The Price

by Joseph Garraty

  The bartender held his shotgun up by the barrel. “I go now,” he said. “I do not know you. You never saw me. Okay?” He started backing away, and nobody stopped him. He was just as frightened as the rest of us, and for one moment we were united in that, if nothing else. Even Big George had nothing to say, he was so shaken. His face was the white of curdled milk, and he was a guy who cut fingers off for a living. If Big George was scared . . . Jesus. I didn’t want to think about it.

  The bartender left the mouth of the alley, and I finally remembered that Kelsen had come this way. He was nowhere to be seen, of course. Benedict was going to kill me.

  Vivek looked around at the three of us, his expression an odd mixture of disgust and fear. “‘Don’t worry,’ Mr. Wizard says. ‘We are looking for this guy.’” He threw his hands into the air. “Great. You are looking for him. I am so relieved.”

  He dropped to the grimy pavement, laughing and weeping.

  Chapter 12. Escalation

  Benedict paced the library, none too steadily, bourbon sloshing in the glass in his hand. “Is that it?” he asked me. “Is that everything? Every detail?” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Everything?”

  I nodded. “Yeah.” I didn’t know what else to say to him. He’d gone out looking for Kelsen—found another trap, as it happened, and got one of his guys blown to Hell—and I’d stumbled across his archnemesis while shaking down somebody else entirely. Those were the breaks, I guess, but he wasn’t handling this well.

  “You didn’t get anything from the scene? A scrap of cloth, anything?”

  “We didn’t really have time for that. That . . . thing he summoned was bulletproof. I think it would have torn us all to strip steak if we hadn’t got out.”

  Benedict put his forearm against a bookcase and leaned his head against it. “Jimmy, this guy’s chewing us to shreds.”

  “We did all right. They lost three guys to our one, anyway.” I tried not to think of Eddie, who hadn’t been able to get out with us. I could only imagine what had happened to him. And there was that poor bastard who got his guts pulled out. I knew he was an enemy and all, but Christ. I actually wouldn’t have wished that shit on my worst enemy, and I didn’t know that guy’s story. He probably ended up in this the same way I did—making the best choices he knew how to, and look where they got him. I pushed the thought away. It was them or us, after all. I needed to focus on that.

  “They have three guys to our one, so that’s not much better than breaking even.” Benedict pushed away from the shelf and came over to the table to refill his glass. “Besides, that’s not all he did last night. Sammy’s crew got ambushed—they knew we were coming. Same with Sid and Rocky. It’s like Kelsen’s got eyes everywhere.” Benedict’s face flushed a dark, angry red.

  “What do you wanna do? We’re on the offensive, so it’s not like they don’t know where we’re going. All they gotta do is hole up and wait.”

  Benedict shook his head. “It’s Kelsen. I know it is.” He pounded the table, causing liquid to jump from his glass. “That fuck.”

  I didn’t know about that, but Benedict was obviously in no mood to be argued with. Like always, really. But Kelsen was a problem, no doubt about that. I’d been brooding on it for hours in between thoughts of man-eating hellhounds. “What’s to stop him showing up here or anywhere else with one of those dog-things? We can’t fucking kill ’em, so even one of ’em will tear through us like we’re made of cardboard.”

  “He’s insane.”

  I shrugged. That much was obvious.

  “Jimmy, you don’t get it. He’s calling up demons, for fuck’s sake.”

  He was right—I didn’t get it. “That’s what we do. What’s the big deal?”

  “It’s one thing to make a short agreement to get a little task done. Dragging corporeal demons here and letting them loose on their own recognizance is fucking nuts.”

  “Because of the price?” I asked.

  “That’s part of it. But bringing those things here—the control is pretty goddamn tenuous, if there even is any. And they need blood, and usually a sacrifice of some kind. We’re lucky they can’t usually stay long, but Kelsen’s getting smarter about that, too.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, he’s done this shit before. But a month or so ago, he was calling up things the size of rats, and for only minutes at a time. Now they’re a lot bigger, and I don’t know how long it takes them to go away.” Benedict made a bleak face. “I don’t know where this stops. God help us if he finds a way to pull up something really horrible.”

