"The so-called 'Un-Magnificent Seven.'"
She nodded. "Another pundit's not-so-clever pun. The six others, and you." She grinned then. "This is not to say that you're not pretty magnificent yourself."
He inclined his head in a slight bow. "But that does not solve our problem, and it must be solved. Otherwise there will be displeasure, from a source whose displeasure is something to be greatly feared."
"Yes, I understand that," she said and began to pace a slow circuit of the living room. After a few minutes she said, musingly, "We have to find a way to make you stand out from the herd."
He nodded. "Yes, all right, you are the expert in such matters. But there is another approach to the problem which we should also consider seriously."
She stopped pacing and looked at him. "And what is that?" she asked, not at all certain that she wanted to hear the answer.
"The Seven, whether magnificent or not, are far too many." A small smile appeared on what had once been Howard Stark's face. "There is an expression used, I believe, by professional hunters in your world. I think they call it thinning the herd."
It was Friday night in New York City - the town where, as Huey Lewis has famously claimed, you can find half a million things to do, even at 2:45 a.m. - and Libby Chastain was bored.
It had been a busy week in the white magic business. Libby had been so preoccupied attending to the urgent needs of several clients, she had neglected to make plans for her downtime. But all the spells had been cast, all the evil curses dispelled, all the pesky spirits banished. And now the weekend was here, and Libby found herself with nothing to do, and nobody to do it with. Crap.
There was a new exhibit at MOMA that she wanted to see. Libby didn't mind going to museums alone; but MOMA had closed at 5:00, which meant that her dose of high culture would have to wait until tomorrow. Double crap.
She called a couple of her friends, well aware that such short notice meant slight odds of success, and was not really surprised when all she got were a series of voice mails. Well, at least somebody's going out tonight. Have fun, kids.
Then, after a brief hesitation, she tried Quincey Morris in Austin. She hadn't seen him since that nasty business in Idaho a few months back. Quincey had saved her life then, at no small risk to his own, but talking about it had seemed awkward to both of them, so they stopped. So, okay - nothing says we have to bring up that stuff.
The sound of a phone ringing buzzed in Libby's ear. At the fifth ring, there was a click.
"Howdy. You have reached Quincey Morris Investigations. If you've got this number, then you know what I do. If you want me to do it for you, then wait for the beep and leave a detailed message. I'll get back to you as soon as possible. Y'all take care, now."
A few seconds later, a brief tone sounded. Libby tried to keep the frustration out of her voice. It wasn't Quincey's fault that he wasn't around when she was feeling needy.
"Hey, Tex, it's me. Nothing urgent - I just called to see how you were doing. Give me a call sometime, when you have a chance. And stay the hell out of Idaho. Bye."
As she closed her phone, Libby wondered if that last thing she'd said had been a tad untactful. Quincey'd had a brush with Hell in Idaho, and still carried a burn scar on his neck to prove it. She knew it still bothered him - and not just physically. Truth be told, it bothered Libby as well, but she never spoke about it to him.
Until now - and in an answering machine message, to boot. Way to go, Libby.
She shook her head, put the phone down, and walked over to one of her condo's large windows. She stared down at the traffic without really seeing it.
There were a couple of nice bars within a few blocks from here - quiet, respectable places where she could nurse a drink and probably get picked up, if she wished.
No, bad idea. Libby had gone that route a few times over the years, with men and women both, and each encounter had left her feeling empty and depressed.
Being somebody's fucktoy for an evening isn't an uplifting experience - even when it's mutual.
Anyway, if it was simply a matter of being horny, Libby had a Hitachi Magic Wand (the world's best vibrator, whose name gave her no end of amusement) and a good imagination. But she was saving that for bedtime. Nothing like three or four good, hard, guilt-free orgasms to help a girl sleep soundly.
Walking slowly through the living room, hands in the deep pockets of her bathrobe, Libby glanced at her plasma-screen TV. She had the best cable package available in the city, but she had done some surfing a little while ago, and found herself agreeing with the country song lyric that went 'a hundred fifty channels, and not a damn thing on.'
