What Man Defies

by Clara Coulson

  “I have a few suspicions, but I want some confirmations before I start spouting my theories.” I dug my chit bag from my coat pocket and plucked out a few ten-chit pieces, sliding them across the table to Granger. “Get us a couple drinks, will you? I’ll have whatever’s on tap.” I looked to Odette. “You?”

  She hesitated, debating whether to accept a drink from me. At last, she said, “I’ll have the same.”

  Granger was annoyed at being the errand boy, but he snatched the chits and left the booth without a word. I figured he didn’t want to seem whiny when sitting right next to his boss.

  Mallory, who’d been ruminating in her stuffy corner since I sat down, took a deep breath and said, “So, I don’t know much about magic. Before we talk any more about the plan, could you possibly explain the difference between a track and a trace?”

  “A track—” Odette and I started in unison.

  We paused and held each other’s stare for a moment.

  Then I gestured for her to continue, which she did, smirking between words.

  “A track tells you where something is going, while a trace tells you where something has been. These both contrast with scrying, which shows you the location of a static target.”

  “I see,” Mallory said. “That’s interesting. So we’re using a trace tonight, you said? To find out where the ghost of the victim came from?”

  “Right.” I gave her a thumbs-up. “You got it.”

  Granger returned with the drinks and handed them off to us. “Don’t know if this is relevant,” he said as he sat back down, “but I heard some guys up near the bar talking about Joe Shark. I think he might be in the building right now. He conducts business here a couple nights a week.”

  Saoirse said, “You sat on the place for a stakeout once, yeah?”

  Granger nodded. “Last year, when we thought Shark was good for a double murder. Real culprit turned out to be Pattie Reiss, the drug lord, but we gathered a lot of good info on Shark’s operations during the investigation.” He pointed to the ceiling. “He’s got a soundproof room upstairs where he conducts, among other things, ‘interviews’ with people trying to cut in on his turf.”

  Odette hissed, “Are you saying a mobster tortures people right above our heads?”

  Granger raised his hands. “Hey, that’s hardly the worst thing these mafia types do.”

  “And what’ll he do to us when we bind a ghost in the middle of his bar?” Odette asked.

  “Guess we’ll find out,” I said.

  “Oh, wonderful.” She snatched her beer glass and chugged a third of its contents.

  “How long do you think it’ll take before somebody throws a punch?” Saoirse asked me.

  I took a few seconds to gauge the atmosphere of the room. Relatively subdued, but there were a few tables whose occupants were tense enough to burn like kindling if they were provoked in the right way. “We can hurry it along, if you’d like.” I tasted my own beer. About two steps above toilet water. I missed Flannigan’s already. “In fact, given how fast the missing seem to be turning into the dead, we might want to rush this as fast as we can without majorly screwing up. Even if the end result is a little dirty and ragged around the edges. I’m concerned that something might’ve been set in motion today, since the Sluagh just started appearing this afternoon.”

  “Some kind of slaughterhouse, you mean.” Saoirse gripped her mug tightly. “What do you think they’re doing with these poor people?”

  “I have no idea. Not yet. But I’m damn well going to find out.” I nodded to a particular booth, where four men in suits looked to be about five minutes from pulling pieces from their bulging suit jackets. “Do I have your permission to engage, Lieutenant?”

  “You’re actually asking?”

  “Well, you’re in charge after all.” I winked. “I’m just a consultant, remember?”

  Saoirse grinned. “You have a go, Mr. Whelan.”

  “Awesome.” I tapped Odette on the shoulder. “Might want to sit back.”

  She plastered herself to the torn faux-leather cushion, lips pursed. “This ought to be good.”

  I focused on the table with the suits, who were steadily becoming more aggressive with each other. Their business deal was going south. And I was about to nuke it.