  I thought about the two-headed monstrosity I’d seen earlier and wondered exactly what counted as really horrible on that scale.

  “If they can be called up, they can be sent back, right?” I asked.

  Benedict tipped back his glass again. “I guess.”

  “How?”

  He slumped in his chair, head lolling over the back. “I don’t have a fucking clue.” He waved an arm at the shelves. “Have at it, Jimmy. If anybody can figure it out, you can.”

  I stared at him for a while, hoping for a little more guidance than that. He closed his eyes and, after a few minutes, started snoring.

  I went to the books.

  * * *

  Hours later, and I had more of an education on ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggedy beasties and things that go bump in the night than I ever wanted. Pity most of the information was contradictory. Benedict’s books couldn’t even agree on what the things were—they were demons, or evil spirits, or faeries (though I wondered what kind of sick fucking faeries they had in the place that particular book was written), or spriggans, djinn, rakshasa, or any of a hundred other names. I thought of Benedict’s original definition: Intrinsically evil entities from a very bad place that is not here. That seemed to encompass everything on the list, yet offer no specifics as a starting place for mounting a defense or even doing further research.

  About the only thing the books agreed on was that you oughta leave the damn things alone. Any section even briefly touching on the idea of summoning demons—or whatever they were—was plastered with so many caveats, cautions, admonitions, and metaphysical warning labels that it seemed only a fool with a reckless disregard for his own safety would even turn to the next page. I thought it was strange that this stuff was documented at all if it was so dangerous. It was like giving somebody a pill bottle with a big red and yellow label on it that said, “NEVER TAKE THESE.”

  Then again, sometimes the cure, however bad, was ever-so-slightly better than the disease. I’d return to that thought later with no small amount of bitterness.

  I paged through the books, trying to piece together enough of an understanding to figure out how to make the damn things go away when somebody else called them up, but it seemed impossible. I couldn’t find anything like a banishment spell, and it was frustratingly clear that most of the authors didn’t know what the fuck they were talking about. Benedict said I had a knack for this stuff, and I was really starting to believe him. It was obvious to me that every page had an incantation that was subtly wrong or a diagram that had lines missing or in the wrong place or used some of the wrong glyphs entirely. I thought I could reconstruct the correct ones, but it would take time, and, like I said, none of it was banishment.

  I scribbled in my notebook, taking down the bits I thought were true or relevant, and trying to compile something credible from the mess of shit on the table in front of me.

  A faint smell tickled my nostrils, and I wrinkled my nose. The smell wasn’t strong enough to identify, but it snagged something in the back of my brain and triggered a sense of dread, releasing a flood of adrenaline into my system. I looked around the room, trying to place the source of my fear.

  The smell got stronger, and now I recognized it. Burning.

  I jumped up from my chair. A fire in Benedict’s library would be a disaster beyond reckoning. Where the hell was it? There were three exits from this room�
��one, the sliding double doors back to the main living room, where a bunch of goombahs were sleeping on the floor, then two others, one in the north wall and one in the west, that went deeper into the library. The living room was safe, I figured, but I couldn’t see any smoke coming from either of the other two doorways.

  I picked the north one at random and walked through. I flicked the light switch as I went in. Nothing happened. I could still see, somehow. A weird yellow light without apparent source lit up enough of the space for me to make out shapes and outlines. The light made me think of flames, hungrily devouring the collected wisdom of centuries, but I didn’t see any.

  I went in, navigating my way through rows of shelves. Unlike the room out front, where the walls were lined with shelves and the rest was open, filled with table space for studying, this space was designed to hold books, to pack them in by the thousand. The yellow light became suffused with red and flickering orange, and I expected to come around each new corner and find a leaping bonfire, but at each turn I was disappointed. The stink was so bad my eyes watered, but no smoke clouded the halls of books.

