The Curse Servant (The Dark Choir Book 2)

by Sloan, J. P.

  Private number.

  “Hello?”

  Cecil Rawls’ voice vibrated through the phone, “Dorian? Have you spoken to Bright yet?”

  “No, can’t reach him. He’s out of town.”

  “You may have less time than we thought.”

  I dropped into my chair. “What happened?”

  “Copies of the photos landed at the Charm City Spectator. It’s a short run rag out of Canton, but people are already talking about it.”

  “Fuck. Okay. I’ll try again.”

  “I’m taking a risk, here.”

  I took a deep breath and nodded. “I recognize that, Cecil. Thank you.”

  “I’m saying this is it. This is as far as I can go with this. You won’t hear from me again.”

  Before I could say “Understood,” he hung up.

  So much for my weekend.

  ello?”

  “It’s Julian.”

  I checked the clock radio by my bed. Six in the morning. What a bastard.

  “Yeah. You back yet?”

  “We’re driving in this morning. I have six voicemails demanding I call you, so I’m thinking this is important?”

  “Yep. Campaign-ending important.”

  “It’s always when I leave town.”

  “I’ll keep my day open for you.”

  “I can’t get into this right this very second, but what’s the five-word version?”

  “Uh… Amy Mancuso. Me. You. Photos.”

  After a long pause he replied, “We’re in Philly now. I’ll call you in four hours.”

  “Roger.”

  My Sunday got busy, all of a sudden. I pulled myself out of bed and slushed through the laundry on the floor on my way to making breakfast. Ches never worked Sunday mornings, so instead of hiking over to the café, I warmed up some cassoulet and made my way down to the basement. I rifled through Emil’s library for that stupid Macedonian-Bulgarian-Ottoman text for Carmody. Dealing with those tomes was never easy. The energies bound within and around those books were almost blindingly distracting. The old stories of books driving men insane were based on the hornet’s nest of infernal intent that swarmed around such texts. And it wasn’t even intentional. The knowledge contained within was simply that potent.

  I paused when I stumbled across a text written by Asok the Sharqui in the late seventeenth century. Emil had jotted down the words thoughtforms, darql craft, servitors, soul traps in the margin. This was the book I needed to bone up on before I made my meeting with Gillette. I plunged headlong into the Indian heretic’s treatise on soul manipulation, not knowing precisely what to expect. The man had been a cultural Muslim during the Moghul Empire, but claimed a Rajput ancestry. The blend of political and religious conflict during his lifetime had driven him outside of the more conventional pursuits of near-Eastern mysticism, pushing him into what could only be described as “utterly sinister” practices, even by modern standards. His ultimate goal of slicing his soul into representations of traditional deities was interrupted by an ill-timed wave of plague, taking his life and those of his followers. Though not before the last managed to put to parchment his theories, means, and observations in his attempts. The document fell into the hands of Muslim landlords a century later, and ultimately rested in the hands of a Vatican emissary just prior to the First World War. Said emissary, regrettably, contracted a rapidly progressing case of tuberculosis during his voyage from Tyre to Italy. The ship made it to Rome intact. The text landed in the hands of whoever taught Emil his craft.

  I recognized Emil’s handwriting on every other page, his translation of the original. The translation was colored predictably with his resentment of Euro-centric colonial ideals. After three hours of plodding through Emil’s butchering of Urdu, I surrendered and returned upstairs to check my phone.

  I had a voicemail from Leibnitz. He had acquired the necessary reagent from his target, and wanted to hand it over as soon as was humanly possible. I figured a man of his focus and seemingly sparing constitution deserved as much quick attention as I could afford. I showered, dressed, and made my way to the street in front of Grey & Lisle.

  He looked like hell. His eyes were sunken, his face more pallid than last I saw him, and his shirt looked like he slept in it last night. Maybe he was working off an all-nighter, maybe he’d hit the sauce last night. Either way, he wasn’t the ray of sunshine I quite frankly needed at that moment.

