“Wish they’d thought of it,” Will affirmed, “and hate me because I did. Except I didn’t. I just kind of ... lucked into it.”
“That’s the kind of luck to have,” Briar said. “Dumb luck.”
There was a sudden disturbance at the front of the café, as the door was jerked open with a loud tinkling of bells. A young boy—no more than twelve—poked his head inside and looked around wildly. When his gaze fell on Briar, he seemed to melt with relief.
“Harley!” he cried, rushing inside and over to their table. Undernourished and undersized, he wore ragged clothes and his face was streaked with oily grime. “Gee, Harley, am I glad to find you. You gotta come!”
Briar leaned back in his seat. “Gotta come where? What gives?”
“There’s trouble over at Mayflower! Floor boss made Rico Selvaggi work a double. He’s gone off the deep end!”
Briar paled, and was already half out of the booth before the boy had finished speaking, putting on his coat and hat. “There anyone else over there can help?”
The boy shook his head, his face anguished.
“NoBody” he said, then added caustically, “Nobody who ain’t afraid of getting canned, that is. But I’ll come, Harley!”
“Hell, no. Wrassle down Rico Selvaggi?” Briar slapped the scrawny kid on the shoulder. “You keep running. Get down to the Temple of Labor, see if anyone there can come. I’ll do what I can in the meanwhile.”
“You ain’t goin’ to take on Selvaggi by yourself, are you?” The kid’s eyes were huge with the thought of it. Even Briar looked daunted. He looked at Will, body tense with haste. “You,” he snapped. “You really want to pay me back? Hell, pay me forward? I need you to come with me. Selvaggi is a big mean sonofabitch, and I can’t handle him alone.”
Will knew he shouldn’t be out on the street—Ben had warned him against it. But the private investigators wouldn’t be looking for him in the kind of places a labor organizer was likely to take him. All that was waiting for him at home were his unfinished schematics and Jenny’s foot-tapping. And Grig wasn’t likely to check on him until after midnight. Nodding, he slid out of the booth to follow.
As they jogged along the dark sidewalk, Will asked Briar, “What is ‘Mayflower’?”
“Mayflower Tobacco Company. They’re one of the big three magic companies I was telling you about. Magic ain’t their primary business, they mostly just manufacture regular cigarettes. But they got a huge magical sideline making Golden Bat Cigarettes ... ever hear of ‘em?”
Will grunted assent. He remembered them—the black-papered, magically-infused cigarettes that came in beautiful green and gold packages. The cigarettes the Dorians smoked to give themselves an “interesting” pallor.
“Mayflower employs about a hundred magical workers to charm the Golden Bats. I been talking to some of these fellows, and the boss at Mayflower caught wind of it, packed a couple dozen of ‘em off to the breadline. Now he’s making the men he didn’t fire pull double shifts. A double shift is murder on the guys who are sensitive. And Selvaggi is extra sensitive.”
They heard angry, unearthly screams coming from the Mayflower Tobacco Company a whole block before they reached the building itself. Inside the cavernous building, lit from high above by strong electric floodlights, dozens of cigarette rolling machines clanked away noisily. Before each machine, workers in stained white aprons, stood busily sorting and packing cigarettes as fast as the machines could spit them out into long square holding trays. These workers seemed to be carefully ignoring the screams of a man at the far end of the factory floor, where a large cluster of rolling machines was set off to one side, expelling cigarettes wrapped in black paper. The employees on these machines wore black aprons to distinguish them as magical workers, and while some of them kept to their business, many more stood around the packing table onto which the screaming man had climbed, kicking hundreds of black cigarettes onto the floor around him. He was a powerfully built man, and in his demented rage he’d torn off his apron and his shirt, and was standing bare-chested under the harsh light. To Will’s horror, he could see tendrils of something black writhing beneath the man’s skin like fat burrowing centipedes.
“Jesus,” Briar muttered, charging forward.
“Get down from there, you goddamn anarchist!” The floor boss—identifiable by his soft white hands and expansive belly—screamed up at the man.