  I drew some energy from my well and guided it from my feet into the floor, then across the room until it reached the base of my target table, where I coaxed it to creep up the central leg, like vines growing around a stone column. When it hit the underside of the table, I split it in two directions, so that a line of energy bisected the fake-wood slab. With a muttered invocation, I brought up an invisible partition, like the one I’d used to block the smoke, except substantially stronger. Finally, from the underside of the table, I tugged out yet another thread of magic from the vines wrapped around the leg, drew it back like a slingshot, and released it.

  The table rocked like somebody had screwed up drawing a gun.

  All four men at the table went for their weapons, and one of them got off a shot in a cool second. Luckily for the guy sitting across from him, my shield spell caught the bullet and suspended it in midair for a moment, before it rebounded off and plinked across the table. The men stared at the bullet as it rolled off the edge of the table and bounced away across the floor.

  The revelation that someone was using magic hit them all like a speeding train. Thing was, they thought someone at their table was the culprit. And for some reason, appeared to believe that while guns could be subverted with magic, fists couldn’t be.

  Because they clambered out of the booth and started throwing punches.

  One guy in a blue suit picked up a smaller man in a gray suit and slung him ten feet across the room. He landed on top of a table populated by gruff men in leather jackets, which overturned and spilled half a dozen plates and beer mugs on the floor. The men at the table leaped up and zeroed in on the scuffling suits. And all of a sudden, there were ten people brawling in the middle of the room instead of four. Kicks connected with legs, cracking kneecaps. Punches collided with noses, crushing cartilage. Somebody drew a knife and slashed a suit across the cheek, blood slinging through the air.

  Everyone who wasn’t involved and didn’t want to be either crawled underneath their tables or ran for the exit. Everyone who wanted a piece of the action, just because, took their time to analyze the layout of the fight, looking for an opening where they could do real damage to any of the people who had so rudely interrupted their dinners and drug deals.

  One of the suits, hobbling with a bum leg and about to be pummeled by two guys with fists the size of his head, decided to try his gun again as a last-ditch effort. He shot a warning round into the ceiling, plaster raining down, and shouted, “Nobody move!”

  And that was when the ghost of Tristan Weatherby appeared.

  Chapter Seven

  “Huh,” I murmured, “that worked even better than I thought it would.”

  “Are you kidding me?” Odette hissed. “We could’ve gotten shot.”

  “You could’ve gotten shot just by walking through the door,” Saoirse pointed out. “Everyone in this room is a criminal.”

  “We can argue later, guys,” I said. “Let’s focus on our new ghost friend for now.”

  Weatherby had been a forty-year-old defense lawyer. His ghost wore the same sharp suit he had in the courtroom, all the way down to the gold tie clip glinting with a spiritual manifestation of a diamond. But whereas the living Weatherby had doubtlessly been a snake-tongued master of law interpretation, cool and collected and self-assured as he sauntered between judge and jury, his soul was currently a warped wreck of a man, face twisted into a sneer of deep-rooted fury.

  Weatherby raised his hands, and five tables in the room flew up to surround him, food and drink raining down onto the defenseless patrons below. Someone took a mug to the head and dropped like a rock. His face landed in the remains of a salad. A woman tattooed neck to wrist ripped a knife from her belt and
held it in front of her, shaking the shoulder of her fallen friend as he slurred words into the lettuce.

  Weatherby didn’t spare the woman a second glance. Instead, he set his sights on the six people in the room who were dumb enough to point guns at a ghost. He clenched his fists. The tables hovering around him began to violently shake, splitting and cracking and finally breaking apart, giving Weatherby not just five tables to throw at people, but about forty projectiles of various sizes. Any of which could crush a skull or a ribcage if thrown at the right speed. As Weatherby’s fingers began to dance, the pieces moving to his tune, he let out a shriek of rage that I took to be a confirmation he could indeed throw those projectiles at the right speed.

  “Time to intervene.” I grabbed my backpack and nudged Odette. “Out of the way please.”

