InDescent

by K. Z. Snow

  “Let it go,” Ivan said irritably. He grabbed another cigarette. “You’re absolutely sure you never said a word to Spey about my connection to Artemis-on-the-Crescent?”

  “Positive. My mind was, uh…on other things when I went to see him.”

  Ivan’s dick twitched at the mention of those other things. But his need to get off was rapidly dwindling. “And you didn’t let anything slip when you talked to him on the phone or at the esbat?”

  “Nope, your name never came up. Hell, Ivan, you told me not to mention you!”

  “Yeah, like you always follow instructions so well.”

  “Bite me.”

  “Not today. So, do you think one of the other women might’ve said something?”

  “Why would they? Shit, they were too busy groping him.” A loud respiration came through the phone. “Listen, Ivan, what’s the big hairy deal? He could’ve found out from anybody. It’s not like you keep yourself under a rock. Spey probably knows about you and the Golden Star. So why’s it so odd that he’d know about your connection to Artemis?”

  Ivan scratched his head. She did have a point. But… “But Jackson Spey does keep himself under a rock. He couldn’t care less what goes on in the occult community. And let me tell you something else. If he’d known previous to the esbat that I was involved with this coven, he would never have agreed to participate. Guaranteed. That means he found out about me between last night and this afternoon. And that brings us right back to where we started.”

  “Miki,” Christy pronounced. Clearly eager to slam the woman who’d stolen her thunder last night, she didn’t have to be prompted on how to fill in that blank.

  “Yeah, Miki.” Ivan considered the possibility. She could easily be the one responsible for letting the cat out of the bag. It wouldn’t be in the least bit surprising if Spey’s partner in sex magic had become smitten with him. “Maybe they exchanged phone numbers or something,” Ivan thought aloud. “Maybe they even spent the night together.”

  “Wouldn’t surprise me. That’s why I wanted to see you.”

  This time Ivan managed to make it to the ashtray with his cigarette. It helped that his dick was now the size of a mushroom cap. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean,” Christy said, all snippy again, “since I’m the High Priestess, I can say who comes in and who goes out. Right?”

  “Well…to a point.” Ivan certainly wasn’t willing to cede control to an idiot, but he wasn’t averse to massaging Christy’s self-image if it served his purposes. “So what are you getting at?”

  “I decided last night, before I went to bed, that I’m gonna kick her to the curb. She way overstepped her bounds at the esbat.”

  “Don’t do that. Not yet. I might be able to use her.”

  “She overstepped!” Christy repeated more stridently, as if Ivan hadn’t understood.

  “Chill your ass out,” he said, irked by her petulance. “You can always give her the boot after I get done what I need to get done.”

  “Good luck,” Christy said snidely. “Because guess what? When I tried calling both her numbers this afternoon, I got these ‘not in service’ messages.”

  Halfway off the couch because he wanted to get a drink, Ivan sank back onto the cushion. “Really? No shit?”

  “No shit. I even tried both numbers at different times, just to make sure I got them right. Nothing.”

  It didn't seem all that strange to Ivan. A lot of people didn't keep up with their bills. But this was an unanticipated wrinkle. He’d been considering using Miki as bait, if need be. A wriggly little mouse of temptation that might allow him to reel Spey in.

  “Goddamn,” he muttered. “Well, I guess all we can do is let it go for now. And by the way, you’d better not get it into your head to pursue His Hotness. We all gotta stay away from him. I seriously mean that.” His mind began to wander to the Prism, which he’d hurriedly carried into his bedroom and covered with a pile of dirty clothes when Spey showed up. There were too many potholes developing in this road. He had to activate his plan soon. And the sooner the better.

  “What’s with you and Spey, anyway?” Christy asked. “Why all the conniving and cover-ups and secrets and crap?”

  “I have an old score to settle, that’s what. And once it’s done, it’s done.”

  Christy startled him by snickering. “You think so? That dude is wicked powerful, Ivan. Freaked me out…and I prob’ly only saw the tip of the iceberg.”

  The statement gave Kurtz a little quiver of anxiety. He flashed onto the afflictions Spey had beset him with—what a nightmare that had been!—then recalled the wizard’s parting words. Almost immediately, he dismissed them. Spey couldn’t have been responsible for his deliverance. It made no sense. Why would any self-respecting Adept smite his enemy with one hand then turn around and raise him up with the other?

