“I will,” she said. “I’ve gotta go.”
“Okay. Stay safe.”
I hung up feeling about as useful as a chewed-up tennis ball. I took advantage of the empty bathroom to shower and brush my teeth. When I came out, Becky and Tabitha were snipping at each other again. Gretchen banged on the wall and shouted, “Some of us are trying to sleep!”
“Gee, wouldn’t want to disturb that,” Becky shot back.
“Oh, Everson!” Gretchen called. “Order wants you off the case.”
“Yeah. Thanks.” I had to get out of here.
“Training at five!” Gretchen added.
Whatever.
“Hey, where are you going?” Becky asked when she saw me grabbing my cane.
“To think,” I said.
I walked over to Two Story Coffee, ordered a large Colombian roast, and retired to my favorite corner chair. The West Village coffee house was about half full, but the sounds of conversation and brewing drinks formed a pleasant wall of noise that was conducive to rumination.
As I took a sip and sat back in the soft chair, it occurred to me that I hadn’t come here in over a year. With all the extra hours of self-practice, I hadn’t had time. Being here now felt a little strange, as if I’d forgotten how to just sit still and think. Indeed, my brain was telling me to read, practice, do affirmations—something.
I set the warm coffee cup on my knee, let my eyelids slip to half mast, and tried to settle into the act of thinking. Something was still niggling at the back of my brain, telling me we were all missing something crucial.
I started at the beginning, with the theater attack.
When I’d asked the smoke golem who he was, he’d replied, You’re going to come to know me quite well in the coming days. And when I asked what he wanted: In good time, my friend. In good time.
His voice had been teasing, goading.
Then in Mr. Han’s Apothecary: Careful, wizard. You’re putting your nose where it doesn’t belong.
More goading. Like he wanted me to chase him, to nip at his heels.
What about the infernal bag I’d cast a reveal spell on? If the demon was powerful enough to break Thelonious without even trying, would he have allowed me a glimpse of the Ark? Because more than just powerful, the demon sounded intelligent and cunning.
I went back over how I’d discovered the identities of the Ark members.
I pictured Becky placing the infernal bag in the brick wall at the movie house. Revenge, as even she had claimed? Or had Damien compelled her to put the bag there, knowing she’d become a suspect in that first attack? Damien had been possessing her, after all. If it was so important the bags be randomly placed, he should have been able to stop her.
Same thing with Quinton visiting her apartment when the police and I were still there. Coincidence or more manipulation?
Now that I was posing these sorts of questions, I found myself going back even further. Such as why Quinton had made the large purchase of devil’s ear at Mr. Han’s in the first place—and then paid him to remain silent, ensuring the encounter would stand out in Mr. Han’s memory. Last night Thelonious said he had told the demon everything. If Thelonious had access to my memories, he would have known that I’d gone to Mr. Han in the past for info.
Had Damien been planting clues for me to follow?
My rational mind resisted the idea, given how many things would have to have gone exactly right—but who knew how many clues were out there? Damien had only needed us to stumble on so many. And look where the demon had held last night’s induction ceremony: in the exact same place as the previous one, even after knowing Becky had talked to me.
Powerful demons weren’t that sloppy.
I opened my eyes at the same time my pager went off. Vega.
I carried my coffee outside to the closest payphone and called her.
“Hey,” she said. “Just wanted to let you know your lead to Red Hook was a good one. We found evidence that Quinton spent last night on one of the boats and then cleared out quickly. He’s probably still in the area. We’ve set up a perimeter while Pierce works on pinpointing him.”
“That’s great,” I said, but without much conviction.
Vega didn’t catch it. “Good work. I’ll keep you posted.”
Though she was using her detective voice, I could tell she felt bad I’d been sidelined. She wanted to include me somehow, even if just through updates. I almost stopped her to share what I’d been thinking—that Damien had wanted us to find and track down the Ark—but I didn’t. One, it was more hunch than hard evidence. And two, I still hadn’t figured out why.
While switching my phone and coffee hands, I fumbled the cup. The top popped off, and coffee splashed over the front of my coat.
“Crap.”
“What was that?” Vega asked.
“Nothing. Just be careful. Demons are … unpredictable.”
“Thanks, Everson. I will.”
I remained standing by the phone after we’d hung up, coffee dripping from the hem of my coat. But I wasn’t thinking about that. If Damien was leading us down a path of his choosing, he had a reason. Was it misdirection, or was my involvement important to his plans somehow? After all, when he’d tortured Thelonious, it hadn’t been for information about Pierce.
Pierce…
Why hadn’t his divination magic picked up anything on the duplicity? Or had it, and he was using the excuse of my magic interfering as a reason not to tell anyone? And what had he meant when he’d told Vega that I had a role?
Even though the Order had vetted the man, and even though he’d saved my life last night, I found myself growing suspicious again. I mean, he’d dropped in on the case out of practically nowhere and now seemed determined to control it.
I shook my head. I didn’t know what to think. The case felt more tangled now than ever.
