by D. R. Perry
“More shitballs, boss?”
“No, just one big dumbass.” I remember that sweet scent from my days of human living, so I tap my phone to wake it up. “Siri, call Esther.”
It rings once. “I’m elbow-deep in shit, so this better be good. What the fuck do you want?”
“Esther, that’s not blood on the bill you’re trying to track Leora with.”
“So what the hell is it then?”
“Raspberry something.”
“Can you be any more fucking specific?”
“No.”
“So why the fuck did you call instead of coming down here, dickface?”
“Hey, I know my Roman nose is big and all, Esther, but it definitely doesn’t look like a dick, okay?”
“Shut the fuck up and get your goddamn asses the hell down here before I drag you both through the hall by your ballsacks.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Scott wastes no time heading for the door.
It takes me a few seconds longer because I take my pad and pencil and bring the keys to lock up.
Chapter Three
I head down the echoing stairwell, trying to resist the urge to take two steps at a time. Esther sounded scared, and she's a tough bird, not the type to get the vapors over nothing. If she's worried, then there's got to be a good reason. Or a bad one, depending on how you want to look at that.
Scott follows with less urgency. Either he's not afraid of anything Esther might find threatening, or he's conserving energy. Probably the latter since I haven't seen the teen wolf eat anything in over eight hours. That's a long time for a normal kid his age to go without food, let alone one with a werewolf metabolism who wolfed out in a tunnel less than an hour ago.
On the second floor landing, there's a scene. Don't worry, it's got nothing to do with my alchemist partner's lab space. Well, almost nothing. It's only happening right outside her door.
"If I told you once, I told you a million times." The guy with the bushy beard pushes the fellow he's talking to. Well, pushes him away, like he doesn’t want a hug right now, thank you very much. The guitar srapped to his back tells me he must be in one of the bands that practice here.
"Um, whazzat again?" Said fellow's words are slurred like he's drunk, except I know he isn't because I don't smell a drop of alcohol on him or in his bloodstream. Instead, he’s got a watery odor, like he spent the entire day next to a fishing pier. His hair looks all slicked back with some sort of gel, too. Or wet, maybe.
"Stop getting drunk and staggering around my building. I can’t deal with your drama anymore, which is why we broke up in the first place. You look like something the cat dragged in. Smell like it, too. Get out of here."
Normally, I don't get involved in messes like this one, but this guy’s personal misfortune is directly in my path. Also, if they start trading punches, they might bust Esther's door down, and that'll make her blow a gasket for sure. The guy’s mumbled apology is almost unintelligible even to my ears. I manage to decipher it all the same.
And that's all thanks to that spiffy enhanced vampire hearing that comes with the bloodthirst. The bearded dude gets in the not-drunk guy's face again, grabbing him by the collar of his faded black tee shirt. The poor sap cowers, trembling so hard that his gel-soaked hair is shaking.
“’M just here to see Esther, not you.”
"Look, he said he's sorry, leave him be." I hold my hands out in what I hope is a gesture showcasing my intention of peaceful intervention.
"Yeah, sure, fine, whatever." Beard man drops his not-drunk ex-boyfriend. He turns his back and delivers his parting shot as he opens the door across the hall, pausing before slamming it. "Just get outta my sight, Frankie."
"Hey." Frankie looks up at me from his spot on the floor. "Thanks, mishter. You're nice for a vam—"
"Shhh!"
“Izza secret, amirite?” He blinks, shakes his head like he’s trying to clear it and stop talking like an internet meme. Maybe it even works. “Sorry.”
"You'd better be." Scott's eyes are an alarming shade of yellow. Something about Frankie has him on a sharper edge than my dad's straight razor.
"Look, pal." I hunker down next to him. "It’s late, and you’re having a bad night. Why don't you call a Lyft and go home?"
He garbles more words about wanting to see Esther. But that can't be right, can it? I fall back on what I always try to do in this type of situation.
"Look, maybe you're in the wrong place. Maybe you should just go home and sleep the, um, whatever it is off."