  Leibnitz shoved a black plastic bag into my hand and turned to walk off.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  He spun a circle of steps without stopping and returned to my side. “You should be able to work with this.”

  “Good. But, are you okay?”

  “No.”

  “What’s going on?”

  He looked up into my eyes with an expression of nauseating dread. “I got what you needed. I don’t want to talk about it.”

  Leibnitz turned to retreat once again.

  “Ari? This isn’t witchcraft. This is karmically clean.”

  He paused as his eyes worked lines on the pavement alongside his shoes.

  “Just take him down, Mister Lake,” he muttered before finally retreating into the lobby of his building.

  My hex would be karmically clean. Sure. I could vouch for that. But as I jostled the plastic bag in my hand, I wondered if Leibnitz was clean any longer.

  When I returned to my house, I went straight to work. I had ideas of how to deal with the target, Jacobs. It had been a long time since I had a hex I could spin which didn’t involve lovers, sex, or children. I had a particularly tangled hex already spelled out in my head that involved sleep deprivation and impotence. Two effects on one hex would require a strong linkage.

  As I opened the plastic bag, I realized I had all the linkage I needed. A bloodied cotton handkerchief fell from the bag and onto my table. I paused for a moment, recognizing the look of terror filling Leibnitz’s eyeballs. What had he done?

  There was probably no way to ever really know. It would be unprofessional to ask. I never had before. I just couldn’t imagine a mouse like Ari Leibnitz drawing blood from a man. Not on purpose, at any rate.

  I grabbed a pair of yellow rubber cleaning gloves from the trunk under my worktable, and scooped the handkerchief into my tiny iron cauldron. It was technically a novelty iron pot I purchased at one of those interstate restaurant gift shops filled with what everyone pretends is genuine old timey crap. I had been using a stainless steel fondue pot for a while, but cast iron packs so much more wallop. I doused the handkerchief with a solution of distilled water, iron shavings, and some dried Chinese wolfberries to tone the blood energy. I let that sit to render while I scraped a fresh parchment and prepared some ink.

  Spreading the parchment flat out on the worktable, I found the center of the leaf and began plotting the points for a spiral of golden rectangles with Emil’s old calipers. I double-checked the ratios and put quill ink to parchment, scribing the sacred geometry. Then, with my mainline of chakras in the correct balance, I began the scripture. For this hex I chose Ionic Greek, notorious for its efficacy in sex magic. Endowing each sigil and word with intent and fate-twisting energy, I spiraled the text of the hex. Its effects, its purpose, its condition for termination. In this case, I made two conditions to balance the two effects. The hex would lift if Jacobs made a public confession of wrongdoing, or if he was otherwise removed from his ill-gained privilege. Until that time, the bed would be a place of frustration and failure for him, in regards both to sleep and sex.

  As the ink dried, I removed the handkerchief from the cauldron and set it over a cup of sterno to heat. The tonic steamed as the blood congealed. When the linkage achieved the correct consistency, I fished out my athame from the tool box and dipped it into the cauldron. I traced the Sigil of Sabi’un in Jacobs’ blood over the hex and folded it neatly into a golden rectangle before burning it with the sterno flame.

  The hex was cast.

  I had barely cleaned up and bleached my
equipment before my phone rang. It was Julian.

  “You’re back?”

  “I only have a few minutes.”

  “Where can you meet?”

  “Better meet me here. Out front.”

  “Where’s here?”

  “City Hall.”

  Fuck me. “Alright. I’m ten minutes away.”

  I had to take the Audi into the city, and parked in the fire lane across the street from City Hall. I had a feeling Julian could fix that ticket if a zealous flatfoot decided to drop the axe on me.

  I waited by the front steps, Rawls’ envelope of photos tucked under my arm. Julian finally emerged from the building, stepping quickly.

  “Are those the photos?” he asked in a low voice before I was quite able to hear it.

  “Yeah. Someone inside The Sun dropped these off for us yesterday. Thought he had an exclusive on these pics, but he was wrong.”

