by John Levitt
With the last of my reserve, I laid a masking spell over the three of us. It wouldn’t fool Christoph if he looked closely, but a rabbit can hide in plain sight if it stays quiet and the focus is elsewhere. By the time I was done, I really was done. I didn’t have enough power left to light a kitchen match.
Christoph shouted something inarticulate and took off after the fleeing images. He wasn’t that bright, either. He swept by us without a glance, moving fast about two feet off the ground like he was riding a hovercraft. I felt a stab of jealousy. Here I was struggling to maintain a simple illusion while this man had power to burn.
We huddled together, frozen, until he was a good ways off, then made a break for the van. If we could get enough distance between us, even his strength wouldn’t be enough to stop us. As we jumped in the van, the ginger cat appeared out of nowhere and scrambled in with us. I jammed the key in the ignition and the engine turned over once, twice, then ground to a halt. I tried it again, frantically, but it was no use. Completely dead.
By this time, Christoph would surely have caught up with the impersonators. Even with his lack of intelligence, he’d be hightailing it back to the van as fast as he could. I summoned up a last effort, trying for enough of a spark to kick over the engine, but I had nothing left. Without a word, Campbell jumped out and ran around to the front of the van, where she put her shoulder into it and pushed with all her strength. Thank God I had parked it on an incline. It rolled ten feet backward with excruciating slowness, barely picking up enough speed for one desperate try. I flung it into reverse, waited half a second, then popped the clutch. The van bucked, hesitated, and then caught, engine blessedly roaring into life. Campbell clambered in just as Christoph came back into view. I tromped on the accelerator, wishing I had Victor’s BMW instead. Still, the tires squealed gratifyingly as we roared off down the road leaving an infuriated Christoph standing impotently behind.
My heart was in my mouth for the next two miles and I didn’t fully relax until we were back halfway across the bridge. Campbell finally broke the silence.
“I didn’t know what I was getting into,” she said.
“Sorry,” I replied. “I didn’t either.”
“I don’t think I’m cut out for this kind of thing.”
“You know,” I said, “nobody is, not really.” Except, I added mentally, maybe Victor.
Lou sat in the back, communing with the ginger cat in the way Ifrits do. I know they can’t talk with each other the way people can, but they do manage to communicate a lot of information to each other.
We were back over the bridge, into the city, and halfway through Golden Gate Park when the ginger cat jumped up onto the back of Campbell’s seat and stared out the side window. At the same time, Lou gave a peremptory bark. I pulled over and Campbell opened the van door. Without so much as a backward glance, the cat exited and swiftly disappeared into the underbrush. Cats aren’t much for extended farewells, even Ifrit cats.
It would have been nice if it were all over. Lou had been rescued. The mystery behind the gems had been solved. Christoph had been exposed as the villain he was. But nothing had been settled. The hard part was still ahead, and the night was just getting started.
Fifteen
As soon as we got home, Lou gobbled up some stale kibble that had been lying around since before he disappeared, but he didn’t act like he was starving. It was still only about nine o’clock. I called Eli, who answered on the first ring.
“I found Lou,” I told him.
“Incredible. Where? How?”
“Christoph. He trapped him somehow. But that’s not all. I know where the gems come from.”
I went into detail, including our narrow escape, and by the time I finished I could feel Eli’s fury crackling over the telephone line. When he finally spoke he was calm, though.
“Poor Moxie,” he said. “And poor Lou. What a heavy responsibility.” He was silent for a few moments. “Okay, we need to do something about Christoph, Now that I know where those gems come from his actions make more sense. The gems are powerful. But there’s no way he could use them, considering what they are and how he got them, without severe psychic damage. So he’s not only dangerous, not only powerful, but also seriously disturbed.” This was not news to me. “And we need to act quickly. For all we know, he could be ripping the eyes out of some other poor Ifrit at this very moment.”
“Yeah, but how are we going to find him? I doubt he’s still up at Point Bonita,” I said.
