icy sweat trickled down my spine and I was assaulted with doubts of my ability to call my magic, but with the first bead of blood, I channeled my fear into a wordless command.
Nothing happened.
The guard pressed his abnormal face to the crack in the doorframe.
Swallowing hard, I pressed back out of his sight, weak with relief when the magic rose fast and furious inside of me.
With absolutely zero telegraphing, which was massively rude of him, the guard ripped the door off the hinges and grabbed me around the throat with his clay fist.
My brain stumbled on how smooth and glossy his fingers were. Also on the lack of oxygen. Stabbing him did nothing except score some marks on his clay skin.
The thing stared at me with a disquieting lack of interest and squeezed my windpipe harder.
The world tunneled down to black pinpricks; my lungs burned. I scrabbled on tiptoe against the ground and, fighting to stay conscious, pried his fingers off my throat.
A shaft of pain blazed up my injured leg when he dropped me, but I grabbed the discarded door and hurled it at him, loving this enhanced strength. The corner embedded right in his schnozz and I used the precious few seconds while he tugged it free to get a head start.
My magic hadn’t done shit for my speed, but I stayed a few feet ahead of the lumbering ape, though my shoulder blades prickled like mad and I tensed, bracing for another grab. I bolted out the back door and hurled myself over the fence, not stopping until I was safely inside Moriarty with all the doors locked.
My leg was screaming at me but it hadn’t given out and I was still alive. The best possible outcome. I popped some painkillers, then sat there, phone in hand, hesitant to search the net. Either there’d be no results matching what I’d seen, in which case I was going to feel incredibly foolish for imagining things or…
There were almost one hundred and fifty million search results for “living clay man.” I hit pay dirt on the eighth one.
A golem. I had seen a freaking golem.
How? And why? And most especially, what the fuck? Of all the things that had happened to me in the past couple of days, this was the one that broke my brain.
Blood & Ash: A Snarky Urban Fantasy Detective Series (The Jezebel Files Book 1) Page 8