by Paul Neuhaus
Darren’s hand came around his back. He grabbed Henaghan and pushed her to the left. We’re doing this, and be ready, the gesture said.
Taft took a few steps toward Sato. “Ha ha ha,” he said, not laughing but pronouncing the words. “Look we could get into the whole my-dad-could-beat-up-your-dad dick measuring thing, I guess, but I don’t wanna. Here’s how I think this should go…”
Sato looked at Taft, amused.
“I’m gonna go around you on the right,” Darren went on. “My right, your left. After that, I’m gonna get in my Torino and I’m gonna drive out of here. You’ll notice that, when I’m gone, they’ll be no one standing between you and the girl. How does that sound?”
What the fuck? Quinn thought. Is he really going to double-cross me?
Chuck reached into his jacket pocket with practiced casualness. From it he withdrew a silver cigarette case. He placed another cigarette in his mouth and left it there, unlit. “How does it sound? It sounds cowardly, Darren. It sounds cowardly, but smart.” The two men stood watching one another until Sato finally made his intent specific. “Fuck off then,” he said.
Without saying a word to Quinn, Darren walked diagonally toward his car. With him out of the way, Sato turned to Henaghan. “We’ll leave your ride,” he said. “Mr. Verbic wants to speak to you personally, so you’ll come with me in the Cadillac.”
As soon as he was past Sato, and Sato was distracted by Quinn, Darren Taft raised his hands and projected fire from them both. The flames interwove to form a dense jet of heat. The burning cloud enveloped the Asura. For a breathless moment, Sato was nothing more than a black shape in a bright curtain of heat and destruction.
Henaghan wasn’t going to waste this opportunity. She ran diagonally toward the Prius.
But then the dark shape inside the fire raised its arm with a jerk. The arm stopped when it was parallel with the ground. An invisible wall of force struck Taft, sending him hurtling twenty feet into his car. He slumped against the Gran Torino. The impact had doused the flames erupting from him and Chuck Sato was no longer enveloped.
Sato was completely undamaged. Only one thing had changed: his cigarette was now lit. The Asura’s arm was still straight. He flicked his hand and from it leapt an indistinct ring. When it reached Taft, it snapped open, went around his throat and snapped closed. Only after it stopped moving did Quinn see it was a ring of barbed wire. Raising his hand again and snapping his fingers, Sato made the ring tighten. His intent was to snap off Taft’s head.
But Darren hadn’t been idle. He’d thrown up a spacer, a doughnut of translucent energy between his skin and the barbed wire. The strain of keeping Sato’s weapon away from his windpipe was causing Taft to spasm and wheeze. His face was crimson.
Meanwhile, Quinn Henaghan had stopped halfway between her motel room door and her Prius. Chuck Sato dropped his arm to his side and turned to regard her. With his other hand, he took a drag from his cigarette, exhaled a white cloud, and replaced the butt back into his mouth.
Taft saw that Quinn had stopped. His eyes were large with disbelief and anger. With his irises and a couple of head cocks, he gestured for her to make a run for her car.
She didn’t make a run for her car. She looked at Darren. She looked at Sato. She looked back at the motel. People were coming out of their rooms. A guy on the second floor had his cellphone out.
Everything was in slow motion. There was no sound.
Quinn lashed out.
A curtain of fast-moving water arose from the earth and ripped toward Chuck Sato like a portable tsunami. The force of it was enough to cut a car in half.
Sato didn’t even blink. He turned himself toward the wave and it crashed around him like he was Moses in a sharkskin suit. The three people in the parking lot were now standing (or sitting) in a shallow puddle.
Sato wasn’t even wet.
He flicked away his second cigarette and smiled at Quinn. “That’s the spirit,” he said. A murder of crows gathered above his head, circling him and calling loudly. “We’ve stumbled upon a theme here, haven’t we? Fire. Air. Water. What does that leave?”
With another subtle wrist-flick, he opened a fissure in the parking lot. From out of the fissure came a Giant, rough with embedded stones and broken shale. Vaguely man-shaped, it was ten feet tall when it pulled itself from the crack and stood.
