Magic and Loss g-3

by Nancy A. Collins

  “That’s too bad,” the Maladanti said as he slid out of the booth, tossing back his peach-colored Jheri curls. I recognized him as Gaza, the goon from the Stronghold who had shown Hexe the torture implements. My heart started to beat so fast it felt like it was standing still. “It was a nice place you had here.” With a quick flourish of his left hand, the Maladanti sent a ball of hellfire flying toward the bar, and then casually strolled to the door, like a championship bowler turning his back on a strike roll. He didn’t have to see the fireball land to know it was a direct hit.

  The bartender leapt over the counter like a bullock jumping over a low fence as the hellfire struck the bull’s-eye mounted over the top shelf stock. It splashed on contact like a water balloon full of napalm, sending flames in every direction. Tongues of fire raced up walls, setting the ceiling drapery ablaze within a heartbeat.

  The huldra in the plastic heels was still twirling about, her back arched and head thrown back, her long honey-blond hair streaming behind her like a banner, when she saw the fire race across the ceiling. She gave a weird, decidedly nonhuman bleat of alarm and lost her grip, which sent her flying off the runway, landing with a loud crash on the table beside me. Jolted free of their lust by the fear of death, the Big Top Club’s clientele cast aside their drinks and lap dancers and made a mad dash for the exits.

  As the room rapidly filled with billows of acrid smoke and shouts of fear, I flashed back to the frantic chaos of the riot only a few months before. I knew it was important to stay as calm as possible and get out as soon as I could to avoid becoming lost in the choking fumes. I moved to help the dazed dancer back up onto her feet, even though she proved as wobbly on her six-inch plastic heels as a newborn calf.

  As I guided the dancer toward the exit, I heard the bellow of an enraged bull, and saw Councilman Cowpen, his normally handsome features contorted into a masque of bestial fury, bound after the retreating Maladanti. The huldu grabbed Gaza, spinning the spellslinger around while wrapping his tail about his throat at the same time. Instead of struggling, Gaza merely made a gesture with his hand. As I exited the Big Top Club with my charge, I glanced over my shoulder in time to see Cowpen drop to the floor like a bag of wet cement.

  Upon our escape from the burning building, a brace of huldren swarmed forward to claim their fellow dancer like a band of naked angels. I had to hand it to them—they did not seem the least bit embarrassed about standing in the middle of Duivel Street in nothing but their landing strips, surrounded by gawking tourists taking pictures with their cell phones.

  “Where’s Bjorn?” one of the dancers asked, casting about anxiously for some sign of the councilman.

  “He’s still inside,” I said, turning to look at the entrance to the club. Smoke was billowing from the clown’s mouth like the world’s worst case of heartburn. “The spellslinger who torched the place pulled a sleeper on him.”

  Upon hearing this news, the bevy of huldren strippers started mooing like distraught cattle preparing to stampede. Although Councilman Cowpen was a sexist and a bigot, I could not find it in me to leave him to die in a fire. I stepped forward, waving at the strippers for silence.

  “Calm down! I know where to find him, but I need someone to help me rescue him.”

  The young bartender stepped forward. “I’ll go.”

  Together, we ran back inside club, holding our breath against the curtain of smoke. Although fewer than three mere minutes had elapsed since Gaza first hurled the fireball, the interior of the club was almost unrecognizable, thanks to the flames and smoke. It seemed like an eternity as I sought for the place where I’d last seen Cowpen, but I finally spotted the huldu sprawled on the floor.

  “Councilman Cowpen!” I shouted as I knelt beside him. “Wake up!”

  “Pappa!” the bartender bellowed, grabbing what I now realized was his father by the shoulders. “You’ve got to get out of here!”

  Cowpen managed to open one eye, which rolled about in its orbit like a greased ball bearing, but was otherwise unresponsive. To my surprise, the bartender lifted his father from the floor and tossed him over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry as if he weighed no more than a bedroll. The moment we headed toward the dim glow of the fire exit sign, a huge chunk of burning canvas detached itself from the ceiling and crashed down on the spot we’d just vacated. We continued to push through the wall of smoke, and seconds later I was rewarded by a rush of fresh air into my aching lungs.

