by A. J. Aalto
Instead of a computer, Beau withdrew from one of the computer bags a slim trumpet case. It was bright red and painted with a blue and yellow striped pattern that looked like a circus Big Top. I remembered what the big guy at the pawn shop had said. Carnival trash. Beau seemed to waver when he approached me with it.
“Where’s your gloves?” He cradled his prize, wary about offering it. “I saw you in a magazine once. You said you always wear them. To block stuff, or whatever.”
The Blue Sense informed me that his anxiety was high enough for him to withdraw, so I reached into my jacket pockets and pulled out the pair of gloves there. They were softest calf skin, tan, and when I tugged them on, they felt like me. I realized I missed my gloves and was glad to have them become part of my life again. I’d been forcing myself to feel everything in an effort to feel nothing; that urge no longer ruled me. I took the box from him and said, “I’m going to need to attune myself psychically with this instrument so I can force her into it.” Lie, lie. “I’ll have to take it with me. And I’ll need to know her name.”
“She doesn’t have a name, she’s just a Horseman of the Apocalypse.”
“Even they have names,” I said. “You said she was the carrier of disease, right? So, Pestilence? But she would have used a human name to ‘trick’ people, yes?”
“Well, what do you need her name for?”
“How else would I direct the spell that takes her and puts her into the instrument? It needs direction. It needs clarity. I can’t just say ‘put pestilence in the trumpet’ and hope for the best. That’s just going to give the trumpet Ebola or something.” I gave him the for-realsies eyes. “The spell needs a name, Beau.”
He didn’t look impressed.
I pushed, “This type of spell is shadow work, Beau. It’s not light, breezy, positive white magic. Trapping a creature like this is touchy business.”
He nodded, seeing the sense in it. “Well, she may have lied about her name, but I think it’s Elyse.”
I saw Umayma whip out her notebook and write this down. Beau had confirmed what Solmes had told me at the pawn shop. If Elyse used this name at the spa, too, then I had a picture of the appointment book and may be able to track her through that. I thanked him, reassured him we were on the case, and started for the door.
Again, he hesitated. “You gotta give me some protection, man. I mean, what if she comes for me?”
I sighed. “Okay, listen, I don’t usually share spells with people outside my circle, but this is what I want you to do.” I gave him a moment to make eye contact and pay full attention. Super-serious. “Go to the grocery store and buy a package of sage. Light a blue candle. Are you getting this? A blue candle.” I waited for his nod. “Then cram about a tablespoon of that sage up your ass, and say the word ‘safety’ three times backward. You got it?”
“Wait, what?”
“It sounds like this: ytefas. YEE-teh-fas.”
“But the sage…”
“Don’t mess that part up,” I said solemnly.
He frowned but nodded. “Is this why fate brought us together?”
“There’s no escaping destiny, man,” I said.
“You’re sure you can trap her in the trumpet? I mean, return her to it? For good?”
I nodded firmly. “Or my name isn’t Marnie Justice Moonbeam Baranuik,” I said cheerfully.
Beau winced. “Hippie parents?”
We laughed together merrily about my made-up name and I nodded as we moved toward the door. “Okay, I should be chatting with you by Monday morning at the latest. Keep your fingers crossed.”
Beau fetched his peanut butter from where it had rolled half under the bed, and waved goodbye.
Umayma went to the car ahead of me, unlocking the doors with her key fob.
“No, I mean it,” I called back to Beau at the motel door. “Literally keep your fingers crossed on your left hand. It’ll help the protection spell. Right hand, sage-cramming. Left hand, fingers crossed.”
When we got into the car and Umayma started the heat, she carefully signed below the dash for only me to see, “Herbs, ass. What kind of spell?”
“No kind,” I said. “That was no kind of spell at all.”
She signed, “Fingers crossed? Until Monday? Mean.”
