by R. M. Ridley
“Seems fair enough, but I think we should include Ralph. It’s so pathetic to see someone so big pouting.”
Frank laughed quietly and then motioned for Jonathan to turn around again. A moment later, a soft growl informed Jonathan that Frank had resumed his animal form.
Jonathan turned and, picking his coat off the ground, watched the large canine stroll out of the alley. He shook his coat to rid it of the worst of the crap it had picked up from being on the ground. Gratefully sliding it on against the cold night air, he made his own way back to the bright lights of the downtown streets.
He walked up the stairs to the studio, trying to put out of his mind the fact that he’d spotted three owls perched on the edge of the building’s roof. A voice of a fourth had been just audible over the din of the downtown activities.
Jonathan heard Wendell’s and Mary’s voices as he ascended. When he reached the door to the studio, he heard Mary explaining to Wendell what she did, what she was.
Clearly, Wendell had been asking questions about her ability to use the tarot. Mary, being the sweetheart she was, appeared to be doing her best to answer his questions.
Jonathan assumed her banter was probably a defense system. A block against the reading she’d just given a kind stranger.
“Okay, Wendell, I think it’s best if we get going,” Jonathan said.
Wendell nodded and, taking Mary’s hand in his, thanked her for her time. He even thanked her for the reading.
Mary could only nod in response.
“Mary,” Jonathan said, “I’ll be in touch.”
“I think that would be good, Jonathan,” she replied with a note of steel backing her soft voice.
Jonathan led Wendell out of the studio and clearly not a moment too soon. As they descended the stairs back out to the early night, people began to come in the door at the bottom of the flight of stairs with yoga mats rolled up under their arms.
When they reached the street and past those heading to their yoga class, Wendell spoke. “She’s a nice person. To think, the first witch I meet and I have to make her feel bad.”
“Technically, Mary isn’t a witch.”
“Oh.”
“But close enough,” Jonathan told him, not feeling like getting into a discussion of semantics. “Where are you parked?”
Wendell pointed in the opposite direction of Jonathan’s Lincoln, which most likely had a ticket flapping against the windshield.
“Look, I want you to come back to my office.”
“Okay,” Wendell said, and though he hadn’t hesitated, he did ask, “What are we going to do there?”
“Well, for one thing, I’m going to grill you for a couple of annoying hours on every aspect of your life. See if I can spot who, or what, might be doing this. There has to be some reason this is happening to you, Wendell. Somewhere, somehow, you really pissed something or someone off.”
Wendell opened his mouth to object, but Jonathan overrode him. “It could be a person with a short fuse and a psychopath’s responses, or it may be you stumbled onto something else and unknowingly hurt or offended something that isn’t even human.
“Either way, we need to pick apart every second of your life starting from the moment you went into that antique store and working back.”
“Uh—okay,” Wendell said without enthusiasm. “You don’t make it sound very good though, see? I got to say, you’re no salesman, Mr. Alvey.”
“Not the first time I’ve heard that,” Jonathan mumbled.
Then, sensing a theme to his day, he insisted, “Wendell, please call me Jonathan. And no, I’m not a salesman.”
He sighed and admitted, “I’m telling you the truth because we don’t have any time to fool around. I need to figure out not only what’s behind this, but how to stop it.”
“What—well, what if you can’t?”
“Let’s just not go there, Wendell. We are far from beat, so I don’t want you thinking we are.”
“Sure.”
“The other thing I want to do today is try and give you some protection, some immunity to magic. I want to see if we can turn away the spells against you.”
“Can we—you—do that?”
“I’m going to do what I can. And tomorrow, I’m going to take you to see someone who can do more.”
“Another friend?”
“No. No, not that.”
“You are an odd man, Mr. Alvey.”
Jonathan didn’t bother pointing out the name usage. “I’ll see you at my office.”
They parted ways and Jonathan walked to his car thinking of what charms, amulets, and other forms of protection and magic repulsion he could supply.
When he reached his car, Jonathan got in and eventually coaxed the old Lincoln to life. Only as he pulled into traffic did he realize he hadn’t been ticketed after all.
“Maybe our luck is turning.”
Jonathan gave Wendell a nod as he walked through the office door, and pointed to the chair. “Give me a minute,” he said, and picked up the phone receiver.
The two of them would be at it for a while and he saw no point in starving themselves. He could quiz Wendell and feed his stomach at the same time.
“I’m calling across the road for food. Anything in particular you might want?”
“Those things you ordered for me last time were tasty enough. I could eat them again.”
“The dumplings,” Jonathan clarified. “Okay, good.”
Quan answered the phone after only two rings and Jonathan couldn’t resist asking him if he’d spent the fifty on a girl yet. The kid snorted a ‘no’ and then asked if he wanted the usual.
Jonathan had a feeling by the time the night was over, he’d have worked up quite the appetite. “Actually, I’ll need a double of the noodles and dumplings.”
“Sure thing, Mr. Alvey. I’ll bring it over soon as it’s ready.”
“Thanks, Quan.”
He hung up and Wendell admitted he didn’t think he could eat so much food.