The creature was faster than it had any right to be. The mud and rocks that composed it did not in any way make it lumbering. In fact, it bounded toward the girl in small jumps. In mid-stride it raised its bulky arm to bring down on Henaghan. She raised her arm as an ineffectual shield.
Before it pulverized her, Chuck Sato said, “Stop!”
The Rock Giant stopped and looked over its shoulder at Sato.
Quinn opened her eyes and looked around the Rock Giant.
Sato took a step to his right and said, “There’s something you’ve gotta see.”
Behind Sato, still on the wet ground beside his Gran Torino, Darren Taft struggled against the wire tightening at his throat. Something was different though.
The air around Taft was boiling.
At first Henaghan couldn’t process the rippling atmosphere around her mentor. Then she knew.
Taft had been straining against Sato’s assault for some time now. Straining with magic. And he wasn’t inside a Circle of Protection.
The boiling air tore in a dozen places and through the tears came Vidyaadhara, phantasms, drawn by the scent of maya. They fell upon Taft and consumed him like so many piranha. He spasmed for a while then lost control of his own spell. The barbed wire closed around his neck and snapped off his head.
“No!” Henaghan screamed. Her angry eyes went first to Sato. Sato snapped his fingers, reanimating the Rock Giant. Quinn’s eyes then returned to the Giant and she knew she was half a second from death—and her arm wouldn’t stop the blow.
Screaming again, this time with rage, she threw up a shield, a bubble of translucent force around herself. Even inside this magic shell, the brutish impact of the creature’s fist rattled her teeth.
But she wasn’t killed.
The Rock Giant’s hand shattered on the bubble. Bits of rock and dust ran down the outside of Quinn’s sphere.
As the Rock Giant, child-like, regarded it’s jagged stump, Henaghan dropped her shield and lashed out with a blast of air.
The Giant was pulverized. Where it stood there was now falling debris and a dense cloud.
Through the cloud, the girl saw Chuck Sato. He wasn’t happy at losing his elemental creation. He struck a martial arts pose and the birds above him swarmed and dove at Henaghan. As they flew, they caught fire and became a shower of burning meteorites.
Quinn brought her shield back up an instant before collision. The impact of the meteors—hitting almost as one—was enough to drive her sphere backward across the lot and kick up a wake from the standing water.
The meteors consumed themselves against her sphere, but the girl knew the sphere had weakened. And she had weakened. If this was to be a game of stamina, she would almost certainly lose. Also, if she maintained the sphere long enough, she’d meet the same fate as Darren Taft. Maybe that was what Chuck Sato was pushing her towards. Whether she dropped her guard from exhaustion or the phantasms ate her, it didn’t matter. She’d still be dead. Her mind flicked back to the problem of stamina. She didn’t even imagine Sato had stamina, since he was a supernatural being that didn’t wear a physical body most of the time. Darren had told her that the Vidyaadhara and Asura were magic made manifest. They were maya.
That thought gave her the only strategy she could think of. It was something she didn’t know if she could even do. It was something she didn’t know would work.
She had to try.
Sato was raising his hands to Channel another weapon. She couldn’t give him time to manifest it. She shut off the sphere around her and snapped a fresh one around Sato. He lowered his arms and looked around at the refractive ball around him. He w
as amused. He gathered his arms around himself and prepared to fling them outward. Quinn knew that when he did, her sphere would shatter like a Christmas tree ornament.
With intense effort (and a little prayer) Henaghan drained all the maya from the inside of her sphere.
Chuck Sato stopped, his eyes going wide. He screamed and there was no sound outside the sphere. He couldn’t cast a spell to free himself since he had no access to magic. Worse, he was suffocating. A creature who breathes pure maya dries up and collapses when deprived of it. The effect was like an astronaut falling victim to explosive decompression and popping like a balloon.
Where Chuck once stood inside the shield, there was a sudden spherical cloud of black fluid.
The cloud fell in upon itself as quickly as it expanded. It went through a pin-prick-sized hole in the universe and was gone.