“That skeevy twat-rocket had it coming,” I said, looking at my phone to see the picture of the names list. If I had Spidey senses, they’d have been pinging badly. I gave Chapel a heads-up text and then sent him the picture of the list and asked him his opinion. “Beau wants to trap some chick in a frickin’ trumpet that I’m pretty sure she doesn’t belong in. He’s lucky I didn’t tell him to apply a nice, fresh ghost-pepper rub to his balls.”
I looked up to wave one more time as we pulled out of the motel. Beau had his peanut butter jar jammed up under his left armpit so he could spoon with his right hand. His left hand fingers were dutifully crossed. I gave a soft chuckle as we headed back to the office.
Chapter 17
My office at Batten’s wasn’t well set up for spell work yet, and I hadn’t stocked up on everything I needed. I did, however, have the last of my galangal and vetivert for hex-breaking and banishing in case the trumpet had any dangerous magic tripwires waiting for me. Before I could strip everything back and explore its nature, I needed to be sure it was safe. Or at least safe-ish. I approached the piece slowly, already sensing that this was no normal musical instrument. I tried to clear my mind while Umayma bustled about behind me, setting up the herbs and candles. I accepted that my perceptions may have been distorted, and I reeled everything back in and tried to tame my heightened emotions. I worked on shedding any baggage that I was hauling around – because of Batten, the run-ins with Dunlop, my messy interactions with just about everyone in town, and my still-shocked eyebrows and half-ruined pedicure – and brought my sense of control front and center. It was important to shine a light on the shadows. I had told Beau that I would be doing shadow work, but that was a lie; I was dissolving the darkness and bringing truths forward, into the light. That required positive energy, ridding myself of the cloak of negativity.
Even casting only half a shadow of my own, I was so fucked.
I shed my gloves as Umayma rummaged in the cabinet under the bookshelf. When she came up empty handed, I said, “No pot?”
She signed, “No.”
I scanned the room for alternatives and said, “Uh, coffee pot? Batten had that old Mr. Caffeine in his kitchen. It’s probably still there.”
She showed me a skeptical nose wrinkle.
“Why not? It’s got hot water and filters and a receptacle. It’s kind of perfect, actually. Don’t know why I haven’t used one before.” I strutted through from my office, double-checking the lock on the front door. Then I flicked the hook lock off the little temporary door and marched into Batten’s kitchen, wary of my bare hands, aiming only for the coffee machine and careful not to touch anything else. I tested my fingers on it like it was hot, tap-tap-rub, and when I didn’t get any visions of a sleepy-headed, messy-haired Morning Batten in his boxer briefs making coffee, I unplugged it, filled the water reservoir at the sink, and gathered the workings up. On the way past the kitchen bar, I swiped a roll of paper towels, too, because I have met me.
The spell was relatively simple, as spells go; removing hexes and banishing blockages was basic white magic that I could have done in my sleep, provided I had everything I needed. I plugged in the coffee machine to start the water percolating, tossed the herbs into the coffee filter, lit purple candles, made some soft appeals to Hestia, and invited the Watchtowers. I didn’t have salt — which was beyond weird for me, but I put that down to having too much on my plate — but substituted with a sprinkle of rosemary oil in the actual coffeepot. “Now, this potion needs to be kept,” I explained to her. “It removes the hex or curse into itself. If we pour this liquid out, it will return the hex to the item. Too bad Harry keeps stealing my brandy, because that bottle would have worked perfectly.”
“What was that?” I asked.
She made a rotating series of uncertain faces then sighed and hurried upstairs to her little study under the eaves. She returned with my brandy bottle, half full.
“You’ve been stealing my brandy.” I felt my eyebrows shoot up. “You’ve been lying to me?” Instead of being pissed, I was impressed. She’d fooled an Empath. “Nicely done. I had no idea.”
She held an imaginary skirt and curtseyed, which tickled my funny bone.
“We’re gonna discuss that later,” I assured her, checking the level of the brandy. The potion would definitely have room in the bottle with the liquid that remained. I waved the bottle through the flames of the purple candles and asked for Hestia to remove the negativity I’d likely put into the alcohol with my misery, and promised that I’d had my last sip from this bottle. Then I set it, open, next to the coffee machine. Visualizing a clear path through darkness and uncertainty, I invited truth and the peeling away of deceptions. I felt power rise in the room, and saw Umayma in the corner of my eye hug herself in anticipation.
