by Chris Lowry
"I'm not that strong," I waved at my boots, which were currently aimed at the ceiling. "Current situation as a prime example."
"It's not just your strength," she twirled her finger and spun me right side up. "It's your will. There are few with more willpower than you."
I adjusted my coat and smoothed back my hair after she settled me on the ground. My little temper tantrum had subsided and I felt a twinge of guilt for trying to force her to talk. Just a little twinge though.
"I'm sorry."
"I know. I could read it up here," she tapped her temple. "I would tell you what you want to know if I thought it would help. But there is the type of knowledge that destroys. This is that."
I sighed.
"Is she alive?"
"Would that make you feel better about the task before you?"
"Hell yeah," I said.
She sniffled and a tiny tear trickled from the corner of her eye.
"It would save you so much pain if you could just accept that she was dead."
The way she said it.
"She's not?"
The gnome shook her head.
"The woman who was your wife still lives."
"There's nothing cryptic about that statement at all," I said.
"I can say no more. You wished to know if she was alive. She is. But she is not who she was."
I took a deep breath and let a long sigh leak out of my nose.
"It's future stuff," she told me. "Right now, there's a witch to find in NOLA."
I took another breath, and this time held it.
She was right. I asked to know, and she told me.
I wanted more, but this would have to be enough for now.
I turned some bad mojo loose on the world and the Judge tasked me with cleaning it up.
There was also a vampire convention going on, and I needed to check in on that power struggle too.
And think about everything I had learned in our visit to the past, because I felt like there were some answers in there too.
Oh yeah, and help Elvis keep his memory, and move on to a better place.
Damn, my list was getting longer.
"It will get longer still," she said reading my head.
I grinned.
"I didn't stand a chance at getting the draw on you, did I?"
She smiled.
"You surprised me in the park. It is possible. Not likely, but always possible."
I nodded.
I'd have to be content with that.
Right now, there was witch hunting to be done.
Right after happy hour.
“Seven billion humans,” she said and sipped her drink.
There was an empty glass waiting for the waitress to pick it up and the gnome was halfway through the second.
I didn't feel so bad about my craft beer.
“They're killing us, you know. Killing magic.”
I wanted to argue, wanted to say I was human and that it wasn't true.
Except it was. We were.
“Each of those billions have an effect on their environment,” the gnome slurred.
“They touch on the, what do you call it? Quantum level. The atoms and things that make up this world and others.”
That made sense to me. Seven billion actions by people every second of every day was bound to create ripples, changes.
“We argued for killing you off,” she confided in me. “All of you. Back before you spread across the land like a plague.”
“In some places, we succeeded,” she ticked them off on her fingers. "Cro-magnum, the pygmy races, Bigfoot, the missing link. Each branch of the evolutionary tree, save one. You. Homo-Sapiens. Pets for the vampires.”
“I didn't know that,” I told her.
“Not many do. Something about your blood, the way it tastes.”
She finished her drink, and made a circle finger motion that could have been interpreted as one more round or bring the check.
I put a hand on my wallet to pick up the tab, but the waitress showed up with a refill for her and a fresh bottle for me.
I wasn't going to complain.
“The vamps liked you around for fodder. But the fodder got loose cause some gods liked playing with you and the next thing you know, here we are. Seven billion reasons the planet is dying, magic is dying.”
She pulled on the straw to wash away the thought and stared at me with bleary eyes.
“Do you know how hard it is to see the future in the first place,” she asked.
I shook my head.
“Must be tough,” I sympathized.
“Let me tell you how tough,” she put a friendly hand on my forearm and leaned in to tell me her secrets.
“See the river? See how muddy it is?”
I nodded.
“Could you find a school of fish in that water? Could you pick out one particular fish out of all the ones living and moving in that river?”
I shook my head no. It did sound too tough.
“It's like that,” she winked. Trying to determine if the ripples and Eddie's are the one fish you want to find and follow.”
She leaned back then for another sip.
“Now multiply it by years, by millions of people who've traipsed across the paths you must go, and where you have been. It is almost impossible.”
Her eyes grew serious and sober.
“But for magic. That's what makes it work for my kind. Faith that it will be. No try. Just do.”
She sounded a lot like a little green fellow I liked from the movies, and a mantra for my own line of tough work.
She smirked.
“Who do you think they based it on? One of us.”
So, she was a mind reader too.
“Not exactly,” she corrected me out loud. “You wear your thoughts on your face. That is perhaps why the Judge values you so much.”
I didn't think so.
I mean, I was good at what I did, but that was farm boy training that stuck with me for ninety years. There is a job to be done. Just saddle up and do it.
“I don't think he likes me one way or the other,” I told her.
The Gnome’s serious eyes grew sad and she blinked back tears as she stared at me.
“Poor fish,” she reached out and held my forearm again. “If you only knew what lies ahead.”
