Magic Time: Angelfire

by Marc Zicree

  Finally, we swung east onto Polk. Enid called back over his shoulder that it was right up ahead, in the middle of the block between Jefferson and Clinton. The buildings were low rises, neither new nor old, and it looked like the zoning was mixed business and residential. Russo’s building was a four-story gray stone with that sparkly stuff in the concrete. The windows were tall, narrow, and covered with a facing of flat, vertical, fake marble columns. Very neo-something.

  We drew to a stop in front of the building and Enid turned to Cal. “Now what? Do we just go in and get in his face?” “That’s my vote,” said Cal.

  I raised my hand. “Excuse me, gentlemen, but I would like to raise a practical issue. What do we do with these horses while we’re getting in Howie’s face?”

  The cool thing about these older neighborhoods is the way they hid things behind their storefronts. In this case, what looked like a garage door led down an alley into a courtyard that contained a patio set with a folded-up umbrella, a woebegone Fiat, and an equally forlorn motorbike. There were also some trash cans and two bicycles sitting in a metal stand. Correction: locked in a metal stand.

  We left the horses in the yard under the watchful eyes of Goldie, Doc, and Magritte, while Cal, Enid, and I entered the building from the rear. Cal’d drawn his sword. Enid’s weapons of choice were a switchblade someone had tossed into his guitar case during one of his street corner “giggles,” as he called them, and a bayonet he told us had been taken off a dead cavalryman by his great-grandfather, Soldier Heart, at Little Big Horn. In close quarters I like a good baseball bat. Especially if you don’t want to damage the other guy too badly. I was glad I’d thought to bring one.

  Splitting up made me nervous, since I’d noted that the locks on those bicycles were brand new. We could only hope that nothing would happen in the courtyard that would separate Magritte from Goldie by more than a few feet.

  Enid took us straight up to the third floor, but started

  shaking his head as we came up onto the landing. “He’s not

  here. But he’s in the building somewhere—I can feel him.” Cal peered up the stairwell. “We go up or down?” Enid’s brow furrowed, then he closed his eyes. “Down.” We went down. Enid first.

  I traded glances with Cal before we moved to follow. “What do we do if he’s not here?” I asked in a whisper.

  “I heard that,” said Enid from below. “He’s here.”

  Cal cracked a smile. “We search the offices. We might find something. Maybe the original contract.”

  I shrugged. “Which would do what for us?”

  “Enid tried destroying his copy and couldn’t. I had a

  thought that maybe we have to destroy the original first.” “Better light a lamp,” Enid called. “It’s dark down here.” “Could it be that simple?” I asked as Cal put a lighter to

  the lamp wick.

  “Now that would be refreshing, wouldn’t it?” He looked up, caught my eyes and smiled. In the lamplight his eyes looked more gold than hazel. Breath stopped in my throat and my face felt suddenly warm and tingly.

  “You comin’?” asked Enid from the darkness.

  “Yeah,” Cal called down, then set the chimney firmly over the flame and started down the stairs, giving me a backward glance.

  I allowed myself to breathe again and followed him. Russo wasn’t on the second floor or the first.

  “Little shit’s hidin’ out in the basement,” muttered Enid. “He probably felt me coming.”

  The basement was a warren of storage and utility rooms, all arranged around a central area. I could tell right away that somebody lived here. Furniture had been dragged into the corner of the main room: a table, a leather chair, a futon, a shelf loaded with books, a small but nice Persian carpet. Very tasteful. There was something wrong with the picture, though—something I couldn’t quite put my finger on.

  “Smells funny,” said Enid.

  Cal was looking over some stuff on the table. He held up a cigar butt—well chewed. A tendril of smoke curled limply from the end. “Still warm.”

  Enid and his great-granddaddy’s bayonet stood guard in the “living room” while Cal and I made our way down the hall toward the storage areas. We got to the first door, a storage room. Cal set the lantern down in the corridor while I checked the lock. It had been jimmied.

  “You open,” Cal whispered. “I’ll go in.”

  I shook my head. “You open.”

  “Colleen…”

  “All right. I open, we both go in.”

  He nodded.

