by Tricia Owens
Pretty damning evidence that he'd had access to some powerful magick.
I did a fist bump with one of the gargoyle statue's clawed feet. "I think we've got 'im, Vale."
Dearborn was unquestionably the maker of both the gargoyle golem and Stevie. I was willing to bet money that he was also in possession of the necromancy artifact. Now all I had to do was find out when he left his condo so I could pull a Tomb Raider on his place.
I looked up as the front door cracked open. The door didn't swing fully open, though, and no one entered the shop. It was as though the latch hadn't fully engaged, but I was sure that I'd closed it after returning from lowering the wards. I didn't want the air conditioning losing its effectiveness.
I slid slowly off my stool while I scanned the interior of Moonlight. Paranoia was running rampant but I called up Lucky anyway. He was a thickening haze of gold by my side, waiting, since I couldn't send him after anyone or anything just yet. So far, the shop appeared empty.
If only that were true.
For nearly ten minutes I stood there, braced for attack. When nothing moved and I didn't hear any sounds of life, I cautiously stepped out from behind the counter.
"Come on out," I said to whatever was in shop. "Do it now, while it's just us."
Nothing, but then, whoever expects an answer when they call, "Who's there?" into the darkness?
I walked cautiously down one aisle of the shop, my senses primed for something to leap out at me. I passed a five foot tall totem pole, an outdoor grill, and the haunted rocking chair that obliged me by slowly rocking back and forth.
Items on the shelves drew my eye: a pink toaster with Hello Kitty painted on its sides, a ceramic Viking ship as big as a microwave, various dolls, some of which were cursed and watched me with plastic eyes that blinked or leaked tears of blood. A Ouija board carved from the lid of an eighteenth century witch's coffin made my skin crawl but did nothing more insidious.
In the section I called the Wannabe Witch I looked over the various implements and tools for creating spells. None of the cauldrons, censers, enchanted stirring spoons or dull-bladed athames twitched or gave off ominous vibes. No more than usual, anyway. I always sensed suppressed energy from the area, as though the objects itched with impatience to be used.
I turned my back on it all and faced the rest of the room.
"Where are you?" I demanded, my wariness giving way to irritation. I had work to do, dammit. "This hide and go seek garbage is seriously lame."
Still nothing.
I passed the painting of the English lake, where a family was currently picnicking in peace. Eventually a mini axe murderer would enter the scene from the trees and wreak major havoc, but for now all was tranquil. That wasn't the case with the 8x10 photo in a copper frame of a young girl who stopped smiling to hiss at me and bare her dripping fangs. To anyone non-magickal she looked like the girl who sold you Girl Scout cookies every spring. Cute as a button.
Yeah, right. Don't trust those Thin Mints.
Lots of creepy stuff was in my shop for sure, but nothing gave me an extra dose of the willies until I neared a tabletop slot machine. That in itself was unusual, for the machine had never given off a vibe before.
The slot machine wasn't a legal gaming apparatus. It was about the size of a rice cooker, made of metal, and accepted nickels, though I think it could be programmed to run without any money inserted. It weighed a good fifty pounds. Feeling my skin break out in goose bumps, I reached up and gingerly pulled the arm to set the reels spinning.
The arm stopped a quarter of the way down.
"Grrr."
I went back to the register, fished a nickel out of the till, and then returned to the slot machine and inserted the coin. The arm now swung all the way down, sending the three old-fashioned reels spinning. I glimpsed the traditional symbols—cherries, lemons, liberty bells, and bars—whizzing around and around.
Then the first reel stopped.
On an image of a skull with flames in its eye sockets.
Well, that was new. Pretty sure that wasn't actually a legitimate symbol.
The second reel stopped a moment later on another skull.
"I can see where this is going," I muttered.
I backed up while Lucky reared up defensively behind me.
The third reel stopped on a third flame-eyed skull.
"Winner," I whispered.
Wasps exploded from the cash tray of the machine.
