The Curse Merchant (The Dark Choir Book 1)
Page 27
A crowd of familiar faces raised glasses to me as I made my entrance. I gave them a wave and stepped to an available settee near the center columns covered across the back with potted palms. One of the working girls in a yellow sequined gown wound her way through the couches toward me, and I gave her a smile and a nod. She looked familiar, but for the life of me I couldn’t remember her name.
“Hi there,” she chimed.
“Hi.”
“Can I get you whiskey?”
“No. I don’t think so. I’m thinking wine tonight.”
She lifted a brow and asked, “Oh. They told me I should mention whiskey to you.”
She must have been new. Without a house mother, the girls were having to make do, sharing information with each other. They needed a replacement if they were going to keep up with the sudden demand at the club.
“Red or white?” she asked.
I laughed politely. “Egelhoff Cab Sav. Ben’s got a case at least.”
She smiled with the same predatory sizzle that Kim gave me. My chest filled with a kind of fuzzy inebriation, and I hadn’t even had my wine yet. A funny thing had happened in the last couple months. I had completely lost my taste for Scotch.
Before what’s-her-name returned with my wine, a hand fell on my shoulder. I looked up to find Julian Bright smiling down at me.
“Merry Christmas, Dorian!”
“Same to you.” I motioned to the chair nearby. “What’s new?”
Julian took a seat, carefully balancing his martini. “One last weekend of relaxation before we step directly into election year, is what’s new.” He sipped his martini and pointed at one of the televisions along the back bar with his pinky. “Sully’s already warming up the machine.”
I turned to spot news footage of the mayor shaking hands at one of the steel foundries. “It’s going to be a hell of a year,” Julian said, leaning in to me. “You ready for it?”
“I’m ready if you are.”
“Sooner’s pushing hard. He can’t nail us on a personal smear, so he’s gunning for me now.”
“You?”
“I’m the low hanging fruit, it seems.”
I blinked rapidly as his face dropped, his eyes tightening. I turned back to the televisions and found the image of Julian patting Sullivan on the back. His hand lingered on his shoulder for a moment, and the image of his face filled with a kind of reverence for the man which bordered on worship.
Not worship. Love.
“Ah,” I whispered. “Okay.”
Julian cleared his throat and steeled his face back into its usual political demeanor. “That’s talk for next week. Look, enjoy your evening. I’ll get out of your hair.”
“Merry Christmas, Julian.”
He saluted me with his glass and wove around the chairs, steadying himself slightly as he negotiated the furniture.
A goblet of red wine drifted into view, and the girl draped her arm over my shoulder. “Ben says you have good taste in wine,” she purred into my ear.
“Well, it’s good to be appreciated.”
“Personally, wine disgusts me. I assume it’s an acquired taste.”
I froze.
The sound of the word “disgust” rang through my brain for a moment. I looked up slowly at the girl’s face. It was fuller, stronger, certainly more commanding.
“Oh. Hey, Gina.”
She blinked and eased off of the arm of the settee.
“You.”
“Now she remembers. You’re looking really good. Better than last time. I mean, you know.”
She stared at me with intent.
“I’m sorry.” She busied herself, trying to find a way to escape me without getting her ass fired.
“I’m good, Gina. Thanks for the wine.”
She took my cue to leave and hustled back into the waiting room. Unfortunately, she managed to duck into the smoking room instead. I leaned over and examined the darkened doorway to the smoking room. So few of the clientele were smokers anymore, the room was left unoccupied. That was before the recent influx of business.
Gina remained out of sight for several minutes. I felt guilty. It was possible that she was going to hide out in the smoking room until I left the club, which would leave her with zero clients for the evening. I had to put her out of her misery.
I stepped through the islands of conversation to the darkened room. When I poked my head through the door, I found Gina sitting uncomfortably across from an elderly gentleman in a light gray suit. He sat in a leather wingback chair puffing on a pipe, his eyes boring a hole through her. The sweet smell of his tobacco curled up into my nostrils.
Gina gave me a nervous wave.
I nodded, and stepped slowly to the man in the gray suit.
“Mister Lake,” the man’s voice cracked, “thank you for your time.”
“Don’t mention it.”
Gina ran a finger under her nose, and with a polite nod from the elderly man, bolted out of the room like a trapped animal freed from its cage.
“Do I know you?” I asked.
“My name is unimportant, but if it helps, you can call me Mister Brown.”
“Well, that’s obnoxious.”
His face didn’t betray the first emotion. He simply lifted his pipe to his mouth.
I spotted a large gold ring on the third finger of his pipe hand. A symbol was rendered in gold on top of the ring.
The symbol of the Presidium.
I sucked in a breath, coughing slightly against the smoke.
“It has come to our attention that you are now operating in Nether Curses.”
“No shit.”
He lifted a brow.
“What? Al-Syriani knows this. Not exactly news, here.”
He smirked and shook his head.
“Your hiatus did not go unnoticed. As for Al-Syriani, there is a degree of accountability we need to establish before we put the matter behind us.”
“What matter?”
“The matter of ninety-nine souls, not to put too fine a point on it.”
“How’s that going? You free those contracts yet?”
“Mister Lake, we never received these contracts.”
“Why not? I gave them to Al-Syriani. He said―”
“Hassam Al-Syriani is an agent of the Haba’al Turej Cabal. He is one of their senior members, a skilled negotiator, and an authority on early Christian Gnosticism. But he is most decidedly not a member of the Presidium.”
I closed my eyes and leaned back in my chair.
The Syrian.
He was the Levantine buyer.
