by Bill Fawcett
“If you don’t believe in the Hyatt ghost, why do you care?” The guy with the glasses asked, honestly curious.
“Because we need to get this over with before our roommate’s mom wakes up and ruins our weekend. Unless, of course, my showing up like this screwed up the ceremony?” Cam asked hopefully.
“No,” Laurel said. “In fact, we need a virgin to complete the spell to lay Old Tom to rest.”
Cam sputtered, “You’re kidding!”
Nobody else was laughing. She couldn’t believe it. Chubby was what—thirteen? Not to mention his BO qualified as a weapon of mass destruction. When and how did he lose his cherry? The sox rot alone was enough to kill any girl who got close. Glasses Guy didn’t look much older. He might be okay when he hit high school, but right now he looked like a bug. Besides, he was blushing. His dusky olive cheeks had darkened to brown as soon as she started to laugh. Then there was Isobel, who had turned bright pink from the top of her forehead all the way down to her boobs. Cam was surprised all the heat didn’t blister Dean’s hands.
“Trust me, you’re not going to have any problem,” Cam said wryly. “Just go back to what you were doing, and pretend I’m not here.”
“Don’t you want to join the circle?” Laurel asked. “It might be safer.”
“Circle jerks really aren’t my thing.”
Now if this ritual really does involve virgin sacrifice ... Cam slipped her sword a few inches out of its scabbard. That got their attention. “Besides, cold iron and magic don’t mix.”
Laurel didn’t disagree. Apparently, the geometry in this part of the garage wasn’t lost on her either. She lined up the members of the group with the points of the pentagram, positioning Isobel between BO boy and the guy with glasses. (Surprise, surprise.) But if Laurel’s plan was to use the circle to split Isobel and Dean, she outsmarted herself. Isobel and her stud muffin stared soulfully at each other across the circle and made mushy noises about laying a troubled soul to rest.
Cam couldn’t wait to tell Megs. The two of them would never let Isobel live this down.
Laurel pulled a stick of pink chalk from the pocket of her baggy linen shorts. She was really going all the way with this nonsense. And it was nonsense. If anybody died under mysterious circumstances when they were building the Hyatt, if there had ever been any hint of a genuine urban legend connected to the hotel—much less a slave market—Megs would’ve known. The girl was a ghost magnet. If there were ghosts anywhere around, she wouldn’t just find them, they’d find her. So she didn’t stay anyplace without Googling it to hell and gone to make sure it was clean of restless spirits.
Which didn’t mean it was safe. Waves of energy snapped over Laurel’s skin. It reminded Cam of Megs’ aura in the lobby, only worse. Megs’ aura didn’t seem to react to the magic lines threading through the atrium. Laurel’s aura grew more opaque as she drew her magic circle between the pillars.
Cam didn’t believe in magic ceremonies. Any idiot could draw a circle with a five-pointed star inside and add the signs of the zodiac around the rim. Just because it looked mystical to the four nitwits inside didn’t mean the symbols had power. It meant the dodos were dumb. More disturbing were the rampant hormones bubbling inside the pentagram. Two girls after the same dumb guy—with an audience keeping score. Cheerleaders killed for less.
Cam retreated a few feet up the ramp to an area where there weren’t so many magic lines to contend with. She drew her sword and laid the sheath beside her feet. Gritting her teeth against the sound and the certain knowledge she was damaging the blade, she used the point to scratch a circle in the cement around her.
Who was overreacting now? She could’ve kicked herself for all the times she accused Megs of being superstitious. Megs totally believed. Cam pretended to believe because she wanted to, but she always thought she knew better. Now she didn’t know what was real or whether it could hurt her. Her muscles twitched with fear. She held her sword in both hands, and it was all she could do to keep the blade from shaking. Buffy would’ve been so ashamed.
The magic lines seemed to glow brighter as Laurel closed her circle. A faint crackle from the fluorescents told a different story.
“Guys, this is turning into a bad idea,” Cam said. “The lights are getting dim.”
