Tomorrow Wendell (White Dragon Black)

by R. M. Ridley

  Called Kalfou’s Blight, it was a hex of sorts—one that blocked magic.

  The problem with using the symbol was that it had to be made with human blood, the blood of a were-creature, gunpowder, and the soil from a true witch’s grave.

  A hex Jonathan had drawn more than once, he took care to always keep those ingredients on hand.

  The other problem with this particular hex lay in how easily those components rubbed or washed away. It made it hard to keep the sigil active over an extended period of time. Jonathan had learned something over his long years in such a job, however.

  Images tattooed into the body held their ingredients and power indefinitely. And so, once he had the symbol cut into the flesh of the man’s finger, he opened the two containers and rubbed a pinch of each of the other three ingredients into the wound.

  The man took Jonathan up on his offer to scream.

  It took an hour to complete the job on all eight of the fingers and both thumbs as well. By the end of that time, the man had moved from screaming and cursing, to silent shock.

  The original pain, the cutting and the abrading would have passed quickly enough. The deeper effect had done him in. Jonathan didn’t even want to imagine the feeling of the hex reacting to the magic the man had accumulated in the marrow of his very bones. He wavered on the edge of consciousness.

  Jonathan finished the last digit, lit a smoke, and leaned back in his chair.

  There was no way the man could use his hands in performing any casting now. With Kalfou’s Blight etched into his body so many times, Jonathan doubted the man would be able to perform the simplest parlor trick. One had to be sure of these things, however.

  And despite how calm he might have appeared, Jonathan was royally pissed.

  They had come into his office, twice, seeking to hurt him. The company used magic to abuse people. They had cost many their livelihoods and some, quite likely, their very lives.

  And they had cost him a perfectly serviceable secretary.

  He took a steadying breath. “Well, now, that’s that. I’m almost sorry that it had to be done, but let’s face it, pal, you’re a sadistic, bullying putz and this is probably for the best.”

  Jonathan took another long drag on his smoke. “Just one more thing and you can be on your way.”

  The man’s glazed eyes darted wildly.

  “Okay. Now, there are two ways to do this. Either you keep your mouth open and behave while I brand your tongue, or I go the easier route and simply cut it out.”

  The man made frantic grunts and Jonathan finally understood what the suit was trying to communicate to him.

  “Oh, you think without a tongue you won’t be able to carry my message?”

  The man nodded furiously.

  “I thought of that,” Jonathan smiled kindly, “which is why I let you keep your fingers.”

  He stopped smiling.

  “You can write it out.”

  The unfortunate employee of Apatedyne passed out.

  Jonathan thought it probably for the best. He took the scarf out of the man’s mouth, grabbed his tongue, and set the point of his knife against the flesh.

  “Probably overkill,” he told himself, holding the wet muscle and knife, the handle sticky with drying blood. “And it may not even work.”

  With a shrug, he pushed down.

  Jonathan clutched the half-empty glass of bourbon like a dying man grasped a priest’s hand. He had told himself, as he took the bottle from the bottom drawer, that after all that work, he needed a drink.

  He had not believed his own lie for even a moment.

  The drink served as defense against the aching need in his bones—for the want that gnawed on his self-control trying to make him manipulate the energies once more.

  He took another steadying gulp and looked down at the street outside his office window.

  On the bus stop bench slouched the latest reason for his having used.

  He had managed to clean most of the blood off the man. His unwelcome guest’s overcoat had covered up most of the staining anyway. Jonathan had also put his own pair of gloves over the man’s damaged hands; it was the least he could do. They had only cost a couple of bucks at the local resale shop anyway.

  Jonathan had called over to The Lucky Monkey as soon as he finished with his visitor. It turned out that rendering a person physically incapable of performing magic, ever again, in their lifetime, really built up an appetite.

  Jonathan saw Bao’s nephew, Quan, come out the front door and cross the street with a brown paper bag in his hand. The young man reached the bus stop when the Apatedyne man woke.