When the hot water washed through the herbs and made a milky potion in the pot, I forced myself to be patient and wait until it hissed its last few drops. Grabbing it by the handle, I began to swirl it and summon clarity. The film in the liquid began to part under the determination in my gaze, and I squinted. Squinting always helps. The potion must have sensed I was super-serious because a tiny whirlpool formed in the center, churning rapidly in the opposite direction of my swirling. I shook it more forcefully.
A few drops splashed out into the air and I hurried to put the pot down and grab at the paper towels, tearing one free. “Sorry, sorry!” I said.
But the droplets hadn’t landed on Umayma. They hadn’t landed anywhere. I held the paper towel in one hand while we both stared at the drops dancing and twinkling mid-air. “Uh, hello?”
Maim’s eyes were wide as dinner plates. She crouched to peer beneath them, and then came around to join me, staring at the glittering, levitating droplets, hanging in the air like miniature UFOs rendered by Swarovski artisans. Then she pinched her nose and looked at me.
I shook my head. “I don’t smell it. What does it smell like?”
She pointed at me, then plunked a fingertip behind her ear at the spot where perfume goes.
“My perfume?”
She nodded rapidly, and signed “Yes,” to make sure it was clear.
I reached back without looking and felt along the wall until my fingers brushed the light switch. I flicked it down, and the lights went out. In the dancing candlelight, it was much easier to see the shape: half a shadow, shaped like me.
Maim pointed at it accusingly and then signed rapidly in letters. I couldn’t get it, and she switched to jotting it in my big Moleskine. Huge letters. F-E-T-C-H. And under that, she’d scrawled: black magic.
“Okay, so maybe the left half my shadow peeled off,” I said defensively. “Maybe my Half-A-Shadow is just trying to be helpful, here. Ever thought of that, huh? No. You just assume the worst. Everyone always assumes the worst! Well…” I planted both hands on my hips. “Go ahead, Half-A-Shadow. Workin’ a spell, here. Removing hexes. Banishing blockages. Revealing truths. You wanna help? Step up!”
The droplets bounced in her cupping hand twice, and then hurtled at Umayma.
Umayma blurted, “Ow! What the fucking shitfuck?”
My jaw dropped. I pointed at her repeatedly, excitedly. “Did you just swear vociferously and awesomely out loud with an actual voice?”
“Oh. Right,” she said. “Did I not mention?”
I looked for my severed shadow lady, but she had skedaddled. “Maim, you can talk?”
“I sure as fuck could, before I was a DaySitter,” she told me. “That asshole Prost took that away. He had a goat-fucking witch shroud my fucking voice with a curse.”
“Was it because of all the swearing?” I guessed. “It was the swearing, right?”
“No!” she said, signing it, too out of habit.
“Did the witch actually fuck a goat, or are you just saying…”
“Fuck, no, idiot!”
“Okay, hey! You’re rattling off a lot of f-bombs, there, Maim,” I told her, “even by my standards.”
“I didn’t mean for that to be a surprise,” she said with a not-sorry-at-all smirk. “It’s fucking hard to sign the word fuck all the time. But it feels fucking great to say it.” Her eyes gleamed with joy, and it made me gawk as she roared crustily on rusty vocal chords, “Fuck! Fuck! Shitting dickfuck ratcunt snatchbadger!”
I blinked rapidly in the force of a curse cascade. “Wow. I’m putting the shrouding curse back on.”
“Don’t you fucking dare!” Her arms swept open in an overly-enthusiastic gesture; one hand knocked the coffee maker, sending the hot pot flying. It smashed into the door, shattering into big glass chunks and spraying black juices and wet herbs all over the carpet.
She tried to say “oops,” or more likely “oh, fuck,” but nothing came out. Her mouth made a perfect little O of distress and she forgot her sign language to gesture frantically at me and her throat.
“Hrm,” I said with sympathy. “That didn’t last long.”