I screamed and flailed, stumbling backward. Lucky blasted out a balloon of fire that engulfed the slot machine. As my back hit another shelf, I saw and heard small insect bodies rain on the floor. There was at least a hundred of them, all charred to a crisp.
I remained where I was, frantically searching the air, afraid of vengeful strays, but Lucky had fried the wasps while they were bunched together as they'd emerged from the machine. He'd incinerated every last one of them.
My relief was short-lived, however. I groaned as I looked over the scene around the slot machine. "Fantastic."
Lucky had not only burned up the wasps, he'd crisped the merchandise on two of my shelves. I counted at least five other items that had been rendered total losses.
I was seriously ticked off. Waving the smoke away with angry karate chops of my hand, I approached the slot machine. To my knowledge it hadn't been cursed. One of my regulars had sold it to me, a guy who picked up junk off Craigslist and restored it for resale. The machine was a blackened mess now. Its display showed three reels of cherries.
Had I imagined the flaming skulls? The insect attack?
No, because beneath my shoes crunched the bodies of wasps. It was all real. But what did it mean?
~~~~~
Celestina pressed her thumb to the face of the cameo pendent and smashed it firmly into the velvet. I heard high pitched, muffled screaming from beneath her thumb and snickered. Celestina gave me a wink.
"I'm glad I can't hear them like you can," she told me. "Just from the looks of them, I can tell they're awful."
"Complete and total bitches. You have no idea."
"I believe you." My friend put her back to the counter and watched Lev trotting through the store. "And by the way, they're harbingers."
I stared dumbly at her. "Say what?"
"The cameos. They foreshadow future doom. But that's it. They know nothing about the good things that are going to happen to you. They only focus on the bad. For better or worse."
"Definitely worse," I mumbled, thinking of the cameos' latest claim: that death was coming for me. Bad enough I had wasps gunning for me.
I felt Celestina looking at me. "Have the cameos told you something about this artifact you're looking for?"
"Not precisely. Just general doom and gloom like you said." I motioned at my shop, which still smelled faintly of burnt plastic and bugs despite propping the door open to air it out. "Would've been nice if they had been specific and warned me to buy some wasp spray."
"If there's something unnatural still here, Lev will probably find it," Celestina promised me as we watched the black wolf sniff around.
He'd been sniffing for over fifteen minutes. I was growing convinced Lev was having a field day smelling all the weird merchandise and had been completely sidetracked from his job. I kept a sharp eye on him. If I saw even a hint that he was about to lift a leg I was swatting him on the nose with a rolled up newspaper.
After the attack, I'd given in to a moment of weakness and asked for help. Having the bad stuff come to Moonlight was a new and unwelcome experience and I wasn't handling it well. I wasn't like those spirit hunters who chased entities in order to help them find peace, nor was I a private contractor who hunted down magickal beings for pay. I normally didn't seek out any sort of trouble and I especially didn't want it following me home.
"You think this is a warning from Dearborn?" I asked Celestina. "I'm not a computer hacker so I haven't used proxies or whatever to hide my tracks as I've investigated him. Could he have found out an
d this is his way of telling me to back off?"
"I thought he cursed objects and made artifacts? From what you told me about the door opening, this isn't that kind of magick."
"Yeah, but he might be multi-talented or he might be friends with someone who's capable of whipping up a wasp spell."
Celestina played with one of her braids thoughtfully. "If I wanted to warn someone off, I'd make sure they knew the warning had come from me, otherwise I'd run the risk of them not understanding why it was happening. Or worse, thinking that someone else had sent the warning."
"So if it's not Dearborn then what is this? That slot machine wasn't cursed when I bought it. I've had it for eight months and it hasn't done anything more ominous than collect dust."
"Maybe someone is just messing with you."
I made a face, but I forced myself to seriously consider the idea. A wasp attack probably wouldn't have killed me unless I was allergic to them, which I wasn't. Besides that, whoever had done this had to know I was a sorceress and that the attack likely wouldn't harm me. In this case it hadn't even reached me.
