by Ari Marmell
I planned to be well inside before any of ’em had the presence of mind to do that much pondering—which, thanks to a quick poke at the lock with the L&G and then a few wiggles under the window frame with a wire pick, I was.
And what I was inside turned out to be a kid’s room. Small bed with colorful sheets and clown pillows, shelf with a baseball glove and some model trains, brown and blue suits with short pants hanging in the open closet, a few other knickknacks scattered here and there…
No, not a kid’s room. More an adult’s version of a kid’s room. It was way too neat, too ordered. It was also dusty enough to make a corpse sneeze.
Huh.
I slunk outta the room and down the hall, but my first impression had been right: there wasn’t anyone here. Long as I didn’t start making a huge racket or flipping on lights—which I shouldn’t need to do, since there was more’n enough leaking in through the windows from the moon and streetlamps—there was no reason anyone should tumble to me.
The upstairs was, other’n a linen closet and a bathroom with a claw-foot iron tub (which I avoided as if it was a friggin’ bomb), just more bedrooms. Scola’s was easy enough to identify, since it was the biggest, with the nicest furniture, an enormous mirror, a closet bursting with suits and tuxes, and the lingering scent of several different women’s perfumes.
There were also a few tiny marks etched into the door jamb and the window panes: miniature glyphs of protection, so small even I almost missed ’em. Would have, in fact, except that I tasted the magic in the air when I passed. Well, that matched up with the charm he’d been wearing, anyway. In fact, come to think of it, the ambient flavor of mysticism couldn’t be accounted for by those runes alone; there was something else not quite natural in this house.
Besides, y’know, me.
Looked like one of his most trusted bodyguards lived here, too, since another bedroom—a lot smaller’n his—held an unmade bed, much cheaper suits, and an array of rumpled “gentlemen’s” magazines heaped on a counter.
And one more bedroom, about the same size but much neater. The bed was covered in a pink-and-white comforter, the walls hung with paintings of flowers. An array of makeup and jewelry boxes were arranged neatly on the dresser, in front of a gilt-trimmed mirror.
Also dusty. And also not quite right: a man’s idea of what a woman’s bedroom “should” be.
Huh, again.
Guess I should clarify, since I told you the house wasn’t that big, that none of these rooms, even Scola’s, were large; most were actually pretty tiny. And none of ’em were protected the way Scola’s was, so I made my way downstairs—without a single groan or creak from the steps, if I can brag a bit.
You want a play-by-play of the whole downstairs? Nah, didn’t think so. Bottom line, there was a kitchen with an attached dining room, a sort of living room-slash-parlor, a combination office and small library, and a utility room. They were all nice, all more or less well kept and clean, and all pretty much as mundane as you could ask for.
Except…
Except for the glyphs and runes and protections, scattered around the entire first floor in every hiding place you could imagine. It looked as though Scola had contracted out his home decorating to the Golden Dawn. Pentacles and mystic formulae, rose crosses and thaumaturgic diagrams, zodiac signs and tiny portraits of saints; whoever Scola had gotten to protect him had drawn from just about every tradition of Western magic. No way of telling if he’d just hired someone local or if he’d brought his own strega along from the Old Country to match Ottati’s—but if the latter, then it was someone not nearly as devoted to a single tradition as Orsola was.
It also wasn’t someone nearly as talented. I could sense the power here—smell it, taste it, my body practically hummed with it—but it wasn’t as strong as the good donna’s.
Or maybe it just felt that way to me since Orsola’s wards had been oriented specifically against Fae, while these were just more general protection from curses and dark magics. I couldn’t be—
Protection against curses? Hmm…
Was that why Scola happened to be in police custody when his men were “accidentally” zotzed? ’Cause he’d been warded? I had a horrible image of what could happen if a Chicago Mob war ever escalated into a battle of warlocks, and shuddered.