  Of course the prick had been bullshitting him, and it made Ivan hate the wizard all the more.

  “Yeah, well,” he said to Christy, “there’s stuff out there even more powerful than his wicked ass. And I got me some of it.”

  Chapter Six

  As he again tapped Mikaela’s phone numbers into his cell, Jackson wondered if his usually accurate memory had been derailed. It was possible. After all, Ivan Kurtz and the Prism of Nezrabi, not to mention Adin Swift, had pretty much monopolized his attention since her visit.

  That wasn’t it. He had a clear mental image of those numbers on the notepad. But he couldn’t get through.

  After leaving Ivan’s apartment, he’d intended to call her from his car, find out where she lived, and stop by for a chat. He didn’t know her work hours, but it was worth a try. Some pointed, rigorous questioning was in order.

  Right now, Jackson didn’t know what to make of his conversation with Kurtz. Was the mage truly innocent of any behind-the-scenes plotting? Was it Christy alone who’d decided to ferret him out? And what exactly had Ivan said last night about this prism he now owned?

  More to the point—although Jackson hated to admit it—he needed to determine if Mikaela had some hidden agenda of her own or was working as Kurtz’s agent. He didn’t think so, but it wouldn’t hurt to do some digging. Jackson had often found out the hard way that a powerful man could never be too careful. And a wizard was, by most people’s standards, a very powerful man indeed.

  Frowning at his phone, Jackson tossed it onto the seat beside him. An electronic voice had again given him that ‘not in service’ message. He wondered what to do next. Mikaela hadn’t written her address on the notepad, but Jackson did know where she worked.

  The day’s early cloud-cover had begun to shred and dissipate. Sunlight, filmy at first, began to stream over the city. Damp pavement quickly dried. Once back on the South Side, Jackson exited the freeway and headed for Lennard Community College. He always felt most comfortable in this part of town. The patchwork of old duplexes and modest storefronts seemed to wrap around him like a favorite, threadbare blanket.

  An accident had stalled traffic on Becher Street. Not much Jackson could do but wait. Rolling down his window to admit some breeze, he vacantly glanced around. The air smelled of spring growth and exhaust fumes and, more faintly, fried food. On his left lay Kosciuszko Park, its verdant stretches of lawn interrupted by public amenities—swimming pool, tennis courts. Between and beyond these, the mature trees gradually thickened, the grass beneath them smeared with charcoal shadows. Jackson smiled. He loved the county parks as much as he loved the Lake Michigan shoreline. His wistful gaze cut between stout, ribbed trunks as he peered deeper into the oasis.

  A structure he’d never noticed before stood in a small clearing far back from the street. Forehead creasing, Jackson squinted at it. The structure looked like a hut on stilts, a rustic, raised cabin surrounded by a weathered fence. At irregular intervals, its pickets were topped by large, white finials.

  It obviously wasn’t a hunter’s deer stand. It obviously wasn’t a ranger station. Could be something for kids to play i
n, but it didn’t seem to be part of a playground.

  A vehicle horn blatted behind him, making him jerk to attention. Traffic had begun to crawl forward. Impulsively, Jackson flipped on his left directional. He had to circle nearly the whole damned plat before he found a place to pull over, and even then he wasn’t sure of whatever curbside parking restrictions might pertain. He decided he didn’t care about being ticketed. The park’s public lot was too far from the structure he’d spotted.

  Without bothering to lock his car, he jogged toward the small clearing he’d seen in one of the wooded areas. Soon he spied the hut up ahead. Or thought he did. Whatever sight now greeted him was less distinct and detailed than it had looked from the street. It wavered like a mirage in the patchy shade.

  Jackson felt disoriented. He seemed to be approaching a hologram. Silently reciting a protective incantation, he cautiously circled the insubstantial scene. Nobody else was around. Nobody he could grab and ask, Do you see that?

  “What the hell?” he whispered, tempted to reach out for, or into, the ghostly diorama. Then he thought better of it. Not wise to touch something unless and until you knew what it was.