Henaghan banished the sphere and fell to her knees in the water beneath her. When she raised her head, she saw Sato’s Cadillac, Darren’s Gran Torino, and Darren’s pitiful body. Beyond the Torino, on the expressway, was an angry swarm of sirens. Good sense won out over grief and panic. She stood and ran to the Prius, started it and drove out of the parking lot. She’d had the presence of mind to create a refractive bubble around her head to disguise her identity to onlookers. She put a similar bubble over her rear license plate.
She tightened her jaw and pointed the car back toward Los Angeles.
7
Watchers at the Gate
When Quinn arrived back at her apartment, there was no sign of the police. She wasn’t expecting a reaction that fast from the desert jurisdiction. She was worried there’d be a contingent left over from Annabelle Grindle’s murder, but the only sign of that grisly crime was a line of yellow tape blocking off Grindle’s front door.
As soon as she mounted the last flight of stairs, Henaghan saw there was a box in front of her own door. She cringed thinking it might be a gift from Rosebud, the proxy of the late, great Chuck Sato. When she got close enough, she saw the box had a pink Post-it note on top. Written in pencil upon the note were two words: “For Quinn”.
The handwriting was Annabelle Grindle’s.
Henaghan picked up the box and went inside. She turned on the overhead light and took off the lid. Inside was a stack of papers, some of them typed, some of them handwritten. On the top page, was another Post-it, this one light blue. It said: “I found this. It’s part of my research for The Devil’s Garden. Thought you’d get a kick out of it.”
With that, Quinn fell all at once onto the couch and cried until she had no more strength.
Before she could drift off into exhaustion-fueled sleep, there was a short rap on her door followed by the door opening enough to admit a face. “Hello?” Molly Blank said. Henaghan had called the older woman on the drive in and now here she was.
Quinn raised her head enough for Blank to see the depleted expression on her face. “Jesus,” Molly said. Blank shut the door behind her and, much to Quinn’s satisfaction, slung the deadbolt and fixed the chain. “What happened?”
As best she could, Quinn related the events of the previous few days. She told Molly about the woman in the flood control channel, about Annabelle Grindle’s death and also about Darren Taft’s death. She left out the fact that she was a wizard and that Taft had died in a magician’s duel. She would tell Molly about those things eventually, but now wasn’t the time.
Blank lifted Quinn’s feet, sat down on the couch and replaced Quinn’s feet onto her lap. She undid Henaghan’s laces and slipped off the girl’s shoes and socks.
“Stinky?” Quinn said, her voice hoarse.
“Not too bad,” Molly said with a smile. She began gently rubbing Henaghan’s feet. “What can I do for you?” she said. “Food? Rest? Talk?”
Quinn wasn’t sure which option she preferred, if any. Her neurons were firing at half-speed. “I dunno,” she said. “God, I’m so sore.”
“Ah ha,” Blank said. She lifted Henaghan’s feet off her lap again and stood. She disappeared for a moment. Soon, Quinn heard the sound of the tub filling up. “Do you have anything girlie? Like some bath salts?” Molly said from the other room.
Quinn shook her head. “I usually don’t go in for that kind of froufrou stuff.” The word “froufrou” made her think of Darren and she experienced a momentary flash of grief. She didn’t have time to dwell on it as Molly came back and pulled her up by both hands.
“Right,” Molly said. “I’m the girlie one. C’mon.”
Henaghan willed her body to rise. It did, haltingly.
“God, you’re like a wrung-out dishrag.”
“That’s it exactly. That’s how I feel.”
Blank had to stoop to guide the more petite Quinn into the bathroom. When they got there, Molly turned off the water, tested it with her hand and turned to the younger woman. She undressed Quinn and then helped her into the bath. When Henaghan was shoulder-deep in hot water, Blank stepped back to appraise her work. “How’s that?” she said with a gentle smile.
“It’s good,” Quinn said.
Kneeling down next to the tub, Molly set to work. Using the cup from the vanity, she poured water over Henaghan’s head and shampooed her hair. Then, with the loofa she found hanging from the shower head, she washed the younger woman. As Blank scrubbed her belly, Quinn reached up and kissed Molly on the lips. “Will you stay with me?” she said.
Molly flicked water at the smaller woman. “Try and stop me,” she said.
Quinn rolled over in bed, roused by the sound of her ringing iPhone. She looked down at the screen, but didn’t recognize the area code. 919.