  “Who else has these?”

  “Charm City Spectator.”

  Julian winced, then nodded. “Okay, I can work with this. Mancuso isn’t a strong witness, and she has some history.”

  “Julian?”

  “Hmm?”

  “She shouldn’t suffer because of us.”

  He blinked twice and squinted. “I don’t intend to do her harm if that’s your meaning.”

  “I don’t want her in play at all. She was the victim, here.”

  “Dorian?” He waved the envelope in front of his face. “She’s already in play. We didn’t start this, but by God, I’m not going to let Sullivan tank to save face for a heroin user.”

  “She’s on heroin?”

  He nodded.

  “How do you know that?”

  “I didn’t spend the last two decades of my life studying dead languages and mysticism, Dorian, but I did learn a thing or two about politics. I’ll pull together a counter for this, hopefully before The Charm City Spectator even goes to print.”

  He cradled the envelope under his shoulder and turned back for the entrance.

  “You’re welcome,” I called out.

  Julian paused and turned to me slowly, his brow lifted. After giving me a tired look, he took a deep breath and nodded. “Thank you.”

  I watched Julian slip back into the pool of city politics without so much as a ripple, and wondered what had become of our friendly repartee? He wasn’t the young lion I had met at the Druid Hill Club nine months ago. He had been so impressed by me, so eager to do business. I even gave him some basic lessons on the hermetic arts as he had always fostered an interest. They never came to much, unfortunately. Julian simply didn’t have the time or the available space in his gray matter for the Craft.

  But things were tense, now. He wasn’t my buddy. He was my employer, and with the mayoral campaign about to hit the public, he had precious little interest in kissing my ass anymore. I shuffled back to my car, perhaps a little pensive. I missed those nights at the Club sipping wine with Julian, talking about unimportant matters. But things had changed. Those moments of homecoming were little more than echoes now, bouncing off the marble halls into which he had retreated.

  It was Sunday afternoon. The day had been a bag of pissed off cats, and I wasn’t feeling particularly good about myself at that moment. The Club was precisely what I needed.

  he arboreal drive to the Druid Hill Club was densely canopied, the last dying rays of sunset unable to penetrate the Live Oak leaves along the gravel lane. I had to grip my steering wheel whenever I drove through dark streets or tunnels. Too many shadows. For whatever reason the shadows enjoyed taunting me when I visited the Club. Perhaps they knew this was where I found my center, refilled what vital essence the week had worn away.

  Perhaps they knew I would die there some day.

  That’s all they really wanted. My life. A man without a soul was a man doomed, and the moment of my death would bring them like sharks in a frenzy.

  Ramon took my car keys as I pulled up to the porte cochere. I struck up a conversation with Ramon whenever I could. He had an intimate understanding of the interiors of the club members’ cars, and a sharp eye for incriminating miscellanea found therein. He fed me dirt from the parking lot, and I fed him dirt from inside the club. He only recently stopped changing my radio to the one and only salsa station in Baltimore.

  I stepped inside the double oak doors and paused in front of Kim, the Coatroom Dominatrix. She pretended not to notice me for a few seconds before finally giving me a cock of her brow.

  “Card?”

  I had it ready in my front pocket, and slid it casually across the coatroom counter. She picked it up and pressed it against her lips, leaving huge lipstick marks on the laminate. With a wink, she slid it back to me.

  “I suppose I’ll let you in.”

  “Don’t think I’m not grateful. How’s the room?”

  “Sunday. Business, y’know?”

  “Hey, you seen Julian Bright around much lately?”

  She shook her head.

  “Okay.”

  “Listen, Dorian. I have another sit next Wednesday. Property managers from Columbia. You have those photos yet?”

  “Shit. Forgot.”

  “Think you can take care of that by tomorrow night, and email them to me?”

  “I’ll do it.”

  Kim had started up her own interior design business a few months ago in an attempt to escape the Club, and I’d hired her to take a crack at my upstairs. I owed her photos, but my mind had been everywhere but décor.

