by J. P. Sloan
My stomach dropped when I spotted her. She was even paler than the last time I visited. She laid still, her arm at a strange angle, her chest moving in impossibly short breaths. For a second, I thought I was too late.
I crept forward and pulled up a chair. After watching her for a moment, I found the courage to speak.
“Clo? Cloteil?”
She didn’t respond.
I fished out the black sachet from my pocket and dangled it over her right hand.
“Hey. I brought you something.”
I let the sachet touch her palm, but her fingers didn’t respond.
“Come on, Mama Clo. I need you to take this.”
Carefully, I slithered the dragonfly pin out of the sachet and onto her palm.
“I want you to know something, Clo. I didn’t forget this. Not by accident. Someone did this to me. They did this to you.” My voice warbled, and I stopped to keep from slipping over the brink of tears.
Her fingers curled up around the pin and she slowly turned her head in my direction. Her eyes were barely open, staring at an unnerving distance through me.
She blinked at me and exhaled hard.
“Mama? I would never have forgotten you. I am so sorry.”
Clo hissed something that was probably words.
“What?”
“Go. Go to… that girl. She misses you.”
I leaned forward and wrapped my hands around hers. “That’s my plan.”
Clo managed the slightest of grins before dropping her head away from me.
I stayed with her for another hour.
Her final hour.
I didn’t notice when she stopped breathing. My eyes were closed and I was piecing together lost memories broken apart and buried by the memory charm. Her hand fell away from mine, and the dragonfly pin dropped to the floor with a delicate ping.
I gingerly reached up and stroked the side of her face as lights flashed silently on the monitor beside her bed.
A nurse rushed into the room, pulling me away with firm hands. She was joined by a man in scrubs, who may have been a nurse or a doctor. I couldn’t tell. I watched as they busied themselves furiously around her IV and her monitor. He checked a chart beside the bed and gave the woman a slow shake of his head.
As they covered Clo’s face and made their indiscernible scribblings on form after form, I turned and surveyed the table beside the door. I found two flower arrangements, one somewhat wilted and one relatively new. A black teddy bear. Several cards, some unopened and still in their envelopes.
One in particular caught my eye.
Carmen Gomez. 3110 Willowshire Lane, Apartment 200, Glen Burnie, Maryland.
I pocketed the card and moved for the door.
“Sir? We need to ask you some questions,” the man said, halting my progress.
I nodded limply at the man and waited for them to finish. There was business to deal with. I explained who I was, and that I wasn’t a relative. I had no real information regarding Mama Clo’s family. After another hour of bureaucratic grilling, I finally left Johns Hopkins. The wind was now driving a firm rain, cold and unfeeling. I didn’t bother running to my car. I could barely feel the drops. I was simply aware of their existence.
I drove away from the campus, once again an orphan. I had lost two pairs of parents in my life, now. My father when I was seventeen. My mother a year after that. Emil, the man who stepped into my father’s role, when I was twenty-seven.
And now Cloteil.
Glen Burnie was only fifteen minutes south of downtown Baltimore. I drove down I-97 past the airport and exited into a clutch of chain restaurants and cookie-cutter apartment buildings. Carmen’s apartment was easy enough to find, now that I had the address. I sat in the car, staring at her apartment door, white knuckling my steering wheel.
I made a mental inventory of the last two years of my life, and stepped out into the rain. After hammering on her door, I only had to wait a few seconds before it opened to reveal Carmen staring back at me with alarm.
“Dorian? How?”
I pushed through the doorway as she squawked in protest. My coat dripped water onto her carpet, but I honestly didn’t care. She closed the door behind me and leaned against it, crossing her arms. She wore gray sweatpants and a slouchy t-shirt. I had definitely caught her off her game.
Her game didn’t matter at this point, at any rate. But at least this would be easy.
“Is it done?” she asked.
I just stared at her.
“Osterhaus? Did he do it? Is it cancelled?”
“Clo’s dead.”
She blinked and slowly straightened her spine. Her eyebrows pulled together and her eyes teared up.
