by Ben Reeder
Chapter 2
~ There’s always a bigger fish. ~ Qui-Gon Jinn, Jedi Master
Lucas' car was a beat up Honda Civic that had to have been made sometime before they put the patent on dirt. He'd named it the Millenium Falcon, and it looked the part. It was his pride and joy, and he'd put a lot of work into it on weekends and the odd afternoon. It was faster than it looked, and it almost never seemed to break down. That was good enough for me.
We pulled up near the Square and gave up on finding a parking place anywhere close by. We settled for a spot near the top of one of the newer parking garages next to the Hollywood Theaters, and rode the cramped elevator down to ground level.
The Square was about five minutes away, but the Friday night hustle added another fifteen minutes to the trip. Dani hunched in on herself, trying not to touch anyone as we went. With Lucas and me in front, and Wanda at her side, she did okay. We stopped as we came up on the west side, next to the old Sears Building, and I took a quick look around. On the street level, everything looked pretty much normal. A handful of smaller fae drifted in and out of the clustered groups, pixies, sprites and faeries working the crowd. Their normal glamoury kept them from being noticed by the people around them as they swooped around their heads. The Goths were grouped around one of the concrete benches that lined the edge of the Square itself, with the Emos on the opposite side. Closest to us, I saw the cluster of homeless men, with their backpacks and duffel bags beside them, bundled in old army jackets or faded windbreakers.
The Square itself was less crowded than the sidewalks around it. The weekend partiers, mostly college students and hipsters, filled the restaurants and bars that lined the open space and, even from the edge, I could see heads turning away from the middle of the Square. Most of them were a little sluggish, a little clumsy, and more than a little drunk. As I scanned the crowd for some sign of Julian, a white stretch limo rounded the corner and started around the Square. A girl in a blue dress popped out of the sunroof and screamed, “Loooosers!” at no one in particular. She ducked back into the limo pretty quickly when someone threw a beer bottle at her.
“Gotta love it,” Lucas remarked, as I shook my head. “Hundreds of people on the quest for the perfect hangover.”
“You mean the one that includes a strange person in your bed the next morning?” Wanda asked dryly.
“That'd be the one. So, where do we start, Chance?”
“I don’t know what he looks like. I'd have to look for his aura . . . and I really don't want to do that here.”
“He’s usually at the coffee shop,” Dani said.
She pointed off to my right, at a small shop with a sign over the door that read 'The Mocha Method.’ It was busy, like any business downtown on a Friday night, but it was also the only place that was full of high school kids. It was the kind of place where I would have done business a few months ago.
“Not a bad thought,” I said as I pulled my backpack off my shoulder and unzipped it. “Wait here, we'll be back in a few minutes.”
“Dude, you said you weren't gonna do anything,” Lucas moaned.
“And I'm probably not.” Inside the heavy nylon pack was my working gear. The telekinesis wand I'd made last year while I was trying to find Mr. Chomsky's killer. My new leather-bound journal, a Yule gift from Lucas, and an Ariakon paintball gun of my own. Dr. C gave it to me at Yule because he was pretty sure that was the only way he'd get his own back from me. For what we were doing tonight, the TK wand was all I could get away with, and most likely (hopefully), I wouldn't even need that. I tucked it in my jacket pocket, re-slung the pack, pulled out a cinnamon Firebomb and popped it in my mouth.
“If the Conclave catches you though . . .”
“I'll be more dead than if some half trained warlock catches me with my pants down?” I asked. The cinnamon was starting a pleasant burn on my tongue as I turned and headed toward the Mocha Method. I couldn't hear Lucas and Wanda behind me, but I knew they were only a couple of steps back. Lucas' hand fell on my shoulder as I reached the door.
“Be careful, okay?” The worry was plain on his face, and Wanda wasn't looking too happy about it either.
“You've got my back, man. I can't be much safer than that. Save it for the other guy.”
Before he could say anything else, I pulled the door open and stepped into the shop. The first thing that hit me was the smell of coffee, and then I caught the wave of sound. A dozen different conversations, all going on at once, hit me like a wall after the intermittent sounds from outside. The barista counter took up half the wall to my left, and a row of tables lined the wall all the way down the right side. A couple of small tables sat in the front half of the place, and I could see a few tables in the back, too. That was where I would be if I wanted to be all dark and mysterious. The people in the front tables looked dark enough, but it was mostly a social thing. Half of them looked like Goths, the other half just wore black trenchcoats and tried to look more depressed than everyone else. But none of them had the feel of serious Darkness to them. I felt my mouth turn up in a pleased grin at that.
The back of the shop beckoned. If Julian was here, I was betting he'd be in the middle of the knot of dark clothes and spiked hair I saw around one of the tables in the back. Most of the audience were girls, with enough black on to suck half the light out of the room. As I made it to the edge of the little crowd, my skin started to tingle, and a familiar pressure began to build between my eyes. Dark magick.
Normally, I would have hated being right. But tonight, I was spoiling for a fight.
I earned a couple of dark looks and a few remarks about my character from the girls around the table as I pushed in closer. Those, I could handle. The sight of what was happening at the table was what made my stomach turn.