  She snapped her fingers at me. “You on another planet or something?”

  “Sorry. I’ve been… well, I’m sort of seeing someone.”

  She blinked furiously and took half a step back. “You’re kidding.”

  “No. Actually not kidding about that.”

  “Jesus, Dorian!”

  “Right?”

  “Is she… does she work here?”

  I deserved that. “No. She’s not in the trade. But, I might bring her here next weekend. You can meet her.”

  Her face stumbled through shades of shock and mirth. “You’re seriously bringing her here? You sure about that?”

  “Yeah, why not?”

  She shook her head before tapping the front of my suit with the back of her hand. “Better go see Ben before he hears you flirting with me.”

  I moved on down the hallway and into the main room. Clutches of settees, couches, and wingbacks speckled the enormous space, separated by columns and potted palms. The crowd tonight was definitely the shirtsleeve set. Sundays were typically “business over drinks” night at Druid Hill. The working girls didn’t push as hard, and those that did tended to sit on armchairs most of the night. Sunlight still spilled through the last of the French doors lining the exterior wall, sending orange hues slicing through the palm leaves. The stripes of sunset light bounced off the back bar mirror as Big Ben Setleigh poured a martini for a man easily in his eighties.

  “Ben?” I called once the octogenarian had returned to his embarrassingly young escort. “I think I’m going to have to find a new entrance to this joint.”

  “Kim giving you shit?” he asked, his broad face glistening with more sweat than was called for.

  “Yes, and you should have her fired immediately.”

  “I have a feeling I’d be doing her a favor. So what’s your pour tonight, Dorian?”

  “Let’s start with an Argentine malbec and see where it goes?”

  He nodded and reached for the lattice wine rack behind him.

  “Still got your Glenny if the mood strikes.”

  “I’m good.”

  “The whole point to owning an expensive Scotch whiskey is to drink it from time-to-time, you know?”

  “Just wine.”

  He pulled the cork and poured me a glass. “So, a man in my position comes to notice a thing or two when he’s doing little else but pouring drinks and listening to worthless assholes like you complain all night.”

  “Do tell?”

 
“And a man like me would notice that you haven’t been patronizing our club to its fullest potential.”

  “I’ve been busy.”

  “How are you and Bright doing lately?”

  “Again, busy.”

  He lifted a brow, and I wilted.

  “It’s been better.”

  “Honeymoon’s over, huh?”

  “We went straight to our bitter golden years, but thanks for asking.” I added after taking a sip, “No, it’s just we both have eyes on our own specific prizes.”

  “What, you got a new job?”

  “Not that kind of prize.”

  Ben pulled a stool from under the bar and settled his girth upon it. “I knew it!”

  “Jesus.”

  “Who’s the lucky girl?”

  “Lucky isn’t the first word that comes to mind.”

  “Shut up. Name.”

  “Francesca.”

  “Local girl?”

  “Not really. She’s in college.”

  His brow lifted.

  “What?” I spat.

  “Nothing. You’re, what? Thirty-five?”

  “How do you know my age?”

  Ben gave me a smug, tight-lipped grin.

  I shrugged. “The age difference isn’t that significant. I mean, it won’t be when we’re both in our forties. At least, when she’s in her forties.”

  “Going to bring her here?”

  “Saturday night.”

  “Wow. Must be serious.”

  “It really isn’t.”

  “You’re bringing her to this place, Dorian. That’s like bringing her to meet your parents, and you know it.”

  I leaned back on the bar stool and took another long quaff of wine. Ben gave me a warm, knowing smile and withdrew to attend to another customer. I watched him work for a while. He was terrifyingly out of shape. He was the kind of man you could imagine dining on two slices of bread soaked in bacon grease every night with a pack of cigarettes and a nightcap. He always listened to me, and he never withdrew his approval from me. Even during all the unpleasantness with Carmen.

  But I hadn’t realized how much I cared what he thought about me until I had someone for him to meet.