  Odette slunk out of the booth and squatted beside the table. Whispers on her tongue as she conjured up her own magic. A faint green aura forming around her fingers. I didn’t know if she was planning to protect herself or the others at the table, but it didn’t matter. Weatherby wasn’t going to get very far in his quest to bludgeon everyone to death. Because I’d already figured I’d need to bind him in no time flat to make sure he couldn’t cause more damage than Joe Shark’s pocket change could cover.

  Anderson and Company’s proprietor could thank me later.

  I whistled a high note, getting Weatherby’s attention. About twenty pieces of the broken tables turned my way as the ghost’s head did. I waved in response. “Hey there, angry ghost man. You got a minute to talk about your kidnapper and killer, possibly the banshee with the metal arm, or possibly an age-old god with a vendetta against me?” As I spoke, I subtly unzipped the bag enough to allow its payload to exit on command. “I know it’s not your lucky day, but if you’d be so kind as to give me your last will and testament, along with a play-by-play of everything that happened after you got grabbed a few weeks ago, I’d really appreciate it. What do you say?”

  Weatherby glared at me for a second. Then he screamed.

  My ears were still healing though, so I didn’t flinch.

  “Sorry to hear that, pal,” I continued. “Guess we’ll have to do this the hard way.”

  Weatherby wound back his arm, preparing to launch a field of wooden asteroids at me. Everyone in the booth, Saoirse included, ducked under the table like they actually thought I was going to let Weatherby attack me.

  I was kind of insulted.

  Oh, ye of little faith.

  I threw the backpack. It landed on its side, underneath Weatherby’s feet, with the open section pointing upward. Since I’d already spoken the invocation for this spell, and had been holding the final activation key, a tiny piece of fox bone, in the thumb of my glove the entire time, all I had to do was snap my fingers and inject a tiny spark of magic. Like a detonator had been pressed, the objects inside the backpack exploded out of the opening.

  They unfolded themselves from a tangled mass into a perfect circle and landed on the floor that Weatherby had so helpfully cleared of tables. The second the last white candle touched down, all five candles lit themselves simultaneously. And that caused the twine strings binding the candles together to flare with a light blue glow. And that caused the little leather pouches, filled with things that would make most people vomit, to disintegrate into ash. The resulting clouds arched up and wrapped around Weatherby. One on each arm, one on each leg, and one around his neck: magical shackles.

  The ghost was yanked down into the circle, and when he hit the floor, the glow of the twine strings turned a darker shade of blue, indicating the intended captive was now firmly bound inside the circle. Weatherby thrashed and attempted to launch his table shrapnel at me, but the suspended pieces didn’t so much as budge. Any poltergeist activity a ghost was causing when it entered this type of binding circle was put on hold. The pieces just stayed motionless in the air, no longer a threat to anyone.

  I peered over my shoulder at Odette, who was gaping at the circle. “Cool trick, huh?”

  She sputtered. “How did you make it unfold like that, with the whole thing already constructed?”

  “Maybe if you actually make an effort to befriend me,” I said, “I’ll tell you sometime.”

  Her astonishment morphed into irritation. “I can’t befriend you if I don’t like you.”

  “Oh, you’d be surprised at the things you can do if you put your mind to it.”

  “Fuck you,” she muttered.

  “And you also.” I shoved my hand into my coat pocket and pulled out another length of twine. The two ends of the piece had been soaked in a mixture of liquids that would kill you if inhaled. But sometimes, magic demanded you take great risks for even greater rewards. “For real though, in case something goes wrong, guard Saoirse and the detectives while I’m working the trace.”

  “Hey,” Odette said, “I’m not your sidekick.”

  “Would you rather I designate you my henchwoman?”

  She didn’t answer. I assumed that was a no.

  “Sidekick it is then.”

  Ignoring all the curious and baffled stares that were glued to my face, I crossed the bar and situated myself in front of Weatherby’s ghost. He was still struggling to free himself from the ash bindings, but it was useless. As good as he was at telekinesis, ghosts didn’t really possess many other abilities. Possession was reserved for a different breed—literally, the Sluagh couldn’t do it—and since ghosts had no tangible forms, they couldn’t use magic in conventional ways, even if they’d been proficient practitioners in life. So all Weatherby could do was snarl as I sat at the edge of the circle and wrapped one end of the twine string around my finger.

