Dead to Rites

by Ari Marmell

  They coulda chewed through the bedframe and the mattress to get to us if they’d meant to kill, but that woulda forced me to respond, shoot back no matter the risk. This? This was about keepin’ us pinned, so we couldn’t interfere.

  But interfere in what?

  Ain’t easy to tune out an a cappella trio of Tommies, especially when you got hearing sensitive as mine, but I buckled down and worked at it. Sure enough, there it was, just audible in the tiny gasps for air between slugs. Two voices, raised in competing chants.

  One of ’em was a tongue I’d never heard, but even if I hadn’t recognized Nessumontu’s raspy pipes, I’da pegged it as Ancient Egyptian.

  The other was Hebrew. And yep, I knew that voice, too, even though I’d only heard it the once.

  A few bits of translation started to filter through the cacophony in my noggin. An Egyptian god here, an Old Testament angel there, a whole heap of words of power.

  And I could tell without question, by the bitter tang of mojo in every syllable, the weight and flavor of the building magics, who was gonna come out ahead.

  Mighta been different if the royal stiff had been at the top of his game, insteada comin’ off a long stretch of being dead. If he’d been prepared and ready for this contest. If Fleischer hadn’t been studyin’ for this particular exam since before the pair of ’em ever met, hadn’t arrived bustin’ at the seams with protective wards already active.

  If he hadn’t been sharp enough to order his thugs to keep me from steppin’ in to lend a hand or a bit of luck.

  If, if, friggin’ if.

  A final torrent of lead from all three Tommies to keep us cowerin’, and a sudden surge of pure mystical power combined to ring my skull like a church bell. Even when the guns and the chanting fell silent and nothin’ remained but the fading sound of beating feet, it took me long seconds before I pulled it together enough to carefully peek up over the shredded mattress.

  Sure enough, nothin’ but an empty room and the sounds of screaming phone calls to the police from up’n down the hall. Fleischer and his boys were gone—and Nessumontu with ’em.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  “Heya, fellas. Nice evening, ain’t it?”

  The two ginks in question, both of ’em loitering around Baskin’s front porch, gave me a couple half-nods—one whole nod between ’em, I guess?—and heavy-lidded glowers. Other’n the colors of their coats and slouch caps, they more or less looked identical.

  They were also both cops. I’d hung around with Pete’n his fellows enough to recognize the look. Off-duty, but definitely bulls.

  Made sense, though. Where else was my favorite ASA gonna go for hirin’ some extra security? And I’d known well before I showed up that he would have extra security. It musta been one of the first things he’d done after my visit of… Lessee, I guess three nights ago, now.

  Since they didn’t appear inclined to say anythin’ in response, I went on.

  “You don’t mind if I just wander up and knock on the door, do ya?”

  “’Fraid we do,” the one on the left said.

  “Move on,” the other one added, openin’ his coat just enough for me to see he was packin’.

  Great.

  “Look,” I said, closing by a single step and keepin’ my mitts well out to my sides, “I just wanna—”

  They both moved, not toward as I mighta expected, and not back as though to clear themselves room to skin leather and start shootin’, but to the side. Away from each other.

  And somehow, even though I coulda come up with half a dozen different reasons for it, I just knew why.

  They were makin’ sure I couldn’t look one of ’em straight in the eyes without turnin’ my back to the other.

  I couldn’t guess just how much Baskin had told them, or what they’d believed of it, but they were takin’ his instructions serious enough. I was gonna hafta add “keepin’ other people’s secrets” to the list of topics I wanted to jaw with him about.

  I watched both of ’em, the stubble on their chins and the whites of their blinkers bathed in waves of light from passing flivvers on the street behind me. Their shadows danced over the front of the house, walkin’ patrol even while the guys themselves stood still.

  “I’m not here to cause any trouble, dammit. I just need to talk to Ramona Webb. She’s a… friend of Mr. Baskin’s. She may be here, and if she ain’t, he’ll know where I can reach her. That’s it.”

  “Leave now,” the second one growled at me, “or trouble’s what you’re gonna have, want it or not.”

