“Is there anything you’d care to see happen to him, m’dear? His energy seems to be mostly focused toward you. Would you care for him to die?”
Magdalena blinked and turned her head. She rubbed her face. I knew what Didgeri was doing, and I found it cruel, though my inner bastard admired the flawless way it was being executed. I almost extended my perceptions to see what was going on inside Magdalena, but it would be a terrible breach of etiquette toward our hostess, who had kept the nasty goon from gunning us down where we sat. So I waited, like the rest of the universe. Magdalena looked Roman in the eye, and I saw the flash of anger there. This man had used her, hurt her, and made her feel foolish. I knew what my answer would be.
“Let him live, let him go,” Magdalena said. “Please.”
Didgeri smiled. Her brown-gold eyes shined. “A very wise choice, darling.”
“But first,” I said, “get the pictures from him. They belong to Magdalena. He was supposed to bring them.” Magdalena laughed and hugged me. Didgeri nodded and turned her attention back to Roman. She slid her hand into his coat.
“It seems Laytham is not as forgiving as Miss Magdalena, here. I hope for your sake you brought the pictures, gubba.”
The scorpion was still teasing and pinching Roman’s ear. Didgeri’s hand returned from under his coat with a thumb drive. She handed it to Magdalena.
“Thank you,” Magdalena said.
Roman blinked and then began to move again. Very stiffly. Didgeri remained next to him.
“You know where the door is,” she said. “Old Man Scorpion is with you and will stay with you until I tell him to leave you be. Any trouble, these good people see you ever again, and he will kiss you. Do you understand, wagala?”
Roman nodded very slowly. The scorpion snipped at the air next to his ear.
“Thank the pretty girl for your life on your way out,” Didgeri said.
Roman looked scared. His eyes were wet. This had all been a little too much for his mind to process.
“Bye, Roman,” Magdalena said, smiling. It was sincere. She stood and placed the envelope with the twenty grand I had given her earlier in the night in his trembling hand. Roman walked away, trying to avoid the crowd of dancers between him and the door like a man carrying sweating dynamite. He vanished into the laser-drenched mist of the Dreamtime, lost in a curtain of bodies.
“That,” I said, “was very cool. Thanks, darlin’.”
“Deadly,” Didgeri said, laughing. “I only get to do stuff like that when I hang out with you, Laytham.”
Didgeri nodded toward the thumb drive Magdalena was examining.
“Why don’t you go check that on the office computer, dear? Make sure it’s what you were looking for.”
“That would be great. Thank you so much,” Magdalena said, and hugged Didgeri. “It should be pictures from a shoot with James Stiles.”
“Ah, yes, James,” Didgeri said as she gestured to one of her bartenders, a powerfully built black man. “Quite the charmer, as I recall, and an excellent eye; made me feel like Cinderella. I hope the photos are intact, dear. I’d love to see them.” She turned to her employee. “Keane, take Ms. Magdalena here back to the manager’s office and help her with the computer, please. Thank you, dear.”
Keane and Magdalena walked away, and Didgeri moved around the table to sit down. I slid out of the booth and pulled out a chair on the other side of the table for her.
“Alone at last,” she said, sitting. I pushed in her chair. “I do so adore southern gentlemen. Even when they aren’t terribly gentle. Especially when they aren’t, actually.”
I offered her a bottle of water. She refused with a dismissive wave and gestured to summon one of her bottle service hostesses.
“I need your memory, Geri,” I said. “I’m looking for someone in the Life, an Initiated Man. He was also a player in the Lifestyle here in New York about ten years ago. His name is Slorzack, Dusan Slorzack. He may have been hooked up with a Wall Street suit named James Berman—also in the Lifestyle, I suspect,” I said, and held up the handcuff keys Berman had been wearing when I found him. Didgeri shuddered as the power from them passed through her like a painful memory. The hostess arrived, a slender Asian woman in a short black dress.
“Bring us a chilled bottle of Ley .925, and three glasses, darling,” Didgeri said. She looked back to me. “Still a tequila man, Laytham?”