“Kresswell, it’s your own damn fault!” Briar yelled right in the fat floor boss’s face. “What the hell you thinking, making him pull a double shift? You know Selvaggi is sensitive!”
Kresswell glared at Briar with equal parts disgust and astonishment. “I don’t give two shits if he’s sensitive! He’s hired to do a job and if he can’t do it he can go find work somewhere else!”
“Yeah, I’m sure you’ll make it real easy for him,” Briar hissed, then leaped nimbly up onto the table beside the big man, who was muttering words to form some kind of spell. He ran his hands over his Body fingers desperately trying to trace charms onto his own flesh. Briar pulled Selvaggi’s hands down, forcing them to his sides. The man struggled and bellowed.
“It hurts!” he shrieked insensibly. “God, it hurts ... I have to do something ...”
“Using magic will just make it hurt worse,” Briar said in a low steady voice. “Come on, let’s get out of here. I’ll get you help ...”
“He’s costing us hundreds, shutting down this line!” Kresswell cried. He glared around himself at the workers who were standing and watching. “And what the hell are you all doing? Get back to work!”
Briar was still trying to keep the man’s hands down, keep him from casting magic. He looked down at Will, his whole body tense with the strain.
“Grab some of that rope.” Briar nodded to hemp coil laying by one of the machines. “If we don’t tie him up we’ll never get him out of here.”
“That’s company property!” Kresswell said, advancing threateningly when Will moved toward the rope. “Don’t you dare ...”
Will dug into his pocket and came up with a five dollar half-eagle—enough to pay for a whole spool of rope. He threw it at Kresswell, who fumbled and caught the money, eyeing it with astonishment.
“Where’d you get money like this?” he barked. “You steal this?”
But he made no further attempt to stop them as Will helped Briar tie Selvaggi’s hands behind his back. The raving man moaned, sobbed, his fingers twitching as if to sketch the air. Together, Will and Briar lifted him down from the table. He was very heavy, and when they tried to help him walk, his feet dragged drunkenly.
Then things got worse.
A half-dozen men in dark heavy wool coats and low-pulled slouch hats appeared at the factory’s far door. They were carrying truncheons and rifles.
All the color drained from Briar’s face. “Hell. Company muscle. And they’re itching to break heads. C’mon, Will, we’ve got to run.”
Looping their arms between Selvaggi’s bound ones, they dragged the man in the opposite direction, toward a small access door at the far corner of the factory floor. But the company men had already sighted them, and began to give chase, yelling.
Even though he was doing the most to keep the delirious man on his feet, Will found himself being dragged along as Briar dodged through dark alleys and backways. Stumbling and panting, they did not stop until the sounds of their pursuers had grown distant and dim.
Selvaggi collapsed to the frozen ground, moaning and shivering.
“Give him your coat,” Briar commanded harshly. “He doesn’t have anything else.”
Without a second thought, Will hurried to comply, wrapping the warm wool around the man’s trembling form. Selvaggi’s flesh was burning hot to the touch, and the grubby, bruise-like trails of black under his skin seemed to throb, as if about to burst forth in a tarry gush. Once Will got the coat around him, Briar took a deep breath and muttered a few low words under his breath. Then he shook out his shoulders like a prizefighter, ben
t down, and picked the huge man up. He slung him over his shoulder fireman-style, his knees quavering but not buckling, and began walking toward Grand River Avenue. Briar smiled wanly at Will’s gape of astonishment.
“I’m tougher’n I look, kid,” he puffed. “We got to get him to Greektown or he’s done for. Come on.”
Luckily, the downtown streetcar on Grand River Avenue was not long in coming. The other passengers gaped as Briar slung the whimpering Selvaggi into the car, but Briar was interested only in the man’s suffering, kneeling next to him, putting a soothing hand on his throat, murmuring more low, comforting words. Briar and Will hauled Selvaggi off the car at Gratiot Avenue, which Will remembered without fondness as being in the vicinity of the Hotel Acheron, the dive where he and Jenny had spent their first night in Detroit.
“Sorry to have got you mixed up in all this,” Briar said as they dragged Selvaggi along Gratiot. “Good thing those thugs didn’t catch us. That would have been tough to explain to your folks at Tesla Industries.”