As she padded through the kitchen, her glance fell on the refrigerator. There was a full bottle of Grey Goose in the freezer, she remembered. Some ice-cold vodka might taste pretty good about now.
Too good, most likely. There was some alcoholism in Libby's family, and although she lived a mostly temperate life - to practice magic effectively, you have to - she was still wary of developing bad habits. Even witches weren't immune to the weaknesses of mankind. Drinking when you were alone and bored was the first step down a path that Libby had no wish to travel. She kept moving.
Well, there was always the Internet, thank Goddess. Libby went into the bedroom, sat at her desk, and logged on.
Like most Internet users, Libby knew where to find free porn on the Web, but most of that stuff bored her now. When you've seen one porn site (well, okay, a couple of hundred) you'd pretty much seen it all.
She went to a few news sites and scanned the day's headlines. The world, it seemed, was still going to Hell in a handbasket. Only the rate of travel seemed to vary.
Then she watched movie trailers for a while. Libby liked the little 'coming attractions' featurettes, even for movies she would never be inclined to see. She admired the artistry involved in taking two hours of Hollywood crap and, in just two minutes, making it look like something that might actually be worth spending eight bucks on.
After viewing all the new trailers that interested her, Libby decided to see if anything was happening in her profession - anything that had made its way into the public press, at least. So she Googled 'witchcraft.'
Lots of Halloween stories, of course, even though Samhain had come and gone. Some Harry Potter stuff, as usual. A parents' group in Lexington, Kentucky, was demanding that local school libraries ban the book series, on the grounds that it encouraged their children to practice the dark arts.
Libby snorted. She knew of a coven of black witches operating near Lexington whose activities made the Harry Potter books look like innocent fairy tales. She and Quincey Morris had clashed with them a few years ago, after the coven had kidnapped a local girl with the intent of inducting her into their circle by force.
Libby and Quincey had rescued the girl before too much harm had been done to her. She had recovered fully. The same could not be said for some of her captors. The survivors, Libby had heard, did not abandon their art - but had become much more discreet in its practice.
Hallmark was coming out with a line of Wiccan greeting cards. And about time, too. She made a mental note to send a blessing in the general direction of the Hallmark Company headquarters, and to maybe buy a few of the cards to send to her sister witches, who might get a kick out of them.
A blogger at a New Age web site had a piece called 'How Witchcraft Really Works.' By the third paragraph, she was smiling a little. By the seventh, she was giggling, and before she finished the essay - which had it all so wrong, wrong, wrong - Libby Chastain was laughing out loud. She bookmarked the page to read again the next time she was feeling down, and noticed that her mood had improved considerably. Maybe the folks at Reader's Digest had been right, and laughter really was the best medicine.
Then she came upon an article from the Providence Journal that prompted no laughter from her. None at all.
PROFESSOR FOUND DEAD;
OCCULT CONNECTION SUSPECTED
East Kingston, RI.
Nov. 4. State Police are labeling as 'suspicious' the death of a URI professor whose body was found in the basement of his rural Narragansett County home yesterday.
The body of Dr. Hassan el-Ghaffar, 47, was discovered by a Sheriff's deputy who was sent to the home after University Police reported that the professor, who taught Anthropology, had failed to show up for his scheduled classes.
A Bureau of Criminal Investigation official, who spoke off the record because he was not authorized to discuss the case publicly, said that el-Ghaffar's body was found in a large basement room containing an altar, atop which were numerous objects often used by Satanists. On the floor near the corpse was a drawn pentagram, a symbol often associated with occultists and those practicing witchcraft.
The official said that el-Ghaffar's death was almost certainly a homicide, although the Coroner's Office has not yet released its report on the case. Identification of the body, which apparently had been in the basement for several days, was made by dental records, the official said, since the corpse had 'become disfigured due to infestation by local wildlife.'