“What? When?”
“An hour ago.”
“How did you―”
“I was there.”
“Dios mio,” she muttered as I reached for my wallet.
I pulled out the ticket stub to Goudot’s Faust and held it up in the air between two fingers. When Carmen finally spotted it, she sniffled and stepped slowly for the kitchen, her red-rimmed eyes firmly planted on the tiny piece of paper.
“Two years ago, she asked me to make her a charm,” I said. “She was having problems with indigestion and wanted to know if I could help her out since she had some out-of-towners coming. I said I would. And I did.” I threw the stub at her, making her gasp. “I never delivered it.”
Carmen dropped down onto the couch, holding a hand over her mouth.
I continued, “I got a phone call several months ago from a woman named Amanda Burlein. Her daughter had been raped, the system failed, and the rapist was suing her for defamation. I think maybe you heard about her on the news?”
She nodded slowly.
“She needed me to hex this guy. I was her last desperate grab at hope. I never returned her call.”
When I stepped forward, she jerked her knees up to her chest.
“Two people’s lives are ruined now. And I could have stopped it. But I didn’t. You know why? Because someone put a fucking memory charm on me!”
Tears streamed from her eyes. “Dorian…”
“I know it wasn’t you. At least, not the charm making. There’s only two people I know in this city who can even craft a memory charm, and only one of them can make one with enough stick to last two God damned years.”
“It’s not what you think.”
I sniffled at her and dropped down onto a very large recliner.
“It’s exactly what I think it is. Because I remember now. I remember Goudot’s Faust. The opera we never went to. Only, we did go, didn’t we? Two nights after our fight at the Club. I took you to the Lyric. We saw the opera. You made a big deal about talking over our relationship, after I made a charm for you. A memory charm for one of the Club regulars who was talking about leaving his wife for you. So I took you to Catonsville. I brought you into my workspace. I made you the charm. Next thing I know, you pull a Taser on me. A Taser!” I shook my head and tried to calm down. “You must have been paying attention all the times I talked about my Craft. You knew exactly when to knock me out. How to anchor the charm to the stub. Good choice, by the way. Very effective. I never even saw the damn thing in my wallet all these months.”
She ran a finger under her nose and braced her face with a small measure of indignation. “It’s not like you were innocent in this.”
“Innocent? How many people were completely screwed by this? Aren’t you getting this? Clo? The Burleins? All the people who lined up at Osterhaus’ cellar door because I wasn’t there?”
“I had to.”
“Had to what?”
She shouted, “I had to get you out of my life!”
“You had to get me out of your life? Carmen, you lived in my house for a year. We were lovers. Friends. I had seriously considered proposing to you. You know that? And yet after one drunk jealous blow-up, you were prepared to erase me?”
“What choice did you leave me? You almost ruined my
career.”
“There were choices, Carmen. You could have talked to me. Screamed at me, kicked me in the balls. Something less than tasing me and wiping my brain clean. Why is it always all or nothing with you?”
“You don’t understand.”
“Clearly.”
“You make people love you, Dorian. Against their will, sometimes. Everyone was going to take your side. It didn’t matter that you were wrong and I was right. It didn’t matter because you’re the golden child, and I’m…” She took a quick breath and stared at the floor.
“You’re what? You’re just a whore? You call that an excuse? No. You’re still trying to prove your father wrong. Still trying to be the rich girl, everyone else be damned.”
Her face drew back into a grimace as tears flowed down her cheeks.
I stood up. “Fine. I’m done. Best of luck to you.”
“Dorian?”
“No. Fuck you and fuck your soul. Deal with Osterhaus yourself. I don’t feel like getting jerked around by you, or him, anymore.”
I went for the door and even managed to get my hand on the doorknob before I heard her miserable voice say, “Dorian? I’m pregnant.”
I stood holding the doorknob for several minutes. Everything in my brain screamed to turn the handle and forget what I just heard.
But the rest of my idiot body knew better.
“What?”