She indicated that I should hurry up and do another spell.
“Well, I would,” I said, “but you explodified my pot and smooshed the last of my Galangal. It’ll have to wait until I get a new order from Thrice Around the Circle.”
She showed me the middle finger to disappointing results.
“Doesn’t really have the same effect,” I said sadly. “Your vocabulary is filthy, by the way. I never would have guessed. I’m actually pretty fucking happy about it, too. With you around, I’m not the only one with a scathing case of coprolalia.”
Umayma threw her hands in the air and marched past me, grabbing the trumpet. She took it to the wet spot on the carpet and rolled it around in the potion, wiping it all over as best she could.
There was a knock on the front door, and I peeked out the window to see Agent Golden on the cement pad that served as a front stoop. I let her in, and returned to Umayma’s side. She was wiping her hands over the wet spot, hoping to gather up enough of the potion to return her voice. Since it wasn’t being cast upon her by the creatrix of the spell, it wasn’t working well. I got down on my knees on the carpet and tried pressing her hands into it with mine, but that didn’t work any better. Maim's shroud of silence was back in place, and was going to require another spell to remove it.
“At least we know it’s possible,” I told her. “I’ll rush the reorder and get those herbs back by Tuesday, okay?”
She nodded, frowning. I took the trumpet to roll it on the wet spot, letting her think. The Blue Sense reported reluctance. Maim had grown accustomed to learning sign language quite quickly, and enjoyed her skills, even as they frustrated. She was not entirely convinced, despite the brief respite, that she wanted her voice back. I suspected that had a lot to do with her trauma, and losing Prost, and the complex DaySitter Bonding; even if she’d been bound to an ubercreep, it had been her norm, her baseline, for many years. Silence was a familiar place for Maim. In addition to the new freedoms in her life, the freedom to speak aloud was, perhaps, too much too soon. I could get the herbs, and let her know they were available, but I wouldn't suggest breaking the curse. When she was ready, we could try again.
I examined the trumpet with tingling fingers, waiting for visions that didn’t come through strong enough to battle all the warring feelings in the room that were distracting my Empathy.
Golden was curious, noticing some strangeness on Umayma's part, but didn’t pursue it. “Thought I’d drop by, see if you made nice with Hood yet,” Golden asked instead, and when she didn’t get an answer, she tried another line of questioning. “Hey, Marnie-Jean?”
“Mmmr-uh?” I murmured.
“Whatcha doing to the trumpet?”
“I was s
ort of wondering what these were.” I pointed to the set of numbers scratched into the inside.
“Serial number?” She reconsidered. “It’s not stamped. Looks like it was done by hand. It’s fresh, bright. Not worn and dirty.”
I gasped, “Secret code!”
“It’s not a secret code,” she said blandly, glancing at Umayma, who nodded in agreement with her.
“Like one of those wartime messages the code breakers have to crack. I could do that, and I would be awesome at it,” I said.
Golden said, “You would be so bad.”
“The best,” I corrected.
“You’d give up immediately,” Golden said. “You try to give up on everything.”
“Nuh unh,” I said. “Remember that time I killed the zombie dentist in the chimp suit?”
“I killed that,” she said.
“Oh. Right. Well, I told you to. I delegated.”
“No,” she said. “You hid in the boathouse and ate green popsicles.”
“So did you!” I cried.
Umayma showed us her phone, the map app open. The coordinates pinpointed a small road to nowhere between two spit-sized lakes up in the mountains. She pointed meaningfully at the trumpet.
“Maim, you cracked the code. High five!” I offered her my raised palm and she slapped it, simultaneously rolling her eyes. “We should check this out in case it’s a lead.”
“Well, I have to get to work, freaks,” Golden announced, “but keep your phones on and text me when you need help.”
I said, “I think I can find a road that looks to be twenty minutes from my home without help from the FBI.”
“Can you?” she asked blandly. “I feel like this is a dodge to get out of the funeral.”
I made my who-me face followed by my how-dare-you throat noise. She bought neither.