by Ari Marmell
Quick step forward, shoving into him, knocking him off balance, then a quick twist, yanking him forward and around by his arm. My spin carried him into the bench seats beside me, so his leg slammed with a loud thump into the wood.
And then, with him pressed against that wood, I kicked him hard just above the ankle, cracking his shin across the edge of the bench.
He screamed and doubled over, and I let him fall, his arm sliding through my grip until I held only the nightstick in my fist. I instantly raised that hand in a parry, catching the iron pipe that would otherwise have struck me a nasty blow across the head. My other, still clutching the wand, swung backward and I unleashed another burst of magic at the guys scrambling to their feet behind me. It was a sudden, sharp blast of pure emotion, terrible anger and shriveling fear. Again, not enough to take them out of the fight, but sufficient to buy me another few moments.
The pipe was coming at me again, but the fella on the end of it was clearly no duelist. He swung like he was chopping wood, and it was no hassle at all to knock the weapon aside, give him a good solid rap on the wrist to send the pipe clattering across the floor, and another one across the top of his skull that shoulda sent him clattering right along with.
And would have, except that his pal with the baseball bat stepped in and hit himself at least a double across my back.
I staggered, probably woulda fallen if I hadn’t propped myself straight with the nightstick on the bench’s armrest. The pain was a bolt of lightning shooting along my spine. Our senses are more acute than yours inside, not just out, so I could actually trace the hairline crack running across three separate ribs.
Those were gonna take more’n a day and a half to heal, damn it!
I spun, doing my best to ignore the agony as those cracks yawned wider with the motion, and bent sideways under his next swing at an angle most humans couldn’t manage. I straightened, reached, and snagged the bat under my left arm. I poked him in the stomach with the wand in that hand, filled him with just enough magic to let him taste a little of my own pain, and then kicked his feet out from under him.
Except the bastard was supposed to let go of the bat when the pain hit him, and instead he clamped up. So he was just sorta hanging there, half-lying on the floor, and I had to either let go of the bat—and leave him armed—or else take an extra second or two to deal with him further.
Which is when I confirmed that, yeah, pipe-guy hadn’t gone down as hard as he was supposed to, either. My shot to his noggin musta gone a little off-track when bat-guy slugged me. He was back on his feet, and worse, the pipe was back in his hand.
Another parry, but this time I was weighted down by gink number two dangling off my left arm. Instead of deflecting, the pipe slid down the nightstick to rest with a thump against my right fist.
It didn’t burn, exactly. But if you’ve ever touched something you knew was diseased, swore you could feel the toxins and sickness seeping into your flesh… This was similar, but absolutely not all in my head. Right now, it was just horribly unpleasant, but in a few heartbeats, I’d start losing skin—at least.
Plus, there were the fellas behind me, who were finally getting themselves sorted again. I heard the vacuum cleaner rattle and roll toward me as one of ’em kicked it out from under his feet.
I dropped the bat, jammed the L&G into pipe-guy’s gut, and channeled every bit of focus I could muster through the wand. I could feel—hell, I could see—his aura go mottled dark with misfortune. A spiritual bruising, kinda.
And then I shoved him back, nightstick on pipe, far enough to kick him hard in the gut.
See, sometimes it’s not about the magic, and it’s not about the fisticuffs, but about a mix of both. ’Cause it was the kick that carried him back into the car’s door—and the unnatural bad luck that caused the impact to trigger the pressure switches meant to keep the door from closing on anyone.
A “safety feature,” that was.
The door trundled open with a muted hiss, and the gink—along with his pipe—vanished from the car in a lion’s roar of sudden winds. Be nice to think he lived, but bouncing across the tracks at that speed, and with that much misfortune clinging to him, I expect that his bad breaks were pretty literal. And honestly, considering why he was here, I wasn’t about to lose too much sleep over it. With the promise of a cold iron rubdown gone, I was already feeling a little bit better.
The rest of the Uptown Boys on the train, though, didn’t look to be nearly as happy with this latest turn. Bats and axe handles hit the floor, and hands started darting inside overcoats.