“It’s just the storm,” BO Boy said.
“That’s right,” she agreed, “it’s just a big, fat, bad-ass thunderstorm that could turn into a tornado. Do you really want to be stuck down here if that happens?”
“If that happens, the parking garage is the safest place to be,” Glasses Guy said.
“And if the power goes down and the lights go out?”
“If it frightens you so much, leave.” Laurel lifted her chin and her arm at the same time. “We’ve got important work to do.”
“I’m not going without Isobel.”
“She’ll be fine,” Dean said. “I’Il take care of her.”
“If there aren’t any more objections—” Laurel’s expression dared Cam to interrupt, “—let’s begin. Everybody face the star in the center of the circle. When I say go, we start walkin’ widdershins, sayin’ all together, ‘I believe in Thomas Brown.’ ”
“Uh,” Dean and BO Boy said together.
“Anti-clockwise,” Laurel explained. They still didn’t get it. “To your left, you ... boys!”
Cam thought she heard Isobel choke back a laugh. But her sister’s face was the picture of innocence by the time Laurel flashed another furious glance in her direction.
“Is everybody ready now?” Laurel drawled. “All right. We need to go nine times around the circle to lay Old Tom’s soul to rest. All together now. Nine. Eight. Seven ...”
The pillars and flickering shadows on the walls seemed to hold their breath. The cords wrapped around the hilt of her katana dug into Cam’s palms. Her fingers throbbed, the echo of thunder in her pulse.
“ ... One. Now. I believe in Thomas Brown.”
Everybody chimed in on a different syllable. The next chorus was less ragged. “I believe in Thomas Brown.”
The auras of the people in the group grew more solid as they shuffled through the glowing star in the center of the pentagram. Cam no longer had to strain to see the filmy full-body energy bubbles. The different emotions coursing through Isobel and Dean, BO Boy, Glasses Guy and Laurel took on color and shape. They became so tangible, Cam could almost smell them. Thrilling fear, horniness, hope, cunning, sex, and fury.
“I believe in Thomas Brown!” they shouted together.
Laurel’s energy was raging red and angry purple. It seemed to claw the light. With each circuit, it grew stronger, striking static through the lights. Tiny lightning bolts mimicked the massive thunderbolts searing the air outside.
Cam became aware of the weight of the building overhead. The fluorescent lights rattled in their sockets.
“I believe in Thomas Brown! I believe in Thomas Brown!”
Laurel’s eyes slitted. She grimaced. Her chest heaved like she was running some kind of race. The rage enveloping her snagged the extended energies of the others. Its blackness stained everything it touched. It swelled and rose like smoke, coiling around the Hyatt’s magical safety net.
“... Thomas Brown!” they screamed.
The lights blacked out.
Everybody started screaming for real.
Thanks to her right eye, Cam could still see. Magical geometry strobed through the darkness, but the pattern was warped. In less than a heartbeat, the snakelike ropes had pulled the lights out of alignment. Where the stained glass lines bowed, the pillars holding up the garage wobbled. Steel groaned and mortar ground together as the snakes tightened their hold. It sounded like the building was about to collapse. Fine white powder sifted from the ceiling.
She had to do something or they were all dead.
“Get down!” Cam shouted as s
he sprang forward. “All of you. Now!”
She slashed her sword at the nearest snake and cut it in two, then went after another. Nobody moved. They froze and screamed like a bunch of idiots. She had to kick the legs out from under Dean to get to the next snake. “I said down!”
For years she’d dreamed of wielding a katana like Renji in Bleach or Sango in Inuyasha. This was nothing like she pictured it. She didn’t know how to use the damn sword. It was way too big for her. She practically fell over herself with every stroke, scraping her toes and the sides of her feet in her stupid flip-flops. The sword was heavy too. Her shoulders ached, not so much from swinging it, but from keeping herself from swinging too far. If she hurt somebody, nobody would believe she was trying to save them. If she didn’t keep going everybody would die. And if she accidentally cut one of the hotel’s magic lines ... ?