  Another car passed, slightly out-of-tune engine rattling our teeth as it passed, and this time the light lingered on the two bulls a little longer. Guess the driver slowed, wantin’ to see what was goin’ on with we three ginks standin’ around on the lawn.

  And that right there was my answer.

  I grinned, makin’ real sure it was broad enough they could see my pearly whites in the glint of the house lights.

  “All right. Say we got trouble. What then?”

  Thankfully, they didn’t blink quite in unison. That woulda been too much. Definitely wasn’t the response they’d been expectin’ though.

  “We got ourselves three possibilities.” I raised three fingers on one paw, started tickin’ ’em off with the other. “First—and by far the most likely, even though you’re gonna be too proud to believe it—is I put you both down and go knock on the damn door anyway.”

  They both puffed up at that, but I went on before they could interrupt.

  “Second, and least likely, is you put me down and arrest me, but not without a long scuffle that’s gonna leave the both of you black’n blue for a good long while—and that’s gonna be a loud enough to pull every one of Baskin’s neighbors to the window.

  “And third is that, after a while of what looks like option one or option two, one of you pulls a gat and shoots me. At which point you’re gonna have a lot more of the neighbors running to either the window or the horn, and you’n Mr. Baskin are gonna be up to your neck in questions.”

  It was the first cop who responded.

  “Look, bo, just move along, wouldja?” It was closer to a plea than an order this time.

  I didn’t. I wasn’t done.

  “Option one ends the same as if you’d just let me go on by—for me, anyway. Not so comfortably for you. You figure out what the other two options got in common?” I didn’t wait for ’em to answer. “Attention. A lot of it. Attention that ain’t gonna do you two, and sure as shootin’ ain’t gonna do Baskin, any good at all.

  “So, how about this? One of you stays out here with me, to make sure I’m bein’ a good boy, and the other can go on up to the house and explain to Miss Webb or Baskin—like I just explained to you—why they really oughta offer me a few minutes of their time.”

  I won’t go into the runnin’ back and forth or the exchange of messages that followed, but the end result was the two goons retreatin’ to the front room, where they could keep a slant on us from between the curtains, while me’n Ramona gabbed for a bit on the front lawn.

  “You have a real knack for making a nuisance of yourself,” she accused me.

  “I should hope so. I been practicing.”

  To that she just grunted and fidgeted a bit, fingering the fabric of her skirt. Definitely right on the edge; she musta been seriously tired. I mean all in.

  “No luck finding the mummy, huh?” I asked her.

  She hissed at me.

  “Nope. You don’t get to be steamed at me for diggin’ him up first. Not after the horse shit you pulled with the wrapping.”

  “We had to make sure you didn’t find—”

  “Save it sister. It don’t matter now, anyway. Guess you’ve heard about the ‘showing’ comin’ up?”

  She sighed, nodded. “Yeah. We’ve heard. Daniel’s in a panic trying to figure out what to do about it.”

  That’s what I’d spent the last couple of days on, see? Well, not all of the last couple days. First t
here’d been an hour or two spent makin’ sure Tsura was okay. I mean, girl had plenty of tough, more’n most people I knew, but she’d never been shot at before, let alone by a trio of choppers from across the damn room. Ain’t any amount of tough makes you ready for your first Chicago lightning-storm.

  Except… She was more or less fine. Shaken up, some, but nothin’ more.

  I couldn’t explain it. She couldn’t explain it. Somethin’ about her gift, telling her she’d be okay? Hadn’t stopped her bein’ scared when the lead was flying. Somethin’ else?

  I didn’t understand that girl.

  But she’d gone back to the carnival to recuperate for a bit, surrounded by familiar sights’n sounds’n people—and maybe to keep her job, since I still didn’t know what excuses she’d been givin’, or how patient Rounser actually was. Me, I’d set out to learn what was goin’ down, and where.

  And why. Fleischer couldn’t make a damn bit of use outta Nessumontu’s spells, so why…?