I nodded and addressed the smiling hostess. “And a Budweiser as well, please, darlin’. Can is fine.”
The hostess seemed a little confused, but Didgeri nodded and she took her leave to get our drinks.
“I’m certain there is a special place in Hell for a man who drinks two-hundred-thousand-dollar tequila with a Budweiser chaser,” Didgeri said blandly.
“So,” I said, holding up the keys again and shaking them, “ring any bells?”
“Ugh,” she said, and rolled her eyes. “There is power coming off that, but you already knew that, didn’t you?”
I nodded. “This Berman guy is dead, murdered. A few days back. Wasn’t in the news. He’s connected, but I’m not sure how much.”
“I know him,” Didgeri said. “By reputation only. He was a switch—liked to play dominance and submission roles, I am led to understand. More into kink as a gateway to power than to passion. I’m sure you know the type.” She smiled at me.
“Yeah, yeah,” I said. “Guilty. I wouldn’t be lucky enough for you to know Slorzack too.”
“Again, by reputation, balla,” she said. “They used to call him ‘the Pain Eater’ in the clubs. He was a sadist, and he combined that with tantric traditions. Very much a horror show, from what I heard. His play partners tended to go missing after a few months. Rumor was a few of them ended up in his fridge.”
“He still creeping around, Geri?” I asked. I felt the slightest hope stir in me that this was going to be easier than I had anticipated.
“No, he left the city around 2002. A lot of people did back then. There were a few police investigations into missing people he may have been involved with, but nothing ever came of them. Berman stayed active on and off in the scene, but the Pain Eater just disappeared. There are rumors that he was, well, never mind.”
“No, c’mon now. Don’t be holding out on me,” I said. “Spill.”
“Well, that he might have had something to do with what happened on nine/eleven,” Didgeri said.
The hostess returned with the chilled gold-and-silver bottle of Ley .925. She poured both of us a shot and then set a frosted mug of beer next to mine. I tipped her a few hundred. And I waited until she departed to continue.
“You are kidding me, right?” I said. “This guy have a secret lair too? Henchmen?”
“First the drink, balla,” Didgeri said, “then the smart ass.”
We raised the slender tubelike crystal shot glasses and clinked them gently together.
“A thousand-mile journey begins with a single step,” she said.
“May as well be ‘here we are’ as ‘where we are,’” I replied. We both tossed back the tequila. Cool, bitter smoke clawed down my throat and caught fire in my belly. I felt a twinge of something warm stir in me, but I pushed it aside.
“Nine-fucking-eleven,” I said. “Really?”
“That was the rumor,” Didgeri continued as she set her glass down and dabbed the corner of her lips with her finger. “That he was connected to that evil somehow.”
“You know any of Berman’s long-time play partners you might be able to reach out to for me?” I asked. “I need as much of a bead as I can get on Slorzack, and I need to know how deep into the Life Berman was too.”
“I can make some inquiries. Give me twenty-four hours,” she said.
“I can give you fourteen, darlin’,” I said. “I threw some pretty ballsy misdirection magic at the hounds on my tail, but I don’t have long to get the hell out of Dodge.”
“Very well,” she said. “I will perform my customary miracles and make it happen. I onl
y do this for you Laytham, I hope you appreciate that.”
“I do,” I said, and I meant it. “It’s damn good to see you again, Adoni. May I still call you that?”
“Name I was born with,” she said. “Name I died with. Boy’s name. After what you did for me back in Brisbane, balla, you can call me whatever you want.”
“You hear anything from your dad?” I asked, pouring another shot.
“He’s alive,” Didgeri said, picking up and examining her empty glass as I filled it. “And he’ll stay that way as long as I stay clear of him. My uncle occasionally sends something mauia lurching out of the Dreamtime to try to piss with me, but his power is weak this far across the sea. He’d love to send a Kurdaitcha man to point a bone at me, but he doesn’t have the balls to do it.”
“Well, you certainly do,” I said, smiling, and raised my glass. Didgeri laughed and raised hers as well; the crystal clinked. “You say the word, sister girl, and we’re on a plane back to the land down under to deal with your uncle and grandfather.”
