Last Best Day

by Jeff Somers

  EVERYTHING IS NORMAL speed again. My head hurts. It’s a steady throbbing ache.

  I look up and Volker is still speaking the spell. He’s close to the end, just tying up some loose threads. The old man is almost dead. Another thirty seconds and he would be, but Volker is just ten seconds from finishing up. I whisper the Words along with him, feeling them in my mouth.

  I look up. Volker. I wonder about him. And then I know.

  Leonard Volker. Not a nice man. He hasn’t left his broken-down uptown mansion in decades. His cats are familiars hosting demonic intelligences. They hunt for rats so he can avoid bleeding humans. Not because bleeding others is wrong, like Lem says. Because Volker had been banned from bleeding humans thirty years ago by other ustari. He cast pleasure spells on himself. Short cantrips that lanced right into his brain. He started bleeding people to death for them, casting them over and over. He made new, better versions, more powerful. He burned down half the Bronx feeding that hole. The ustari convened a council and slapped him down. For three decades he’s been in his mansion with the leaking roof and the piles of newspapers, training his cats to bring him plump, hairy rats to bleed so he could cast his pleasure mu.

  In three years the building is going to collapse on him. He’ll be trapped under rubble. He’ll die there, and the cats will just sit there and stare at him, the udug inside waiting patiently for his death to free them from their bonds.

  I close my eyes and frown. I don’t know how I know all that. And then I do. It’s the spell. Volker’s spell, already at work.

  Volker hits his cadence and turns to grin at me. “Thank you, Mr. Mageshkumar. I had almost forgotten the pleasure of bleeding a human being. This loophole was a welcome diversion.”

  Volker has kept half the fifty dollars, I know.

  The old man slumps sideways onto the floor, and I open my eyes again. I wonder about him, too.

  And then I know.

  His name is Julian Kempfer and he’d once been a singer with a band. He’d come to New York to play clubs and never made it, his venues getting smaller and smaller and his bandmates getting younger and younger until he finally gave up twenty-three years ago. He was fifty then and had little education, no savings, no work experience. He hustled, he had some friends in the music business, he survived. But it was a downward spiral until he was on the street, sick, weak, and selling the only thing he had left of any value: his blood.

  And now he’s dead.

  I shake my head. The aching is making my stomach turn.

  Volker glances at Kempfer and frowns. “What the hell?”

  The mansion. Volker inherited it from his gasam, who’d been the real hoarder. Most of the stuff wedged into the place dated back to those days. Volker has simply never done anything to clean it out. The place is soaked in old biludha. The house was built in the late nineteenth century and has housed ustari continuously. Before Volker’s gasam it belonged to Lilian Goethbe, enustari. She regularly lured children, vagrants, and police into the place. She trapped them in a specially designed room that had a ceiling that slowly lowered, crushing them and squeezing the blood out of them for her spells.

  The room is still there and will still work if fed with some gas—and if a few people spent a day cleaning all the trash out of it.

  I close my eyes again. I don’t want to know these things. I open my eyes and look at my shoes. I know, suddenly, the factory where they were made. The names of every person who has touched them, the cost and source of the materials, the date they will develop a hole in the bottom. I will lose one of them in six months and four days while running away from the police.

  “What did you do?” I ask, and the moment I say it, I know Volker doesn’t know. He’s confused. I know he’s misspoken four Words and transposed a phrase in his spell and accidentally made it something bigger, something worse.

  “What?” Volker says, nudging Kempfer with his boot. “What do you mean?”

  I turn and stagger toward the stairs. The layout of the house is in my head. The true names of the demons inhabiting the cats. Where Volker keeps his cash. Where he buries the rats.

  “Where you going, kid?”

  “Back. To where Lem got snatched.”

  3.

  I TRY WALKING WITH MY EYES CLOSED, but I keep bumping into things. And it makes my headache worse, so I start punching myself. Every time I hit myself in the head I feel a little bit better. So then I start walking with my eyes down, looking at the ground and keeping my eyes off the street signs. Every time I see a street sign I know something about it. Dates and names going back a long time. Accidents, murders. People getting run over. Speeches. It’s too much. The sidewalk doesn’t tell me anything.