But so far, everything I’d found here was low-grade, something any half-competent witch could cook up. No sign of darker magics or hexes, and certainly no sign of any sort of pact with the Fae—or anything to do with us, for that matter. All this trouble, and I was back where I’d started. I couldn’t rule Scola out, since he obviously knew a little of the eldritch world—enough to get someone to protect him from it, at any rate—but neither did I have anything other than an old family grudge to suggest he was involved.
I shuffled around the house some more, aimlessly hunting for anything that’d tell me—well, anything. I didn’t find any more about the magics, just a few more hidden protections (including an actual tuft of dried frankincense, holly, rosemary, and belladonna) that I’d missed on the first go-round. But I did find an answer to something else.
On the mantle over the fireplace was a photograph in a silver frame: a photo of a young mother and her son. They coulda been Scola’s wife and kid, but she resembled him enough that I was more inclined to peg ’em as his sister and nephew. And I also knew, with no doubt at all, that they were the ones who’d lived in those bedrooms upstairs—those dusty, long-abandoned bedrooms that Scola had practically transformed into shrines.
I skittered over to the phone and dialed. Pete had taken a powder by then, and once I got Detective Keenan to take my call instead, he wasn’t real shy about telling me how damn busy he was. Still and all, he was polite enough to take three winks to look into my question. I waited, he dug, he answered, I thanked him, he hung up. I stood for a few long minutes, holding the blower in my hand and staring off at nothing.
Car accident. They’d run smack into a truck hauling tractor parts, about four months before most of Scola’s crew got cut down. Yeah, it coulda just been a bad break; it ain’t like accidents are rare, right? But the timing nagged at me, and something had convinced Vince Scola that he needed some serious protection against the evil eye.
Was Donna Orsola really that harsh? Was she really so bitter over her own lost kin that she’d have laid a death curse on a woman, to say nothing of a child, just for being Scola’s blood?
Well, she’d cursed me when I was helping her, just to send me a message. So yeah, I had to think that maybe she would. Jeez, what the hell kinda family was I working for? A witch who’d apparently gone completely off the track and an Outfit wiseguy… If it hadn’t been for Bianca, I mighta started wondering if Celia wasn’t better off with the goddamn phouka.
It gave me a lot to think about as I trudged back upstairs, made my way to the same window, and started watching for my best chance to slip back out into a night that was getting old far, far too quickly.
* * *
The sky in the east was just starting to blush a rosy pink—maybe ’cause we’d seen her before she was dressed for the morning?—as I stumbled my way back up the steps of Soucek’s greystone in Pilsen. Around me, only a few flivvers and a couple of the old-fashioned horse-drawn milk wagons were rolling and clomping their way along the neighborhood streets. It’d been a long, long night, and since I hadn’t yet come up with the foggiest notion what to do with Sleeping Beauty, it was looking to be a long, long day ahead.
After making a clean sneak from Scola’s place, I’d caught the L and headed north, finally getting off on Lawrence. From there, it’d just been a couple blocks’ walk to a fancy and really damn huge apartment, in a really damn huge apartment building. This was the home of one Nolan Shea, lieutenant to a lieutenant of Bugs Moran—and, more importantly, boss of the Uptown Boys.
It didn’t go as smooth as the Scola house did, since Shea and some of his hoods had the audacity to actually be home when I was trying to bust into his pl
ace, tossing back hooch and playing checkers. A couple of those mugs were actually part of the group that’d jumped me on the L, so once they’d spotted me anyway, I made like I was there for some payback.
Heh. “Furious vacuum repairman seeks vengeance.” Sounds like a bad picture or radio drama.
I let ’em tune me up a little, enough so I didn’t come across as much of a threat anymore, and then skedaddled while they argued about where and how to murder me. (It wasn’t hard to get away while they were distracted, since they thought I was way too badly hurt to move. If I was one of you, I woulda been.)
Anyway, point is I got myself a good look at the inside of Shea’s place. The joint was so completely bare of anything even resembling the taste or feel of magic, I’d have been surprised to learn anyone had even ever tried a card trick in there. Not that it was too shocking—I hadn’t thought the Uptown Boys were likely as suspects in Celia’s disappearance, since the timing had been so off—but nevertheless, disappointing to hit another dead end. Waste of half a night, and a dozen perfectly good bruises.