“No, Laytham,” she said as we both set down our empty glasses. “I miss my da’, but I understand your way, my balla. An Initiated Man, a Secret Man, needs to walk alone in his world. It’s too dangerous to have people you care about who can become collateral damage. Too many things that can make them bleed, drive them mad. Don’t you agree, yes?”
“Yeah,” I said, as I watched Magdalena walk out of the back room, talking to Keane, smiling, laughing, completely unaware of her power, her beauty. Heat stirred in me again, but now, looking at her, I had no desire to push it away. But I did. I suddenly saw her on the other side of the meat grinder that was my life, and realized I couldn’t do that to a work of art. “You’re right.”
“Still,” Didgeri said, smiling and pouring three new drinks, “even if you walk alone, doesn’t mean you can’t have a little company with you for part of the trip.”
I turned back to Didgeri. “You are up to something, you scheming witch.”
“Always, darling,” Didgeri said. “Magdalena, she has no idea what she is, what she has the capability to become?”
“I didn’t even feel it until tonight, in here,” I said. “Whatever working you were doing, it caught her up in it, and you could feel her power like a bomb blast.”
“Caught her, yes, I see,” Didgeri said. “It’s a simple bit of yilpinji. Quite common back home. I do it with the crowd on good nights. They seem to enjoy it.”
“That sounds familiar,” I said, sipping my beer. “Where do I know that from? This is some damn good tequila, Geri.”
“She will be back over here in a moment,” Didgeri said. “Any thoughts on how we proceed? Each tradition has its own ways of—”
“I don’t have a damn tradition,” I said. “You know that. I’m a mutt. I can’t take on a fucking apprentice! I’m in the middle of caper! The way my life is, especially an apprentice that looks like that.”
“Then perhaps it is time to change the way your life is, balla. You want to die alone? No friends? No lovers? Some nightmare thing locked at your throat?”
“But you just said you agreed with how I live my life,” I said, draining more of my beer. “What the hell, Geri!”
The music, the lights, everything was diverting. I was getting tired of Didgeri’s mystic master bullshit. I looked over to Magdalena. She was dancing alone, well, she had several men and women dancing around her, dancing to the rhythm she set. They wanted to dance with her, connect with her. The voice in Fashion’s techno version of Bowie’s “The Man Who Sold the World” was blasting across the Dreamtime. Magdalena was smiling, laughing. She looked very young, life incarnate. I vaguely remembered feeling that way once—a long, long time ago, like the song says.
“I said I understood it. That doesn’t mean it’s what I want for you, balla,” she said. “You used to work with others—Harel, Boj—your ‘Occult Rat Pack.’ Now you walk into places alone that can get you killed, or worse. You could take this girl as an apprentice, settle down and teach her, prepare her. She’s a Star Soul, a High Magician, like you and me. She will work miracles in time. You could help her, like you helped me.”
“Shit, I helped you into a mental hospital, Geri,” I said, draining the last of my beer. “A real master would have stayed with you, taught you. I just strapped you into a roller coaster full of explosives, lit the fuse, and walked the fuck away when the credits rolled. Like I always do.”
“I seem to recall it a bit differently,” Didgeri said. “If people follow you, join you in your journeys, it is their choice, their walkabout. It is arrogant and selfish of you to deny them a destiny, and egotistical, I might add, to think it’s all about you.”
“Whatever,” I said. “Bottom line, I can’t teach her. Can’t. I’ll give her the pitch and explain to her the options she has. Can I send her to you to study?”
“Of course, but you and I both know you are the one who can prepare her for the Life far better than I.”
Magdalena was walking to the table now; she was glistening, laughing from the dance. Her eyes were damp and dark and focused on me. The deer I met in the apartment this morning was gone. She moved like a panther, my breath caught in my throat.
“Damn, look at her,” I said, and then shook it off. I glanced back to Didgeri.
“I don’t want her in the Life. You can teach her how to live, not just survive, Adoni. Please?”