Guess they weren’t too interested in just knocking me around anymore. Who knew they’d take me booting one of their pals out of a moving train so personally?
Okay, I was in a bit of a jam, then. In a couple more seconds, I’d be sucking down a lot of lead—certainly enough to put me down for days or weeks, maybe even enough to finish me outright, iron or no iron. And my only way out was the exit my buddy with the pipe had just taken. Somehow, I didn’t think I wanted to go that route, not without slowing us up a little first.
I know what you’re thinking, but no, I couldn’t just stop the train the way I’d done earlier with the flivver. It ain’t that the mechanism itself is any harder to gum up; it’s the people. In a car, you only got a couple of guys, so the weight of their belief don’t add up to much. But on a train, there’s dozens, sometimes hundreds. The sheer momentum of their expectations, their faith in how the train works—and more important, that it works—makes it just about impossible to mess with.
Magic, though, ain’t the only way to stop a train.
This had to go real smooth, or it wasn’t gonna go at all. I dropped the billy club so I’d have a hand free, crouched to snag the mug who’d been tenderizing me with the bat as he was struggling to his feet, and hauled him upright. Quick thump on the head with the wand, followed by a headbutt to the sniffer, and he wasn’t thinking all that clear. I walked him back toward his buddies, step by step, blocking their line of fire. And they let me, since they figured there wasn’t a damn thing I could do once we reached ’em.
Which mighta been true, but I wasn’t trying to reach ’em.
I stopped next to the vacuum cleaner, tossed the guy into the others as hard as I could and snatched up the hose, yanking it loose from the canister. I spun it, an awkward lariat, once, twice, and threw, drawing on the luck I’d glommed from the not-so-dearly departed.
And damn if that extra dab of fortune didn’t make all the difference. I not only hit the pull-chain I’d been aiming for, but struck it from the side hard enough for the chain to wrap itself around the cleaning head. It wouldn’t hold for more’n a second or two, but that was long enough.
I yanked, hard, on the vacuum hose—and it yanked, hard, on the passenger emergency brake.
Everybody stumbled; everyone but me, of course, since A: I’d known it was coming, and B: most of you mooks are damn clumsy. A few shots rang out, punching holes in the ceiling or shattering the windows, but I couldn’t hear ’em over the screaming brakes. Anyway, none of ’em came anywhere near clipping me. I staggered along the car, slapped the L&G against my own arm for an extra jot of luck, and threw myself from the train.
I hit hard, mashing my shoulder between the railroad ties, bruising arms and ribs—including the cracked ones, damn it, damn it, ow!—on the tracks. My skin started to burn again, and I could feel the bruises running deep, thanks to the iron rails, but the contact was short enough that my clothes protected me from the worst of it. Sparks flashed in front of my face, and it took me a moment to realize that they were coming from the wheels, not a bonk on the noggin or the pain of the iron. I deliberately kept rolling away from the tracks until I fetched up against the side of the elevated railway, and scrambled to my feet. A quick tick to shove the wand deep into a pocket, then I deliberately tumbled over the railing.
The train hadn’t yet come to a full stop. I could feel little indentations and depressions in the wood and
steel of the bridge, fingerholds that few humans coulda used but which let me climb to the ground headfirst. I almost fell a couple of times, thanks to the various aches and lacerations, but finally I flipped around and my feet touched concrete. Walking as fast as my brand-spanking-new limp would let me, I wandered away into the Chicago evening.
Oh, that extra dash of luck? No, that wasn’t to protect me from injury; I knew I’d recover quick enough, long as I didn’t dash my brains out on the iron rails.
I just didn’t want all my tumbling and thumping around to rip my favorite coat.
* * *
By the time I got back to Soucek’s building, I’d worked it all out.
See, even with Fae luck running to extremes the way it does, this had all been too much. The Uptown Boys happened to be watching Ottati’s digs when I left; they happened to be in more’n one car, which I missed; they happened to keep out of my sight well enough to flank me on the platform and come at me from two sides on the L; their leader happened to shrug off my attempt at suggestion; one of ’em happened to be armed with a fucking iron pipe.