“What about Lou?” Eli understood Lou’s potential.
“Not likely. There’s a huge difference between locating a random individual and locating a practitioner who doesn’t want to be found.”
“True.” The fact that Eli hadn’t thought of that made me realize how upset he was. “We have another problem,” he said.
“Of course.”
“There’s a message from Sherwood on my voice mail asking me to stop by and see her at Victor’s as soon as possible.”
“Is she okay?”
“As far as I know. She’s not answering the phone. But it sounds like someone else has gone missing.”
“Who?”
“She didn’t say. But if you’re up to it, meet me over there and we’ll find out.”
* * * *
I was exhausted. Lou was curled up on the bed, totally out. I thought of leaving him to sleep; God knows he needed it and Campbell was here to check on him. But I was afraid to let either one of them out of my sight. I shook him gently and he raised his head.
“Sorry,” I said. “We’ve got to go out again.”
He yawned, stretched, and looked at me bleary-eyed. With an air of infinite patience and resignation, he stood up ever so slowly and slithered off the bed onto the floor.
“Don’t give me that,” I said. “I just saved your ass, remember?” He yawned again and turned his back.
Back in the van, back to Victor’s. It was worse than being a cabdriver. Eli was already there, and he’d filled Sherwood in on our adventures in Christoph Land. She greeted Lou enthusiastically and Campbell somewhat less so. As if I didn’t have enough trouble. Lou and Maggie had come to a truce of sorts and they ambled off companionably enough into the next room. I looked around for Victor, but he was nowhere to be seen. Nor was Danny, for that matter.
“Where’s Victor?” I asked.
“Checking out another Christoph rumor,” Sherwood said. “Someone in the East Bay who claims to have seen him.”
“Is that likely?”
“No, but that’s not why I wanted to talk to you. Jenna’s missing.”
“Who’s Jenna?”
“Jenna from the Tenderloin,” Eli reminded me. “That street girl?”
It took me a moment to realize who he was talking about, and when I did, I wasn’t very sympathetic. I was tired and I was stressed.
“You get all of us over here because that little street moppet decided to take a hike?” I said. “With everything else that’s going on? Jesus, Sherwood, what is wrong with you?”
“Tell you what, Mason. How about for once you just shut up and listen?”
Those words were so unlike Sherwood that it instantly did shut me up. I guess I wasn’t the only one experiencing stress. She glared at me.
“Jenna has a lot of issues, but the important thing to remember is what she is. She’s a Finder.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “You don’t mean you sent her…”
“No, of course not. Don’t be an idiot.” Sherwood was on a roll. “Jenna called me a few days ago and offered to find Christoph for us.”
“You’re joking,” Eli said. “How did she even know we were looking for him?”
“Those kids hear everything. With you and Victor scouring the city all week, it wasn’t exactly a secret, you know.”
“I guess not. So she wanted to help out?”
“No, not exactly. She’s still got that street kid mentality. She wanted five hundred dollars to find him.”
<
br /> “Would have been worth it,” I muttered.
“I told her to stay away from it. I tried to impress on her just how dangerous Christoph was but I’m not sure I got through. When I hadn’t heard from her in a couple of days, I called the Home. Nobody has seen her for the last three days. I’m afraid she might have decided to do it anyway, then demand the money after she found him.”
“Not good,” said Eli.
“Maybe she’s wandering the city, still trying to locate him. Even a Finder would have difficulty locating Christoph,” I said.
Campbell gave voice to what we all were thinking. “Or maybe she did find him.”
We were interrupted by Victor’s return from the East Bay. If he was surprised to see me there he didn’t show it, but he couldn’t keep his dead-cool demeanor when Lou came trotting back into the room, Maggie trailing behind.
“Congratulations,” he said to me. “Although I did lose the bet with Eli. I didn’t think we’d ever see him again.”
I should have been outraged that he was betting against Lou, but I was too tired. Eli asked if the East Bay trip had panned out.