  Outside Rue’s, I try to remember where, exactly, Lem and me had walked. And the moment I wonder, I know. I retrace our steps, and when I get to the spot where the car had pulled up to snatch Lem, I know it. I stop and close my eyes and think of the moment, and I know everything about it.

  I know that it was 2:38 in the morning. I know the car was a Rolls-Royce Phantom. I know that the woman who stepped out of it had an Indian accent. I know that Mycroft Pell was an enustari, an Archmage. I know that me and Lem had met him, once. Lem had pissed him off. And he was the type to hold a grudge.

  I know where Mycroft Pell lives. And I know I can’t get to him. Not on my own. So I wonder who can. And then I know. And I wonder where they are. And I know.

  IN THE LOBBY of the hotel there is a door. The door isn’t marked. The door isn’t locked. No one pays any attention to the door at all. This is on purpose. The door has a Ward on it. It’s a simple Ward that makes you look away from the door. You glance in its direction and your eyes skip over it and you never notice or think about it.

  I think about the Ward and I know everything about it. How it was made. The Words used. How much gas was required. And how to undo it, to get past it.

  Without meaning to I know everything about the hotel. It was built in 1913, and sixteen people have committed suicide in its rooms. It has six suites that aren’t known to the public, rented only to people who can afford them and who know the phone number to call. It has a secret restaurant that seats only two people at a time.

  I am being watched by security. Two men in green jackets and ties are watching me as they walk in my direction. As I notice them, I know their names. I know how long they’ve worked at the hotel. I know they’ve noticed me because of my ragged jacket and the duct tape on my shoes.

  I walk fast toward the door. It keeps trying to slide away from my eyes, but I know it’s there. Even when I forget it’s there because the Ward makes me, I remember, and my head throbs like someone is pushing a screwdriver into my ear. I open it and step through. I close it behind me as fast as I can and lean back against it. My heart is pounding. I’m afraid they’re coming in after me and I’ll be in trouble. I can’t get into trouble because Lem is waiting for me to help him.

  Every beat of my heart makes me wince. It’s pushing pain into my head, blowing it up like a balloon.

  They don’t come after me. When I closed the door, it must have disappeared for them. I push my hair out of my face and start walking down the short hallway. It ends in a small elevator lobby. Just one elevator. Just one button. So I press it.

  I know if I think about it, I’ll know everything there is to know about the elevator. Where it was made. Who inspected it. Where it goes. I think about nothing. I think about clouds. I think about hot dogs. Which is a mistake, because then I know everything there is to know about hot dogs and I want to throw up.

  Every time I wonder about something, a wave of dizzy faintness passes through me, and my head feels worse.

  I press the button. The elevator opens. I step inside. There are no buttons inside. After a moment the doors slide closed, and I am rising. Music is playing. The moment I notice it, I know it’s Mahler’s Second Symphony. Resurrecti
on. I’m nervous. I don’t like knowing things. Lem sometimes tells me things and tells me not to forget, and I am unhappy all day because I know I will forget.

  The elevator doors slide open. I step into a huge room.

  The restaurant’s unofficial name is Ezen Mah, but officially it has no name. Ezen mah means “great feast” in the secret language of magicians. The smell of food makes my mouth water. The same symphony is playing. The room is wide-open, with glass all around. The city glitters out there. It makes me feel like I might slip and fall and wind up outside, in the air.

  There’s just one table in the whole place. Two people, a man and a woman, are seated at it. A dozen waiters and other servants stand at the ready, crisp white napkins folded over their arms. They are all wearing tuxedos.

  A group of men and women stands against the opposite wall of the restaurant. They’re dressed okay, but not tuxedos. I look at them and I know they’re Bleeders. Most are big fat men and women in loose suits, but one is a short girl with dark skin. Sometimes mages will make someone be a Bleeder for a while before making them an apprentice. To make sure they were serious.

  The man at the table is Mr. Fallon; the woman I’ve never seen before. I can’t tell how old she is. Her face looks young but her hair is white against her dark skin. A feast is spread out on the table. I’m starving.