  The poor sap looked around, got up, and stumbled a bit. Bao’s nephew gave him a steadying hand before continuing into the office building.

  The man looked up at the front of the structure, and Jonathan waved.

  The look of horror on the man’s face was priceless and, as he staggered off down the road, Jonathan sat back down and prepared himself for a nice lunch of Singapore noodles.

  “There was man down at the bus stop, looked not so good,” Quan said coming into the office, which immediately filled with the tantalizing aroma of the noodles contained in the paper bag. “Think I should call for an ambulance?”

  “Ah, he’ll be fine. He just received some deeply depressing information.”

  “Okay,” Quan said with a grin.

  “Here.” Jonathan passed Quan one of the fifties he had appropriated from his guest’s wallet.

  “Mr. Alvey, I don’t have change for that.”

  “Didn’t expect any,” he said tearing open the bag. “Take your girl someplace nice.”

  “I work too hard to have a girl.” Quan shook his head but grinned.

  “Well, then take the change and rent one.”

  Quan laughed and waved his goodbye. Jonathan was already stuffing the spicy noodles into his mouth.

  Once finished, he sat back and enjoyed another glass of bourbon with a smoke. His mind circled around the case and his complete lack of leads.

  Simple human interaction could account for some of the predictions, but others ruled out that sort of chicanery. None of it had shown signs of arcane interference.

  With no magic, Jonathan couldn’t hope to track it back to the source. Of course, he knew that this had obviously been the point. Someone, or thing, had made sure they couldn’t be implicated in any of these threats.

  “But how the hell did they do it?” Jonathan asked his empty office.

  It came to him like a slap upside the head, and he sat up in his chair. Every single one of Wendell’s predictions had come from inanimate objects—things.

  He didn’t know how such an obvious fact had eluded him before. But now, Jonathan thought there might be a way around his current problem.

  He picked up the phone and made the call he should have the night before.

  Mary Parsons made her money doing private tarot reading for the wealthy and by teaching yoga at a place near the downtown core. His call went right to her answering machine.

  Jonathan left a message, knowing she’d call back in an hour at the most, as neither her yoga classes, nor her private readings, ever lasted longer than that.

  To keep himself busy, Jonathan contemplated other things he could do to try and catch the perpetrator in the act.

  If anyone, or thing, was managing to follow Wendell around to mess with him, Jonathan needed to know. It wasn’t likely but he’d be remiss at this point if he didn’t get eyes on Wendell Courtney around the clock.

  Someone inconspicuous. Someone to blend into the background. Someone others wouldn’t ever think about.

  Or see, Jonathan thought with a grin.

  He had the perfect individual for the task: Frank, Ralph’s number one guy at the salvage yard; Jonathan just didn’t know how to convince him of it.

  Getting Frank away from his job would be difficult enough. Jonathan would also have to construct one hell of a plausible excuse for Ralph to explain why
. If Wendell’s timeline was to be believed, Jonathan knew he had better act fast.

  Moments after he’d left his message, his phone rang. Jonathan snatched it up and Mary Parsons’ dulcimer voice came across the line.

  “Alvey, are you all right?” she probed, testing the waters.

  “I’m fine.”

  “Well, then, to what do I owe this dubious honor?”

  “I have a rather unique problem and require a solid, reliable reading.”

  “You in trouble?”

  “Not me. I told you, I’m fine.”

  “Uh-huh. You lay off using yet?”

  Jonathan didn’t say anything.

  “Just what I thought, so don’t try and feed me the ‘fine’ crap.”

  Mary’s voice managed to somehow make ‘crap’ both sensual and disconcerting at the same time. “Can we get into this later, Mary? After the reading.”

  “For a client, huh?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Hmm . . . for you to say a problem’s unique, well . . .”

  “It is, but I don’t want to bias you in any way, so I’d rather explain after the fact.”