As they turned down Beaubien, Will noticed that the signs for the restaurants and shops they were passing were in Greek. They finally came to a narrow brownstone-style storefront with a hand-lettered sign in the front window printed both in English and Greek: Dr. Lazaros Gore. Still holding Selvaggi up, Briar had to kick the door with his foot instead of knocking. The door was opened by a tall, olive-skinned woman. She wore a nurse’s uniform: a plain white shirtwaist and white cotton apron, stained brown in places with iodine. Her hair was neatly tucked up under a starched muffin cap.
“Oh, Harley,” she sighed, stepping forward to help. In one swift movement, she wrapped her arm around Selvaggi and lifted him over the threshold.
“Good evening, Irene,” Briar greeted her with odd formality. “This one’s just lost his job, so you got yourself another charity case.”
“I’ve got money,” said Will, following Briar inside. “I can pay.”
The nurse glanced back at Will, frowning. Then she looked at Briar. “Who is this swell fellow?”
“His name’s Will Edwards,” Briar said. “He was buying me dinner when this happened. He’s a good egg.”
Together, Briar and the nurse dragged Selvaggi into a receiving room just off the main hall. As they laid him out on a sturdy table, an older man entered from the back room, clearly drawn by the commotion. He was in gartered shirtsleeves and was holding a copy of the evening paper. Removing his reading glasses from his face, he looked them all over curiously. The old man’s gaze lingered, though, on Selvaggi, as the nurse removed the coat Will had wrapped around him. The big man’s bare, goosepimpled torso was swirling with moving bruises, yellow and purple and black. He looked as if he was being pummeled by invisible fists.
Laying his paper aside, the old man clucked his tongue unhappily. “Dear, dear, dear,” he said, running his fingers lightly over some particularly swollen places on the man’s skin. “He’s positively riddled with Exunge. He’s done far too much magic.”
“Gee, you think?” Briar deadpanned. He’d taken up a position near the door and was watching the proceedings with dark eyes.
The doctor gave Briar a reproachful look. “I’ve seen him before, yes?”
“Yes,” said Briar.
“But not this bad, before,” the doctor said.
“He’s got kids to feed,” Briar said. “His wife died last year, he’s one foot out of the poorhouse. What else do you expect him to do?”
The doctor sighed heavily. “Well, let us see if we can get him fixed up again. Irene, are you ready?”
The nurse nodded. She’d already assembled a small tray containing just one simple piece of equipment—a razor. Will watched with horrified fascination as she swiftly drew the blade across Selvaggi’s chest, leaving three parallel trails of blood. The cuts were not deep, just enough to make the blood well up from the man’s skin, quick and strong and black. Looking closer, Will saw that the man must have been cut like this before—many other light silver scars crisscrossed his skin. Irene placed one strong brown hand on his chest and began massaging the blood over his heart. Then the doctor, who was standing across the table opposite from her, placed a hand over hers. He closed his eyes and began murmuring something, a guttural kind of language that didn’t sound like Greek.
Irene reached below the high collar of her white blouse, accidentally streaking it with blood, and withdrew a small two-chambered pendant. Will’s eyes widened, for he knew what it was instantly. He’d remembered seeing illustrations of them in the Dreadnought Stanton books. It was an alembic, a kind of power-channeling pendant that was unique to one—and only one—type of magical practitioner.
“They’re ... sangrimancers,” Will whispered to Briar, who snorted.
“Well, hell! I guess you are a genius, just like everyone says.”
Will watched as the alembic in Irene’s hand began to glow.
“I’ve never heard of sangrimancer doctors,” he breathed, watching as the doctor and his nurse chanted in unison, passing the glowing alembic over the man’s Body the allergic swelling beneath his skin subsiding and fading as they did.
“Seems there’s a lot you ain’t never heard of,” Briar said. “Dr. Gore’s the best in Greektown. And him and his daughter are the finest people you’ll ever meet.”