Any one or two of those, fine, but all of ’em? No. No way. And now that I knew to look for it, now that I knew it wasn’t just a “hangover” from the wards at the house, I could sense it easily enough. I’d have tumbled to it a lot sooner, if not for those wards, if not for—well, yeah. Bad luck.
First stop, my office, where I draped my coat over the chair, yanked open a drawer, and hauled out a big bag of salt. Wand in my left hand, I dribbled handful after handful of the stuff from my right, over my left shoulder. Every seven handfuls, I’d stop and walk widdershins—that’s counterclockwise, to most of you—three times around the growing salt pile. Each cascade of sifting crystals, augmented by my own magics flowing through the L&G, peeled away bits of the misfortune wrapping me in an invisible shroud. And finally, finally I felt the last of it fade.
I don’t think I can even begin to put you wise to how exhausted I was. The wards, the fight, the iron, and of course this… My hands were actually shaking, my vision just a bit blurred. I just wanted to yank down the Murphy bed, if I even had the strength for that, and collapse long enough to give Rip Van Winkle a run for his money.
But no, not yet. There was something else I had to deal with first.
I stepped back into the hall, briefly aiming my wand at the lock to the door at the bottom of the basement stairs. I heard a faint thunk as several tumblers fell out of alignment. The chances of anyone coming down here while I was talking were tiny, but I didn’t want “tiny,” I wanted “none.” I’d funnel the luck back into the lock when I was done, and a quick jiggle of the key should knock everything back into place.
Okay, privacy. I lifted the payphone’s receiver, grimaced at the increased tickling in my head as I held it close, and slipped a nickel into the slot. I grumbled at the operator for a minute, and waited.
Despite the hour, someone answered before the end of the third ring. “Hello?”
“Donna Orsola Maldera, please.”
“Who’s calling?” the gruff voice asked. It coulda been one of the guys I’d met earlier today; I wasn’t sure.
“Tell her… Tell her it’s about her vacuum.”
“Hey, buster, you got any idea what time it is? I—”
“Just tell her.” Times like this, I really wished I could mess with someone’s head over the blower. “Look, if she doesn’t think it’s worth her time, she can always hang up on me, right?”
I heard him grousing to himself even as the phone clicked a few times—probably the receiver settling on a table. I stood waiting, long enough that I was starting to worry about having to drop in another nickel, and then…
“It’s late, Mr. Oberon.”
“Donna Orsola.” I smiled broadly, knowing it would carry in my voice. “And how are you this lovely evening?”
“I’m fine. I—”
“Everyone doing well? Mrs. Ottati? How’s she?”
“Well. I—”
“No problems with her husband, I hope? About letting me in to see Adalina, I mean.”
The old woman sighed loudly. “No, Mr. Oberon, no problems. I, ah, convinced Ricky not to mention it to him.”
“Oh, good. I’m so glad.”
Silence, for a moment. I was gonna make her ask, goddamn it.
“Mr. Oberon, what is it you—?”
I didn’t say I’d let her ask all of it.
“I just had one quick question for you, Donna Orsola. I’m afraid it couldn’t wait for a more polite hour.”
“I see. And your question would be?”
“Are you out of your goddamn fucking mind?!”
Her gasp echoed in the receiver, and I swear I could hear her entire body go rigid on the other end of the line. “You will never use that language around me! You—”
“Language? Language? You put a hex on me, you dumb broad! What the hell’s the matter with you? You damn near got me killed!”
“I’ve told you before, fata, I use my powers only against the evil and impure. The malocchio was a message.”
“A message?” The receiver was actually creaking in my hand. “A man is dead tonight, Maldera. Your ‘evil eye’ set him gunning for me, and I had to croak him. That’s on you, sister. Not me.”
Silence again. Angry as I was, and with nobody to see, I wasn’t bothering with my act anymore; anyone woulda thought I was a corpse, motionless as I was standing. I heard her pacing as far as her cord would allow.
Then, “He must have been an evil man, else he would not, as you say, have come ‘gunning for you.’ But still, that was not my intent. For that, I am sorry.”