  Upon seeing the bartender emerge from the burning building with the unconscious Bjorn thrown over his back, the dancer I had helped escape earlier gave voice to a strange, bovine cry and rushed forward to greet us. “Is he alive?” she asked, her tail switching anxiously back and forth.

  “I think so, Mamma,” the bartender replied as he lowered his father onto the sidewalk. Cowpen’s limbs abruptly spasmed and he started to cough as Gaza’s sleeper spell finally began to wear off.

  “Tyr—go see to your sisters,” the older dancer said, pointing to the gaggle of strippers staring worriedly in our direction. “The last thing we need right now is someone getting rustled.”

  The bartender nodded his understanding and went to put himself between his siblings and the leering throng of looky-loos that had gathered about them. Mrs. Cowpen knelt beside her husband, gently wiping the soot from his face with the end of her tail. She smiled up at me, tears shining in her cornflower blue eyes. Now that I was aware of the exact relationship between her and the rest of the club’s employees, I suddenly found myself too embarrassed to look anywhere but directly at her face. I’d heard of family businesses before, but nothing like this.

  “Thank you, young lady, for helping us. My name is Svenda.”

  “Well, we Golgothamites have to stick together, ma’am,” I replied. “And you can call me Tate.”

  Suddenly there was the sound of a loudly clanging bell, and I looked up to see an old-fashioned pumper wagon, pulled by a brawny centaur wearing a fireman’s helmet and a heavy canvas coat, arrive on the scene. There were identically dressed firefighters clinging to the sides of the wagon, one of whom was Octavia, our new boarder. As the pumper came to a halt, the faun leapt down and snatched up a four-foot-long metal tool that looked like a cross between a pry bar and a sledgehammer, wielding it like it weighed no more than a broom.

  “It’s a nasty one, Chief!” she shouted as she eyed the smoke and flames belching from the Big Top’s entrance.

  A Kymeran bearing the badge of fire chief on his helmet reached into the pocket of his canvas coat and removed a small glass bottle the size of a Christmas ornament. “There you go, my friend,” he said as he removed the stopper. “Eat your fill!”

  The jinn shot forth like a flash of lightning, and a second later the outline of a creature composed not of flesh and blood but from smokeless fire hovered in midair above Duivel Street. As the elemental turned its attention to the inferno before it, its eyes literally burned with hunger. It tossed back its blazing head and opened its fiery mouth and inhaled mightily, like a child preparing to blow out the candles on a birthday cake. A cascade of flame suddenly came pouring out of the building like the torrents of a flash flood. The gathered onlookers shouted in alarm and raised their arms to shield their faces and eyes from the blistering heat as the fire shot toward the hovering jinn. This seemed to amuse the elemental, whose laughter rang out like the peals from a great bell.

  Within the space of a few heartbeats the conflagration was extinguished, and what had moments before been a raging inferno was now no more than a swelling in the jinn’s belly. The elemental yawned and stretched its flickering limbs as it disappeared back into the safety of its bottle, where it could digest its meal in peace.

  The moment the jinn was contained, the firefighters trained their hoses on the front of the building, dousing it in high-pressure streams of water. Once they finished with the exterior, Octavia entered the burned-out club through the clown’s head, only now one side of it had melted from the extreme heat, causing
the face to sag as if it had suffered a stroke. Using her metal fire tool as a walking stick, she made her way, sure-footed as a goat, through the charred ruins, searching for hidden hot spots to extinguish.

  Bjorn Cowpen seemed woozy but otherwise unharmed. As his family gathered around him, he kissed each of his daughters on the forehead, muttering endearments in their native tongue, before warmly embracing the son who had carried him to safety. He slipped an arm around his wife and heir, using them as living crutches to hobble over to where I stood.

  “I’m sorry about what happened to your club, Councilman,” I said, and was surprised to realize that I actually meant it.

  “I have others,” he said with a weary shrug. “But this was the one I inherited from my father, when I was Tyr’s age.” As he looked me in the eye, I could tell he was truly seeing me for the first time. “You’re Canterbury’s apprentice, are you not?”