  “Mr. Mageshkumar?” Mr. Fallon turns around in his chair to look at me. “How in the world did you find your way here?”

  The woman holds up one hand. One of the Bleeders slashes herself on the arm.

  “No need, Beatrice,” Fallon says. “Mr. Mageshkumar is . . . unexpected. Surprising! But, I believe, harmless.”

  Beatrice nods. The gas stays in the air. Mr. Fallon stands up and walks over to me. I’m afraid. Mr. Fallon has never been mean to me. But he’s an Archmage. And Lem is scared of him. And Hiram is scared of him. So I am scared of him, too.

  When Mr. Fallon is standing in front of me in his nice suit, he leans up on his toes a little to peer into my face. “Well, Mr. Mageshkumar? We will explore how you were even aware of this place at a future moment. Since you have come here, you must have business. Come! What is it?”

  For a moment I can’t talk. My heart is pounding and my head is killing me. I can feel tears coming because Lem’s been missing for a long time. But I don’t want to blubber in front of Mr. Fallon. Because Mr. Fallon is mean.

  “Lem,” I manage to say. “He’s been kidnapped. By Mycroft Pell.”

  Mr. Fallon squints a little.

  He straightens up and laughs. “Mycroft Pell?” Behind him, Beatrice smiles. I don’t like her smile. It’s a mean smile. “My goodness, Mycroft holds a grudge! I would hate to see what he might do if Lemuel had done something beyond being slightly rude to him!” Fallon turns to look back at Beatrice. “All this man did to Mycroft was be insolent! Once!” Fallon laughs again and looks back at me. “So! Mr. Mageshkumar. Your friend ran afoul of enustari. I always assumed that not doing so was the first lesson for all aspiring mages. You have done something unlikely by finding me here. Why? What is your purpose?”

  Mr. Fallon’s smile feels angry. “I need help. I need to help Lem. I can’t go up against an Archmage alone.”

  Fallon nods. “Yes! That is true. You are operating at a high level today, Mr. Mageshkumar. Unfortunately, I will not help you.”

  I blink. I thought Mr. Fallon was Lem’s friend. He was always nice to him. “Why not?”

  As Fallon speaks, I know what he’s going to say. “Mr. Vonnegan severed his bond with Hiram Bosch. He is no longer urtuku with any mage of rank. I had rather expected he might seek me out and request that I bond him apprentice. Perhaps I was too subtle; the boy has talent, but he has not demonstrated much sense, yes? Without a gasam, Mr. Vonnegan enjoys no protection. If he had a master, that master could make a legitimate complaint, and they would be supported by others—we can’t have our apprentices snatched off the streets over personal grudges, after all. But as a—how would we say it?—a freelancer, Mr. Vonnegan enjoys no such protection, and no mage will interfere with another’s business. That would set the wrong precedent.”

  I stare at him and feel the tears again. Fallon makes a face I don’t understand.

  “I am sorry, Mr. Mageshkumar. It is time for you to go. Bear in mind we will be changing the Wards and other protections on this place, in case you decide to spread word of it.”

  He turns away, spreading his hands as he walks back to the table.

  “You could help me,” I say, trying not to blubber. “You’re enustari. They’re all afraid of you. I’ve seen it. You could help. You just won’t.”

  Mr. Fallon pauses and turns back around. He’s scary. He’s smiling slightly, but something in his eyes scares me. “Yes, Mr. Mageshkumar. That is a correct summation of the situation. Now leave, before I become—”

  “If you help me,” I say, suddenly knowing exactly what to do, “I can give you the Gul Sahar Siga.”

  Something changes in the room. I don’t know what it is. Mr. Fallon doesn’t move.

  Then, a moment later, he is right in front of me. I take a step back, startled, flinching, and now I am crying and I’m embarrassed. Lem always says, Don’t fucking blubber, Mags, it ruins the effect.

  “Beatrice,” Mr. Fallon says, though he is looking at me, his eyes moving over my face, too close. “I am afraid our interview is over. You must go.”