I didn't get the chance to ask.
One of those ripples in the current of life, or maybe it was an eddy that blocked her view stopped her from talking. She gaped at the figure who stepped through the door. I used the mirror behind her to watch and I gaped too.
No matter what the gnome planned to tell me, neither one of us expected this.
Gloria of the Memphis witches pulled a scarf off her head and made a beeline for our seats.
CHAPTER THIRTY
“Fancy a boy like you in a place like this,” she pulled out a chair and sat across from us at the table.
“Do you know how hard you are to find?”
I almost spelled her.
Marshals train. A lot. The Judge makes sure we're the fastest guys and gals in the room no matter who we come up against.
To do that, we forgo wands and pointing and any of the other signals that would tell our opponent to get ready, bad stuff is coming down the pipe.
No, the Judge trains us to use our mind and only our mind to cast.
It ain't easy.
And the woman across from me seemed to know that.
She motioned for the waitress by calling out across the bar, ensuring every head in the room turned to look at her.
Sure, I could have popped her head off, or popped her heart, or gave her a raging case of genital warts but the problem was people were watching.
About fifty of those seven billion souls the gnome had just been bitching about were in for some happy hour libation.
I didn't want to give them a story to tell and I saw a couple of phones out and up, ensuring any sort of action had the potential to end up being live streamed.<
br />
“Nice company you keep,” she slathered on a smile that looked sincere. “Am I interrupting a first date.”
“Sidhe,” the Gnome spat and did something with her fingers.
A protective spell popped up around her as Gloria the good witch made finger motions back, sending little sheets of sparks to bounce off the gnomes up stretched hand.
“There's no smoking in here,” the waitress sneered.
She must have mistaken the light show for lighters
“You can get cancer on the deck though.”
I snorted.
She must have cared more about her lungs than a tip, but I can't say I blamed her. I came of age when doctors were prescribing cigarettes as cures and taking massive payoffs from the tobacco industry to do it.
I guess they still did, only now it was with opium instead of leaves.
“What can I get you?” she asked Gloria.
“Out of here, “I advised.
“Dirty martini,” the Witch ignored me.
I decided to press for some info if she was planning to stay.
“Why did she call you Sidhe?”
Gloria laughed.
“Takes one to know one,” her voice tinkled.
“It is possessed,” the Gnome spat from behind her protective shield.
“Possessed?”
“She looks human,” I said confused.
“Oh Darling, that's the whole idea.”
I froze with my bottle halfway to my lips. My brain wouldn't work, I was vapor locked by one word she let slip from those luscious lips.
Darling.
“I'm so sorry,” the Gnome glanced at me. “I would have told you had I known.”
Only my wife called me darling. Just like that.
Same tone. Lilt to the voice, tilt to the head
I couldn't move.
Couldn't breathe.
“Son of a bitch,” Elvis said it for me.
The spell slipped, just a bit.
And I saw her.
The face was different, distorted by the possession that changed everything about her. Look, smell, touch, feel. Even her mind was different as I reached out and probed with magic. But the essence was there, a hint of her soul.
And it had changed.
I looked at the Gnome, at tears streaming down her wrinkled cheeks. She looked heartbroken, and then I realized it was pity.
At me.
“How?” I stuttered.
Gloria laughed again as the waitress set a dirty martini in front of her. She pulled out a man's wallet and passed the girl a crisp one hundred dollars bill.
“These don't stop until I say they do. And one more round before they're cut off.”
The girl smiled and scampered off after tucking the bill in her pocket.
“How?” Gloria took a drink and smacked her lips. She fished out an olive and popped it in her mouth. “Tell him.”
“A Sidhe only takes over by invitation,” the Gnome grimaced.
“It is a union that cannot be broken.”
I watched her fingers twitch as she tried to scry the next few moments, few hours. She was looking for my reaction, and the actions that would have strong repercussions.
“Why would I want to break it?” Gloria trilled. “Your wife gave up her body in exchange for power. Neither of us would wish it back.”
I took a breath to cast.
I was gonna destroy it and damn the consequences. I'd kill every last person in the bar if I had to.
The Gnome clutched my arm, sharp nails digging in and stopping me.
“The Judge looked for you,” I said.
Even to me it sounded desperate. It would have been better if I casted and damn the consequences.
“That old fool,” Gloria snorted. “He found me. Guess he didn't want you to know.”
The room started spinning and I could hear the blood pumping in my ears. It sounded like the shuffling of a bull about to charge.
“Here you go,” said the waitress depositing another beer in front of me and a glass in front of the gnome.
I reached out, lifted it to my lips and drained the bottle.
"What do you want?"
She smiled and I could see it in her features. The Sidhe had changed the shape of her face, but it was like looking at someone who got plastic surgery. There was a hint of her sister in there, and I was going to need to contact her.
I suspected she was a Valkyrie and wondered if that was why the Sidhe targeted her.