I needed my own diviner. Unfortunately, the only one in the city I had ever trusted, Lady Bastet, had been murdered by Lich to keep me from discovering the truth about my mother. The Yellow Pages had a long listing of oracles, soothsayers, and diviners, but ninety-nine percent of them were fakes. The challenge would be finding the one percent who weren’t.
“Wait a minute,” I muttered.
I picked up the phone, dropped in another fifty cents, and called the mayor’s office. After going through concentric layers of secretaries and assistants, Budge’s voice came on.
“Everson,” he said. “What the hell’s happening to my city? Your partner’s telling me we’ve got a demon?”
“Well, yeah, but the demon isn’t here here. He’s been working through spell bags and innocent vessels.”
“And claiming a helluva lot of New Yorkers! You know about the museum, right?”
“Detective Vega just told me. She thinks they’re closing in on the final person under the demon’s control.”
“And that’ll take care of this thing?”
“I think so.”
“You think so? Unh-unh, Everson. I need better than that. We could be hosting the World Series next month, not to mention that the developer is already asking for more guarantees.”
“Well, I’m not technically on the case.”
“What? Of course you are.”
I didn’t want to get into the whole thing about Pierce’s divination magic and the Order’s mandate that I sit the rest of this one out. That’s not why I’d called him.
“Hey, listen,” I said. “I need a favor. Something that might help wrap this up. A year or so ago, you told me about a diviner in Chinatown. Someone you consulted to get background info on your late wife and her daughter.”
“Yeah, Jing-Sheng. What about him?”
“Do you know where I can find him?”
“Jing’s in an apartment on Grand and Eldridge. He’s got a big Yankees sticker on the window. Can’t miss it. Been a while since I last saw him, though. And he was already getting on in years.”
“Was he good?”
“When
you could get him to stop talking baseball.”
24
A short subway ride later, and I was in Chinatown. I kept an eye out for Bashi’s White Hand enforcers as I navigated the bustling sidewalks. Two blocks from Mr. Han’s Apothecary, I found the apartment with the big Yankees sticker on the second-story window.
I climbed a narrow flight of stairs, slid my cane through my coat strap, and knocked on the door. An old Asian woman whose head barely came to my waist answered and squinted up at me.
“Yes, I’m here to consult Jing-Sheng?”
She nodded as if she’d been expecting me. “Yes, Jing here. Twenty dollar for fifteen minute.”
The woman, who I assumed to be his wife, apparently handled the business end of their esoteric practice. I liked her efficiency. I opened my wallet, then stopped. “How long is a typical session?”
“Thirty minute.”
She took my two twenties and guided me through a neat living room to a closed door. She knocked and said something in rapid Mandarin. As we waited for Jing to answer, I caught myself wondering: If Damien had set something up, would he have anticipated this move too?
That was the problem with that line of thinking. The paranoia never ended.
The old woman knocked more sharply. Jing barked back in what sounded like irritation. The old woman smiled up at me and opened the door. Expecting to see a shrine room of some kind, Jing seated at a pillow with tendrils of incense curling up on either side of him, I was surprised to find him seated at a regular desk, wearing a blue and white striped baseball cap backwards.
The old man was hunched over a rectangle of paper, pencil in hand, muttering to himself. A scrying scroll? But when I stepped further into the dim space, I saw it was a stat sheet for a baseball game.
The walls were covered in similar stat sheets, thousands of them. And lines had been drawn over them, connecting a number on one sheet to numbers on others, forming a mind-boggling web. It looked like the work of either a brilliant mind or someone fit for a straitjacket.
The woman closed the door behind me, prompting Jing to look up. Wispy hair fell from beneath his cap to frame a wrinkled, whiskered face. His eyes stared, unblinking, like a pair of black marbles.
“Yes,” I said. “The mayor referred me to you. I was wondering if you could help me.” On the way here, I’d considered what questions I would ask. With divination, it was best to keep it simple. I needed to know Damien’s true identity, one. And then, two, what his ultimate plan was. Were we on the verge of stopping him, or just playing into his hands?
Jing pointed past me. “Get out.”
I looked behind me and then back at him. “I’m sorry?”
“Yes, I’m talking to you, stretch,” he said with almost no accent. “Get out.”
“But I paid for a half hour.”
“I don’t care. Take your money and go.”
“Can I ask why?”
“Black luck.”
“Black luck?”
He pointed at the crotch of my coat. “How did that happen?”
I looked down in confusion before remembering the accident at the payphone. “Oh. I, um, spilled my coffee earlier.”
“And that?” He switched his aim to a tarry black streak higher up my coat.
“I got caught in the subway doors when I was trying to get on. When I was trying to get off too, actually.” That had seemed a little unusual. Almost like a replay of the day before when everything that could go wrong had: the falls, a backfiring invocation, the trouble in the elevator.
“And what’s that smell?”
“Oh, an encumbering potion broke in my pocket.” Thankfully I hadn’t activated it.
Jing opened a desk drawer and took out an old pair of dice that looked like they’d been carved from bone. “Roll,” he ordered.
I shook the dice and then dropped them onto his stat sheet.
“Snake eyes,” Jing said, eyeing the two ones. “Roll eleven more times.”
I did as he said, Jing jotting down the rolls on a scrap of paper.