"Magic, Tino." Scott snarls. "From a creature, too. The worst kind of mojo I’ve ever smelled in my life. He totally reeks of it."
"Oh." maybe I'm the mistaken one, and he really is here to see Esther. Alchemists might know how to take the bad out of mojo. Or maybe not. I know next to nothing about what the three kinds of magicians can do, which is why I work with Miss Pottymouth Rhode Island in the first place. “I’ll see what I can do.”
I loop one arm under Frankie's shoulders, across his back, then try to help him stand up with me. It's not going so well. The guy is floppier than overcooked pasta and almost as slippery.
Frankie's also more cumbersome than the average guy. For whatever reason, he's throwing my balance off like nobody's business. Maybe it's the mojo Scott mentioned. One moment he's top-heavy, and the other his torso feels light as a feather. His face is pressed against my chest while I try to hoist him up by the back belt loop on his distressed black jeans. It's not a pretty sight. So, of course, that's when we suddenly gain another spectator.
"Get your fangs off my fucking uncle, Crispo."
"Um, Esther. Hi!" I try waving, but almost topple over with Frankie under me. Not a good look.
"This dude's your uncle?" Scott's upper lip curls like a surfer's ideal wave. I can’t blame him for the doubt. Frankie looks younger than his niece. But I can smell the similarities in their blood. Complicated as it looks and sounds, my nose doesn't lie. They're definitely related.
"Just get him the hell inside already until we figure out what to do with him, okay?"
"I'd do that, but—" I try to shrug and fail miserably. “A little help here would be nice.”
Esther rolls her eyes and ducks back inside her studio for a moment. She comes back out with a shaker like one you might see in my mom’s kitchen with Parmesan cheese inside, except this one is full of sparkly yellow dust instead. It's got to be magic. A moment later, Esther confirms my hunch.
She turns it upside-down over Frankie's head and shakes seven times. I figure it's some kind of Alchemy she's cooked up in there. Turns out I'm right. It's the levitating kind of magic. Handy thing to have in a sprinkle jar. Frankie lifts far enough off the floor so only his toes touch it. After that, it's an easy thing to guide him through the door like a partially deflated helium balloon.
After we're inside, Esther closes the door and positions Frankie over a bean bag chair in the corner. She flicks him on the cheek with one finger three times, then presses down on the top of his head. The floating effect wears off immediately, dropping him on his rump into the middle of the bean bag. Frankie's head lolls back, and his eyes close. But I wait until I hear a faint snore before talking.
"So, he looks a little young to be your uncle."
"It's complicated."
"By that, she means some magician family trees are more like wreaths." Scott’s studying his fingernails.
"Fuck you, distemper poster-child." I don’t blame Esther one bit for the insult.
"Well, it's what everybody I know says. And I said some, not all."
"Look, I asked you guys to come down here to talk about the raspberry tracking thing, not the uncle fucker."
"Okay." I'm cool with leaving Frankie in his niece’s care. "So lay it on us. Everybody knows it's raspberry jam now."
"Good. But what you couldn't know is where those raspberries are from."
I blink because it's hard to believe Esther Solomon actually said a sentence without any words
that would give a censor a coronary. She takes that as a sign to continue, which is good because I'm totally speechless.
"This jam was made of raspberries from the brambles on Baba Yaga's house. Same old lady in all those Russian folk tales."
"So you're telling me that Leora's dear old Baba is some kind of legendary magical paragon?"
"I can’t fucking say. But whatever asshole gave the kid that stack of cash is in good with the old bag. She doesn't give that damn jam to just anybody. Or the witch actually handled the money herself."
"Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Baba Yaga unable to leave her house?" Scott scratches his head. “The stories I heard said that's the reason it’s on chicken feet.”
"I've got no clue." Hooking a thumb at my chest, I continue. "Italian, remember? Not a drop of Slavic anything in these veins. And Ma kept the scary stuff out of my bedtime stories."