  I mouthed a three-second countdown, then flung the door against the wall with a bang, in the hope that if Russo was in there, he’d freak and blow his cover. I mean, how used to being stalked through a dark building by armed commandos could he be?

  No one leapt out of the stuff that filled the storage room. It would take a thorough search to find anyone in there. I took a step farther into the room, wielding my bat.

  “Hey, Howie. Come on out and say hi.”

  Out in the hall a door slammed and someone pounded down the corridor. Enid shouted. Cal and I whirled in unison and vaulted out of the room and down the hall to the main chamber.

  Enid was facing us, bayonet in hand, his lamp held high and a stunned expression on his face. Cowering between him and us, trying to shield its bulging, white eyes from the light, was a grunter in a brown tweed suit coat and little else.

  Now I realized what was wrong with the charming domestic scene we’d stumbled into. There were no lamps.

  Enid took a step forward, lowering his lantern. “Shit, Howie. Is that you?”

  EIGHTEEN

  GOLDIE

  Moments like the one we spend in the courtyard behind Russo’s place are precious. This is something I know from experience. They’re photographs I can take out and look at as I please. Well, holograms, actually—like on Star Trek—3-D, with scents and sounds and sensations. If I could, I’d live my life in a holodeck, which is, I suppose, why the opportunity has never presented itself. I’d go in and never come out. And while I was inside, I’d be anybody but Herman Goldman.

  It’s quiet here, almost balmy after our sojourn on the Great Plains. And there’s no gusting wind. I lie on the hood of the defunct Fiat, aware that I am stealing this moment. Magritte is curled up next to me. Her aura waxes and wanes as we talk, our eyes on the ring of buildings, watching windows.

  Doc sits on the back stoop of Russo’s building, watching the windows we can’t see. Watching us. Given what little I know about his family, this adds a blue tint to my hologram.

  The sun has just snuffed itself when lights flicker feebly behind the windows of the building that faces Russo’s across the courtyard. We all tense up, clutching weapons more tightly.

  My stolen moment evaporates.

  Doc is on his feet, crossbow up and ready. “Perhaps we should take cover.” He gives the building behind him a worried glance. “They have been in there a long time.”

  “Only seems like a long time,” I say, pulling myself upright.

  The words have barely left my mouth when the metal door behind Doc scrapes open. He’s got the jitters so bad, he leaps off the stoop into the courtyard, pivoting in midair to draw down on the door. Fortunately for Cal, he doesn’t have an itchy trigger finger.

  “Come on in,” Cal says. “We found Russo.”

  “The horses?” I nod at our snoozing animals.

  “Russo says they’ll be fine here. His neighbors, according to him, wouldn’t know how to ride a horse if they wanted to steal one.”

  “Uh-huh,” I say. “But I’ll betcha they could probably figure out how to cook one.”

  “Good point. Maybe you could do something to protect them?”

  I fire off my most awesome ball-o’-fire to date and leave it swaddling the horses with a dangerous-looking veil of light. The poor animals are so exhausted, they barely notice. I notice that I do it with much less effort than before.

  I am beyond surpr
ise when we are ushered into a basement room to meet Howard Russo. “Holy cow, Blindman,” I pun, “your manager is a troll.”

  Enid gives me a dark look from under his dreadlocks. “Yeah, tell me about it.”

  The troll in question turns to look at us. His big milky eyes get even bigger and milkier when he sees Magritte, the vertical pupils squeezing shut against her glow.

  “You got angelfire,” he croaks.

  Angelfire. That’s one I haven’t heard before. Given the effect Magritte has on my various synapses, it’s appropriate. “Why’d you bring her here?” Russo asks.

  “She’s protecting me from you,” says Enid.

  “From me?” He blinks myopically.

  “Shit—you are no way that stupid, Howard Russo. It’s my damned contract.”

  The little grunter’s face goes gray. Oh, all right—it’s already gray; it goes grayer. “Whaddaya mean, your contract?”

  “I mean that clause about repercussions. I play my music and weird shit happens. Things get all twisted. People get all twisted.”