  “Yes, I am,” I replied. “He sent me to hand over the title to your new carriage and take the final payment. But I’m afraid I left the paperwork in the club. . . .”

  “That old horse-wizard must really trust you,” Cowpen said as he reached into the pocket of his skintight pants and pulled out a folded piece of paper, which he then handed to me.

  I unfolded the paper and saw that it was a cashier’s check drawn on Midas National Bank. I checked that the zeroes lined up before and after the comma and decimal were of the correct number, then nodded my head and carefully transferred it to my own pocket.

  “I appreciate what you did, human,” the councilman continued, stepping in close to shake my hand. “But if anyone asks you what happened today, you didn’t see nothing. Understand?”

  I stared down at the tightly bundled wad of hundred dollar bills pressed into my palm. Part of me wanted to give the money back and tell Cowpen that pretending nothing happened wasn’t going to keep the Maladanti away. But then I remembered my own delicate standing with Boss Marz, the stack of bills on Hexe’s desk, and the future cradled inside me.

  “More than you realize,” I replied.

  Chapter 11

  While my “tip” from Cowpen wasn’t going to solve all our financial worries, it was enough to give us the first breathing room we’d known in months. For the first time since Jubilee Night, not only did there seem to be a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel, for once it didn’t appear to be a train barreling down on us. However, the moment I set foot in the door and saw a scowling Hexe waiting for me in the front parlor, my high spirits came crashing back down to earth.

  “Octavia tells me that you ran into a burning building today. Is that true?”

  “For crying out loud, Hexe!” I groaned, setting down my lunch pail on the coffee table. “I didn’t do it for kicks! Did Octavia also mention I went in there to save Bjorn Cowpen?”

  “What were you thinking?” Hexe exclaimed, coming out of his seat like a jack-in-the-box.

  “I was thinking that I was the only person who saw him collapse and knew where to find him,” I replied. “Are you actually mad at me for saving a man’s life?”

  “No, I’m more upset than anything else,” he admitted, the scowl disappearing from his face. “You did a very brash thing. What if you’d been hurt? Did you give any thought at all to what might happen to you—or the baby?”

  I blushed and dropped my gaze. He had me there. The fact I was now pregnant had not occurred to me in the heat of the moment. I simply knew what I had to do, and I just went ahead and did it, without taking anything else into consideration. “I guess you’ve got every right to be pissed off at me,” I agreed. “It’s not just me anymore, is it?”

  “It hasn’t been ‘just you’ since the day we met,” he replied. “Were you in the club when the fire started?”

  “Yes,” I admitted grudgingly. “The Maladanti are raising their protection fees. Bjorn told them to get stuffed in no uncertain terms—so Marz’s croggy Gaza hellfire-bombed the bar and put Cowpen under a sleeper spell. That’s why I had to go back in and get him. I’m certain Cowpen’s going to insist it was all an accident, though, and his family’s going to back him up on it.”

  “What you did today was very courageous, Tate. But you’ve always been a brave woman—we would have never met if you didn’t have the guts to move to Golgotham in the first place. Just promise me you won’t do anything that dangerous again—at least not until after you have the baby.”

  “And here I was planning on juggling chainsaws to bring in extra money!” I laughed. “I’m just joking!” I added hastily, seeing the flash of alarm in his golden eyes, and planted a kiss on his cheek. “Oh—and speaking of putting off things until the baby arrives—have you told your parents the news yet?”

  Now it was his turn to look at his shoes. “Not yet. I’ll call them in a day or two.”

  “How about we put all this behind us and go out for dinner? After all, you were complaining about feeling cooped up earlier. . . .”

  “That sounds great,” he said with a rueful smile. “But there’s no way we can afford it.”

  “Don’t worry—I’ve got it covered,” I said, taking out the money Cowpen had given me.

  “Where did you get that?” Hexe asked, his eyes widening in surprise.

  “Let’s just say it was the councilman’s way of saying ‘thank you’ for saving his life, as well as keeping my mouth shut.”

  “I don’t feel good about this, Tate,” Hexe said, frowning at the money.

