by Chris Lowry
I fished up another and finally got a swallow of hops to celebrate my recent victory over a watery death.
I wouldn’t have died, because I can swim, and I’ve got magic, but there are life principles involved when one survives a trauma. One of them being a celebratory drink.
“So the vampire didn’t set us up?” I mused out loud. “Hell of a coincidence that it happened while we were down there.”
Kiko shrugged.
“Do you think there are no such things as coincidences?”
My turn to shrug back.
“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,” I said and took another sip.
Her eyes flicked to the water stains on my jacket.
“Out out damn spot.”
That earned a chuckle. I held out the bottle and she clinked the thick bottom of hers against mine with a satisfying dink.
“What now?” she glared in the direction the cloud had been, but only saw clear blue sky.
I shook my head. There was much to do and not enough known to do it.
And waiting around for something to happen was never a productive path.
Still, we needed information. More than we had.
“There’s a demon witch in town I have to stop,” I ticked off on one finger.
“There’s something hunting humans and pissing off the vampires,” I held up a second finger.
“And you need a shower,” she held up a third finger. “And a dry cleaner.”
She popped up all four fingers.
“We should focus on the most important thing first.”
“Find the witch,” I suggested.
“Find a shower.”
“I know who is hunting the humans,” said Elvis.
I cranked my head around and stared at him. He was perched on the trunk, feet in the back seat, man spread as wide as I had ever seen.
He looked confident and cocky and comfortable. And transparent even in the shadows.
“How do you know that?”
“Yurei,” Kiko whispered and made a gesture with her fingers.
“The woman you killed told me.”
“I didn’t kill her,” I snapped.
“Caused to die?”
“She was running from you.”
“She shouldn’t have been able to see me,” Elvis argued.
He tilted his head to one side.
“But did she?”
I nodded and finished the beer. Considered another and then slid it back into the slot on the cardboard carton. I’d save it for later.
“She looked at you, let out a yell and ran,” I told him.
“But why?” Elvis asked. “I look harmless.”
I shrugged.
“Because you’re a ghost?”
“Do you know who weird this is?” Kiko interrupted. “I’m watching you have a conversation with what looks like thin air.”
“Weird is my middle name.”
“Mine is Yukikuro,” she grinned.
“It was more than that. We need to find her,” he said.
I sighed. I put a lot of heart into that sigh. It was world weary and full of resignation and it sounded great.
“Number five,” I held up all five fingers to Kiko. “Ghost hunting.”
She shivered.
Then she held up number six.
“And the favor you owe me.”
I raised both eyebrows in a question. Raised them almost to my hat.
“Which is?”
“Priorities,” she said and started the car.
She passed me her half empty bottle.
“You need a shower.”
I finished her beer for her and slipped the empty into the slot next to mine.
Kiko pulled out across traffic and floored it for the Strip.
CHAPTER
We pulled in at the Bellagio and she traded her keys with a warning for another ticket.
Then it was another walk across a casino floor that ended at the elevators instead of a bar.
She stuck a key in a slot and we rode all the way up to a suite on the top floor. There were only four doors that branched off the shallow hallway.
She opened her room door and ushered me through.
“There,” she pointed and picked up the phone. “I need someone to pick up dry cleaning.”
I listened to her bark orders on the phone as I went in the direction she pointed.
The bathroom was as big as my apartment in Memphis. Marble walls, glass wall shower. Everything clean, pristine and modern.
I shucked my coat at the door and dropped my jeans and shirt on the marble floor.
The water turned hot three seconds after I turned it on. I carried a beer in with me and relaxed under the hot stream.
Kiko stepped in, scooped up my clothes without looking at me and disappeared before I could protest.
“Hey,” I said.
“While we’re ghost hunting,” Elvis said.
I’m not saying I jumped. But I did catch my bottle before it hit the floor and shattered. Fast reflexes. A Marshal trademark.
“I guess I should have known,” I said. “Couldn’t you stretch it out to the other side of the door or something? Give me some privacy?”
Elvis peered into the shower.
“It’s no big deal,” he said in a dry tone.
At least ghosts still had a sense of humor.
“You could at least turn around.”