Jonathan waved away the comment. “Whatever doesn’t get eaten tonight will make a delicious breakfast. I speak from experience.”
He took the bottle of bourbon from the drawer and set it on the desk. Seeing how low in the bottle the level of amber liquid sat, he thanked the gods he had a full bottle in the filing cabinet.
Jonathan filled his own glass and then the mug Wendell had used the day before. He pushed the mug across the desk towards his client, lit a smoke, and then offered one as well. Wendell’s long arm extended and plucked a single smoke from the silver case.
Jonathan had spent the drive going over and over the cards Mary had lain out. By the look on his client’s face, he hadn’t been thinking of much else either.
“Look, Wendell, about the reading Mary gave.” Wendell looked up without lifting his head. “It doesn’t mean we’re beat. Not by a long shot.”
“So, it was just another prediction, is what you’re saying?”
Jonathan hadn’t meant that. In fact, it had been the first time he had taken the concept of his client’s life being in jeopardy seriously.
“Nothing’s written in stone.” He took a swig of the bourbon and realized the statement could be taken either way. “We make our own way through life and I’ve had a lot of practice finding the way through to staying alive.”
“You really aren’t worried?” Wendell straightened more in the chair.
“I won’t lie.”
Much.
“I’m a little worried, but that’s my job. If I didn’t worry, I’d be leaving you open to a possible assault. But let me do the worrying.”
“She didn’t seem very happy about the experience,” Wendell said.
Jonathan didn’t know if the statement came from fear for himself or concern for Mary.
He decided to assume the latter.
“She wasn’t. That’s Mary for you. She cares and empathizes, maybe too much, but it’s probably what makes her so good at the readings.”
/> In truth, Mary’s readings were too good to be anything but genuine. Sometimes eerily so. But Jonathan hadn’t lied about staying alive, and he had confidence in his ability to transfer those skills to keeping another person alive.
Jonathan continued to work at easing his client’s fears, while in his own mind working out what he should fear.
When Bao’s nephew came through the door with the brown paper bags of food, both men had been working hard on killing the bottle of booze.
Jonathan thanked Quan for the quick delivery and, still having money from the Apatedyne representative, passed over the second to last fifty.
Jonathan found it hard to believe his run-in with Apatedyne had only been that morning.
It had just been one of those days—both so much and so little had happened. Connecting the one experience with the rest of the day took effort.
Quan reached into his pocket to make change, but Jonathan shook his head.
“I came into a bit of money this morning. I feel like sharing the wealth. It will balance out all the times you’ve been kind enough to give me credit.”
“Ah, it’s no problem, Mr. Alvey. You are our best customer.”
“Well, most frequent anyway.”
The young man laughed and nodded, then said, “There’s a lot of crows on the roof of the building. I noticed when I came outside.”
“Yeah. Great. Thanks, but my client and I had better get to it.”
“Of course, Mr. Alvey. Goodnight.”
“Night.”
Jonathan waited until he heard the outer door close and then, opening one of the brown paper bags, he passed Wendell a Styrofoam container of dumplings and placed a container of Singapore noodles on the desk before him.
Jonathan worked quickly to quell the worst of his hunger pangs, before starting in on Wendell about his every move since entering the antique store.
When the beast in his stomach no longer growled and threatened to disembowel him from the inside out, Jonathan decided he’d better start.
He took a legal pad from his desk drawer and dug up a pen from under the assorted mess covering the desktop. He waited for Wendell to stop chewing and asked the first question he could think of.
“Did you touch, break, try out, or in any other way, manipulate any item in the antique store before using the fortuneteller machine?”
Wendell took the question seriously. He lowered his fork and the dumpling on it back into the container and thought.
Jonathan could almost see him replaying in his head every move he had made in the store.
“I picked up a statue,” Wendell finally confessed with something bordering on excitement.
Jonathan could understand the feeling. Sometimes, all it took was one small puzzle piece to get the whole picture.
“Can you remember what it was made of? What it looked like?”
“A plaster recreation of the Venus de Milo,” Wendell answered promptly.
One part of Jonathan’s mind tried to recall if he had seen the statue when he’d cased the store. Another part called up anything he knew about the goddess, or the church of Venus. He hoped for a fit to the effects Wendell had experienced. Unfortunately, nothing matched.
Jonathan did remember seeing a statue. He assumed it was the same one Wendell referred to. However, he hadn’t got any vibes off it when he’d been in the store. Regrettably, he could say with reasonable certainty that it could be ruled out as a clue or cause, yet, desperate for a lead, he made a note of it just the same.
“Anything else?” Jonathan prodded hopefully.
“Um, I might have brushed against the canes by the door.”
“I need you to be more certain than ‘might have’ here, Wendell,” Jonathan said and shoved another forkful of noodles into his mouth.
Wendell poked at his food while he thought. Then he nodded his head. “Yeah, I did. I remember hearing the metallic click of one hitting the other.”
Jonathan had examined the canes when he had gone in the shop. All too often, magical wands got mistaken for walking sticks or canes.
Nothing had caught his attention.