  “What are you implying, Alvey? I can’t be professional?”

  “You’re the best, Mary, that’s why I called you, but this one’s . . . as I said, I’d prefer, for my sake—and my client’s—that you enter into the reading blind. I promise I’ll catch you up afterwards.”

  “It’s not all we will catch up on, Alvey,” Mary warned. “All right, Jonathan, because it’s you. The studio is dead around four. Meet me then.”

  Jonathan didn’t like her choice of words, but thanked her and assured her that both he, and his client, would be there on time.

  Pressing his thumb down on the receiver to hang up the old, black Bakelite phone, Jonathan dialed Wendell’s number. It took a number of rings, but finally his client answered.

  “Wendell, its Jonathan.”

  “Have you—have you found anything?”

  “Maybe a loop hole.”

  “A what?”

  “I got to think thinking, and it came to me—every one of the predictions you’ve got has been from inanimate objects. Objects which could, though I admit I don’t know how, but which could have been magically tampered with.

  “What you never had is a living person. So, instead of a mannequin of a tarot card reader, we are going to see a real live one.”

  “Oh.”

  “Look, this woman’s the best I’ve seen. She’d been doing it for a long, long time and she knows nothing about the case beyond the fact that I need her to do a reading.”

  “Okay,” Wendell sighed.

  “Good. I need you to meet me by four this afternoon. Got a pen for the address?”

  Jonathan gave Wendell the address of the yoga studio, confirmed he could be there on time, and hung up the phone.

  The next step had to be done in person.

  He hated deceiving his best friend. Strictly speaking, that was a lie, but it would have been easier for him if he could tell Ralph the real reason he wanted to borrow an employee of his for this particular job.

  However, it wasn’t Jonathan’s call to make in this case. He‘d have to feed Ralph a believable line to be able to co-op his employee.

  When he pulled into the large gravel parking lot out front of Madden Auto Salvage, Jonathan took a deep breath. Then he took a fortifying drink from his flask and, finally, lit a smoke.

  He achieved a neutral expression while looking in the rearview mirror, and then got out.

  One of the Rottweillers guarding the lot had gotten out from the back and trotted over to greet him.

  Jonathan had been a friend of Ralph’s since high school and so he had grown up around these dogs. Even if he hadn’t, a Rottweiller, though he respected their capabilities, wasn’t really daunting if you’d tangled with something like a Harpy.

  Also, it had been Jonathan who had taught all the dogs not to be afraid of the gremlins living—and thriving—in the rusted steel hive which comprised the back lot of Madden Auto Salvage.

  Gremlins are a problem for any place that collected metal in quantity, especially iron-based metals. They were about as harmless as a raccoon with rabies and a crowbar.

  Nothing more than nuisances, most of the time, gremlins could turn nasty if abused, cornered, or if their nests were threatened. A gremlin infestation could get out of hand. If that happened, then something akin to tribe wars occurred and all hell would break loose.

  Generally, they simply meant a loss of stock as they dissolved the metal with their saliva and ingested it for food.

  Jonathan patted the dog, rubbed him behind the ears, and half-heartedly scolded him for being out of the back lot. He started for the office and slapped his thigh so the canine would follow.

  Pulling open the heavy front door, Jonathan allowed the dog to enter first and saw his friend sitting behind the counter working on invoices and inventory lists.

  Ralph had inherited the place from his father and had helped out since he had been twelve. The years of hard work had made a big kid into a mountain of a man.

  “Caught a stray out front; thought you could use him.”

  Ralph looked up from one of the overfilled, tattered binders and down at the dog who sat and gazed up at him.

  “Taft. Again? Really? You keep this up, I’m going to have to chain you, and we know how much we both don’t want that.” Ralph shook his head.

  Pointing to the rear door that lead out to the yard, he said, “Get. Go on, you stupid mutt.”