  I’d been stompin’ along the sidewalk, dodging other pedestrians and kickin’ old, greasy napkins off my Oxfords while I pondered. The day was warm, the breeze was gentle, and I didn’t give a fig for any of it due to the gray skies and thunder in my thoughts. I nearly bumped headlong into a passel of schlubs headin’ out to lunch, lurched to a stop ready to shout somethin’ more or less obscene at ’em, and it was right then I noticed the building they were leavin’.

  A bank. They worked at a bank.

  That’s when it all hit me like a fallin’ piano. Made of anvils. And I did spend a good couple minutes muttering some vile curses, imprecations, and profanities—in about half a dozen languages—but all directed at me, not the folks I’d just about run into.

  Because I’d done it again, without even realizin’ it. Even after gettin’ fixated on the idea of Goswythe, and warnin’ Tsura not to get locked into any one angle when studying the situation, I’d gone and done it myself.

  All this time—from the moment I’d first suspected Fleischer’s involvement, let alone confirmed it—I’d been huntin’ for a motive rooted in the mystical. The motive of an occultist. But Saul Fleischer wasn’t just an occultist: first and foremost the mug was a gangster. Alla his skills in magic, his occult knowledge, were tools in his criminal cupboard, not an end unto themselves.

  Which meant I shoulda been lookin’ for the usual gangster motive: money.

  Fleischer never intended to keep the damn mummy, but to sell him!

  Once that little piece finally fell into place, at least I had a handle on what needed doing next. It took time and a lotta burnt shoe leather, but it was just a matter of tracking down how and where the sale was gonna take place. Sure, Fleischer’d wanna be careful who got wind of it, but the word hadda get out through Chicago’s magical community. Don’t do anybody any good to sell somethin’, no matter how valuable, if none of the potential buyers know about it, you dig?

  So yeah, I’d tracked down Four-Leaf Franky, who knew a guy, who knew another guy, who’d heard of a girl, who knew of a non-human thing, who knew a guy… Took the better part of a day and a half, but I’d finally tumbled to the time and place.

  And then I’d come here, lookin’ for Ramona, which brings you pretty well up to date.

  “Well, Daniel’s gonna hafta be disappointed,” I told her. “See, you’re gonna be there to help me recover Nessumontu. Or, well, I guess ‘rescue’ might be a better word. Important part, though, is helping me. Not Baskin.”

  She laughed softly. “Mick, you know I still care for you, and if I could help you both, I would. But—”

  I looked around, edged a couple steps to my right as though I was fidgeting. I mean, she knows I don’t fidget, but the show wasn’t for her.

  “No ‘but,’ doll. If you’re there, you’ll be backin’ me up.”

  Dunno if it was just my tone or if she caught the “if” buried in there, but her expression cooled by thirty degrees or more.

  “And why will I be doing that, exactl—?”

  I had my wand in my hand before the “y,” and because I’d made a point of “accidentally” puttin’ her partly between me’n the window, I was pretty sure nobody inside the house had seen me draw.

  “Because I am completely fucking through playing games with you, Ramona.” The porch light dimmed, then—just a little, since we were a ways away, but neither of us missed it. I felt the lawn pressin’ against the soles of my shoes, tryin’ to writhe, and the grass around me turned a late-spring green even as it flattened, caught in some unseen storm. I wasn’t quite as near losin’ control as I was lettin’ on, but Ramona hadda know I was serious.

  And maybe I wasn’t as far from losin’ control as I’da preferred.

  “This is only happenin’ because bastards like Fleischer and Baskin can’t keep their mitts offa what ain’t theirs, and Baskin’s only a player because of you. I mighta gotten to Nessumontu in time, warned him off or found him before Fleischer did, if you hadn’t sicced that damn mob on me! Pete’s in danger because McCall knew about my connection to you—and I had no clue what I hadda protect myself against because you could never be bothered to tell me what the fuck you are.”

  “Mick—”

  “So you are going to help me put this right, Ramona—you are going to do everything I need you to do, to make sure nobody walks away with Nessumontu, your boss absolutely included—or so help me, I swear by my ancestors and every last one of the Tuatha Dé Danann that I will deliver you giftwrapped to Carmen McCall or die trying!”