  Little by little, he thought he did know. It was a fairy tale come to life. Maybe more like an acted-out fairy tale viewed through a camera obscura. The finials on the pickets were human skulls, their eye sockets emitting a ghastly green glow. The shutters on the hut’s windows were human bones. Most astonishing of all, the stilts were actually a pair of yellow chicken legs, perhaps twelve feet high, which seemed to grow from the very floor of the cabin. As Jackson stared at them, the toes twitched on the grass.

  “Baba Yaga,” he murmured in wonderment.

  The character was a staple of Slavic folklore, Russian in particular. A hideous, ill-tempered and deceitful hag, she reputedly cooked children in an oversized oven and then ate them, her iron teeth crunching ravenously through flesh and bone. Unlike other witches, Baba Yaga—or Jaga in Polish, which was more appropriate here—rode through the sky in a mortar bowl. She used its pestle like an oar, to ply the air and steer her flight. In her other hand, she clutched a straw broom that swept away her tracks.

  This must be a hologram, part of some experimental, alternative-art display. Jackson’s gaze again swept over the scene. Even a filmy ribbon of smoke wound from the crooked chimney on the hut’s roof.

  “Are you cooking your next meal, Baba Yaga?” Jackson asked with a smile.

  His smile quickly fell. An answering murmur seemed to drift from the hut. The whole structure shifted as its supporting legs subtly flexed and relaxed. Driven by curiosity, Jackson slowly swept a hand toward one of the fence’s skulls. His fingers didn’t glide through the vision, as he’d fully expected them to. They disappeared into it.

  Eyes widening, he pulled back his hand. The chicken legs began to bend, lowering the hut. Only the witch, when she recited a certain verse, could cause that to happen.

  Jackson took a few steps backward as images of Baba Yaga floated up from his well of childhood memories. He suddenly lost all desire to explore this mystery. Turning, he began briskly walking back to the street. A finger of smoke, acridly putrid, tickled his nose. The smell spurred him into a trot. At his back he heard a series of dry creaks and rattles. Then a hoarse, brittle voice sounded faintly in the distance, as if calling out. Bounding across two lanes of traffic, Jackson finally slid into his car and slammed the door. He gaped at the deceptively still greenspace.

  Nothing more appeared.

  “I’ll be dicked,” he gasped, trying to collect his thoughts enough to head in the right direction. He still had to get to Lennard.

  Jackson thought of something he’d said earlier to Adin, that the peculiar things suddenly happening around him could be neither explained nor controlled. What was worse, they kept multiplying.

  If, over the next twenty-four hours, he didn’t hear or read some news report about a little hut on chicken’s legs appearing in Kosciuszko Park, Jackson would know he had much more crap to figure out than he’d previously thought. And the whole baffling list seemed somehow to originate with Ivan Kurtz and the Prism of Nezrabi.

  Perhaps Ivan was trying to use his new toy to drive Jackson crazy.

  Ahead lay the single-story sprawl of Lennard. Jackson turned right, into the parking lot. Finding the main entrance and front office was remarkably easy. The place wasn’t much bigger than a good-sized high school.

  Inside, it looked and smelled like one, too. The pebbled-beige, industrial-grade linoleum shone bravely despite its scuffs. Floor wax faintly scented the air. The smell of paper was slightly stronger. Boot soles and heels thwacking beneath him, Jackson went straight to the most prominent feature of the central hallway—a long counter topped by a wall-to-wall window. The hive behind it was populated by desks and desktop computers, file cabinets, and mostly female workers. Within seconds, an older woman toddled toward him. Her ID badge read ESTELLE.

  “May I help you?”

  “I’m looking for one of your instructors,” he said in a pleasantly business-like tone.

  Estelle eyed him suspiciously. It suddenly occurred to Jackson how much he had going against him in this effort. First, he probably looked like an outlaw to this matronly lady. Second, there’d been way too many stories on the news about twisted stalkers and disgruntled exes cornering women at their places of employment. Third, he didn’t even know Mikaela’s last name.

  “Are you a student here?” Estelle asked.