After finishing the article, Libby continued to stare at the screen. There was probably nothing supernatural involved in this Rhode Island business, anyway. People who became interested in black magic were often none too stable to begin with. Few of them were interested in undertaking the years of study necessary to become proficient in the dark arts, fortunately.
Although sometimes they can learn just enough to get themselves killed.
Nobody had hired Libby to worry about it, and there was probably nothing to be concerned about, anyway - except to local law enforcement. Some budding psychopaths got buzzed on meth, and tried to conjure up something evil. When it didn't work, they turned on one of their own.
But the one who had been turned on had been a professor, a Ph.D. This el-Ghaffar was apparently a man who had already devoted years of study to learning - what?
When Libby finally went to bed, her sleep was troubled, three good orgasms notwithstanding. She kept wondering whether that pentagram had actually contained something from the Other Side - and if so, what had become of it?
Chapter 3
Dr. Reiss' assessment turned out to be right on the money; Ron Brooks never did develop cancer - but, a month later, his prostate killed him, anyway.
The medication was slowly doing its job of shrinking Brooks' enlarged prostate gland, but the pills had one annoying side effect: stimulation of the kidneys, leading to increased urine production. As a result, Brooks' sleep was usually disrupted several times by the demands of his uncomfortably full bladder.
On the December night that he died, Brooks had gone to bed early. The Iowa Caucuses, which marked the start of the long and grueling presidential primary season, were about a month away. From that point on, sleep would be a luxury. Brooks arose at 1:43, awakened by the need to take a leak. This would be his first trip to the bathroom since retiring for the evening a little before 10:00. It would also be his last.
As he slipped out of the warm queen-size bed, Brooks was careful not to disturb his wife, Evelyn, who was snoring gently a few inches away. He trudged along the twenty feet or so of carpeted hallway that led to the upstairs bathroom. He had always hated bedroom slippers, so as he stepped into the darkened bathroom, it was his bare feet that first told him that something was wrong.
Water. Cold water. Christ, a lot of cold water, all over the floor, it feels like. What the hell's happened?
Then Ron Brooks did what almost anyone would have done in similar circumstances. Still standing in the inch or so of water on the floor, he reached out for the bathroom light switch, found it, and flicked it on.
"I got laid off last June," Len Kowal said, his rough voice low and sad. "Mold-All Plastics. Machinist. Twenty-two years, I was there."
Quincey Morris didn't know what to say to that, so he just nodded.
"What Len means is, we got no health insurance," Helen Kowal said. "They kept up his benefits for six weeks after they let him go, but after that..."
"So that's why you haven't been able to get medical treatment for Susie," Morris said.
"We been to the hospital with her twice. To the ER. They asked a lot of questions, then they did some tests that we had to put on our MasterCard." She shrugged her thin shoulders. "We're still paying, a little each month."
"Did the tests find anything?"
"No, not a thing. So they wanted to admit her, and do even more. But once we said we had no insurance..." Another shrug.
"Tried to mortgage the place," Len Kowal rumbled. "None of the banks would give us the time of day. Mortgage crisis, they said. Nobody's lending money, nobody's buying houses." He looked away and said to the wall, "And our credit number, it maybe ain't so good, either."
"I'm not a doctor," Morris said gently. "If it really is a medical problem, I'm afraid there isn't anything I can do to help."
"We understand that, Mr. Morris," Helen Kowal said, her eyes rimmed red from crying. "But we thought at least you could tell us if it's... that other thing we talked about."
She doesn't want to say it, Morris thought. Can't hardly blame her for that.
He was rapidly coming to the conclusion that this trip was going to be a waste of time, but the knowledge made him more depressed than irritated. The likelihood was that the girl was suffering from some disorder of the nervous system, or worse.
Good news, Mrs. Kowal: your daughter isn't possessed by an entity from Hell, after all. The downside is, she has a brain tumor the size of a golf ball. We're giving her six months, at the outside.