Throughout the entire ordeal with Osterhaus, he was sitting back and waiting for the two of us to self-destruct. He knew he had a chance of grabbing the souls for free, and he played me perfectly. All he had to do was watch and wait.
“I don’t fucking believe this.”
“Believe it, Mister Lake. Ninety-nine souls now belong to the Levantines. I don’t believe I need to explain what they intend to do with them.”
“Please don’t.”
“The Presidium has yet to come to a conclusion regarding your complicity. Certainly your lack of understanding has created a somewhat criminal breech in national mystical security. However, it is my personal belief that you are, at worst, a dangerously naïve element.”
“Naïve?”
“How else would you describe yourself? Your categorical blunder? This inexcusable foolishness?”
“Hey! I didn’t exactly come out of this unscathed, Brown. I lost my soul in all of this.”
“Well, let’s the two of us go and ask one of the ninety-nine which is worse?”
I glared at Brown for a moment, then coughed as more tobacco drifted into my face. “What does the Presidium plan to do with me?”
“At the moment,” Brown said, pulling his pipe down to an ashtray, “nothing. There are individuals within our group that believe you are on the verge of some great breakthrough. Others believe your dealings with Mayor Sulliva
n will create a damaging imbalance. Eventually, you will have to be dealt with.”
“Well, see, here’s the thing. If you send your spooks to come black bag me, or erase me, or shoot a thermonuclear magic bomb up my ass, then there’s really nothing I can do to stop it, is there? So I don’t think I’m going to waste any of my time worrying about you Ivory Tower assholes.” I stood up, shaking my head. “And I’m not going to carry your burdens for you. Or anyone else’s. So Al-Syriani fooled me. Fine. I was in an impossible position. But the fact that you people let him into the country in the first place isn’t lost on me. Nor the fact that he walked out with those souls on your watch. I’m not the gatekeeper, and I wasn’t asleep at my station. So you people want to deal with me, then deal with me. I’m not going to let you bully me.”
“I think you misunderstand me, Mister Lake. My intention isn’t to threaten you. My intention is to gauge your character.”
“It’s fine, thanks.”
“And your business? Do you plan on selling Nether Curses to the public?”
“I’ll let the Cosmos be the judge of what I do. Merry Christmas.”
I walked away, pausing at the door as something scurried beneath a nearby table in the corner of my eye.
“If you’re going to survive,” Brown added, “you might want to work on your personal skills. Just some friendly advice.”
I glared back at him, and moved to the bar.
Ben refreshed my wine goblet and shook his head with a snicker. “Piss off another beautiful woman, Dorian?”
I sighed and took a long drink of wine, staring at myself in the mirror along the back bar. I looked older. Too old for my age. Maybe I just lacked a spark of life.
“Does it ever get easy, Ben?”
“I’ll tell you when it does,” he snickered, stepping toward a crowd of young men along the bar.
I regarded my face in the mirror. It wasn’t so bad. I just needed some good news, was all.
A man brushed past me, and I caught a look at his face in the mirror. His eyes were sunken far into his face, the irises red with reptilian slits. His gaunt cheeks pulled back into a hideous grin, sharp teeth lining his maw.
I spun on my stool as my pulse thundered in my chest.
The man jumped back a step, nearly spilling his drink. His face was normal. Round cheeks, brown confused eyes.
“Sorry,” I sputtered as he shook his head and moved on.
Pushing the goblet away, I collected myself and moved to the exit. The dark windows beyond the smoking room flickered with movement in the corner of my eye. I turned to see what was moving, but saw nothing.
Eyes around me were harsh, bearing in on me.
I had to get out of there.
I had work to do.
I retrieved my coat from Kim, who slipped me a card with her phone number. I would have stayed to play out the gesture, but I thought I saw something. A tiny cloven hoof slipped into the shadows between the coats just behind her.
I pushed out of the Club and jammed my valet ticket into his hand.
Trees hung over the drive to the club, denuded of leaves like bony fingers reaching to grip and keep me. I sucked in a swift, cold breath of winter air and shook my head. I was being ridiculous.
My car pulled up to the front of the Club, and I took my keys from the valet. When I sat down in my car, I felt safe. Finally safe.
I drove out of Druid Hill and into the streets of Baltimore.
They call it Charm City. I call it home.
My name is Dorian Lake. I am a Curse Merchant.
And I am damned.
I have a lot to learn about my own craft. More than I ever realized I needed to learn. And despite the fact that my only competition is six feet under, and that the Presidium seems to be tolerating my presence at the moment, I know that I don’t have much time.
Because the shadows are moving.
I’d like to thank the City of Baltimore for being creepy enough to inspire this series. Never change, hon!
More specific thanks go out to all the literary marauders at Curiosity Quills; my beta-readers, Carrie, Tara and Pherin; and my alpha-reader, chief grammarian, and long-suffering wife, Courtney, without whom I’d still be choking on commas and truly horrible blended whiskey…
J.P. Sloan is a speculative fiction author, primarily of urban fantasy, horror and several shades between. His writing explores the strangeness in that which is familiar, at times stretching the limits of the human experience, or only hinting at the monsters lurking under your bed.
A Louisiana native, Sloan relocated to the vineyards and cow pastures of Central Maryland after Hurricane Katrina, where he lives with his wife and son. During the day he commutes to the city of Baltimore, a setting which inspires much of his writing.
In his spare time, Sloan enjoys wine-making and homebrewing, and is a National-ranked beer judge.”
Now that you have completed this book, we hope you will leave a review so that other readers may benefit from your perspective. Authors like J.P. Sloan live and die by your reviews, after all!
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Appetizer:
Book Cover
Title Page
Main Course:
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three