"Go read a fucking book or surf the web and leave me the hell alone. I don’t have time to give your lazy ass a mythology lesson here."
"Well, can you track Baba Yaga’s little buddy or not?"
"Yeah, but like I said, I need some fucking alone-time to do it, without you assholes hanging over my head like Damocles with his overcompensating sword of fucking dick substitution." Esther means that affectionately. I think. But there’s one problem I can see with her logic in telling us to get lost.
"You're not alone with him around." I point at Frankie.
"You're right." She hands me the yellow sparkle dust shaker. "I can’t risk having him in here with the shit pile he's stepped in. He might fuck up all the energy I'm using. Take him off my hands, and I'll have some kind of fucking tracker for you by sunset tomorrow."
Esther's cussing again, but not her usual blue streak. I sprinkle the levitation dust over Frankie's head seven times like she did before. Scott doesn't complain or ask any questions as he drives us back to my apartment in Rolfe Square.
All the same, I can tell my teenage werewolf sidekick is angrier than a nest of hornets because he doesn't help me get Frankie out of the car or up to my apartment. He burns rubber peeling out and drives off instead of hanging around like his usual tag-along self. Probably he’ll wash down the inside of the truck he borrows from his dad. I guess bad mojo is extraordinarily funky to a werewolf’s nose, even if I can’t really smell it. Frankie might just smell as bad to them as they do to me.
So that leaves me alone with the unluckiest man alive. Maybe. I mean, if you've read as many of the Dresden Files books as I have, you might beg to differ on the question of who’s the guy with the worst fortune.
Helping a partially levitated and functionally drunk man up three flights of stairs is harder than it sounds. Okay, maybe it's exactly as hard as it sounds if you know anything about floating objects and wrangling almost unconscious people.
Frankie bumps into the banister, the wall, the light fixtures, the ceiling, and the door to one of the second-floor apartments. I freeze, afraid the occupant will wake up and be angry about a seemingly drunk man knocking on his door at zero dark thirty in the morning. I pick up the pace. If we're both gone before that happens, he won't have anyone to complain to.
I maneuver Esther's wayward uncle to my apartment door, but it's much trickier getting him inside. Well, it's unlocking and opening the door without him putting his eye out by floating into the wall sconce or all the way up to the vaulted ceiling that's really the problem. The last thing I want to do is use the powder on myself. As I fumble with my keys one-handed, an unexpected solution to all my navigation problems presents itself.
My door opens.
I don't freak out because coming home to an uninvited guest in the apartment I call The Belfry isn't unusual. At least not for me. There's only one person it could possibly be at this hour, anyway.
"Hullo, Tino."
"A little help would be nice, Stephanie."
"Hmm? No, thank you." She steps aside. Again, I'm not surprised.
Stephanie is the opposite of helpful as a general matter of course when it comes to anything physical. Has been for the entire two months I've known her. She's single-handedly responsible for most of my own personal issues, beginning with the fact that I'm a vampire. As the one who turned me, she has the right to enter my house without an invitation. Technically she owns everything in it, including me. Yes, this is true even though a couple of weeks ago, I got my status as a full member of vampire society in a bizarre Trial ceremony thing I don’t have time to explain right now.
Did I just say she wasn’t helpful at all? I’m wrong. She’s got a pot of blood on, and I’m thirsting like woah. Fortunately for me, Frankie smells about as appetizing as a piece of paper, which is to say, not one bit. He doesn’t have a foul odor, but what I can smell of the blood pumping through his veins reminds me of reptiles or maybe even fish. Vampires get the most out of blood from mammals. And maybe marsupials, too. I have no way of knowing, but if I ever make friends with an Aussie vamp and hear first-hand stories about being able to live off drop bears and kangaroos, I’ll be sure to let you know first thing.
Anyway, while thinking about vampires in the land down under, I managed to wrangle my hinky house guest into the cozy chair reserved for my incurable reading habit. Which Stephanie happens to share. This gives me a small dollop of satisfaction because I can tell Stephanie was sitting in it just before she opened the door. As I repeat the gestures Esther used to make Frankie stop floating, I notice the book sitting on the side table beside the lamp. She’s got it marked about halfway through.