  Russo’s eyes kind of pinball off Enid’s face. Shifty little fellow. “Feedback … The contract … feeds back.” The words sound chewed on. He shakes a finger at Enid. “You shouldn’t play without… you know, without…”

  “Permission?” offers Cal.

  “Uh-huh. The contract is… it’s—it’s put together to protect the interests of the, uh, the management.”

  “What about my interests?” Enid snarls. He points at Russo’s diminutive nose. “I can’t believe you’d do something like this to me.”

  Russo blinks. “You signed. You were okay with it then.” “In the real world, Howard. Not in this damned Twilight Zone we’re living in.”

  The grunter picks at a piece of lint on his tweed jacket. “So, don’t play.” He gives Enid a sly look out of his milky bug-eyes.

  “Don’t play? That’s like saying ‘don’t breathe.’ Besides, there’s Maggie. I been having to make music to protect her.”

  Russo’s eyes sort of snap to Enid’s face. “To what?”

  “Yeah, I know it sounds weird, but it protects her from the Storm or the Source or whatever you want to call it.”

  Russo looks vaguely puzzled. “You mean that big, black thing that, uh, hoovered up all the angelfire? The Dark?”

  Enid nods. “Bottom line, Howard, I want out.”

  “Out?”

  “Of the contract. I came to tell you it ain’t legal no more. You’re gonna tear it up.”

  Russo’s little gray face pales and he blinks rapidly several times. I have the loopy idea that he’s holding back tears. “Can’t do it,” he mumbles.

  “You want me to tear you up instead?”

  The grunter takes a step away from Enid and backs straight into Colleen, who snags the shoulder pads of his overlarge tweeds and holds him still. He cowers a little, but repeats, “Can’t do it. Not won’t do it—can’t.”

  Colleen literally growls. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Cal leans down into Russo’s face. “It’s not as if you have a choice to make, Mr. Russo. This is simple: the contract was voided by the fact that it was altered after Enid signed it.”

  Russo giggles—a strange, wheezy sound like a car that doesn’t want to turn over. “You talk like a lawyer.”

  “I am a lawyer.”

  He sneezes away the giggles and sobers a little. “S’more than business,” he mutters, then pulls away from Colleen and shuffles over to the table, where he picks up the cigar butt and sticks it between his sharp, nasty little teeth.

  Such panache.

  He’s silent for a moment, chewing on his cigar butt. Then he stops and looks straight at Enid, suddenly seeming utterly human. “Look, Enid, I’m not the one you gotta deal with.”

  “What do you mean, you’re not the one?” Enid asks. “Primal.”

  “Primal,” Enid repeats.

  “Third party to the contract, remember? Primal got a say.” “Shit, Howard, there’s no Primal Records anymore. The Storm put paid to that. There’s just you and me.”

  The cigar butt hangs loosely in Russo’s mouth for a moment while his eyes move from Cal to Enid to Magritte. “You protect her, huh?”

  And I thought my noodle produced non sequiturs.

  “I could,” Enid said, “except for the fact that the damn contract makes my music feed back all over the place. I’m sick, Howard. And I’ve twisted the shit out of I don’t know how many innocent folks.”

  Russo is startled. “Sick? How—sick?”

  “Sick. As in dying. I play and it sucks the life out of me.

  I don’t play and it shrivels up my soul. Rock and a hard place, Howie. And you put me there.”

  Russo shakes his head hard enough to make it rattle. “Not me. Not me,” he mumbles. “Primal. There is a Primal. It— It’s Primal you gotta deal with.”

  “Do you have the original contract?” Cal asks.

  “Me? No. Primal got it. I only got a copy.”

  “A copy you can’t get rid of?”

  Russo’s eyes bug out even more than they are naturally inclined to do. “What?”

  “You do, don’t you?” Enid presses. “You try to destroy it, but you can’t. You try to lose it; it won’t stay lost.”

  Russo’s about chewed his cigar in two by now. He looks up at Enid and blinks. “Why d’you think I’m still in Chicago? Far as I can go. Right here.” He yanks the soggy butt out of his mouth and stabs it at the floor. Then he drops it and crushes it into the concrete with a bare foot.

  Enid and Cal exchange glances, then Cal says, “And you’ve never tried to void it?”