Instead, it had left me as I was now: shaken, growing angrier, and feeling like I needed to find out who did this and I needed to kick his or her butt in retaliation.
"He's goading me," I concluded. "Dearborn knows I'm after him and he's telling me to bring it. If I had a car parked out front he probably would have had a werewolf slash all its tires."
"Are you sure he's the only one with motive?"
"The timing is just too perfect, Celestina. And it totally fits what I've read of him. He bullied all his students. But too bad for him because I'm not intimidated by bullies."
I'd had enough experience with them as a kid, after being teased for being a half-breed or alternatively, for being too Chinese. I'd learned how to handle them. The key was denying them what they wanted, which was a reaction. And if lack of reaction didn't put them off, you had to go on the offensive.
That's coming soon enough, buddy.
Celestina turned her back on the shop and Lev to face me. Much like Vale, she could do serious very, very well. Her dark eyes bored into me. Her lipstick was burgundy red and flattering on her. Whenever I tried red I ended up looking like a prostitute version of Snow White.
"I could do a reading for you, Anne. Take a peek into the future, see what it holds for you and for Dearborn. A bit of knowledge could change the odds."
I took a deep breath, resisting my first instinct which was to say yes. This was more complicated than it seemed.
"How fixed will that future be?" I asked her, searching her eyes. "If I know that Dearborn gets hit by a car tomorrow, and I decide to rent one, will that make the prophecy come true because I hit him? Or will I accidentally sideswipe the car that was fated to hit him off the road and end up keeping him alive?"
"The future isn't set," she acknowledged. "Nothing is permanent and this goes for the future more than anything else. Interference leads to changes. Usually, the less you know the better."
"So if knowing the future is a bad thing, why would I want a reading?"
She smiled slightly, as if in remembrance. "There's a caveat that makes me suggest it. I once had a client come in, a young guy from Toronto. He wanted to know if he ended up with his secret crush. She was in his study group, but they'd never spent any time alone together. He asked me if I could see a moment when he asked her out and she accepted."
"Did you see it?"
"I saw them together, yes."
"Well, did you tell him?"
"I told him a lie."
I waited in vain for her to tell me she was kidding. "Celestina, why would you lie to the poor guy?" I cocked my head with interest. "Do you lie to all your clients? Someone once told me that's what fortune tellers do: they tell you what you want to hear and you're so pleased by it that you keep returning."
Her eyes narrowed. "That's a load of bull crap. Maybe it's true of the fakes at county fairs but it's not true of genuine spiritualists." She tapped her fingers on the countertop restlessly. "Sometimes I bend the truth if I feel like the future isn't malleable. And by that I mean if one seemingly insignificant change to the present will make a dramatic difference on the future, such as deciding to order a latte instead of your usual cappuccino at Starbucks means you end up being paralyzed when a piano falls on you later, then you're better off not knowing the future."
"Jesus! Has that happened?"
"The piano? No, but I've seen little choices make big differences. I've also seen the reverse, however, where it would take a lot—moving out of the country suddenly or deciding to take your own life, for instance—to majorly impact the future. With this guy...his future was a piano. A little change in present behavior would have ruined the future he wanted."
"How?"
"If he knew that the only way to win over this girl was to continue being shy so that she could make the first move, he would have begun ignoring her and playing it cool, trying in his own misguided way to show her that he wasn't going to approach her first. But that would have put her off."
I liked this story. "So what did you tell him instead?"
"I told him I didn't see her accepting a date request from him. Ever."
"What? Celestina!"
But she only laughed. "He left me looking like a broken puppy. He was heartbroken and bleeding unrequited love. And that's what his girl would sense: someone who loved her but saw no hope in approaching her. I knew that would intrigue her and draw her in. That would be the reason she would ask him out for coffee at the end of the week. For him, coming to see me was the best thing he could have done, though I'm sure he didn't feel that way when he left."