  I turned one last corner and came out in a straight hall, one I didn’t remember encountering before. It went on, unbending, farther than I could see in the strange light, an infinite corridor lined with books bound in leather.

  A figure stood in the center of the hall a hundred feet or so away, a ragged black silhouette blocking out the feverish light behind it.

  The burning smell wasn’t coming from the books at all, I realized.

  I turned to run—and found that the hall behind me was a straight, infinite corridor of shelves, a burned figure standing a hundred feet in front of me. It began walking toward me. I heard soft plopping sounds, and sizzling, as bits of it fell off and hit the carpeted floor.

  I couldn’t move. My feet wouldn’t budge, my head wouldn’t turn. I could only watch as that awful specter approached—twenty feet away, then a dozen, and then I could see the yellow light reflecting in its eyes, or maybe the yellow light somehow came from its eyes and filled my whole world, and I tried even harder to move, my struggles as useless as if my body had been cast in cement, and the burned figure came closer and reached out with one crooked finger, and—

  * * *

  I woke with a violent start to the buzzing of my phone in my pocket. My researches were spread out before me on the table, and a puddle of drool had collected on the bottom corner of my notebook.

  I got my phone out and checked the caller ID. Kit. It was five-thirty in the morning, which meant it was a safe bet that the other guys were asleep, but I didn’t want to press my luck. I got up and walked into the next room, and I admit I was relieved when a subtle yellow glow didn’t rise from the floor.

  “Hello?”

  “Jimmy, what on earth is going on?”

  “Conflict in the Middle East and a rising standard of living in China, I think. Also, I didn’t sleep worth a damn.”

  “Not funny.”

  I wiped some crud out of the corner of my eye. “Sorry. What’s this about?”

  “Bodies. Everywhere. A shop blew up on Sanford Street last night. Shoot-outs in half a dozen seedy dives. We don’t have a complete body count yet because it seems like every twenty minutes somebody calls in a new one.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “It’s war. It’s probably going to get a lot worse before it gets better.”

  “I can’t stand around and watch this happen. Innocent people are going to get hurt, if they haven’t already.”

  I went deeper into the library, relying on the thick stacks of books to muffle my voice. “You can’t stop it. Neither can I. I don’t know what you want from me.”

  She lowered her voice until it was barely audible over the phone. “Can we meet? In person? I’ve seen . . . some things. I need an explanation, and I don’t know where else to get one.”

  That wasn’t hard to believe. If she’d run across the leftovers from any of Kelsen’s little projects, she probably could use all kinds of explanation. Not that I could really provide one that would satisfy her. Hell, I could have used an explanation for some of it myself. “Kit, I don’t know if I can help you. I don’t know much, for one thing, and for another, we’re at war. Nobody goes anywhere alone right now.”

  There was a long pause, and then: “I can help you.” I almost dropped the phone. I didn’t know what she’d seen or encountered, but it must have been bad. Up until that moment, I’d have put the likelihood of her saying those four words on par with the chance she’d don a cape and try to fly by jumping off the Prudential Tower. When I didn’t say anything, she continued. “I know some places they do business. I can get you other information, too. But we need to meet.”

  Oh boy. Whether it was the note of desperation in her voice or the offer itself, I was stuck. I couldn’t walk away from this. “All right. I’ll text you with an address and a time. It’s going to be inconvenient.”

  “Yeah, fine. Soon, though, right?”

  “Soon as I can manage.”

  I hung up the phone and stood in the library, wondering just how in the hell I was going to manage this.