She wouldn’t let herself go there. Thank God she was fighting something that didn’t fight back. The snakes parted in a hiss of steam. She barely felt them against the blade. She felt everything else, though. She squeezed the katana’s sweat-slick hilt so tight, she thought her wrists would fall off.
The sense of a tremendous weight hanging over her head eased a little. But the strain of cutting the right thing and only the right thing got worse. Sweat popped out of her forehead and salted her upper lip. It rolled icy down her spine.
The emergency lights kicked in, almost blinding her. Through the pounding in her ears she heard Isobel whimper, “Cam?”
Glasses Guy took one look at her sword and dropped to the floor. BO Boy shrieked and did the same. Dean started to roll over. Cam jumped on him and cut another brackish line. The nearest pillar creaked back into place.
“What the hell are you doing?” Laurel yelled. Out of the corner of her eye, Cam saw her make a grab for her arm. Something streaked between them, and Cam heard a muffled thud.
“My sister said ‘Down!’ ” Isobel added as an afterthought, “Bitch.”
Smiling, Cam jerked her blade through another smoky worm. Another pillar groaned into place. “Just a couple more,” Cam panted.
“Do it,” Isobel said. “Nobody moves until you say so.”
Cam wanted to laugh at the certain command in her sister’s voice, but she didn’t have the breath. She sliced through the final knot of dark. All the fluorescents in the garage flashed to life, and for an awful instant she couldn’t see anything. She lowered her sword to the sounds of five people scuffling to their feet. By the time her eyes adjusted to the light, the guys were in full retreat.
Laurel would’ve probably tried to jump her again, but Isobel had her right arm twisted behind her back. Her sister wore a bloodthirsty smile. Laurel started to snarl something, then she froze, her eyes fixed on the katana.
A thousand smart remarks jockeyed for position in Cam’s brain, but she was suddenly too exhausted to say any of them. She’d saved her sister—her older sister—and the rest of them. That was all that mattered anyway.
Blearily looking around for her scabbard, she happened to glance at her katana. Some kind of black gunk dripped off the blade. Carefully holding it by the hilt, she covered her right eye to be sure. But no matter how she looked at it, the blade was coated in slime. The oily gunk rolled sluggishly down the chipped and pitted edge of her brand new katana before plopping, drop by drop, on the stained cement.
“Carmen Sofia,” her sister wheezed, “I think you’ve got some ’splainin’ to do.”
* * *
After everything that happened Saturday night, it wasn’t easy for Cam to sneak into the Dealers’ Room before it opened. But she managed. It was even harder to wait next to the Elphame booth clutching her katana, steeling herself for a fight ... or worse. Cutting those energy snakes—or whatever they were—in the parking garage didn’t make her a hero. It gave her a better reason to be scared.
The bells jingled. The woman in green breezed down the aisle, a cardboard cup of coffee in her hand. She set her cup on the counter and tipped her head at Cam, as if there was nothing at all strange about finding her there with a sword in her hand first thing on Sunday morning. Fluffing her skirts, the woman settled gracefully on the booth’s single high stool. In a lot of ways she looked the same as she did yesterday—tall and gray-haired, with eyes older than the hills. But the face she kept hidden was young and beautiful in the same strange way as the silver creatures in her jewelry case.
Cam set the little silver critter who’d led her to the parking garage on the countertop. “I think this belongs to you.”
The woman smiled and the bells sang louder. “Keep the tapir as a souvenir,” she said. “You earned it.”
“I’d rather keep my eye.”
“What good would your eye do me?”
“But the stories—” Cam clamped her teeth on her bottom lip before she said anything stupid.
“Do you think we’re frozen in time?” The woman lifted the lid on her cup and blew gently. Chunks of coffee-colored ice formed in the cup. Condensation dewed the cardboard. “Our technologies have advanced as much as yours. Those drops, for example. They’ll wear off by Monday morning, sooner if you rinse your eye with a saline solution.”
“Then why’d you do it?”
“It amused me.”
