The Curse Servant (The Dark Choir Book 2)

by Sloan, J. P.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “I know what you want. You want my method. My notes, perhaps. A deeply personal, but still not entirely un-embarrassing view into my struggles with soul magic. What are you offering in exchange?”

  I wilted in my chair. For whatever reason, I hadn’t thought to prepare to negotiate. I was expecting a more or less cooperative conversation. Instead, I was met with this mercenary frontier mentality, and I really should have known better.

  “I’m a hex and charm crafter by trade.”

  She snickered and shook her head. “Fuck me. You’re really going to try and impress me with charms and hexes? If I need to make a pretzel out of my own karma, I’m qualified to do it myself. So thank you, but what else you got?”

  I balked. The cedar fumes were getting to me. Either that, or I was so close to a real way to find my soul that I was getting desperate. I didn’t want to beg.

  “What did you have in mind?”

  She shook her finger at me. “You’re presenting yourself as weak. Bad idea. It would have been wiser to start with Curses, but if you want to bury your lead―”

  “Curses?”

  “You are a Curse Merchant, aren’t you?”

  “I―”

  “You took out Osterhaus with a simple and particularly nasty curse. A sly bit of Netherwork that pancaked him in so many tons of iron and cement. Not entirely uncalled for, considering he torched your soul contract, but still.”

  “I never told you his name.”

  “Who, Osterhaus?”

  “That’s right. How do you know about―”

  “Just like you never mentioned Emil Desiderio by name. Or the fact that you lived with him in London for the better part of ten years? Or the fact that Del Carmody skittered all the way to Baltimore with my name in a hot little envelope ready to drop into your hands without so much as a dislocated pinky?”

  My stomach was in free-fall, so keeping my mouth shut seemed to be the best choice at the moment.

  She continued, “I understand the Presidium has you East Coast practitioners thumbscrewed and pissing your pants, but out here on the West Coast we actually do our homework.”

  “Just wanted to watch me wiggle on the hook?”

  “Welcome to real life. You want my method? Tough shit. I’m not inclined to share knowledge with a shit-kicker like you. But I need a curse, so I’m willing to do the work for you.”

  “A curse?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “What else can we work out?”

  “You’re pretty squeamish for a man who’s killed with magic.”

  “That’s mostly why I’m squeamish.”

  “Well, that’s my price. I want you to curse a man. Not a hex, not some clever-shit way to needle my mark into wishing he was a better man. I want him to meet his end. I want it done quickly, and I want it clean. You do that, and I’ll find your soul for you. Hell, I’ll even put it back in your body.”

  This sounded too familiar.

  “What, you’re trying to teach me a lesson or something? I’ve been around that particular racetrack already.”

  “I honestly don’t care what you know or feel or think, Lake. This man has been a pain in my ass for far too long, and I am beyond whatever point of compassion I pretend to have with the people who don’t actively screw me.”

  “Who’s your mark?”

  “Del Carmody.”

  Of course. “He’s a handful, I’ll grant you, but―”

  “He’s made a career out of poaching and selling grimoires and personal dealings among the West Coast practitioners. He knows we’re all ready to shove a pentacle up his ass sideways, so he took precautions.”

  “Why would he give me your name, then? He’d have to know I’d contact you. Doesn’t really follow.”

  “It does if you’re the kind of man who will side with someone out of a misplaced sense of Judeo-Christian morality. Are you?”

  “I’m not a murderer, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “Alright. If labels are important to you, then fine. You’re not a murderer. But you are a Netherworker. Like it or don’t. You’ve tainted your soul with infernal magic.” She leaned forward slowly. “Only, you haven’t, have you?”

  “Sorry?”

  “Your soul? Was it on your person when you cursed Osterhaus?”

  “No.”

  Gillette grinned. It was unnerving as hell.

  “You’re in a unique position, Lake. Your soul is elsewhere. What your body does until you locate it? Well, one doesn’t often get the opportunity to indulge in Netherwork without consequences.”

  “There really has to be another way. I can get money together.”

