by Arjay Lewis
“Both charlatans, I assure you.” Marlowe’s focus shifted to the top of his cane.
“Really? I suppose you would know, but how come?”
“Because the last thing a true wizard wants is his own television show. When you can have anything, your needs become smaller.”
“Yeah?” Eddie frowned. “You got some perks. Your big house? It’s pretty fancy.”
Marlowe sighed. “Yes, it is, but not by my choice. As coven master, I often act as an ambassador. But, like Frisha, I could easily be content living in a cardboard box.”
They both rose as Beverly entered the room.
She held up a paper “Okay, it’s getting weird again.”
“How do you mean?” Eddie hoped he sounded helpful.
“Although it looks like a snakebite, from his blood work, it appears that he was injected with an unusual combination of herbs and strange animal byproducts. The tox guy thinks one of them is the urine of a large cat—like a tiger.”
Marlowe nodded. “Well done! Though it was probably a black panther.”
Eddie held out his hand for the report and Beverly handed him the paper. “It’s pretty technical— Hey!” she added as Eddie handed the paper to Marlowe. “I thought he was here to help his friend.”
“He is,” Eddie agreed, “but he happens to be an expert on unusual herbs and poisons.”
“Oh, really?” Beverly asked with suspicion.
“Why yes,” Marlowe skimmed the chemical breakdown. “Sort of a lifelong hobby.”
“So what do you think the herbs are, oh expert?” Beverly folded her arms to strike an "impress me" stance.
“A combination of several exotic ones, belladonna to begin with, and the mammal hemoglobin you detected is bat’s blood,” Marlowe returned the sheet to Beverly. “Thank you.”
Beverly gaped at the paper, then to Eddie. “Is he for real?”
“Oh, yes,” Eddie effused, “the real deal.”
“You would come in handy on the tox we got off the dismembered guy. He ingested some pretty weird stuff,” Beverly said.
“I’d be happy to,” Marlowe made another quick circle with his stick.
Beverly stared at him for the briefest of moments, and then told them, “Well, I gotta go.” She headed for the door. “You let me know anything you find out, Eddie.”
“Thanks, Beverly,” Eddie called as she walked out the door. He then leaned to Marlowe and whispered, “I saw that.”
“What?”
“You put the whammy on her, to get her to leave.”
“I did not put a ‘whammy’ on her, I merely reminded her of a pressing engagement. We need a few minutes alone with Trefoil.”
“Can the pair of us wake him?”
“After looking at the potion ingredients, that will be insufficient. We must get him to my house.”
“Great, so we wave our sticks and poof! Off we go!”
Marlowe sighed. “Eddie, teleportation is an ability held by a master wizard—”
“Then let’s go,” Eddie stood straighter and closed his eyes. “Beam me up, Scotty.”
Marlowe shook Eddie’s shoulder to rouse him. “In a city as crowded as this, there are far too many dangers. The slightest miscalculation could be disastrous.”
“How do you mean?”
“Materializing inside a solid wall? Or worse, inside another person or an animal? I’ll put it in a context you’ll understand. Did you see the movie The Fly?”
Eddie thought for a moment. “Yuck.”
“Indeed.”
“What are our other options? It’s not like we can just walk out of here with him on a gurney.”
Marlowe stood for a moment and considered this as he rubbed his beard with his free left hand. “Actually, Edward, that is a good idea!”
“Look, Marlowe, so far I know you can float cups, travel the world by walking into the woods, and other stuff. But old Nurse Bulldog at that front desk is not going to let you stroll out of here with Trefoil.”
“Yes, she will, Eddie. If she sees what looks acceptable to her. It is time I introduced you to the power of illusion.”
“Illusion?”
Marlowe nodded with a twinkle in his eye. “It requires deceit. But the deception is merely a visual one, and we do not tell untruths with our lips. It is a case of the ‘eye of the beholder.’”
“I have no clue what you are talking about, old man,” Eddie replied, frustrated.
“It shall all be clear. But, you must follow my directions exactly, do you ken?”
“I ken, I ken. What do I do?”
“First, you must get the car…”
Nineteen
Five minutes later, Eddie waved to the security man as he drove out of the lot. Following Marlowe’s instructions, he pulled the car into the driveway marked “EMERGENCY AMBULANCES ONLY.” Marlowe hadn’t totally explained everything, only that Eddie must park the unmarked police car close to an ambulance.
“What the hell does he think this will do?” Eddie said to himself, as he pulled the car behind a row of three emergency vehicles. He got out of the car and watched the doors that led to the Emergency Room. He glanced at his suit and found it wasn’t a suit anymore but a set of green hospital scrubs.
Marlowe had suggested that money was the easiest thing to manifest. To Eddie, it seemed that what was manifested most was abrupt changes of clothing.
He looked at what he wore again, and his suit was back and yet at the same time it wasn’t. He turned to peer at the car, and instead found a large ambulance in its place, with “SAINT MARLOWES HOSPITAL” emblazoned on the sides.