“Oh, the guy saw Christoph, all right. Only, it was three weeks ago.” He looked down at Lou, and the barest of smiles flickered over his face. “When did Lou turn up?”
I related the entire story once again, along with my conclusions. Eli added qualifiers from time to time. Victor’s expression never changed, although when I described what had happened to Moxie, his right eye started to twitch. Before he could comment though, Sherwood impatiently jumped in with the news that now Jenna was missing and might have gone looking for Christoph.
“That is a complication,” said Victor, “but I don’t have time to deal with it right now.” He paused, seeming to struggle with a thought. “On the other hand, I suppose we do have an obligation. If we hadn’t tracked her down and taken her off the streets in the first place, she wouldn’t be the middle of this.”
“My thoughts exactly,” Sherwood said. “So we’re going to look for her, then?”
Victor nodded a reluctant yes.
“But how are we going to find her?”
Eli looked at me, then pointedly at Lou. He knew Lou’s capabilities.
“Maybe,” I said. “If Lou can remember who she is. But she needs to be relatively nearby for him to locate her. He can’t just waltz out the door and find somebody on the other side of town. We’d have to drive all over the city until he picked up the scent.”
“Then that’s what we’ll do,” Eli said. You didn’t often hear that tone from him, but when you did, there was no point in arguing.
“What, you mean now?” I said, visions of bed and sleep rapidly receding.
Lou was sitting quietly, following the conversation with interest. Or, perhaps, waiting to see if there might be a late dinner in the offing. I’m never sure what goes on with him. Eli leaned over and scratched his ears.
“Where would Lou be now if you’d waited until the next morning to go looking for him?” Trust Eli to zero in on my guilt. He could be as manipulative as Victor when he needed to be.
“Okay,” I said. Lou had lost interest in the conversation and it took me a minute to get his attention. I grabbed his muzzle and made him look at me.
“Listen up. Jenna. We need to find Jenna.”
Of course, he looked at me blankly. He had no idea who “Jenna” might be.
“Jenna,” I repeated. “The girl we followed? Spiky hair?” I put my hands up to my head and wiggled my fingers in imitation. Lou’s blank stare turned to one of bafflement. “Remember the street guy?” I squatted down and mimed taking a dump. Lou looked over at Eli and then at Victor. His expression now said, “Hmm, I knew someday he’d lose his mind.”
Campbell was trying to keep a straight face. “Sherwood,” she said. “Do you have anything that belonged to her? Or something she wore?”
A lot of times I’m guilty of forgetting that Lou isn’t really a dog. This time I’d forgotten that in a lot of ways, he really is.
“A bracelet,” Sherwood said. “I got her a new backpack, and in appreciation, she gave me a bracelet woven out of hemp that she made. I think I have it here.”
She left the room and returned a minute later, holding a woven bracelet. She proffered it to Lou, who gave it a quick sniff and then barked confidently, as if to say, “Oh, her. Why didn’t you say so?”
Sherwood was adamant that she wanted to come with us, but Eli and Victor both vetoed the idea. “Too dangerous,” Eli said. “For all we know, this might be nothing more than a ploy to get you away from the safety of this house.”
There wasn’t any reason to drag Campbell along either. We could drop her off at my place, start our search in the Mission, and expand out from there. At least it would be easy navigating the city at night when the traffic is light. But it turned out we didn’t have to go anywhere. As we walked through the front door, Lou stopped. He turned in a semicircle, nose quivering in the night air. Finally he stood stock still and faced due west, one paw lifted off the ground in his psychic scenting position. There was nothing in that direction but the Great Highway and the Pacific Ocean. And the dark expanse of Ocean Beach at night.
Lou took a couple of slow steps forward, then stopped and looked back over his shoulder at us. We followed automatically. Ocean Beach is no more than a few hundred yards from where we stood, and it’s a common meeting place at night for older teens and young adults. Bonfires dot the beach, surrounded by party people, marijuana, and freely flowing beer. It can be dangerous, but it can be a lot of fun as well. A good place to look for a missing girl.