The guy sitting at the table wore a white t-shirt with a red goat's head in a pentagram plastered on it, and a blood red beret perched over a mop of greasy black hair. He had a round, almost baby-faced look, but there was a coldness to his eyes that made me want to reach across the table and hit him. He was shuffling a deck of black-backed tarot cards, and playing the girl sitting across from him.
“I must tune the cards to your energy, first. Give me your hand,” he said as he laid the cards down on the table and put his hand out to the girl, a tiny blond in an off white lace and satin dress.
She reached out and put one lace-gloved hand in his and looked at him with wide, trusting blue eyes.
“Concentrate on your question to the twilit forces, and we will show you the truth. I must warn you . . . it may not be what you want to hear. Do you have the courage to continue?”
I had to hand it to him; he was good. The odd word choices gave his act an air of the exotic, and by ‘allying’ himself with an outside force, he was taking any blame off himself if the reading didn’t give the results his mark expected.
She hesitated for a moment before she gave him a jerky nod.
“I want to know if—” she started to say, but he put his other hand up and shushed her.
“Do not speak your question until I have given you the answers you seek.”
Legit readers did the same thing, only they were trying not to load their readings with advance information. If he was using dark magick, it wasn't a question of if he was conning her, it just was a question of how. In fact, I would have bet every dollar my father had ever stolen that the he'd pulled same bit with Crystal.
I closed my eyes, concentrated for a second, and opened my defenses just enough to allow my aura-sight to fall into place. When I opened my eyes again, I could see the auras around the table, mostly purples and blues in this crowd. Across from me, I could see Wanda’s aura, a bright, vibrant yellow that looked like sunlight through leaves. I gave her a smile and turned my attention on the wanna-be warlock.
Julian’s aura was murky, not as bright as the rest of the auras I could see, with narrow bands of dark green and red in running through it. He had a lot of envy and anger going through him.
Aside from being a little faded, he was pretty much a normal guy, except for the thin, glowing tendril of pale green that drifted from his tarot deck and flowed up to the middle of his forehead. Another tendril ran up the girl’s arm and wrapped itself around her neck, flowing up until it plunged into her left temple. Her aura practically screamed of despair, tinged with a pastel shade that I had named ‘suicide blue’ after seeing it on the walls during one of my first trips to Twisted Oaks Asylum.
A pulse ran along the energy strand connecting them, and Julian reached for the deck. My eyes went to it, and I saw the image of a tarot card face floating above it. The card was the four of Swords, showing a man resting on a sarcophagus and holding a sword by the handle, with the point laying at his feet. On most decks, there would be three other swords hanging sideways above him. This one showed them with the points hidden behind the man’s body. It didn’t really show that they were stabbing the man on the sarcophagus, but a depressed girl would see what she wanted to see, or, more accurately, what she expected to see.
I shuddered as I recognized the design. Julian was using an enchanted Despair Deck.
“The Four of Swords,” he said before he turned the card over.
There was a gasp from the crowd as he turned the card face up.
“You are seeking some sort of . . . respite: a reprieve from a painful situation.”
The girl’s face fell as she heard her troubles suddenly spoken aloud, as Julian gave her a direction for her thoughts to move in. She might not have been on the verge of suicide before, but the deck's magick probably just made her believe she was. The next card was the Tower, a card of uneasy changes. Despair Decks didn’t have to change it much to give the worst possible interpretation.
The tendril of energy pulsed again, and I saw Julian’s aura glow a little brighter while the girl’s dimmed in response.
“Your life has become turbulent, there are . . . changes? No, not changes . . . a disturbance: turmoil. Your world has been uprooted.”
Tears were streaming down the girl’s face now. I’d seen enough. I wasn’t going to let him prey on her any longer. It only took me a couple of steps to shove my way to her side, and a quick glance at her purse told me her name: she had it written with another name all over a small journal. She flinched when I touched her shoulder and squatted down beside her, but her eyes were on mine, and I wasn’t letting go.
“Listen to me, Giselle,” I pitched my voice soft, so she had to concentrate on what I was saying over the crowd. “He’s a fake. I’ll prove it.”
“Hey, you’re disturbing the energies of the aether!” Julian said angrily. “Your negative energy is making things worse for her, asshole.”
“The next card is the Chariot.” This time, I was louder.
Giselle's eyes went wide as I reached for the deck with my right hand, and Julian grabbed my wrist. The tingle of minor talent coursed along my skin. Our eyes locked as I reached into my jacket pocket for the TK wand.
“Verto,” I whispered as twisted my wrist in his grip.
One of the things Dr. C had been teaching me over the past few months was how to fine-tune my control over a single spell. The new trigger word made the wand send a tiny surge of telekinetic energy rolling across the table instead of a destructive blast.
Everyone, including Julian, was looking at my right hand as I twisted my wrist and pointed my index and middle fingers at the deck. All eyes followed my gesture, as the TK wave touched the deck and flipped the top card over, revealing a man in a chariot with two black horses galloping full tilt with the reins flying across their backs.
“Back off, asshole,” Julian hissed at me.