Lev had dragged out a stuffed Elvis doll and was shaking it vigorously back and forth. Apparently the investigation was over and it was now playtime.
"I don't know, from what you've told me, knowing the future won't be much help," I said with a sigh. "I'll probably end up changing it for the worst."
"But what if you can change it for the better? What if one alteration can prevent someone from getting hurt? Some events can be avoided altogether if you're clever enough. Careful enough."
I shuddered at the possibility she painted. Did I owe it to my friends to look ahead and see? I hadn't wanted to drag them into this in the first place and yet I had. If any of them were hurt, it would be on me.
"Talk to Vale about it," Celestina said, patting my arm. "He's the one putting the most on the line with you."
"I don't think I could stop him even if we knew that in the future his statue gets sold to Kim Jong Un's interior decorator," I said honestly.
From the corner of my eye I saw her nod approvingly. "He likes you."
"That doesn't mean he should die for me."
Celestina snorted. "Then manipulate the future to keep him safe."
But that scared me. I wasn't some genius at strategy. Far from it. I sucked at Risk. Plants vs Zombies gave me hives. If people were depending on me to play around with Fate and win, well, they were betting on the wrong horse.
"No," I said. "No reading. What's going to happen is going to happen. If I try to manipulate things—I don't want to make anything worse."
I expected her to argue, but Celestina only nodded and turned back around to watch her boyfriend continue to maul Elvis.
"It's your choice, Anne, and I respect it."
But rather than comfort me, her words only increased the foreboding sense that something terrible was right around the corner.
Chapter 10
The thing about foreboding—the way I understood it, anyway—was that it was supposed to take some time. It was supposed to be an unnerving feeling at the back of your mind that something was wrong and was about to get worse. Foreboding was supposed to make you nervous. It was supposed to leave you a wreck of stretched nerves as you waited and waited for your fears to take shape.
Not my brand of foreboding, apparently. My brand was from New Jersey. It whacked me upside the head wit
h a two by four, because eight hours later, I saw it on Facebook.
For a long time I was uncomprehending. I recognized the words that made up the article on the screen as well as their meaning, but none of it was absorbed. It kept bouncing off me. My mind had shut down along with my heart. I wanted nothing to penetrate either.
It must have been sometime around dinner that my defenses finally fell and the hordes stormed me. I heard the sound of the shower running in the back, which meant the sun had set and Vale had transformed back into a man. As I listened to him moving around, the impact of what I'd read finally sank in and poisoned me.
I didn't cry. I wanted to. I needed to. But I didn't deserve the relief that tears would grant me. Celestina had offered me the chance to save my friends and I had turned it down. Selfishly, because I hadn't wanted to take on the responsibility of knowledge.
Well, look where that's gotten you, Anne. You must be so proud.
I wasn't Wonder Woman. I wasn't even someone a little girl in the ghetto would want to look up to. I was flawed and afraid. I was too clingy and needy. And yet because of something beyond my control—my ancestral blood—I was being put forth as the one who could do some good.
Sure. I did a hell of a lot of good today. I did the exact opposite of good.
There weren't any customers in the shop that I needed to kick out. They would have gotten a rude boot out the door if there were. I walked on shaky legs to the Open sign and turned it off, but stood against the locked door wishing that I could barricade it with steel and magick and a thousand dragons. It was a pointless wish that was too little too late. It wouldn't end what I'd already set in motion.
Vale finally entered the shop, his hair damp and curling at the ends. I smiled at him, thinking I had it all together.
He knew better.
"What's wrong?" he demanded at once, his brows drawing down.
I pointed at my computer instead of answering.
I watched him read the article about the gas explosion that had occurred this afternoon at the Gold Panner Apartments on Koval. I watched his expression grow grimmer and grimmer as he read about the two bodies discovered in apartment 8B. Zach and Rob's apartment.