So he did.
Upside down.
I gave up and lathered instead. Then I finished the beer and the shower at the same time and got out.
The towels were as thick as blankets and soft.
“Ghost hunting,” Elvis reminded me.
“Yes,” I agreed. “We’ll go find the woman ghost and you can tell me what she told you.”
“I will Marshal. It will help. But I want to do something first,” he tilted his head to one side. “Or at the same time, really.”
I wiped the steam on the mirror and ran fingers through my hair, combing it as well as I could.
Then I wet a rag and went to work on the Stetson. I wasn’t sure which dark stains were blood, or poo water so I cleaned them all and tried not to feel sad about it.
I had left the blood stains on the brim as a sort of badge of honor or reminder, and here I was washing them off.
I tried to think if it meant something, but it didn’t. Marshal’s died all the time. It was a dangerous line of work. We went up against black wizards and bad witches and all sorts of nasties.
There were a long line of men and women before me, and once I went down, there would be more after me.
Most Marshals of magic did not meet a silent end. Nor did they go quietly into that night.
There were bangs and booms and lots of blood. Usually.
“What do you want me to do Elvis?” I asked.
I owed him too. He was a ghost because of me.
“Marshal,” he said. He had a reflection in the mirror, but it was a faint outline in the fog, a shape in the steam that grew fainter as the room cleared. “The Flying Elvi need our help.”
CHAPTER
“What is a flying Elvi?” I asked only half listening to the ghost in the fog.
I opened the door and stepped into the room, followed by a cloud of steam that drifted toward the ceiling.
My clothes were gone. And so was Kiko.
“A group of Elvis impersonators who skydive,” said my Elvis as he floated through the wall and into the room to join me.
“Shouldn’t they be called the Falling Elvi, then?” I asked. “Technically, they’re not flying.”
“I think that’s the problem,” Elvis moaned. “Someone rigged their chutes.”
I sat on the edge of the bed and waited. Kiko probably took my clothes to go get them cleaned. I had heard her on the phone with the front desk, so I wasn’t too worried.
“How do you know this?”
He pointed a ghostly finger to the corner of our room. I stared
at the empty space.
“What am I looking at?”
“A half dozen impersonators,” Elvis sneered.
“I’m going to regret this,” I sighed and wiggled a finger. Just a twitch.
But it was enough to power a spell to reveal all corporeal and non-corporeal spirits in the vicinity.
Of which there were more than six.
“Liar,” I grunted.
Elvis shrugged.
“You wouldn’t have believed me if I told you,” he answered.
There were two dozen Elvis impersonators dressed in various stages of his career. Young rocker with blue suede shoes, black leather motorcycle jacket, the sequined jumpsuits in a variety of colors, sparkles and spangles.
The impersonators were stacked up on top of each other, floating against the wall, the ceiling, the window.
But I had to admire them for bunching up together, because they were giving me my space.
“I talked to them while you were in the shower,” Elvis told me as if he could pick up on my thoughts.
He wasn’t, he was just reading the room.
“Isn’t this a case for the cops?” I asked. “Sorry guys.”
The collected Elvi moaned in unison and then began to clamor all at once. My Elvis floated between them and me, hands held up for peace.
“I’ll talk to him, I’ll talk to him,” he reassured them, then spun around.
“The plane crashed,” he explained. “So they think it’s just a regular malfunction. Mechanical or some tragic accident.”
“But it’s not?”
Elvis shook his head accompanied by the moans of the rest. It was starting to grate on my ears, and I could feel a headache blooming from my jaw across the top of my head.
“Was it magic?” I asked the magic question.
The million dollar question. Elvis knew, and I knew there were things I could do, things I was allowed to do by Council law, and things I could stretch with the Judge’s edict.
But it had to be in our world.
And sad to say, a simple murder wasn’t. Often wasn’t. Even if there were two dozen victims.
The moans started up again, the clamor for attention and stating their cases finally turning my headache from a budding blossom into a full blown bloom.
“I’ll talk to him!” Elvis shouted at the ghosts.
A loud knock rapped on the door.
“Room service,” a muffled voice said.
I stood up and tucked the towel in tight.