Will could almost feel the man’s pain subsiding. The black substance, which Dr. Gore had called Exunge, was mostly gone now, leaving only faint smudgy traces. Breathing deeply, the man was soon asleep.
“All right, that should be enough,” Dr. Gore said, withdrawing his hand from Irene’s. He looked at his daughter with concern. “Are you all right, my dear?”
Irene had grown exceptionally pale, and now there were dark circles under her eyes—the wan Dorian pallor Will recognized. A sangrimancer nurse risking a bout of magical allergy to save a stranger from his? The very idea made Will’s head spin.
“I’m fine,” said Irene softly, withdrawing her hands and going to wash them. When she returned with hot water and bandages to tend to the man’s wounds, Dr. Gore took them from her.
“I’ll take care of that,” he said. “You go lie down for a bit.”
“No, I will—”
“Harley,” Dr. Gore called over his shoulder. “Please talk sense into her.”
Briar crossed the room in two strides and wrapped his arm around Irene’s waist. She was much taller than him, and larger, but she leaned against him nonetheless. “Come on,” he murmured fondly. “You gotta stay strong for the cause.” Irene nodded, compliant, and as they left the room Dr. Gore eyed Will.
“So, I heard you say you had money,” he said tartly, as he began cleaning the wounds on the man’s chest. Will dug out all the spare change he had left after the evening’s activities, regretting that he’d thrown a whole five-dollar gold piece at the odious floor boss. But the handful of coins seemed satisfactory to Dr. Gore. After daubing Selvaggi’s chest with a towel, he washed his hands again with strong-smelling soap, then began laying on strips of bandage. The man’s chest rose and fell with peaceful regularity beneath the doctor’s deft, careful touch.
“Will he be all right?” Will asked.
Dr. Gore shrugged. “That depends on what you mean. This time, he will recover. But I’ve seen him so many times before. For someone like him, someone so sensitive to Exunge, using any magic is very damaging to the system. He will die young. So no, he won’t be all right.”
Will felt the terrible injustice of it—that this man had to put his life in jeopardy just so he could keep himself and his children out of the poorhouse. But despite his sympathy, Will was more curious about something Dr. Gore had said earlier. “What does that word mean, Exunge?”
“The tendrils of black you saw moving under his skin, that is Exunge,” Dr. Gore said. “The substance represents the toxic residuals that are left after one works magic. If one works too much magic, it builds up in the system, causing illness. If too much builds up, death.”
There was
the sound of footsteps coming down the stairs, and Briar poked his head into the examining room. He punched Will on the arm.
“C’mon kid, I’ll walk you back. Don’t want you to catch hell with the wife.”
Will’s heart leapt, and he checked his wristwatch. It was almost midnight. Jenny probably wasn’t worried yet—she was used to him working late—but what if Grig happened to check in at the apartment and discovered that he hadn’t been home? He grabbed his coat.
“Thank you for your patronage!” Dr. Gore’s voice called after them as they left. “Please try not to come again!”
Will hadn’t a nickel left in his pocket after paying Dr. Gore, so he and Briar had to walk back, the cold night air urging them briskly along.
“Sangrimancer doctors,” Will said again, still hardly able to believe it. “I always thought sangrimancers were evil through and through.”
“Yeah, that’s what all the Dreadnought Stanton books want you to believe,” Briar scoffed, turning up his collar and jamming his hands deep in his pockets. “But those are kids books, and you’re no kid.”
“It’s not just the Dreadnought Stanton books,” said Will softly. “Everyone knows they torture people. I mean, they have to. They have to empower the blood they take with suffering, right? “
Briar lifted a thoughtful eyebrow. “Sangrimancers do draw power from blood charged by human emotion,” he allowed. “Suffering, misery, despair ...” He paused, looked at Will. “But you don’t have to torture a man for him to feel misery. I saw enough misery in the coalfields back in Kentucky—hell, I see enough of it in the factories here in Detroit, every day—to fuel magic bigger than you can imagine. Dr. Gore and Irene, they take that suffering and use it to help people. They take the suffering out of their patients’ blood. And that’s why I say they’re the finest people you’ll ever meet.”
The Warlock's Curse Page 23