“I’m pregnant,” she muttered through tears.
With a sigh, I turned back around. “You’re pregnant?”
“That’s why Osterhaus wouldn’t sell me back my soul. He knows I’m more valuable, now.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
She pulled a throw from the back of the couch and ran it under her eyes. “I don’t know for sure. But I’ve heard things. I don’t know if they’re true, but if they are…”
I returned to the recliner, rubbing the bridge of my nose. “Okay. Tell me these things you’ve heard.”
“I’ve heard a child born to a mother who is damned will be stillborn. Or worse.”
“That’s crap.”
“How do you know it’s crap?”
“I suppose I don’t. You’re right. I’m way out of my depth, here. I barely understand the concept of soul trafficking. But this is just another stupid level to this.”
She wept miserably on the couch. If I hadn’t mentioned it before, there was very little in this world I enjoyed less than watching someone cry.
“Look. I’ll find out if there’s any truth to this. Get the real answers, not speculation. I’m not sure what to think about this yet. Just remember that I didn’t do this to you. You created this entire situation.”
She bristled, then tucked her feet underneath her.
I stood up once again, and loomed over her. “Who’s the father?”
“No,” she spat. “You don’t get to ask me that question.”
I considered it, then agreed. She wasn’t my business anymore.
But I took precious little joy in the thought of a newborn’s soul being sold on the open market. Every person deserved a chance to screw up their own life. I certainly had been given that chance, and to date, had done quite a fine screwing myself.
I stepped out of her apartment and plodded down to my car. The rain continued, ponding on the streets of Glen Burnie. I drove home slowly, miserably. I was so certain when I got up that morning that I was about to be done with it. All of it.
Now I had lost Mama Clo, and gained yet another assignment.
I went to make coffee, but as I pulled out the grinder, I listened to the pattering of the rain on the kitchen window, and put it back in the cabinet. Instead, I reached for the bottle of bourbon one door to the left. I poured two fingers neat and brought my glass to the writing desk. Sip, breathe, sip, breathe. This was going to get simple eventually.
The slip of paper with Gene Bollstadt’s number lay on the desk, teetering on its fold.
I had reached my limit of understanding. It was time to call someone with experience.
It was time to call the Curse Merchant.
ello?”
“Is this Gene Bollstadt?”
“This is. How can I be of assistance?”
“My name is Dorian Lake. I’m a practitioner in Baltimore. I was wondering if I might arrange a meeting with you to discuss some matters of―”
“Excuse me. Did you say Dorian Lake?”
The man’s sonorous voice lifted into a nasal register as he repeated my name.
“Yes.”
“Remarkable.”
I didn’t know how to respond. The man had completely derailed me within a few seconds. This wasn’t going to be easy.
“Anyway, this is something of an urgent matter. Do you have some time to meet this afternoon, by any chance?”
After a long, uncomfortable silence, he sucked in a musing breath. “I suppose.”
“Very good! I’ll be arriving by train sometime around one. Where can I meet you?”
“Well, might as well come on up to my place. No sense having you wandering around the city like a tourist.” His voice drifted back to a silky, apathetic timbre as he gave me his address. Central Park West. The Curse trade must have been far more lucrative than my karmic charms and hexes.
“Excellent. Thank you for making time.”
“Time? That’s funny.”
I wasn’t sure why it was funny, but I wasn’t about to argue with the man.
I purchased tickets on my phone and managed to squeeze in a cup of coffee before I had to continue on downtown. The rain had blown over, thankfully. The coffee soothed my brain a little. I felt relaxed, almost excited. Perhaps I was feeling a release from the pressure I had been under from Osterhaus’ errand. As things stood, I was removed from the situation. I didn’t have to save Carmen anymore. I just had to gather information. It was nice to sit and think about my work for a change.
Bright had thrown a changeup over my plate, and I had to figure out how I was going to swing at it. McHenry was notorious among the high society of Baltimore. There was no mafia element to speak of in the city. McHenry wouldn’t allow it. The man had dominated most of the inner city development since he snatched up all the cheap properties during the economic bust. He owned the city, and God paid him rent. If he wanted to push an upright man out of City Hall, he certainly had the muscle.