Before we’d gone more than a few steps, Victor halted. “Wait here,” he said, and ran back into the house. When he came out he was carrying a heavy flashlight, one of those halogen Maglites, the ones cops carry that light up the area like a searchlight.
The Great Highway is two blocks from Victor’s house, and the sparse traffic let us scoot right across and onto the beach. Lou headed north toward the nearest bonfire, then swerved and continued past it along the beach. He darted back and forth with tentative movements, hesitant, unsure. A quarter mile down the beach, he angled up away from the surf and abruptly sat down. I had no idea what he was doing; there wasn’t anything in either direction as far as I could see. I suspected he’d momentarily lost the trail, but when he continued to sit there, whining softly, I looked all around.
Victor exhaled sharply and flashed his light on the sand in front of us. I looked again but still saw nothing. Then it clicked. I really was seeing nothing. Someone had chosen an area of sand and layered it over with a concealment. The spell was hardly noticeable since any one area of beach sand looks pretty much like any other, but it was obvious once I noticed it. Victor cleared the spell off with a couple of words and a gesture as if he were flicking water off his fingertips. The sand wavered and cleared, but I still couldn’t see anything but sand.
Victor handed me the flashlight, got down on his knees, and started carefully scooping away sand. For a moment I was puzzled; then I wasn’t. Lou had been asked to find Jenna. He had led us to this empty dark spot on the beach, and now Victor was crouched down and digging in the sand. The implication was not pleasant.
It only took him a minute to uncover the first part of her body, a small clenched hand. Then, an arm and a shoulder. The arm was limp, which meant that rigor had come and gone. She’d probably been dead a couple of days, then. A faint smell of rotting fish came from the grave, but it wasn’t bad enough yet to send us away retching and puking.
Victor finally reached her head and brushed away the covering sand. She’d been buried faceup and her once spiky hair was now stringy and matted. Hordes of sand fleas swarmed through it. Half-closed sightless eyes stared up at the night sky. Campbell made a horrified sound and crossed herself. Unexpected from a Wiccan and magical practitioner, but childhood beliefs are seated deeply.
As I played the flashlight beam over Jenna’s face, her eyes caught the
light and gleamed with an aliveness so bright I almost dropped the light. Stories I’d heard of necromancy came rushing back and I almost turned tail and ran. Eli’s voice snapped me out of it.
“Mason, did you see that? Move the light over her face again.”
I did, and the same gleam sparkled out. Victor reached out a hand and thumbed one eyelid back. The lid stubbornly stuck fast before finally tearing free. The eye had been transformed into crystal, like the Ifrit eyes, although without the same luminous clarity. Instead, it was cloudy and diffuse. Victor reached out and prodded the eyeball cautiously as Eli kneeled down next to him.
“Hard as stone,” Victor said.
“Or a diamond.”
“What’s going on?” I asked.
Eli levered his bulk upright with effort. He was still feeling the effects of the Gaki. “It looks very much like Christoph is no longer satisfied to use Ifrit eyes. Now he’s trying it on practitioners as well.”
“How could that be?” asked Campbell.
“It is hard to believe. Maybe he thought it would work on her because she was a Finder. Similar to Lou here.”
“How awful.”
A look of grim satisfaction settled on Eli’s face. “Yes, it is. But it didn’t succeed. And Christoph made a huge mistake when he attempted it.”
“Why is that?”
“He was only able to transform the eyes partway. And when he failed to complete the transformation, part of his psychic energy got trapped inside. Only a infinitesimal part, but still enough to cement a connection between himself and the eyes. Enough to find him.”
I didn’t like the sound of that. Using body parts from a dead person, transformed or not, smacked of black magic, and I told him so.
“I would never ask you to do anything like that,” he said. “Or Victor. It would be too psychically damaging. But there are others we can call on.”