  “Carmody came to you. Specifically you. He’s slippery, and the one thing I want is for him to know he failed. That means you have to do it.”

  “I’m not sure if I can even find Carmody.”

  She leaned back and checked the door again. “That’s your problem.”

  “Gillette. This is my soul we’re talking about here. I don’t mean for you to go fetch it for me. All I’m looking for is information.”

  “I know.”

  “Is this really necessary?”

  The door opened with its creak and jingle. Gillette didn’t bother to turn and look, but I did. A long-haired young man stepped inside carrying a skateboard. I recognized him. It was the kid who nearly ran me over on the street.

  There are moments when you realize that shit’s about to go down, and you’re utterly powerless to stop it. I was getting really damn tired of those moments.

  The skateboarder lingered across the shop from the elderly man still thumbing through his paperback. He was my life vest. As long as he was here, I suspected they wouldn’t jump me.

  “Friend of yours?” I whispered.

  “No, and neither is grandpa.”

  The skateboarder cracked his knuckles.

  The old man looked up just in time to see him hoist his skateboard into the air and swing it in a swift, savage arc into his face. His nose crunched and a spray of blood misted the nearby bookshelves. His body tumbled backward in her chair as the skateboarder pulled a silver blade from his baggy shorts. Two stabs and he was done.

  The barista sighed and swept around his bar with a handful of towels.

  “Dammit, Gillette,” he grumbled as he moved to mop up the pool of blood forming on the hardwood.

  The skateboarder dead bolted the front door and twisted the front blinds closed.

  I clenched my jaw and finally released the breath I hadn’t realized I was holding, glancing over to Gillette who hadn’t looked away from me once.

  “Christ,” I spat.

  “You’re never going to be rid of them,” she stated matter-of-factly.

  “Who?”

  The skateboarder approached with something in his hand. He dropped it onto the table directly in front of Gillette, who poked at it with a folded napkin. It was a charm on a gold chain. The Eye of Providence.

  “He was Presidium?” I muttered, rubbing my eyes.

  “They’re willing to follow you all the way to Portland. Imagine how far up your asshole they’ve already crawled when you’re in Baltimore.”

  “You had to kill him?”

  “The Presidium doesn’t have the muscle to police us out here. They want you to think so, but they don’t. And we’ve been enjoying a kind of Cold War since the late 1860’s. Things were actually fairly quiet for the last couple decades. Then you show up.”

  “You can’t blame me for this.”

  She folded the charm into her napkin and pocketed it. “I wanted to you to see how things are, Lake. How they really are, in a world that isn’t insulated and artificial. This is what we live. This is how we survive. When people like you and Carmody run and hide under the Presidium’s skirt, it doesn’t exactly impress us.”

  “I’m not going to curse Carmody, Gillette.”

  She blinked rapidly, then sighed. “So, if that’s a
deal-breaker for you, and it looks like it is, then I guess we’re done here.”

  I stood up. The skateboarder didn’t flinch. Nothing about me seemed to register as a threat to him or Gillette. I hadn’t felt that small in a long time.

  Gillette shrugged and picked up her reader again.

  By the time I reached the front door, the barista had expended all of his towels, and the blood was still spreading. He gave me a miserable look before returning to the back for more. The skateboarder trotted up beside me and unbolted the door.

  Gillette called over her shoulder, “When the shadows start coming for you, you have my number. Try not to hold out too long.”

  I stepped out into the fresh air of the street. The door closed and bolted behind me. The tiny bookstore seemed to simply melt into the other innocuous stoops along Columbia Street.

  So there it was. I had come to the brink of finding my soul, and all I had to do was one more curse. One curse without consequence, without damning my soul. If Gillette were to be believed, it seemed that Carmody had made this bed.

  As I called a cab, I had serious doubts that I would be the one to lay him in it.

  spent most of the week thinking about Carmody, despite my best efforts otherwise. My brain continued to wander down the path of justification Gillette had provided for me. I had no soul at the moment. Whatever my body did while it was away was effectively karma-free. Or was it? There was no guarantee the Cosmos didn’t hold my chips regardless of my soul’s disposition, and what few texts in Emil’s Library dedicated to soul magic offered me little clarity on the subject.