I had no doubt that McHenry had bankrolled lots of lousy karma. The complication in the Burlein matter came from his son. Joey Junior was the actual guilty party, at least in the most direct sense. I had to determine whom to hex, and which cosmic mechanic would be best suited.
My biggest problem was Bright. He didn’t give me a concrete goal to accomplish. He wanted Sullivan to look good. Perhaps even to survive the public beating he was receiving from Sooner. But this situation positively reeked of election year politics, which shouldn’t start until January. Did he want Sooner out of the race this early? Did he want the truth out, and McHenry’s son to be disgraced as a result? Would the Cosmos allow that?
These thoughts swirled through my head as I drove downtown and parked in one of the garages near Penn Station. I hadn’t taken the train for a long time, probably not since I moved to Baltimore from Long Island. The old station was partially covered in scaffolds and chain link fences bearing giant McHenry Construction signs. Seemed there was some remodeling to be done. I recalled reading something about it in the Sun.
It was nice having my memory restored. Everywhere I walked tiny things would jog memories I had buried. The charm I had cast was very thorough, but it was safe. No permanent memory loss. The details of my last night with Carmen came flooding back into my head the second Edgar doused the stub with salt. Carmen concocted her bullshit story about the married man, even convinced me to leave the opera early so we could cook up a charm for her. I had been at the workspace that morning, making the vigor charm for Clo, and figured since I already had an open wound on my forearm, I might as well make use of it. I made
the charm, perhaps charging it a little too well thanks to my anxiety around Carmen.
That’s when the bitch tased me.
As I printed my paper tickets from a kiosk inside Penn Station and took a seat on one of the long wooden benches, I stared up at the magnificent cupolas in the ceiling. I rubbed my head absently. The spot where the ballerina had clocked me on the noggin was still sore. I had left the figurine there on that box. For two years it sat there, waiting for someone to remember it. Then I came blundering along and smashed it to pieces. It really wasn’t my fault.
For whatever reason, I felt miserably guilty over the figurine.
With a deep, cleansing breath, I decided to let it go. Too much was falling back into place, I didn’t need guilt to screw everything up for me. I had to remain thankful. To the Cosmos. I figured I should thank Gina Desalo, too. It was likely that her pointing a gun at my face was what cracked the charm. Moments of intense emotion had the tendency to subvert karmic charms. From that night forward, I had begun to slip back into the old habits. Two year old habits. That was the night I had returned to the club, and no one was more surprised to see me that night than Carmen.
I was pretty hard on her. It was a boneheaded thing to do, but on its own merit, it was an act of passion. Passionate anger, but passion nonetheless. I couldn’t hold her entirely responsible for Clo’s death. There was no likelihood that my vigor charm would have cured her of her cancer. I had thrown that out there to punish Carmen. I was pissed. And I was grieving. I had been squirming at the end of Osterhaus’ hook for her sake for one long week, and I had hit my breaking point.
But I logically couldn’t hold her responsible.
Nor could I hold her unborn child responsible.
After a short wait, I found myself on the train heading north to New York City.
Home.
In the past several years I had driven to Long Island off and on to visit Aunt Viv. But the train ride was an entirely different experience. It was too similar to that long ride I had taken after Mom and Dad died, and my stay with Aunt Viv became… complicated. The ride to Baltimore those long years ago was like a funeral. A final departure. I was leaving my home forever.
After a few short hours staring out the window at fields, cities, and the darkness of tunnels, the train arrived at Penn Station New York. By the time I poked my head out in the fresh air of the city street, I couldn’t recognize the place. It was an entirely new city. Sure, the corners were there. The lay of the land was the same. Some of the old familiar buildings stood in visible swaths of the skyline. But all of the storefronts were new. Fresh. Crisp. It was a future version of the city I remembered, and it was completely alien to me.