It’s Shadow Over Innsmouth by H.P. Lovecraft.
The idea of that one creeps me out so much I’ve never actually read it. Why she’s got it out is a mystery I won’t bother trying to solve. Everything my sire does is cryptic, which makes sense on account of us being born in different millennia. I head straight to the kitchen for some blood from the coffee maker, past where Steph sits at the dinky breakfast table that still takes up too much room in here. Yeah, it’s a studio apartment. Luckily, my bed’s in the closet with a light-blocking curtain where the double folding doors used to be, so at least I get some privacy and extra safety from the sun.
As I pour warmed blood into my second favorite mug (she’s drinking out of my favorite one, of course), I sigh and shake my head. Last month, the book Steph had me wrapped up in like melon slices in prosciutto was The Scarlet Pimpernel. I ended up confronting and stopping a masked assassin. If she’s currently recommending horror by Lovecraft, I don’t want to ask what she thinks might be in store.
Still, there’s nothing better to do, so why not have a chat about a classic of the horror genre?
But she doesn’t give me the chance.
Chapter Four
“Why are you storing that in here?” Stephanie’s eyebrow isn’t in any danger of touching the ceiling, but that’s got more to do with her being five-foot-nothing than how far it’s migrated up her forehead.
“Um, what?” I can’t even imagine what she’s talking about. The Belfry isn’t a storage unit, and I didn’t bring anything in with me.
“That.” She points at Frankie. I realize she's engaging in dehumanizing speech and calling him a thing. Uncool.
“Oh, he’s Esther’s uncle.” I shrug. “You know, my magician friend with the cussing and the Alchemy?”
“Is that all she told you?” Stephanie makes a clucking sound. "Oh, Tino. You're so naive."
“Yeah, well, she’s got no reason to lie.” I’m not in the mood to hear one of my friends trash another, especially when they haven’t even met.
Stephanie turns her head, looking at the wall for half a moment. She doesn’t do anything so juvenile as rolling her eyes or as crass as snorting. She’s been classy with a capital C the entire time I’ve known her. Well, except for the part where she referred to a down-on-his-luck human being as a thing just now. But that should only serve to make me pay attention. Any time my sire does something outside the realm of normal for her, it’s been followed by some s
erious shit going down.
“Okay, so Esther’s exactly as trustworthy to me as I am to her.” I lean back and take a long gulp from the blood in my cup. “Which is like, almost microscopic.”
“Microscopically.” There’s good old normal Stephanie again. Correcting my grammar. “And that’s why you ought to be extremely careful in your dealings with her.” She wrinkles her nose. “I’ll bet young Master Fitzpatrick has as much apprehension about that thing as I do.”
“You know, he’s got a name.” I emphasize the pronoun. It’s not right to talk about a human being like they aren't one.
“That’s all part of its appearance.” Stephanie’s giving me the fishiest eye that ever resembled a fish.
“Look, Frankie was staggering around the studio building like a drunk, trying to ask his niece for help. According to Scott, it's not alcohol, it's magic. So somebody hurt the guy. And Esther's doing Alchemy for a case we’re on so I’m watching him until she’s done. That’s all.”
“Hmm. I suppose you are a product of your time and generation.” Stephanie turns her head and looks at me out of the corner of one eye. At least the gaze doesn’t come down her nose. “My comments stand, regardless of what you might think about their delivery.”
“Do they have anything to do with your reading material?” I glance at Shadows Over Innsmouth and then back at her face again.
“Astute, Valentino.” She grins.
“So, what are we looking at here?” I set my cup on the table, figuring she can’t be giving me a hint that’s literally about fish people. But I’ve heard the book has more subtle themes. “Cults of personality? Mass hysteria?”
“What happened last time I recommended a good book to you?”
“Um, I had to read it? And take notes.” I lean back in my chair. “It helped me figure out what to do in the end.”