I slouched down the stairs to my office, twisted the key in the lock with a grating squeal, and slipped inside. The place was starting to come over faintly pink, with the rising sun peeking in the high windows, more’n enough for me to see. For a second or two, I only had eyes for my chair, where I hoped I could catch a couple hours to dream before I had to deal with the “guest” occupying my bed. I was just draping my overcoat across the rack, and…
Froze. Carefully, trying for nonchalant, I turned back and gave the room another up-and-down. It was… Off. Not much—nothing missing, nothing obviously in the wrong place—but enough.
Hadn’t that glass been closer to the edge of the desk? That one drawer been standing open a few more inches? Celia’s hat been hanging off the other side of the chair?
There’s a reason I’m a detective, y’know.
I took a few paces toward the bed. “I know you’re awake,” I said in a casual tone. “You can stop pretending.”
Celia didn’t move, but I heard the quick hitch in her breathing I’d been listening for. Oh, she was awake, all right.
It was then, in a spectacular case of “better late than never,” that realization dawned on me.
Celia had been raised in Elphame. She had a grasp, however crude, of our basic magics. So yeah, just maybe the girl would be harder to keep under, and would recover quicker, than a regular human.
Oh, there’s a reason I’m a detective, all right. It don’t mean that sometimes I don’t also make a pretty passable dunce.
I hunkered down beside the bed, staring her in the face. She breathed, softly, in and out, a pretty respectable imitation of slumber.
After a minute or two, I drew the L&G, held it over her head, and sorta tapped at her mind, just enough to make sure she’d notice I was doing something.
The girl bolted upright with a shriek, sheets flying, and slugged me one across the jaw that coulda taught Shea’s boys a thing or two. I staggered back, already a smidge off-balance from the crouch, and fell hard on my keister.
“I see you are awake,” I said, ruefully rubbing my chin. “I thought you—Whoa!”
Now that her ruse was over, she was off the bed and coming at me, my own rapier clutched in a competent grip. She musta had it hid under the covers with her.
Okay, that’d be right about enough of that. I rolled aside, letting the blade score a line in the carpeting, then rolled back fast. My whole torso came down on the flat, yanking the weapon from her fist. At the same time I reached up to jab her in the ribs with my wand, shoving her back physically and magically. Thanks to the tiny scrap of luck I knocked from her, her feet tangled in the wadded sheets and she fell back onto the mattress with a faint yelp.
By the time she was sitting, I was standing over her, holding the wand and rapier both.
“Trying to skewer a man with his own blade,” I said, “is just rude.” I chucked the rapier back behind me—after a quick glance to make sure it’d land safely across the chair.
“So’s keeping a girl prisoner,” she snapped, running a few fingers through her mussed hair and then crossing her arms resentfully.
“We been through this, Celia. You ain’t a prisoner.”
“No? So I can leave, then?”
“Uh… no, but not because you’re…”
Jeez, I was slow on the uptake this morning.
“What the hell are you still doing here?” I almost shouted at her. “If you’ve been awake more’n a couple minutes, why the hell didn’t you scram?”
Her entire face wrinkled in a petulant scowl, and she pressed her lips together until they went white.
“Listen, sister, you better—”
The whole office reverberated with the sudden knocking at the door.
I took a step back, trying to watch her and the door at once. Was that it? Had she called someone? Was—?
“Mr. Oberon? Mr. Oberon, is everything okay?”
I exhaled louder’n an old bellows. “Yeah, Mr. Soucek. Everything’s fine.”
“I heard screams.”
“Nah, it’s nothing.” He heard Celia’s shouts? From down here? Maybe he’d already been in the basement, fixing something… “Just an argument, got a little heated. You know how it is.”
Celia was fidgeting; she couldn’t have told me more clearly she was about to try something if she’d sent me a dated telegram. I shook my head, and she called me something girls her age aren’t supposed to know.