I stood up, and Julian came up with me. His grip slipped off my wrist when I yanked my arm away.
“You do not want to end up on my bad side,” he threatened.
“The cards are marked,” I said, ignoring him. A low mutter drifted from the crowd. “The next card is the ten of Swords.” This time, Julian kept his hands to himself, and I flipped the top card without any resistance from him. As the card slid across the table, I laid my hand down over the rest of the deck. The mutter turned into a rumble of disbelief, and the crowd started to break up. Julian’s tricks weren’t so cool now that they knew they were being tricked. I turned to Giselle; it was time to undo some of the damage he'd done.
“It’s a card of betrayal. But any idiot can look at you and see you’ve just had your heart ripped out and stomped on. You wouldn’t have found any answers here. Just Julian leading you on, telling you there was a curse on you or bad karma from a previous life or some other bullshit, and how only he could understand and help you. You want hope, all you gotta do is go look in a mirror. There are plenty of guys here who'd love to get to know you better . . . and help you forget about Chris.”
“How did you know my name? And about Chris?” Giselle asked.
When in doubt, be cryptic, I could almost hear Dr. C saying in my ear while I matched Julian's glare with one of my own.
“I have my ways,” I told her. “Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to deal with this charlatan.”
She backed away with wide eyes, and I fought to keep a straight face. There was no telling what explanation she would come up with by tomorrow morning, but for now, Lucas was at her side, getting her out of the shop through a side door. We exchanged a nod as they headed for the door, and he held up his keys to tell me where they'd be waiting.
“Get your hands off my deck, asshole,” Julian spat, “or you’ve got a mage war on your hands.” The deck’s enchantment was trying to work its way into my head, but my defenses were holding it off for the moment.
“What were you planning on fighting it with? This?” I held the deck up and grabbed the enchantment poking at my aura with a thought.
“Tribuo suus viris ut meas,”I uttered, and Julian gasped as I broke his control over the deck.
“Next card is the Page of Swords,” I told him and flipped the Page face up.
He stared at me in disbelief as I held the card up for a second, then slipped it into my back pocket. Vague memories of the Page of Swords card and a moonlit room tugged at the back of my thoughts, but I pushed them aside for the moment.
“What are you doing?”
“If you think you’re mage enough to take this from me, you can have control of your deck back.”
I tossed the rest of the deck down on the table and headed for the front door. Even the last lingering touch of the deck made me want to wash my hands as I left. I pushed the glass door open and stepped into the cooler outside air.
The group that had been lurking around Julian was watching the door from the Goth benches, and the group of Emos were wandering across the open concrete plaza for a better look as I walked toward Dani. She fell in step beside me.
“So?” she demanded.
“I hate to admit it, but you were right,” I said. “He probably did cast a spell on Crystal.”
“But . . . but . . . did you break it?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Not that easy.”
“But you're going to, right?”
“You'll see.”
“What are you gonna do now?”
“Is he following us?”
This cryptic thing didn't always work as well for me as it did for Dr. C. Hell, it didn't always work for him, either. Now I understood why he got the look on his face he sometimes did.
Dani looked over her shoulder, then turned back quickly. “Yeah. What now?”
“Now we find a quiet place to wait for him.”
“Then what?”
“I'm gonna kick his ass a little. He'll whine a lot. I'll kick his ass a little more, and then he'll tell me where your girl is. It'll be fun.”
We headed into a dark alley between two buildings and found ourselves out on St. Louis Street. A quick left turn took us to where I wanted to be: the opening of another alley, right behind the parking garage the Falcon was in.
Seconds later, I caught sight of Julian peeking around the corner, and I made little bit of a show of looking around like I was looking for a place to hide. As I ducked into the alley, I felt a touch on my arm, and I nearly ran into the wall as a flood of feelings and images ran roughshod over my thoughts.
Dani staggered a few steps away from me, her own face screwed into a pained grimace.
“Sorry,” she said. Obviously a well-practiced phrase for her.
“Damn, don't do that!” I muttered before I could think about it.
“Your mind's no freaking picnic, either.”
“Yeah, well. Come on. He's right behind us.”
A dark alcove loomed on our right, and I pointed her at it. We squeezed into it without touching and waited. Julian didn't disappoint. Only a couple of minutes passed before he came stomping down the alley, muttering to himself. I waited until he had passed us before I stepped out behind him with my fingers laced together and hammered him in the back of the head. He staggered and fell to his hands and knees, and I was on him before he knew what was happening. My hands were bunched in his belt and jacket before he could do more than shake his head, and I bounced his face off the side of a dumpster. He slumped to the ground and tried to get his arms and legs back under control.
“Now that was disappointing,” I said with my best I'm-about-to-eat-you grin.
It took a little work to get him turned over and on his feet, but I got him up. His eyes struggled to focus on me, and he reached for my hands. I pushed him against the wall next to my hiding place, but he still struggled, so I bounced the back of his head off the bricks a couple of times, then a couple more times because it felt good.
“Chance, stop,” Dani said softly. “You're hurting him!”
“Kinda the point. Omelet, eggs, you know the drill. So, Julian, that funky little deck of cards you have . . . where did you get it?”