  But even if I could curse a man with impunity, would I? Had Carmody actually deserved it? Did that even matter at this point? I had certainly appointed myself judge, jury, and executioner for Osterhaus. Why would this circumstance be any different? Granted it would be a moot decision unless I could acquire a piece of Carmody. Until that point, I had little to act upon. Still, the struggle proved to be an ongoing distraction.

  The next day, I delivered a few gallons of interior latex paint for my property manager, Abraham Carter, when I passed a new sign staked up by the corner of Fayette and Carrollton. Another urban revitalization project from McHenry Construction. The sign displayed a series of modern mixed use structures resembling glass and steel townhomes. There were restaurants and a large fountain surrounded by cobblestones. The words The Manor at Carrollton swished across the top of the sign in labored cursive.

  I found Abe sitting on his porch, staring across the street blandly. He hopped to his feet when I pulled up to my rental properties, and he made it to the Audi before I could even try to carry the paint up to his porch for him.

  “Afternoon, Mr. Lake,” he whistled through his false teeth. “Mighty nice of you to bring me this paint.”

  “Don’t sweat it.”

  It was a poor choice of words. The sun was high and oppressive, and Abe’s skin glistened with countless bubbles of sweat breaking into one another.

  He hobbled up the front walk to his porch and sat the gallons of paint on the old boards.

  “You want some lemonade?”

  “Nah.”

  “Aw, come on now. It’s hotter’n shit out here today.”

  He was right. Also, he made monster lemonade.

  We took a seat on his porch rockers and sipped as we rocked. There was a bizarre calm to the moment, and I realized how a man like Abe could live his entire life without a plan. All he had to do was sit and drink lemonade. A clutch of shirtless men huddled on a stoop across the street. Every now and then they would shoot us a dirty look, and one of them even circled my car.

  “They out of work,” Abe commented without really looking at me.

  “Not surprised.”

  “Nothin’ better to do but sweat and talk, I suppose.”

  I spotted Lakeisha, Abe’s next-door neighbor and one of my more vocal tenants, dancing up the street to something on her ear buds. She paused long enough to spot my car, and then me sitting on Abe’s porch.

  “Hey, what’s up D-Lake?”

  “Just catching up on all of the nothing I was planning to do this week.”

  “Hey,” she shouted as she turned up Abe’s walk. “You gonna sell or what?”

  “Sell what?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Huh?”

  “You gonna sell?” she spat with a kick of her hip.

  “What am I selling, Lakeisha?”

  “Our homes. You ain’t selling them, are you?”

  I blinked and shook my head. “Wasn’t planning on it.”

  I caught a glimpse of Abe releasing a held breath beside me.

  “That’s good ‘cause I was gonna come slash your tires or something if you did.”

  “Oh, thanks.”

  “But you ain’t, so we’re all good.”

  The Dumont brothers, the tenants living next to Lakeisha, poked their heads out from their tiny fenced yard.

  “Hey, Lakeisha,” Tyrel bellowed. “That Lake over there?”

  “Yeah, hon!”

  The two men trotted around the hurricane fencing and up Abe’s front walk, and I suddenly had an impromptu tenant meeting on my hands. Tyrel and Jamal Dumont were huge men. I was pretty sure they lifted weights, but I had never really had more than three sentences’ worth of conversation with them.

  Tyrel threw his massive hands on his hips. “Yo, Lake. What’s this shit about selling these houses?”

  “Where the hell is this coming from? Who said I was going to sell?”

  Abe shifted in his rocker as he set down his glass. “Men came from the big retail project, knockin’ on doors. One of them left this.” He pulled a folded envelope from his shirt pocket.

  I thumbed it open and gave it a quick read.

  McHenry Construction letterhead.

  “Why did they give this to you? This was supposed to get mailed to me directly. They shouldn’t be bothering you with this.”