What would her sister do?
I set the beer down on the table, careful of my shaking hands. Spells whirled in my head, twirled around in a vortex of rage and pain, a hurricane of emotion that needed an outlet.
"I want you to go home," she said. "I'll even meet you there once this is all done."
"What is this?" I asked.
I couldn't let go of the beer bottle. The thick brown glass creaked and shifted under my palm. Knu put her hand on my forearm again, trying to center me, trying to keep me from reacting.
"This is a mess you created when you interfered," Gloria said.
Her auburn hair was so different from the blond I knew. Hey eyes slightly canted up in the corners. I could see the person who had been my wife, but I could also note the influence of the Sidhe possessing her.
"Stopping you," I muttered.
It came out a little pettier than I intended and she remarked upon it.
"Petty doesn't become you."
"If I was that dress I'd be coming on you too," I snapped.
The bottle shattered in my fist, sharp pain lancing through the skin of my palm as shards ripped it apart. The beer burned in the cuts and the waitress shouted from across the room.
"I'll bring you a rag to clean up!"
She didn't notice the blood.
The Sidhe did.
Gloria licked her lips.
"What a waste," she purred and reached out a finger to steal some of the crimson life on the table.
"Nein!" Knu crackled a force shield over the bloodstain on the table.
Protecting me from who knew what kinds of horror a magic creature beyond the veil could do with the blood. Keeping me safe from the woman I loved, the woman I missed for the past decade. The woman I would now have to mourn.
Gloria drew back her finger like touching an electric outlet and cursed in a language that hadn't been heard on earth in ten thousand years or longer.
Or it could have been Latin, I needed to brush up.
"Ix-nay on the touching my od-blay," I wiggled a finger in the air, making sure Gloria could see the tip of the long digit.
She might be natural magic contained in a human vessel, an immortal creature who maybe even created the quantum rules by which magic exists, but I was a damn Marshal.
And no matter what deal my wife made to let this thing use her body it wasn't going to get a piece of mine.
Not without a fight.
Gloria laughed.
"I have her memories of you in here," she sneered. "And I remember the way you fumbled in Memphis. You're a child."
Her eyes turned to Knu.
"Both of you, children. Your limited minds couldn't comprehend the depth of my abilities. That is why she surrendered to me. The power. The exchange was... glorious."
The waitress hustled over with a bar towel.
"You're bleeding," she gagged and feinted.
I spun out of my seat and caught her with my good hand before she cracked her head on the tile, but that gave Gloria a chance to hop away from the table. She backed toward the door.
"Go home Marshal. Your Judge has set you on an impossible task and you are in over your head. You're just going to get more people killed."
"Shoot her," Elvis shouted.
"I’m going to save her," I said to Gloria.
Gloria stopped and beamed in ecstasy.
"You don't know!" she crowed and did a tiny jig with her feet. "She can't be saved Marshal. Your wife gave up her very soul when she inv
ited me in. She is gone. Forever."
I shot a thought at her face then.
It couldn't be helped.
Gloria snapped up a hand and batted it away, laughing as she slipped through the door.
The manager arrived at the same time as Knu, taking over care for the fallen waitress who was moaning as she came around.
I stood up, dripped blood on the floor next to her and she passed out again. She was cared for, so I bolted toward the door and slammed through it with my shoulder.
Gloria was gone.
But the sound of her laughter lingered. I couldn't tell if it was just in my mind or on the wind.
CHAPTER THIRTY
“I need some time,” I yelled at Knu.
I didn’t care if she wanted to hang me up by my heels again, I was pissed.
“I didn’t know,” she pleaded. “That is something I would have shared.”
Maybe she would have.
Maybe not.
But I came to NOLA to do a job, and I was finding out a lot more than I wanted to know.
Like my wife was dead.
I opened my mouth to say something smart, something pithy, something with wit and bite, designed to cut her to the bone and leave her second guessing everything about her life.
It came out as a sob.
Then my eyes watered up and I ran.
It’s hard to run in hiking boots, but not impossible. I ran as fast as I could from the bar on the river.
I pounded on the pavement past the park. I crossed traffic, ignoring the honking horns and the swerving cars, the sound of tires screeching on the pavement.
I ran in front of a trolley to beat it, and felt the edge tug against my bomber jacket.
I stopped at a park in the center of town, a memorial to a jazz man and his trumpet and sat under a tree with my face in my hands.
The tears kept coming.
“Marshal?” Elvis said from beside me. “That was a wild run through town but it’s time to sober up.”
“Not now Elvis,” I had to clear my throat to speak.
“Now,” the ghost hissed.
I looked up just in time.
“Look who’s weeping in fear,” the giant Viking sent a kick at my head as he stomped up to the tree.
I ducked aside and he hit the trunk, shaking loose leaves.
“You have the worst timing,” I grunted and rolled away.