Eddie gave a yelp of surprise and walked back to examine it. There was indeed an ambulance in place of his NYPD vehicle. Eddie rubbed his eyes.
He uncovered them to find his unmarked police car sat where it belonged. This caused him to blink, and in that nictitate, it again was replaced by the ambulance.
He peered about to observe if anyone else noticed. There were a few people coming and going, but they didn’t discern anything out of the ordinary.
They see what they expect to see, Eddie thought.
He casually reached out to the ambulance and found his hand passed through the outside of it.
He leapt back, closed his eyes and felt for the vehicle. He touched the back fender, and felt along the trunk of the car, the metal against his hand, the sun warming it. His car was indeed there.
He backed away and opened his eyes.
A siren went off a few short feet from him, and Eddie turned to see a large ambulance coming straight toward him.
With reflexes that saved him on more than one occasion, Eddie leapt out of the way, the speeding conveyance missing him with room to spare.
Eddie stood next to his vehicle and breathed heavily. It still projected the SAINT MARLOWES HOSPITAL conveyance to anyone who noticed.
The newly arrived real ambulance was busily discharging its patient. From the corner of his eye, Eddie saw a gurney slowly coming out of the Emergency Room doors. It was being pushed by a young and handsome doctor in a clean, white coat, a stethoscope hung from his neck. Eddie realized this doctor gave the appearance of someone cast for a television show. In fact, the man was reminiscent of every handsome doctor he’d ever seen on any soap opera.
But the patient in the gurney was Trefoil.
Trusting his instincts, he rubbed his eyes.
He opened them and Eddie saw Trefoil was not on a gurney at all, but hovered in the air.
For a moment he wanted to laugh, because it reminded him of an old trick one of the neighborhood kids used to do. A kid would lie down with his feet sticking out from under a bed sheet and start to rise up in the air. Of course, this was accomplished with a pair of legs made from scrap wood with shoes at the end. The kid held the wood in his arms, as if he were laying straight out, and the long sheet covered his real legs to give the appearance he floated in the air.
But Trefoil was not walking with fake legs. He floated.
The young, handsome doctor was actually Marlowe, who walked behind his friend with one hand on the back of his head.
Eddie glanced down as his own green scrubs which seemed to fade in and out with each step, and walked toward Marlowe. As he approached, his outfit changed completely to hospital garb, and Marlowe was once again the handsome young doctor. The only thing constant was Trefoil, oblivious to the illusions around him— or anything else.
The two men drew close to the parked car and Eddie stopped, not sure what to do.
“Hit your head,” Marlowe’s voice emanated from the handsome doctor’s mouth.
“What?” Eddie was convinced he’d heard him wrong.
“Hit your head,” the young beardless, ruggedly handsome face repeated, and then added, “with the flat of your hand.”
Eddie lightly smacked his hand against the side of his head.
The ambulance was gone, and Eddie’s car sat where he parked it. Just as he absorbed this, the image of the larger vehicle returned.
“Where do we load him in?” Eddie asked.
“Open the rear seat door, I’ll take care of the rest,” the handsome doctor replied with a winning smile.
Eddie struck the side of his head, saw the back door handle, reached out and grabbed it. As he pulled it open, he saw the large rear door of the projected ambulance open and the young doctor touched something on the gurney to fold it up and push it in the back.
He smacked his head again and saw the truth. Marlowe waved his stick and the floating Trefoil lowered into the back seat of the car.
The doctor got in the vehicle, which to the world still appeared as an ambulance.
Eddie quickly walked around to the driver’s side and slapped his head again to grasp the door handle, open the door, and get in.
Inside the car, everything was as Eddie remembered it. He was relieved to see Marlowe beside him, and Trefoil lay on the back seat.
“Don’t worry, it’s safe to drive. The illusion is only outside the vehicle.”
“Man, that was…” Eddie hesitated and took a large lungful of air. “That was—”
“Drive, Eddie, time is passing, and I don’t want to maintain the illusion any longer than I have to.”
“Oh! Right, right,” Eddie started the car, pulled it around the circular roadway, and out the way he’d come.
Two blocks away, Marlowe visibly relaxed. “Very well, now all anyone sees is the car.”
“Are we taking him to your place?”
“I do have more than enough room.”
Eddie nodded, “No doubt about that. You could move my entire precinct into your house.”
Negotiating the midtown traffic as well as one could manage, Marlowe and Eddie arrived at the 85th Street house, and were able to get Trefoil up the stairs and stoop, held between them like a friend who imbibed too much. Once inside, they ceased all attempts at stealth and Marlowe levitated the man to the elevator in the center of the spiral stairs. The elevator was small, and the three men were crammed in together.
“Is this thing safe?” Eddie asked, as the tubular contrivance lifted and shook.
“Perfectly,” Marlowe seemed unperturbed by the rattle of chains and the unsteady ride.
On the high second floor, Marlowe carefully lifted Trefoil from the elevator car and levitated him into one of the many bedrooms.