  “How?”

  “Well, gee,” I say, “I’ll bet you’d want to go to the Ruby City with us, Mr. Cowardly Lion, sir, and see if we can’t get the Wizard to give you some ba—”

  “Goldie…” Cal gives me a sideways glance (not completely devoid of humor) and shakes his head. “It does look as if you could benefit from a visit to Primal Records.”

  Russo shakes his head. His eyes crinkle at the corners and get a little milkier. “No. Not goin’ into that place. Not goin’ downtown.”

  Russo clearly has some serious angst about the Bubble. I gotta admit, it weirds me out no end, because I can’t tell what’s inside it. I figure maybe Howie knows, so I ask. “What’s downtown, Howie? Is it … is the Dark downtown? Is that what makes the Bubble?”

  He gapes at me. “The Dark? Here?” He’s laughing, sort of, but his eyes are darting around as if the Dark might just jump right out and bite him. “What kind of crazy question is that? Nobody knows where the Dark comes from. Nobody’d want to know.”

  Except us. I slant a glance at Cal. Your turn.

  Cal says, “You’re stuck here. You said it yourself. If you want to get unstuck, you need to void that contract. And given how things change, we may need a guide. You help us, we help you.”

  “You help me?”

  Cal nods.

  Russo seems to consider that for a moment, then develops a profound case of Gumby shoulders. “Why get unstuck? No place to go.”

  Cal leans down into his face. “We know a place you can go.”

  “Cal’s right,” Enid chips in. “Maggie and I just came from there. It’s called the Preserve. It was a safe place for us, Howard. Until I got so damn sick. If I can get free of this contract, it’ll be safe for us again.”

  “Just show us where we can find Primal Records,” says Cal.

  “Now?” Russo squeaks.

  “We’re in a bit of a hurry,” I say.

  Russo blanches. Except for the tips of his pointy little ears, which turn a darker shade of blue. “Oh, no, no. Not now. S’after hours.”

  That’s a chuckle. “They still keep business hours?” I ask. “Old habits,” says Russo, fidgeting.

  “Sorry,” says Cal. “I don’t buy that. You don’t know how to get in, do you?”

  Russo leans toward Cal, his eyes shifting to the shadows
. “I know how to get in, couns’ler. But you don’t wanna go out at night around here. Trust me.”

  About as far as I could throw you, I think.

  “Fine. I’d rather do this fully rested anyway.” Cal lays a hand on Russo’s tweedy shoulder. “But tomorrow morning you’re taking us to see the Wizard.”

  Russo looks at the hand, then back at Cal, and giggles again. “Yeah. T’morrow. See the Wizard.”

  We are to spend an uneasy night in Russo’s third-floor suite of rooms. There is a large, rather ostentatious office with its own minimally working bathroom, a wet bar, and what amounts to a parlor tucked into a corner beside the front doors. Through a second set of doors a small but fully furnished living room with a fireplace, and a large bedroom with a second bath, line up along the front of the building. A pocket kitchen opens up kitty-corner to the bedroom door. Only a close look at the accouterments in the living room reveal that the marble hearth and parquet floors are faux. It’s been slightly “grunterfied.” Every window is covered with thick curtains, none of which seem to match. They are velvet, linen, brocade. One is a quilt.

  There is no moon visible tonight, but the faerie Bubble illuminates the darkness much as Chicago’s bowl of light pollution must have done once. When I pull the quilt aside from a living room window, I can see it shining dully above the rooftops about two or three blocks to the east. I try to touch it, figuratively speaking—try to lay psychic hands on it, to feel its texture. It resists me. After pulling me here, its silence is unnerving and annoying. I’m pretty sure this is what it feels like to be a cat toy.

  It clearly makes Russo ferklempt. He doesn’t go near the window; he doesn’t look at the window. This strikes me as odd, because the Bubble’s just not that bright. It puts out a lot less light than Magritte does, and he doesn’t seem at all reluctant to look at her, even though she makes his eyes water. In fact, he can’t seem to take his eyes off her, which makes me nervous.

  “Close that,” he whines at last, as if he can’t stand the pale wash of ruddy light that seeps in.