  * * *

  I spent that day and much of the next digging through Benedict’s books, looking for anything that might help send a demon back to its hideous place of origin. There was so much to dig through that it would take me months by myself, so I recruited Lazzaro to help. He was more enthusiastic than I expected, and actually pretty helpful. Watching him work on this stuff was a forceful reminder that, behind his “hey youse guys” demeanor, he was a pretty sharp motherfucker. He found a bunch of things in the stacks that I never would have gotten to, and he had quite a bit of insight on some of it. Books piled up around us, dozens of scraps of paper hanging out of them at important places.

  Benedict came and went, sometimes pointing us at different texts when he was around, mostly just watching us through the bottom of a glass. By the end of the second day of frustration, I was ready to start throwing back a few myself.

  “This is shit,” I said, pushing a stack of papers away from my body. It spread out across the table like a deck of cards. “Complete shit. These idiots couldn’t call a demon up with a telephone.”

  “Keep it down,” Benedict admonished me. He gestured with his glass toward the main room, where a couple of his guys were dealing another of their endless hands of gin rummy. “Not everybody needs to hear the details. Have some fucking discretion.”

  For a second, I wanted to get up and make him eat his glass, but one look at his face defused most of my anger. His eyes were red and rheumy, the creases in his face deeper than they’d been even a few days ago. I realized he probably hadn’t had a night’s sleep or been entirely sober since the war started—maybe since before that—and I could guess at the cause of his sleeplessness. The Slob had made it clear that Kelsen was Benedict’s problem to deal with. Everybody knew that. What everybody didn’t know, at least not yet, was that Benedict was way outclassed.

  I rubbed my eyes. “This stuff is a mess. There’s nothing anywhere that’s obviously a banishment spell. Not even close.”

  Benedict straightened, and a bit of life came into his face as he slid into his teacher role. “Oh? If there’s no direct spell for it, what else might you try?”

  Jesus, I thought. I’m trying to unravel a life-threatening mystery, and he wants to have some kind of Socratic fucking dialogue. I sighed.

  “The box,” Lazzaro said, cutting off my thought.

  “What?” Benedict’s voice held a sharp tone that he had used on me a few times. It was never a good sign.

  “The box. The one from the truck. Weren’t there notes or something in there?”

  The ensuing silence was the kind you don’t want to touch, because it might cut you. Lazzaro didn’t pick up on that.

  “What?” he said. “There were, right?”

  “They won’t help you,” Benedict said. “I don’t want to hear about it again. You should forget about th
at box, and be grateful for it.”

  I wanted to crawl under the table to get away from Benedict’s gaze, and it wasn’t even directed at me. Lazzaro didn’t even notice. “Why?”

  I winced. Here it comes. One question too many. But Benedict reined in his temper, perhaps recognizing that Lazzaro’d never let it go otherwise.

  “The notes in that box were all about a death spell Kelsen was working on.” He looked from Lazzaro to me and back, making sure he had both our attention. “And what have I told you about death magic?”

  “Don’t do it,” I said.

  “But why?” Lazzaro asked.

  Benedict sighed. “You ever hear one of those old stories about genies granting wishes? Somehow, they always interpret the last wish in a way that fucks over the guy making the wish. Death magic is like that—it opens doors you don’t want opened. Even if it goes right, it goes wrong.”

  “And there’s the price,” I said.

  “Yeah. That, too.” The offhand way in which he said that got my attention as much as the previous speech. Benedict always stressed the price of magic, so if he was dismissing it on account of the other business, that was some bad news.

  Lazzaro didn’t look convinced enough, I guess, so Benedict added a final, uncharacteristic threat: “And if I catch you messing with that shit, I will burn you myself. Got it?”

  Me and Lazzaro nodded. Silence spun out, and eventually even Lazzaro looked down at the floor.

  “Okay,” Benedict said. “Where were we? Jimmy said you guys can’t find a banishment spell. So, if there’s no direct spell for something, what else can you try?”

  Relieved to be off the other topic, I grabbed for an answer. “Often, turning a diagram upside down and reversing some of the elements will go a long way toward reversing a spell.”