“Hello?” she said.
After a pause, the voice of a woman Henaghan didn’t recognize. “Is this— Is this Quinn?”
“Yes.”
The woman spoke again, lost her breath and had to start over. “Hi. This is Donna Keller. I’m Noah’s mom.”
Huh? Quinn thought. “Oh, hello. Did Noah make it home okay?”
Another long pause. “He did. He did. Listen, I wanna tell you something. They—that is we found Noah’s body yesterday evening. In his room.”
Henaghan had trouble processing the statement. “I’m sorry. Did you say Noah is dead?”
“Yes, I did,” Donna Keller said. “I thought you’d wanna know. Noah didn’t have many friends, and he told us how you helped him get home. I wanted you to know what happened and tell you I’m grateful for your help. It’s good he was home when he—”
“Yes, yes, of course.” Quinn said, sitting up. Next to her, Molly moaned and rolled over. Henaghan weighed her next question carefully, but she had to know. “Mrs. Keller, can you tell me what happened?”
“It looks like a drug overdose. That’s what the police are saying. I can’t hardly believe it. It’s been years, and I saw no signs. Not while he was here. I—I can’t figure it.”
“I know, I know. I understand. He—Well, I didn’t see him much recently but he told me he hadn’t—well, you know—in a very long time. It—it doesn’t make any sense.”
Donna seemed an intuitive woman. She didn’t keep Quinn on the phone long and didn’t lay the weight of her grief on a stranger. She did invite Henaghan to the funeral, but Quinn declined, saying funerals were against her religion (which was true in spirit if not in actual fact). Before she said goodbye, Keller dropped one more peculiar fact. “Do you wanna know the weirdest thing? Noah had a diamond drawn on his forehead. With an eyebrow pencil. Isn’t that weird?”
Henaghan conceded that, yes, that was weird. After she hung up, Quinn laid there staring at the dormant TV.
Henaghan slid out from under the comforter without waking Molly. She picked a t-shit up off the floor, slid it on and went out into the living room. Reaching into Annabelle Grindle’s box, she grabbed the item on top, the one with the Post-it addressed to Quinn. She peeled off the note and pasted it to the next document on the stack. Sitting down on the couch, she read the top of the print-out’s first page. “Interview w
ith Horace Kronenbusch conducted by Annabelle Grindle—June 14, 1994”. Before she began reading, Henaghan Googled Horace Kronenbusch on her phone. Fortunately for her, Kronenbusch made a splash as a world-class philanthropist. She found a picture of him from the 1930s (he was quite handsome) and another from the 1990s—right around the time Grindle conducted her interview (he was quite old).
As she got further into her reading, Quinn realized the specificity of Mr. Kronenbusch’s account made him a credible witness. The subject was the meeting between R. Verbic, Chuck Sato and the heads of the still-young movie studios. It took place in the early ‘20s at—of all places—Musso & Frank (which had been open only a year or two at the time). Horace was present because he was Carl Laemmle’s assistant. Since he was not invited and not welcome, the young and timid Kronenbusch sat with his mouth clamped shut. “I nibbled at the bread, but I ordered neither a drink nor an entrée,” he said. “It was night, Hollywood Boulevard was as quiet as a tomb, and I wanted very badly to be somewhere else.”
“Why were you so frightened?” Annabelle said. “Wasn’t it a business meeting?”
“That’s what the men thought going in. They knew Verbic by reputation. They knew he was gathering up power in political circles, but they had no idea who or what he was. Not really. They saw that night, though. Boy, did they ever see.”
“How do you mean?”
“We were in one of the banquet rooms, away from the main dining area,” Horace said. “It was late and there was no one in the place. Once Verbic came in and started talking, it was like the staff knew to stay away. He had an… aura about him. You know how, if you’re in the desert, there’re waves of heat between you and the horizon? It was like that. Only it wasn’t heat Verbic was giving off, it was something else.”
“What was it?”
Grindle had annotated the transcripts well. In the margins, before Kronenbusch’s next line, she wrote ‘hesitates’. “It was… intimidation. Pure, 100-proof intimidation. Tangible. Does that make sense?”