  The black woman sits up a little straighter. “I will not.”

  Mr. Fallon nods without taking his eyes from me. Without blinking. “You will. I will speak to you later.”

  For a moment Beatrice doesn’t move. Then she stands up and wordlessly walks past us. She glides like a dancer and she looks good in a pantsuit that looks expensive. As she moves past us, she puts on sunglasses. All the Bleeders turn and follow her, including the one still bleeding pretty bad from an arm, leaving a trail of blood on the floor. The youngest one, the girl with the tan skin, glances at me as she walks by. She doesn’t say anything.

  The sound of the door shutting is soft and distant.

  “How do you know these Words?” Fallon asks, and his voice is soft but terrifying. “Do you even know what they mean?”

  I don’t, but then I do. My headache gets so bad I think I’m going to throw up on Fallon’s shoes. I swallow it down.

  “The Rite of Amplification,” I say, the words just coming to me. “A spell to make other spells more powerful without using more blood.”

  Fallon nods, his eyes still moving over me in little increments. “Yes. Impossible, most ustari conclude. It violates the Rule of Volume, yes?” He squints, tilting his head up. “You are magicked, Mr. Mageshkumar, and it is killing you. Literally. Whatever butcher has cast this on you has made you the fuel source. Do you see? The initial bleed formed the spell and infused it within you. Every time you use its effects, it is drawing your blood directly.” He reaches out and takes my chin in his fingers, pushing my head up and turning it this way and that. “Was this on purpose?”

  I shake my head, thinking of Volker’s mistakes with his spell.

  Fallon keeps looking at me. “Mr. Mageshkumar, I am not a kind man. But I am a fair one. This spell, it grants you knowledge. The cost to you in terms of blood—in terms of life—varies depending on the complexity of the information. The Gul Sahar Siga is a complex biludha, yes? Learning that it is, perhaps, the one thing I desire and have not been able to learn on my own has cost you only a small portion of yourself. Learning the biludha itself to trade to me will very probably kill you.” He squints a bit, studying me, then nods. “Will definitely kill you.”

  I think about that, and as I do, I know it’s true. If I ask for the Words to that spell, it will be the end. I nod. “Help me with Lem. I’ll give you the spell.”

  Fallon closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. Aftershave smell, salty and sweet. “All right
, Mr. Mageshkumar. We have a deal.” His eyes open. “It may be that you will survive that transaction, though I cannot promise as much.”

  I nod. I grab his hand and start shaking it, like I’d been taught. “Thank you,” I say, thinking of all the times Hiram hit me on the head when I forgot my manners. Mr. Fallon reminds me of Hiram, a little. Mr. Fallon stares at our hands for a moment, then pulls his free.

  “Good. I assume you are here for a reason. What has your spell told you? What do you need from me?”

  I swallow, hard. “Firepower.”

  4.

  “DO NOT LET your mind wander, Mr. Mageshkumar,” Mr. Fallon says. “When you wonder about things, the broken spell this idiot savant has cast on you will satisfy your curiosity, and you will pay in blood.” He turns and grins at me. “A curious mind will kill you in short order.”

  I don’t know what to say. I’m terrified of Mr. Fallon. He studies me and turns away. I look across the rear of his car. The other enustari, Beatrice, sits there with one of her Bleeders. The young girl. Tan skin. Pretty. Our eyes meet, and I look away as fast as I can, feeling the blood rush into my face. When I look back, sneaky, she’s looking out the window.

  “I see this is less of a worry than I might have imagined,” Mr. Fallon says. I’ve already forgotten what he’s referring to. Then it comes back to me, accompanied by a shiver of fatigue. Volker’s broken spell, giving me answers, taking my life.

  Then we’re walking from the car down a cobblestone street toward a redbrick warehouse. I’m not sure where we are. And then I am sure—Hoboken—and I feel bad for a moment. I stumble, dizzy. And then I’m okay again, just tired. I dozed off in the backseat of the car. When I woke up, we were here. Everything seems empty. It’s all old warehouses, broken windows, a sewer smell I don’t like.