The Queen of Dreamtime smiled at me, and it was like the sun warming my face. “Of course, balla, of course.”
SEVEN
We grabbed a cab out front of the Dreamtime at four A.M. and sloshed into the backseat. Magdalena told the driver, a slender, dour-faced Indian man in a maroon windbreaker, the address, and off we went.
It was still raining, but it felt cool and good after the heat of the club, and we both felt the exhaustion and strange marriage of calm and exhilaration that come after a night of dancing your ass off. A random thought wandered through my tequila-enhanced brain. Cocaine would ruin this feeling right now. Even pot would.
“You got kinda quiet after you and Didgeri talked,” Magdalena said, taking a sip on a bottle of water. “You okay?”
“Right as rain, darlin’,” I said. “We just got to talking all serious council of wizards stuff. Very weighty, cosmic shit. Who’s taking the sorting hat to prom, and such.”
“Umhm,” she said. “Have to do with this guy you are looking for, that you still haven’t told me anything about?”
“How the hell did you know I was looking for someone?” I asked.
“You have Grinner working on something for you,” Magdalena said. “People usually hire him to find people or to get lost. I had a fifty-fifty shot. Besides, you don’t seem the type to be trying to hide.”
“You’d be surprised,” I said. “What time is it?”
She looked at her phone. “Four ten. Why don’t you have a cell phone?”
“They are a tool to control you economically and mentally,” I said.
“Paranoid much?” Magdalena asked.
“I know a guy in L.A. who has developed an entire form of sympathetic magic through cell phones,” I said. “He’s a twittermancer—he can read your thoughts, control your actions, and know your secrets through your cell phone traffic. Of course his workings have to be a hundred and forty characters or less to work, but that keeps him on his toes.”
“You’re not serious about the phone stuff are you?” she asked.
“Think about it for a second,” I said. “What is one of the most personal, idiosyncratic talismans you carry with you everywhere—to bed, to the bathroom? Your phone. The cell companies are drug dealers; they push minutes and data plans instead of crack and meth. Most folks would pay for their phone before they pay their rent. No one seems to notice that one of the major cell companies has the fucking Elder Sign from H. P. Lovecraft as its corporate logo.”
“Oh, come on,” she said. “You’re ranting. You sound like a Luddite, for Christ’s
sake.”
“Arcane, binding contracts,” I went on, “the addictive quality of having the phone close by, to check it, to talk through it by texts instead of actually talking to people. The constant hunger and envy for the newest one, the thinnest, the biggest screen, even if you just got one. The incessant monitoring of where you are by GPS, the dependence on it. Tell me, the people closest to you—do you know their numbers, or do you just push a button and the phone takes care of it? And the constant use of the things mutates your brain, alters the organ you use to interpret reality, to reason. Give it a few decades, you will have them implanted inside you—part of you. I’ll pass on Candy Crush, thanks.”
She laughed. I could get used to that sound.
The tires of the cars swooshed on the wet streets, smeared with the reflections of city lights. The cabbie was listening to some AM talk show going on about Bigfoot being an extradimensional entity. He was, but I really didn’t need that in my ear right now.
“You feel any different tonight, in the club?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said, “I did. At one point, I thought maybe I had been dosed with Ecstasy. I felt connected to everyone and everything in there. The people, the music, the light. It was amazing, but it didn’t feel … synthetic, like X can. It felt like I was breathing with the world.”
I nodded and fished out my cigarettes. “Well said. You were.” I held the pack up so the driver could see. “Hey, pal, you cool?” The driver glared at me with eyes that smoldered of hate and practiced patience. The window on my side of the cab hummed down and the cool air and rain blew in. I nodded and went about the business of lighting up. “Tell me, did you feel connected to me or Didgeri in there?”
“Some when we were dancing, early on, some when she was doing her poi thing, but now that you mention it, no. It was like you two were outside of everything.”
“It’s a defense,” I said, “something you learn to do so you aren’t naked and vulnerable. That beautiful world you were breathing with, it has teeth sometimes, sharp ones.”
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