Cam suspected the reason was as simple as that, but it disappointed her just the same. “Then you really are as heartless as they say.”
The woman took a sip of ice coffee and considered for a moment.
“Not quite. Some things are worth saving. This—” she gestured to the bright magic and mundane bustle gathering in the Dealers’ Room “—is one of them.”
“Then you knew what was going to happen in the garage last night.”
“Not exactly. I had a sense of the way the wind was blowing, but I didn’t know whose house—whose hotel,” she amended, “it would blow down.”
“I still don’t get it,” Cam insisted. “Even if you only guessed something was up, why didn’t you take care of it yourself?” She pointed at the coffee cup. “You’re the one with the power. Why put it on me? People could’ve died!”
The woman laughed like a flock of birds taking flight. “Look around you, Carmen Sofia Raymes. Look at my silver, my bells, my cases of wood, brass and glass. Now look at what you hold in your hand.
“Sweet child of man, I needed someone to wield the iron.”
AS TO why they stole the fire extinguisher, I didn’t know and I didn’t care.
I had taken the redeye flight into Atlanta, and then discovered that my hotel didn’t run a shuttle service to the airport. At first, the only choice that presented itself was the long line of car rental counters. Spotting the MARTA (Metro Atlanta Rail Transportation Agency) train sign presented a very workable alternative.
Hey, I’ve always had a weakness for trains.
Earlier today, I had returned from picking up lunch at the Greek place across the street from my office to find that I’d had a visitor. The interesting thing was the door was still locked tight.
One of my exes keeps telling me I should put in an alarm system, but when you’re in a building that would have been old in the Depression, it seems a waste of money. Besides, I didn’t think that the wiring could handle the additional load.
Even though I was on the 12th floor, I checked the window anyway. It was locked tight, just like the door. Since there wasn’t a fire escape, someone would have had to know a few magic tricks to get inside. Stage magic has always been a hobby of mine, bringing in a few dollars when the P.I. business was slow, and getting in through the window would be beyond me. Whoever my visitor had been, they had left a manila envelope sitting in my desk chair. I opened it to find several things of interest: a round-trip airline ticket, a hotel room confirmation number and a membership in something called DragonCon.
“What in the hell is DragonCon?” I asked the empty office.
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br /> I’ve been a private investigator for eight years, so finding answers is my bread and butter. In this case it was easy; I just Googled the term and had the information in a matter of a few key strokes.
DragonCon turned out to be a large-scale sci-fi convention, with a lot of actors, musicians, writers, artists, and that sort of thing. It had been going on for twenty years and got a shitload of people who were apparently willing to come from far and wide to hang out with their fellow sci-fi geeks.
I had actually been thinking about taking a few days off to go fishing. It looked like the trout would have to wait, though, since included with the other paperwork were twenty pictures of Benjamin Franklin, all of them with non-sequential serial numbers.
This whole thing had piqued my curiosity. I’ve had more than one person tell me that my curiosity would be the death of me; one day they may be right.
I’d been on the train for a half hour, and had had the car to myself for the last few minutes. That was when the gang-bangers showed up, none of them any older than sixteen; dressed in baggy pants, do-rags and vinyl vests.
They stood in the door of the car, surveying the whole scene, before dropping onto one of the plastic bench seats that ran along one side. Three of them were pointing out the window and speaking in low voices; the fourth was lost in whatever was on his iPod.
We’d passed two more stops when iPod boy suddenly stood up and marched across the car. I shifted a bit, just in case there was trouble in the offing. He didn’t make a move toward me. Instead, he went to the back of the car and began feeling around under one of the plastic benches. It took a moment for him to find and open a compartment that had been built into the thing. He pulled out a fire extinguisher that had been stored there. With a satisfied look on his face, iPod boy carried it back to where his friends were sitting and slid the thing under their bench without a word being said.
Two stops later, the gang-bangers were up and heading for the door before the train had come to a complete halt, iPod grabbing the extinguisher and hefting it onto his shoulder.