"Would you at least look at her?" Helen Kowal said. "Maybe talk to her a little bit?"
It would have been cruel to refuse. Anyway, he had come all the way up from Texas, and there was always the outside chance...
"Sure, I can do that," Morris said, and stood. Helen Kowal rose also, but her husband remained seated in the worn, overstuffed armchair that had probably been 'Dad's chair' for twenty years or more. He did not look at Morris.
"Her room is upstairs," Helen Kowal said. "This way."
Two flights of threadbare, creaking stairs led to the big house's second story. At the landing between staircases, Helen Kowal paused, waiting for Morris to catch up. As he reached her, Morris said, "I guess your husband isn't coming with us?"
She shook her head. "He don't go in there anymore. The things she does... no father should see his daughter that way."
Morris nodded, as if he understood completely. But he was puzzled as he followed Helen Kowal up the remaining stairs and along a carpeted hallway.
She stopped at a door of brown wood that looked newer than the jamb that held it in place. The doorknob was surrounded by the metal plate of a heavy security lock. Helen Kowal reached into the side pocket of her housedress and produced a key ring.
"This didn't come with the house, did it?" Morris said quietly.
"No," she told him, sliding a key into the lock's thin aperture. "We had it installed after."
The door opened smoothly on oiled hinges.
The large room would have made a Spartan feel right at home. It contained a bed, a plastic commode with a roll of toilet paper on the floor next to it, and the girl, who lay in the bed, covers pulled up to her chin.
Morris had thought that Helen Kowal would perform introductions, to put the girl at ease with the stranger. Instead, she simply closed the door and stood with her back against it, arms folded as if to ward off a chill.
Morris walked slowly toward the bed.
Mrs. K. didn't relock the door. Maybe she's afraid it would stop us from getting out fast, if we need to.
Susan Kowal, age seventeen, calmly watched him approach. All he could see of her was a thin face and a mop of medium-brown hair, tangled and matted as if it hadn't been either combed or washed in quite a while. Her body was just a vague shape under the gray, stained blanket.
I don't know what's wrong with this poor kid, but keeping her in here is tantamount to
child abuse. The parents don't know any better, but there's got to be a better place for her than this fucking prison cell.
He stopped at the foot of the bed and rested his hands lightly on the metal frame. "Hi, Susan," he said pleasantly. "My name's Quincey Morris."
"Hi, Mr. Morris. Are you a doctor?" Her voice was high, a natural soprano.
"No, I'm not. But I was visiting your folks, and they asked me to come up and say hello. I figured you hadn't had much company, lately."
Her mouth twitched in what Morris supposed was intended as a smile. "Not too much, no."
"How long have you been...?" Morris found himself searching for a tactful way to describe her circumstances. No point in upsetting her.
"The Prisoner of Zenda?" Her voice was mild, without bitterness. "I'm not sure. The trees are bare, aren't they? They had all their leaves when Mummy and Daddy put that big lock on the door. It was hot out, too."
Mummy and Daddy? Dear God - this kid needs a doctor, maybe a series of them. Not an exorcist.
It looked as if her hands were moving under the blanket. Was she scratching herself? Bedbugs wouldn't be hard to imagine in this hellhole.
He wondered if having an itch was like yawning - one person starts and, before you know it, you're doing it too. Morris had a healed burn scar on his neck, half hidden by his collar. Given the circumstances under which he'd received it, he did his best to forget it was there. These days, he was succeeding more often than not. But sometimes it itched a little. Like right now.
"Your Mom and Dad tell me that you've been having some pretty serious problems lately. What do you think is -"
The girl threw her head back, eyes shut tight, breath coming fast between her clenched teeth.
"Susan, what's wrong?" Morris asked urgently. "Are you in pain? Should I -"
Jaw still tight she growled at him, "No, I'm coming! Oh, yes, yes, yesssssss..."
Sympathy for the Devil Page 4