“So what was your intent? Do you even want me to find your granddaughter?”
“How dare you?” I’d rather she’d screamed, but no. It was a whisper, hoarse, scratchy, as if it was the static and distortion on the line speaking to me now. “After everyone who’s been stolen from me, everyone I’ve lost back in Sicily, or here… Cousins, friends, my husband Piero, my carino mio… No.” A few deep, heaving breaths rasped wetly in my ear. “No, figlio di male, you are not worthy even to know their names! Know only that I will stop at nothing to find my granddaughter!”
“Uh-huh. Then maybe you wanna stop gumming things up for me? I’m trying to help you!”
“I deal with you only because I’ve no other choice,” she said. “I knew the malocchio would not cause you lasting injury. But I’ll not let you endanger my family’s souls! You are not welcome in our home, and you are not to return; do your job, but do it away from us! You refused to heed, when we first met. Now you have been punished for that transgression. I trust the message is now clear?”
“Oh, quite clear, Donna Orsola. Now let me be just as clear, you loony witch. You want me to find your granddaughter? Then I’m going where I need to, when I need to, and you’re doing exactly squat to stop me. Not only are you not gonna gimme the evil eye again, but if I do have to come back by your place, you’re gonna break the wards for me, and I don’t care how long it takes for you to put ’em back up. You got all that?”
“If you think for one instant—”
“I’m not done! You sent Mrs. Ottati to me. You convinced her she needed me, and you’ve as much as told me that you’re as hot to find your granddaughter as she is. So fine. Consider this your formal announcement, Donna Maldera. I now consider you to be as much a party to my hiring as your daughter-in-law. Anything you do to interfere with my investigation from now on will be considered a violation of any pact or agreement she and I have. That means, if I choose, that I can walk away from this whole mess—not just as a PI, but as aes sidhe and a former lord of the Seelie Court—without repercussion.
“And if that happens, you may just have bigger concerns than trying to find a missing girl. You get me, Donna Orsola?”
Her breath came in an angry gurgle now, but her skin scraped against the earpiece as she nodded. “Sì, capisco.”
“I know that you believe
I’m your enemy,” I said. “I get that there’s nothing I can do to change your mind on that.
“So trust me, instead, when I tell you that you really, really don’t want me to start believing it, too.”
And with that, there was nothing left but to hang up on her with a satisfying click, take half a second to fix the lock, and then go collapse face-first on the mattress.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“Jesus, Mick. You look like something the cat dragged in.”
“Huh. Do I?” I took a step back, leaving room for Pete to slip into my office. “’Cause I feel like something the cat coughed up.”
This despite the fact that I was actually doing a lot better’n I had been. After flopping into bed that night, I lost a whole day to just recuperating, and then the weekend to leads that didn’t go anywhere. Four-Leaf Franky, Lenai, and the others still hadn’t heard a peep, the Ottati cousins I tracked down didn’t know from nothing, and Pete—who’d been so busy he’d only had a minute to spare for me on the horn—could only promise to look into my follow-up questions.
He’d better have some answers for me now, or I was gonna—gonna—I dunno, complain at him.
Point is, I’d had a day of rest, and two more days that were frustrating but easy as beans, yet I hadn’t completely recovered. Yeah, the hex was gone, and most of the marks had healed up, but I was sporting a few bruises and abrasions from the iron—or that I’d gotten when I was sick from the iron’s touch—and my body was still kinda stressed from trying to shake loose Orsola’s curse like it was a damn infection. So considering how Pete was used to seeing me, yeah, I probably did look a little washed up and wrung out.
Pete—who was wearing rugged denims and a sheepskin coat, rather’n his uniform, and carrying a large backpack—scooted around the desk and planted his keister in my chair. When I squinted at him, he just shrugged and said, “I don’t have an office. Lemme indulge a minute.”
My turn to shrug. I wandered to the icebox, poured myself a glass (I think you know of what by now), and dropped into the seat across from him. He pulled a small flask from his pack, took a slug, and offered it my way. “Flavor?”