  “Uh-uh,” I said, with a defiant shake of my head. “I know that look. You’re getting ready to give me the big lecture about the Right Hand path and tell me to give the money back and report what happened to the PTU. I realize you don’t want to compromise your principles—but I am not returning this money, and I am definitely not talking to your father about what I saw.

  “For one, I’m pretty sure giving back this money will offend Bjorn Cowpen only slightly less than setting fire to his club. And, secondly, since we’re already playing our own little game of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ with Boss Marz, who are we to insist he go to the authorities? Hell, he’s a chuffin’ councilman; he is the authority in Golgotham! If Marz doesn’t hesitate to physically strike out at members of the Royal Family and the GoBOO, then he must really have some badass mojo up his sleeve. And I, for one, have no desire to find out what it might be. I’ll admit that running into a burning building in my current condition was reckless, but it’s nowhere near as dangerous as what you’re suggesting I do.”

  Hexe’s shoulders dropped in resignation, as if all the weight in the world had suddenly settled upon them. “You’re right,” he sighed in agreement. “I can’t blame Cowpen for keeping silent. He’s doesn’t want to do anything that will jeopardize his family.” He gave a sad little smile as he rested his left hand on my belly. “It’s like you said—it’s not just me anymore.”

  * * *

  As luck would have it, Talisman was playing at the Two-Headed Calf that night. Since the Kymeran punk band had become extremely popular with the younger humans intrepid enough to venture beyond Duivel Street and the Fly Market, the evenings they played the Calf were always guaranteed to be packed to the rafters.

  As crowded as it was, I could still easily spot Lafo, standing head and shoulders over his patrons, his bright red hair spilling over the collar of a purple pinstripe zoot suit. Upon seeing us, the restaurateur elbowed his way across the packed room

  “Good to see you again, Serenity!” he grinned, shouting over the amplified accordions and electric hurdy-gurdy.

  As his friend moved to shake his hand, Hexe hastily recoiled. “No offense, Lafo,” he said quickly, holding up his right hand by way of explanation, displaying the splint. “I had a little too much to drink Jubilee Night and lost my balance stepping off a curb. I tried to break my fall, and ended up breaking my hand instead.”

  Lafo’s ketchup-red eyebrows shot up in surprise. “Nothing serious, I hope?”

  “I’ll be good as new within a week,�
� he lied. “I just have to give the bones time to strengthen after being reknit, that’s all. Tate and I were hoping to have dinner here this evening, but it looks like we picked the wrong night.”

  “No need to worry about that; most of the kids who show up for the band never set foot upstairs,” Lafo snorted. “Luckily, they all drink like fish, though.”

  Upon reaching the upstairs dining room, we were unsurprised to discover only a handful of the tables and booths occupied, as the regular clientele had learned to steer clear of the Calf on those nights Talisman was scheduled to play. Not wanting to call attention to ourselves, we chose a booth toward the back of the dining area and placed our drink and dinner orders.

  As we waited for our food, we chatted about work, friends, and our pet, trying hard to have a good time and not dwell on current problems. And, for a while, we actually succeeded in doing so. Then our meals arrived.

  “Oh,” Hexe said, his face collapsing as he stared at the roasted kangaroo tail draped across the platter. “I forgot you need two hands to eat this thing.”

  “You can have my parsnip casserole, if you like,” I suggested.

  “That’s okay,” he replied, as he unrolled the cutlery, fumbling with the steak knife. “I can cut it up into chunks.” He studied his food for a long moment, trying to figure out the best way to attack the problem without it ending up in his lap.

  “Darling, do you need some help?” I asked gently. “I can cut it up for you, if you like. . . .”

  “No!” he replied sharply. “I’m fine. I do not need anyone to cut up my food for me!” He began to saw at the roo-tail, only to have the knife fly out his hand and land on the floor. His face flushed bright red as he bent to retrieve it, before our server appeared tableside with a fresh roll of cutlery.

  “If you like, Serenity, I can take your entree back to the kitchen and have it replaced with a chopped version?” the waiter suggested politely as he retrieved the soiled knife.