“Besides,” I reminded him. “We have a job to do. Two jobs to do.”
“But after,” said Elvis.
“After, we have ten more demons and witches to track down,” I said, lowering my voice before I opened the door.
I didn’t want a waiter or delivery guy to hear the words and think the weirdo answering the door in his bath towel was, well, weirder than that.
But it was Vegas. I bet they had seen worse.
“Sorry about the towel,” I opened the door.
A body slammed into me and carried me across the room toward the window.
We were going to hit it, crash through and die.
I had a flash of empathy for the Flying Elvi watching from their perch in the corner of the room because I was going to end up just like them.
CHAPTER
Except I didn’t.
My dangling calves caught the lower mattress half way across the room and broke our momentum.
Instead of crashing through the glass and plummeting to my death, we slammed into the floor and it only hurt a lot.
The great thing about working with the Judge is the training. Benefits suck and every one in my line of work ended up dead. But he spent a lot of time training his Marshals not to die.
My magic had a special ability. I called it luck magic when I was feeling generous, and damned lucky when I wasn’t.
My feet hitting the bed was lucky. Landing on the floor with a snarling, slobbering, screaming something on top of me was not.
Claws ripped at my arms, teeth gnashed at my throat as we struggled on the soft plush carpet.
A lot of magic users have to use wands to focus their willpower and channel their power.
The Judge trained us to forgo the wand. To forget the elaborate hand waves, the dramatic gestures that indicated to anyone watching there was magic afoot.
He trained us to enforce through will alone, in silence. Which meant thought was action. Or in this case, magic in action.
The body on top of me spun around upside down and slammed into the wall where I pinned it.
“Toothless,” I said.
A second vamp sprinted through the door. Not quite as fast as Vega, but still just a blur.
I caught it out of the corner of my eye, threw up a shield spell and watched it bounce up and over against the window.
I pinned it too and backed up against the wall.
The towel was lost in the first tumble, but I didn’t care. I had to focus on keeping the two snarling creatures of the night frozen and watch out for what might come through the door to help them.
It was a vampire. Another vampire. I had a split second to wonder how they were out in daylight and then it was in front of me.
Long talons scratched against the invisible air in front of my face, my guts and nuts, the black eyes of the vamp red rimmed in rage.
“This is not going to end well,” I told them.
I shot a stake of air through Toothless’ chest and pinned him to the wall. He dissolved into a pile of ash, scream cut off as his lungs disappeared.
The second vamp against the window got it next.
Number three got scared. He tried to get gone, but the spike caught him in the back, and blew a pile of ash into the hall.
The force of the wind almost shut the door, but a tiny foot kicked it open.
Kiko stood there with dry cleaning in one hand and bag of take out in the other.
“What kind of parties are you throwing in here?” she asked and nudged the door shut behind her.
CHAPTER
I leaned against the wall and took a breath.
“Is it cold in here?” she smirked. “Let me turn the temperature up.”
I glanced down and went for the towel on the floor by the bed.
“The last guy that smirked at me like that,” I pointed to the thin layer of gray dust on the comforter.
“I was just looking out for your comfort,” she laid the clothes on the other bed and began to lay out cartons of Chinese food.
I picked up a pair of chopsticks, broke them apart and rubbed the ends together to smooth out the splinters. Then I grabbed the little square boxes and examined the goodies.
“You’re not going to ask about the vampire attack in the middle of the day?”
She shrugged her tiny muscular shoulders.
“There are a couple of things I might not have told you,” she said.
“You think?”
She grabbed a towel from the rod by the sink and brushed off the seat of a plush chair by the window. She folded her legs underneath her and tucked into a ginger beef.
“There’s a power struggle happening,” she said. “These guys worked for the guy who wants to take down Vega.”
I dusted off a chair of my own and tucked in with a box of garlic chicken. It seemed appropriate.
“You put me in the middle of a turf war?” I said around a mouthful.
“I’m just the driver,” she said.
“I don’t have time for a land grab,” I told her.
“Looks like you can handle it,” she nodded toward the two piles of dust.
“Besides the point. I’m here to find a witch-,”
“And solve a murder,” Elvis added.