When I finished, he moved his pencil across the numbers.
“You rolled snake eyes six times. Do you know the statistical probability?”
“Not off the top of my head.”
“One in a fuck load.”
“What does that mean?”
“Black luck,” he repeated.
“Right, I got that part. Why do I have black luck?”
“I don’t know, but I don’t want it in here. Not with the Yankees playing tonight.”
“Can we do this in the living room, then?”
“No. We can do it nowhere.” He stood and came around his desk. But rather than physically escort me to the door, he made shooing gestures with his hands. He didn’t want to touch me.
“Look, I’ll leave as soon as you tell me how I got this.”
“Leave now,” he said, making little lunging motions at me. Under different circumstances it would have been comical, given the man’s advanced age and that he was shorter than his wife.
“When can I come back?”
“When the black luck is gone.”
That wasn’t going to work. “I’ll pay you double.”
He shook his head and then, seeing I wasn’t moving, grabbed a Louisville Slugger from beside his desk and rotated it like a batter at the plate. His eyes narrowed toward my head.
“You’re not serious,” I said.
The swing arrived slowly, but when I tried to move back, my coat snagged on the corner of his desk. The weak blow thumped against my ear. More frustrated than hurt, I took the end of the bat and twisted it from his hands. He drew back.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” I said. “But so help me God, I’ll smear my black luck over you and every last stat sheet in here if you don’t give me the divination session I paid for.”
“I can’t,” he said. “The black luck would interfere.”
I stopped and thought about that. Was that what was messing with Pierce’s divination magic? Not my own magic, but the black luck Jing kept referring to?
“Fine. Then how do I get rid of it?”
Jing moved back around his desk, watching me warily. “When did the bad luck start?” he asked.
“Yesterday afternoon. But it came and went away until last night.”
“That’s how black luck works. Come and go, like the tide. But every time it returns, it’s stronger than before.”
“Could it have anything to do with drinking an expired potion?”
“No, Black luck doesn’t come from a potion. It comes from direct magic.”
“Demon magic, maybe?”
“Maybe. But yours is from faerie magic.”
“Faerie…” My voice trailed off.
Gretchen. When I said I no longer wanted to rely on my luck quotient, she’d had me close my eyes. I hadn’t felt anything, but had she tried to cancel my luck quotient and screwed it up? That had been right before I’d prepared the potion, making me think that had been the culprit. The falls and mishaps that had followed … Vega’s exploding phone…
“I don’t believe this,” I muttered.
“Whoever put it on you will have to take it off.”
“Oh, don’t worry,” I said. “She’s taking it off.”
“But it must be fast. It’s usually the third time the luck comes back that it kills you.”
“Kills me?”
“Statistically speaking. Definitely by the fourth.”
Great. I started to set the bat against his desk.
Jing waved his hands frantically. “No, no, it has the black luck now! You have to take it!”
Thinking of Gretchen, I said, “Good. I might need it.”
My journey back to the West Village was even more fraught than the one to Chinatown. I had just stepped from Jing-Sheng’s apartment when a gang of White Hand enforcers spotted me. They chased me for two blocks before I stumbled over a construction barricade in the middle of the street and fell down a m
anhole. Only a last second force invocation spared me a cracked skull or broken neck. I ducked into a side tunnel as the enforcers began shooting down into the darkness, all of the ricocheting bullets seeming to spark off my shield.
I had no choice but to swallow my phobia and crawl through the tunnels. In the darkness, I was threatened by rats and moaned at by passing soul eaters. I wiped out twice while trying to climb a rebar ladder to the surface. I was replacing the manhole cover when the same gang of enforcers spotted me again. I managed to flag down a cab, but the Waristani driver misunderstood me and started driving back toward the enforcers.
A shield invocation followed by a wrestling match for control of the steering wheel eventually got us out of there in one piece, but holy hell. Jing hadn’t been kidding about the black luck getting worse with each recurrence.
By the time I stepped over my threshold, I was shaking with anger and adrenaline.
“There you are,” Gretchen called from the kitchen. “Did you forget about your training?”
I stalked toward her. She looked up from the stove, where she had something cooking on all four burners. “What in the heck happened to you? You look like something your cat dragged in. Speaking of which, Tabitha ran onto the ledge when I came out to cook. Not sure what that was all about. Oh, and I let Becky use the bedroom. Have to keep the peace around here someho—”
“You,” I interrupted. “You happened to me.”
“And what’s that supposed to mean?”
“Yesterday when you had me close my eyes, what did you do?”
“When I had you close your eyes…” she said, as though thinking back. She slurped something off her thumb.
“During our training?” I prompted.
“Oh, right. I neutralized your luck quotient. Like you asked.”
“No. You went a little further than that. You gave me black luck.”
“Well, gee whiz. You make it sound like we had a romp in the sack without protection.”
I was too angry to recoil at the image. “So you knew?”
“Of course I knew.” She stirred whatever was bubbling in the big pot. “The fastest way to neutralize a luck quotient is with a dose of black luck. There are other methods, of course, but they’re a colossal bore. Not to mention they take a long time. And you were itching to go.”
Black Luck (Prof Croft Book 5) Page 17