  The dog barked once and made its way to the back door, shouldering it open to walk through.

  “Ralph, I need a favor.”

  “Really? Because usually when you need a favor, you arrive with a twelve pack.”

  “Yeah, I’ve been a bit distracted. New case, and it’s proving to be a real bitch. Giving me a headache.”

  “Poor boy,” Ralph said with no real concern. “All right, what do you need?”

  “I need another set of eyes, someone to tail my client—discreetly.”

  “Thinking double cross?”

  “No. But there may be someone already following him and I need to be certain.”

  “Okay,” Ralph said with a shrug of his Herculean shoulders. “Doesn’t sound like the most enjoyable thing I’ve done for you, but I think we both know it won’t rank as the worst.”

  “You just won’t let that go, will you?”

  “You left me in a sewer drain for twelve hours,” Ralph pointed out bitterly. “With rats. Big ones.”

  “You can be such a baby. Aren’t you going to offer me some coffee?”

  “You want some coffee?”

  “That would be nice.”

  “Great, you know where the machine is. Knock yourself out.” Ralph wrote down something from the binder on a notepad. “Do I need to bring a gun?”

  “Pardon?” Jonathan asked, pouring some bourbon from his flask to top up his coffee mug.

  “Gun—do you think I should be packing for this assignment?”

  “It’s so adorable when you say things like ‘packing.’”

  “May I remind you that you’re the one who needs me and not the other way around?”

  “Somebody’s Mister Grumpy this morning. Did you wake up again to the realization that your first name is slang for the act of regurgitation?”

  Ralph shook his head. “Remind me why I put up with you?”

  “I keep coming back?”

  “So do hemorrhoids.”

  “Wouldn’t know,” Jonathan said, pouring some of his bourbon into Ralph’s mug.

  “I’ll call for Frank, let him know he’s going to be running the place without me for the day.”

  “Um,” Jonathan said, and took a sip of his coffee.

  “Um, what?”

  “Actually, Ralph, I was hoping I could borrow Frank for this one.”

  “What? But we always do these things together,” Ralph griped. “Frank doesn’t ev
en really know anything about this stuff. I mean he’s not ignorant, what with the ghosts, gremlins, and you. He couldn’t work here and not know, but still—it’s not like he’s got the experience I do.”

  “Stop whining. I’m not looking for a replacement for the role of sidekick here.”

  “Hey!”

  “I just need to be sure whoever I put on my client as tail isn’t recognized. Sorry, Ralph, but this is the one time when your previous experience helping me out is a determent.”

  “But, Frank—”

  “Look, it’s not a dangerous thing at all. I just need someone to casually hang about a block away from my client for a day or two. He just needs to watch and see if there is anyone else doing the same.

  “Frank is an average Joe; he blends in. He’s anyone. No one will suspect him of following my client. If he thinks there might be trouble, all he has to do is high tail it out of there.”

  “I don’t know, Jonathan.”

  “Look, I’ll go back and ask him. If he’s hesitant about it, then I’ll risk you being recognized. But my client may be running out of time while I’m running into brick walls. This could give me the leg up I need.”

  “Fine, I’ll call him.”

  “No. Just let me talk to him privately. I don’t want him to feel pressured, or like he owes you or anything.”

  “Fine, but next time—”

  “Next time I’ll be trusting my back to you, buddy. Count on it.”

  He finished off his coffee and set the mug down on the counter beside Ralph’s.

  “He’s running the compacter,” Ralph said.

  With a nod, Jonathan followed the same route that Taft, the Rottweiller, had taken out the back door.

  The back lot resembled a huge labyrinth of dead cars. The first of the vehicles were still essentially intact, placed side by side. However, like an encroaching jungle of steel, rust, and broken glass, the vehicles became more damaged, crushed, and mangled.

  The farther back you went, the higher the wreck piles. Corridors, dead ends, and even caverns had formed by the storage of discarded automobiles.