  “I’m not going to promise this won’t hurt,” I said, low and soothing, “because I’ve never done it before. But I’m fairly certain that if it does hurt, I’m the one who’s going to be feeling the burn. All you should experience is a trip down memory lane, which can’t traumatize your soul more than it already has.” I held up my hand and spoke the first line of the invocation. The length of twine whipped up into the air, tethered only by the tie around my index finger. “And hey, I know you’re really suffering right now, and you probably can’t comprehend a word I’m saying because of the immense turmoil resonating through you, but I feel compelled to tell you that it’ll get better.”

  I spoke the second line of the invocation, and the curling twine in the air stretched out into a straight line, crossing into the circle and plunging into Weatherby’s ghostly visage. “It will get better. I promise. As soon as I banish you from this world and send you to the afterlife, everything will get better.”

  Behind the unbridled fury rampaging in his liquid brown eyes, I thought I saw a fleeting spark of comprehension. But it could’ve just been my imagination, trying to make me feel better about violating all that remained of a man who’d already suffered a gruesome fate. Either way, I felt a sense of solace in my chest, cold and calming, as I spoke the third line of the invocation.

  The twine between us glowed blue, and the world around me went white.

  Emotions assaulted me. Raw. Unbridled. A rage so overpowering, it nearly made my heart stop. A fear so unfathomably deep, I felt as if I was standing on the edge of a cliff, looking down into an endless black pit. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe. I was sure I was going to suffocate. Sure I had performed the trace spell wrong, and the backfire was crushing my soul.

  But then, the emotions ebbed into something more recognizably human. More constrained. If not more stable. And as the white purgatory around me began to dissolve, revealing shadows and shapes, and my thoughts fought off the lingering pressure of those horribly intense feelings, I finally realized what it was I’d just experienced: Tristan Weatherby’s death. The emotions he’d experienced as his soul was detaching itself from his body. With his brain no longer constraining his soul, his emotions had no limits. There were no neurotransmitters in a soul. There was only emotion, pure and unlimited, or its absence.

&n
bsp; Weatherby had died angry and scared. I was about to find out why.

  My trace spell only allowed me to witness where an object had been in the past day or so, but that was all I needed in this case. To see where in the Otherworld Weatherby had been taken, and possibly see what the banshee or someone else had done to him to cause his death. Weatherby’s own senses were going to show me these things now, as the trace was rewinding back to a point shortly before he died.

  The last of the purgatory faded, color bleeding in, and I found myself surrounded by a dark and gloomy world. Weatherby was lying on the ground, and I could feel echoes of his physical pain. He was holding his arm before his face, and his hand was covered in blood. A lot of blood. He was bleeding to death. But as the trace ticked backward, the hand fell to his gut—where the fatal wound was—and then Weatherby spun around quickly and rose back to his feet, the exact opposite of the way he’d fallen. The second he was back on his feet, something flashed through his peripheral vision. Some kind of blade glinting in the dim light. It cut directly in front of him—no, through him. It sliced him open. It disemboweled him.

  Since I was watching events in reverse though, I didn’t have to see Weatherby die twice. The trace pushed the timeline back and back and back. Weatherby climbing over jagged obsidian jutting out of the ground, slicing his palms in the process. Weatherby stumbling across a rocky field, where he passed the body of the ghost from the market. That poor man had been run through with a javelin.

  Finally, Weatherby’s memory took me to what appeared to be a starting line. Literally. There was a white chalk line drawn across the black earth. Behind that line were humans sitting on their hands and knees, staring at the ground, forlorn. Some of them were crying. Some of them had that vacant look of trauma-induced dissociation. A few were praying. And almost all of them could be matched to one of the photos I’d seen on O’Shea’s board.

  There they were. The abduction victims. All the ones who were still alive at the time Weatherby had gone on his death march.