“Mr. Oberon, please open the door, or I’ll have to call the police.”
I grumbled something, moved across the room, and reached for the knob…
Remember what I said about sometimes being a dunce? And being sluggish in the brain department that morning? I can only say, in my defense, that I was tired as hell and real distracted by a whole lotta big worries.
So I’d already cracked the door a hand’s breadth when my senses finally caught up with the rest of my mind and said, The accent’s right, but when did Jozka take the grammar lessons?
I immediately started to slam the door, but someone or something on the outside—a goddamn charging rhino from the feel of it—slammed it open. I hurtled back, empty hand clutching the side of my head where the edge had caught me, until I fetched up against the desk and dropped to one knee.
My sight blurring, I looked up to see Jozka Soucek striding into my office.
Except my sight wasn’t the only thing blurring, and Soucek wasn’t Soucek anymore.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
With every step he took, the air wafting past him grew thicker with the tang of old straw and sun-baked grasses. His body shivered and swam, flesh flowing thick, like sap. For less’n a second his skin was rough and heavy, his clothes not clothes at all but a coarse layer of fur, and then the fella who’d been “Soucek” was human again.
He looked old, maybe seventy-five or eighty. He had a narrow face that was almost more of a prow, wrinkled as a wet newspaper and sprouting a scraggly tuft of beard that woulda looked more at home on a billy goat. His body was gaunt and hunched, so that he barely came up to my shoulders (or woulda done, if I’d been standing), and wrapped in a raggedy greatcoat.
I knew better’n to assume he was anywhere close to as decrepit as he looked.
“Goswythe, I presume?” I said, climbing back to my feet when he got about halfway between me and the door.
“Mick,” he said with a nod.
“And Mr. Soucek?” If the phouka had hurt him, I swore he wasn’t getting outta here alive, and I didn’t make too much effort to keep that fact off my mug.
But, “Ah, don’t get excited. I didn’t hurt the geezer. He may sleep through a few appointments, is all.” Then, “You okay, sweetheart?”
“I’ll be fine when you get me clear of this bastard!” Celia barked.
“Aw, and here I thought we were getting along swell,” I said. Then, “She called you, right? And you told her to stay put, instead of blo
wing this place… Why, exactly?”
Goswythe smirked, showing off a handful of missing teeth. “You’d just have come looking for her again, right? I figured this’d be the best opportunity to talk to you about that.”
“Ah. And what’ve you got to say about it?”
“Don’t.”
I chuckled. “To the point. I can dig that. But you know I can’t do that. She needs to learn the truth for her—”
“I’ve told her the truth,” Goswythe interrupted. He gave his spindly shoulders a shrug and sidled over to the chair in front of my desk. With narrow, shriveled fingers he began idly rocking it back and forth as he spoke. “Look, Mick, it’s not as though you can just hold her here against her will.”
“She’s a child, and her parents want her home. Legally—” And then I spun, arm raised, and handily caught the electric fan that Celia was about to use to brain me. I’m sharp enough to know a distraction when I see one.
Usually.
I shoved her with the wand in my other hand—again—and twisted back, pitching the fan at Goswythe’s face even as he started to come around the desk. Both of ’em staggered, just a little, and I lunged.
At the girl, not the phouka.
She yelped as I shoved her, hard, sending her careening back into the bathroom. I cringed at the loud thump and a second, pained shout; something else she’d hold against me, no doubt. I jogged forward a few paces and hauled the bathroom door shut, then jabbed the knob with the L&G.
Between her shouting at me and the sound of the fan clattering into the corner where Goswythe tossed it, I barely heard the tiny clatter from inside the lock as the mechanism slipped out of alignment. She wouldn’t be opening that door anytime soon.
I also made one other little tweak to the chance and probability surrounding the bathroom door. An ace in the hole, in case the next few minutes went as bad as I thought they might.
Ignoring the rattling of the knob, and then the angry pounding on the door, I turned back to the approaching phouka.