  “Uh…no.” Jackson rested his forearms on the counter and briefly lowered his head. He wondered if he should make up some story but decided to take the straightforward approach. It’s what he almost always did. “The truth is, I met her recently, in a…social situation, and I’d like to see her again. But all I know about her is her first name and where she works.”

  “Which is here.”

  “So she said.” Was that the beginning of a smile he saw on the clerk’s powdered face? Maybe she was a romantic at heart. Maybe she found him good looking and was a tart at heart.

  “What’s her name?” Estelle asked.

  “Mikaela. Or Miki. That’s all I know. Oh, and she teaches composition.”

  “What kind of composition?”

  Jackson frowned. “How many kinds are there?”

  Estelle, bless her, cut to the most likely choice. “You probably mean English comp.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I assumed. I never thought to ask for clarification.”

  His use of a multisyllabic word seemed further to garner Estelle’s trust. “We don’t have any English instructors with that name. In fact, we don’t have any instructors with that name.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I’m positive. Wouldn’t have been here for twenty-six years if I didn’t have a good memory. We have two instructors who teach English composition. A man named Conrad and a woman named Jean.” Finally, Estelle did allow herself to smile. “I doubt Jean is your type.” She didn’t elaborate.

  “Can you think of any female instructors with blonde hair and brown eyes, about five-foot-four?”

  “None who’s single and teaches any kind of composition and is named Mikaela or Miki. Sorry.”

  Puffing an exhalation, Jackson straightened. “Okay. Thank you.”

  “Looks like you got hoodwinked. Maybe you need to pick your ‘social situations’ more carefully.”

  “I think you’re telling me not to meet women in bars,” Jackson said with a smirk.

  “Taverns in this city aren’t what they used to be.” Estelle sounded regretful. “Better luck next time.”

  Giving her a rueful smile, Jackson had little choice but to leave.

  On his way home, he made a point of again driving past Kosciuszko Park. This time he cruised down all four streets that bordered it. The nearly square plat was probably thirty acres, give or take. On Lincoln Avenue near Tenth Street, a life-size statue of Thaddeus Kosciuszko, hero on horseback, punctured the air with his upraised sword. Ja
ckson saluted the general. And almost rear-ended the SUV ahead of him.

  The Polish luminary was not alone on his noble steed. A naked young woman with fair, flowing hair, and a bow and arrow resting on her lap, sat nestled against the general’s crotch. Only, she had no substance; she was translucent. As soon as Jackson glimpsed her, the woman’s form elongated into a hazy tendril that shot off into the crown of a nearby tree.

  Jackson had walked through or driven past this park a score of times, at least. It was soothingly ordinary. He’d never before seen what he’d seen today. Yet, no other passing vehicles swerved or screeched to a halt; no clusters of neighborhood residents stood gawking at fanciful figures that appeared and disappeared within the pastoral confines of their local retreat. For some reason, he seemed to be the only one witnessing these apparitions.

  And Mikaela, his unexpected one-time lover, had appeared and disappeared as mysteriously as the phantoms of Kosciuszko Park. And Ivan Kurtz was again behaving like a weasel with a plan.

  None of it boded well.

  When he got back to his flat, the first thing Jackson did was pour himself a stiff drink. He glanced at the two most arresting photos on the bookshelves, and his groin immediately tingled at the thought of seeing Adin tomorrow. The gorgeous son of a bitch always made him feel like a mass of sentient jelly.

  “You have eyelashes like a woman, Swift,” he murmured, toasting the pictures. “But you sure as hell fuck like a man.”

  Snatching up his cordless phone, Jackson went over to his desk and pushed aside its drift of papers until he found his address book. He ambled into the bedroom and flopped on the bed. The whiskey he’d just dumped down his throat had kindled a small fire in his belly that quickly wrapped his brain in dozy warmth. God bless Jack Daniels.

  At least he’d come up with some notion of how to proceed. It might not pan out, but it was worth a try. He began flipping through the address book he held above his face. The phone rested on his stomach. It suddenly trilled, giving him a mild start.

  Angelina. She was about to leave the Grand Avenue Mall, she said, and was just waiting for rush-hour traffic to die down. Jackson heard the fragmented, atonal hum of busyness in the background, including thready strains of music, then the white-noise splashing of a fountain. Angelina must have parked herself on a bench.