  Everything the two of us had been through together, I’d never seen her make anything even close to an expression like this one. I read a dozen conflicting emotions on her map, tasted ’em in her aura—but more even than that, I saw her own control startin’ to slip. Her features were shiftin’ beneath her skin—subtle, slow, unnoticeable to anyone without my senses—and I saw the shoulders of her dress bunch and fold as she struggled to keep webbed, barb-tipped wings from sprouting across her back.

  “You’d really do this?” I swear I heard two or three different voices in her words.

  “I don’t make an oath like that one for funsies, sister.”

  “And are you so damn sure I can’t put you down, Mick?”

  She clenched her fists, opened up wide—and her fingers were tipped not with nails, now, but black and pitted talons.

  I tightened my grip on the L&G.

  “Maybe you can. But not without takin’ a whole mess of hurt in the process. Even if you do beat me, even if you croak me, you’re gonna be suffering for a good long while afterward. And when I go missing? McCall’s gonna come for you herself, and you ain’t gonna be in any state to fight her off, not after tusslin’ with me. I may lose, Ramona, but you can’t win. Not by fightin’ me, you can’t.”

  I wondered at first if she wasn’t gonna test me on that score. One more surge of leather and bone movin’ under her clothes, one sharp screech as talon scraped against talon… Then both were just gone, and it was Ramona—just Ramona, as she’d looked the day we met—standing in fronta me.

  “Goddamn you, Mick. This isn’t you. I can’t believe—”

  “Don’t. Just don’t. You started this, and my best friend’s payin’ the price. You get zilch for sympathy from me now. I don’t want this, but don’t think for a second I ain’t serious.”

  “I don’t.”

  She hung her head, scarlet locks fallin’ in front of her face, though whether any of it was genuine or if it was more of her “woe is me” human act, I wouldn’t begin to guess.

  “All right. What do you want me to do?”

  “First off, don’t breathe a word of this to Baskin. Not just for my sake, either. You do, he’s gonna order you to do somethin’ dippy that we’re both of us gonna regret, see?”

  “Yeah. I see.”

  On that, at least, I could probably trust her. If she decided to move against me or put her own spin on what I told her to do—and I’m not dumb enough to assume she wouldn’t—she
’d wanna be able to choose her own time, her own tactics. Baskin? He still didn’t really comprehend the waters he swam in. She didn’t want him callin’ her play any more than I did.

  As to the rest? Well, I just hadda hope I could either keep her on board with the plan, or anticipate what she’d do when she veered off-script.

  “So,” I told her, “here’s what we’re gonna do…”

  * * *

  “Wow. Looking pretty sharp there, Mick,” Tsura said as I stepped outta the bathroom. I’d known she was there; I heard her come into the office while I was adjustin’ my tie in the mirror.

  What, did you think I only had cheap, wrinkly glad rags? Most of ’em, sure, but I own a nice suit or two for special occasions.

  “Thanks, doll. You, too.”

  She really did.

  The deep blue number, with broad sleeves and a slim skirt, wasn’t exactly formal, but it was close; damn sight fancier’n anythin’ I’d seen her in before. She cleaned up nice, a lot nicer’n you’d expect if you only ever saw her in her gypsy fortune-teller getup. Tsura was never gonna stop the conversation when she sauntered into a room the way Ramona did, but she was definitely the kinda gal you’d remember afterward, that’d make you wonder if you’d been focused on the wrong dame.

  Tsura’s answerin’ smile was almost bashful, as was the way she ran her palms down the sides of her skirt. I dunno how much of that was in response to the compliment, small and casual as it was, or to what she said next.

  “Mick, I’m… The other night…”

  “We been through this,” I said, slidin’ my wand into the holster and makin’ sure it didn’t throw off the lines of this swankier coat too bad. “There’s nothin’ to apologize for.”

  “I should’ve seen them coming sooner. And I wasn’t much good once the shooting started.”

  “You warned me before they showed, gave me time to not get my spine blown to pieces. That’s good enough for my book. After that, hell, anybody woulda been scared. I ain’t that easy to bump off, and I been shot at more times than I can count, and I was scared.” Well, a little.