However, one cane, which had leaned out more than the rest, had a brass head in the shape of a retriever. Although highly unlikely as being the beginning of it all, Jonathan scribbled a quick note on the legal pad just the same.
“Anything else?”
“I don’t believe so. It was then that I came around a shelf and saw the fortune machine. Once I saw it, well, I went straight to it, see?”
“All right,” Jonathan nodded. “Did you accidentally knock into anyone when walking from your car to the store?”
“No.”
“You sound pretty sure there, Wendell.”
“I am.” He looked Jonathan square in the face. “I know I didn’t because I was the only one on the street.”
“Yeah, it was pretty dea—empty, when I got there, too. Okay, how about the street? You said you parked on the same side as the shop, right?”
Wendell looked impressed that Jonathan had remembered such a trivial bit of detail and nodded.
“When you got out, did you maybe step out in front of a car heading up the street?”
Wendell shook his head and took the opportunity to place a piece of his dumplings into his mouth.
“When you parked, did you possibly take someone else’s parking spot?”
Wendell finished chewing before answering. “I don’t recall seeing another car trying to park and there was another open spot one car ahead, which was still empty when I came out of the store. I know because I ran through that spot, and around the car parked in front of mine, to get to my own car.”
“Okay.” Jonathan crammed another pile of noodles in his mouth and then washed them down with bourbon. The liquor went well with the heat of the spicy noodles.
“When you drove to your appointment, did you cut anyone off, annoy another driver by going too slow, fast, or hell, anything that might make the most sensitive of people get pissed off? I’m talking mild to extreme road rage here.”
Wendell sighed but he didn’t complain about the questions. Instead of railing against this nitpick probing, Wendell took a drink from his mug of bourbon.
Jonathan could see, by the way Wendell’s eyes slowly moved back and forth, though he seemed to be looking at nothing, and by his pursed lips, he was attempting to relive each and every block of the trip.
They went on like this for hours.
Jonathan made Wendell regress seven days from the moment he had entered the antique store, in case the problem had only begun to manifest there instead of being the cause.
Seven days went beyond what Jonathan actually thought necessary, but since he had not gained a toehold on this mountain of confusion, he just kept pushing and hoping.
With each minute and every futile question, the process became more tedious for both of them. Jonathan pushed the timeline of his questions farther and farther back. Wendell, naturally, found it harder and harder to recollect the details of his day-to-day life.
He stopped when he realized he had been asking questions for the sake of asking, simply stabbing with a dull stick into the dark, hoping to hit a phantom.
By the time Jonathan admitted defeat and called it a night, they had finished their meal, half a bottle of bourbon, and a pack of cigarettes.
Mentally worn out and so frustrated he wanted to tear up the few notes he had, Jonathan suppressed the urge and reassured Wendell that he’d done well.
Jonathan looked with dismay at the extremely short list of possibilities scribbled down. Not one single point stood out as a solid lead. Every single note, to him, read as an obvious grasp at straws.
Jonathan reread one prospective lead he’d written. The only thing that stayed his hand from crossing it out was the desire to not discourage his client.
The real problem lay in the fact of Wendell being a kind, conscientious, and polite individual.
If someone had taken offense at
something he’d done over the last week, they were so thin-skinned they would have hemorrhaged and died already.
Jonathan tried to comfort himself with the knowledge that it would have been more time-consuming if his client behaved like a right royal bastard.
It takes more time to whittle down a list of prospective leads if everyone hates your client than if they like him.
The legal pad, only half covered with his scrawled handwriting, Jonathan slid aside. He stood up to stretch and, after popping a few vertebrae back into place, Jonathan opened the closet door.
He began going through his collection of amulets, medicine bags, and crystal pendants. He had a decent collection, ranging from those he had made for previous cases, to ones he had bought from reliable sources. He even had some he’d relieved others of.
It would be foolish and unrealistic not to use what existing artifacts he had to keep his client safe.
Jonathan planned to grab whatever just might protect Wendell from arcane interference. Then he would augment the protection with a few spells and enchantments of his own.
Most important, Jonathan wanted to perform a ritual in an attempt to hide Wendell’s energy signature.
Hopefully, that would mean whoever had targeted his client would lose the ability to affect him from afar.
Jonathan couldn’t conceal Wendell’s energy completely, but he should be able to obscure it, maybe even alter the energy’s outward appearance enough to stop whatever harassed the man.
Jonathan stored most of his active amulets in a rowan wood box inscribed with sigils to boost both magical and positive energy.
He began pulling out the necklaces and bracelets one by one. He set those that had no connection to Wendell’s current predicament into the top of the box and looped the others over his free hand.
He found a silver Solomonic pentacle of protection which, on the reverse side, had the symbol of the 6th Pentacle of Mars, said to protect the wearer from their attackers.
A few more moments of digging unearthed an amulet based on the symbol for the ancient Indian mantra of Om Mani Padme Hum, worn so that protection and peace might be attracted to the bearer.
Jonathan debated its use in this situation. Realizing he didn’t know what the damn situation was, he added it to the other pendant.