  I realized my tone was a touch stronger than I had intended. Both Abe and Lakeisha looked away as the Dumonts bristled.

  “Sorry,” I muttered. “Guess Joey McHenry’s too cheap to bother with fucking stamps.” I looked over to Abe. “Why didn’t you call me about this?”

  “Figured they called you already.”

  “They hadn’t. First I’m hearing about it.”

  Lakeisha squirmed a little. “So, you still not selling, right?”

  “No. I’m not selling the properties. Especially to this dick-whistle.” I finished my lemonade quickly and stood up. The Dumonts didn’t seem inclined to move out of the way. “Seriously, guys. I intend on being your shitty landlord for another ten years, minimum.”

  Tyrel gave me the tiniest of grins and stepped aside.

  As I approached my car, the crew from across the street stood up together and started moving toward it. I fished my keys out of my pants quickly, but there wasn’t enough time to keep this from turning into a scene. The first shirtless gentleman stood in front of my car, setting his foot onto the front bumper.

  I shrugged at them. “Guys, really?”

  “Nice car,” his friend offered.

  “Thanks. I’m going now.”

  “Sure about that?”

  I never carried weapons. I didn’t believe in them. My personal wardings were generally enough to scoop my ass out of danger when I needed them. Though I had to admit in a situation like this one, gnostic hermeticism wasn’t as useful as a bodyguard.

  “Look, I own these properties across the street. I’m just meeting with my tenants.”

  “Oh, we know who you are, Money.” He smirked at the others. “See, if we owned shit like that, we figured we’d have plenty carrying-around cash, know what I’m saying?”

  Fuck. This was going to turn into a mugging right in front of my tenants. Not what I needed.

  A voice boomed from the front of the hurricane fence. “Yo, what’s up?”

  The thugs turned to find Tyrel and Jamal trotting up to my car. The
y gathered back into a line as the Dumonts eased up next to me.

  “Problem here, Mister Lake?” Tyrel declared.

  “No. Just chatting with your neighbors, T.”

  The second thug clicked his teeth and postured. “Best step away.”

  Jamal lifted his t-shirt to reveal a handgun tucked into his shorts.

  The thugs backed away several steps.

  I took advantage of the pause to jump into the Audi, but not before mouthing a “thank you” to Tyrel and Jamal. I watched as the clutch of thugs moved back across the street in my rearview mirror.

  On the way around the block to my house, I wondered if McHenry even knew who all of the property owners were. Perhaps one of his employees had a list of names. It was possible he had no idea I was in his way.

  And oh sweet Jesus, was I about to be a pain in his ass!

  hes and I played a fun game of “pretend we totally don’t have a date on Saturday night” each morning at the café. The game usually involved her bringing out my order with a bouncier smirk than normal, and me basically being awkward yet charming. I was a natural at that. Things felt right with Ches all week, which actually had me worried. I wasn’t used to feeling normal, and this new emotion was as alien as it was opiate.

  But before I could enjoy my weekend, I had to survive Julian’s make-up meeting with the election staff. He held the meeting at Gordon’s, as usual. The restaurant basically kept the back room open for Julian unless they had a bar mitzvah or a graduation. That steak restaurant, two blocks from the Inner Harbor, had become the unofficial campaign headquarters for Mayor Sullivan.

  That week Sooner began his media blitz, painting the television with his “The Sooner The Better” ads attacking Sullivan’s record as a liberal. Though in reality the two candidates stood on the same platform: clean up Baltimore. The fundamental difference came in the execution. Sullivan wanted to raise taxes on corporations to better fund the police and public services. Sooner wanted to relax the taxes on business and remove other obstacles to business growth in order to court major corporations to relocate headquarters to Baltimore. The money would mean jobs, which meant more income revenue, property sales, and a whole new demographic. Of course the obstacles to business growth were protecting both the poor residents of Baltimore and the health of the Chesapeake Bay, but that didn’t seem to matter to Sooner or McHenry.