At Marlowe’s behest, Eddie brought out his staff and held it aloft as Marlowe chanted strange words. A beam of red light shot forth from Eddie’s staff, combined with white light from Marlowe’s, and rained down as pink sparkles on Trefoil’s still form. The unconscious man began to breathe deeper and more fully. His face regained a little color. He now resembled someone merely asleep, instead of near death.
“Can we bring him out of it?” Eddie wondered, when Marlowe stopped vocalizing and the glow faded from their raised staffs.
“The pair of us do not have enough power,” Marlowe said. “But we helped.”
Eddie nodded. “That’s good. I like Trey.” He glanced at his wristwatch. “Is that the time? I gotta get back to work.”
“Eddie, I am concerned, we should practice.”
“I have to report in,” Eddie said with a shrug. “I will come here after work for an hour or two.”
“I would prefer you remain here tonight.”
Eddie slowly turned to face Marlowe, as his wooden staff shrank down to a credit card and was replaced in his wallet.
“Look, I can’t. I have a wife, a family, and a sick momma. They need me.”
“So does the world, Eddie,” Marlowe said. “In a few days the summer solstice will come. It is a day of great power. If the staves of the Five can come together on the longest day of the year, our combined might will break the power of the Great Evil.”
“You are already one down without Trefoil,” Eddie warned.
Marlowe looked over at his friend’s inert form. “Yes, but once the other two join us, we should be able to rouse him.”
“Even so, you really expect me to be ready by then?”
“You see why we must begin at once!” Marlowe implored. “You must train! Eddie, only great souls are summoned. Those who were called left their old lives behind.”
Eddie shook his head. “I’m no great soul, I’m just a cop. I’m not interested in starting a religion or anything.”
Marlowe sighed. “Sometimes, wizards teach spiritual insights after gaining their staffs. However, most of the great masters found being religious leaders too great a burden.”
“A burden?”
“Yes, a spiritual master points the way. However, a religion is designed to control its members and teach a dogma, which leads to holy wars and other such foolishness. Those of us who walk the path now know this, which is why we live in secrecy.”
“What about you?” Eddie asked. “The writing on the ambulance said Saint Marlowe.”
“Ah, yes,” Marlowe stroked his beard. “Not as bad as that, I created myth and legend of a different sort, but it ended badly. I had an apprentice who deceived me and used my powers against me. I decided never again to take on the risk of another apprentice.”
“Until me.”
“I couldn’t refuse,” Marlowe mused. “Drusilicus left me no choice.”
“I’m glad you took me on,” Eddie gave the older man a smile. ”You’re good.”
“You appear to be a very adept student, Eddie. If you are going to your police duties, could I ask you to do some…what is it called in your line of work…legwork?”
“You want me to follow-up a clue?”
“Precisely. There is an occult store in Greenwich Village. Bankrock told me the other day that there might be suspicious activity there. As a police officer, you could look into it with more authority than I could.”
“What’s it about?”
“Bankrock suggested there were odd energy readings that may involve a talisman.”
“Oh yeah, that tally-thing…”
“Yes. Since I now know that a talisman could have been connected with Abraxas’s release, I think anything involving talismans, even minor incidents, should be examined.”
Eddie nodded. “I don’t know anything about talismans, but I know how to ask questions. What’s the place called?”
“Magickal Cherub, it’s on the corner of Eighth Street and Avenue B.”
Eddie’s eyes grew wide.
“What is it?” Marlowe asked.
“My partner mentioned that place just the other day.”
“Hmm. Interesting. But, if you can find out anything, that would be useful. Later we will practice and you will stay here at the townhouse—”
“I told you, I can’t, Marlowe. I swear I’ll give you a few hours each night.”
“Can you take vacation time?”
“I might, but damn if Cerise would want to kill me.”
“Why?”
Eddie looked at his feet. “I’ve been promising her since we got married that I’d take her to Aruba.”
“And have you?”
Eddie rubbed the back of his neck. “Something always comes up.”
“I see,” Marlowe’s face took on a decisive visage. “Well then, if you cannot come here, I shall go with you.”
“Say, what?”
“I shall accompany you to your home,” Marlowe announced. “It is the only way you will be safe. I doubt Abraxas will attack two of the Five together. I can watch over you and yours.”
“You want to stay at my house? What about Trefoil?”
“There is naught I can do for him until the others arrive. I will have Frisha watch over him.”
“She doesn’t seem all that stable. What about your, uh, vampire friend?”
“Daniel is on a special mission that cannot be disturbed. But there are spells that protect the townhouse. If anything should happen, Daniel will sense it and return. He is quite a fighter!”
“Tooth and nail, I would imagine,” Eddie quipped.
“Was that a joke?”
“Never mind! What do I tell my wife?”
“Tell her I am a witness that needs protecting. Really, Eddie, I solved your problem this morning! I would think you’d be more adept at lying to your own wife!”
“I don’t make it a habit!” Eddie asserted defensively. “I’ll think of something.”
“Well and good, apprentice!” Marlowe smiled.
“Yeah, yeah,” Eddie muttered glumly, “just don’t start calling me ‘boy’!”
For a moment, Marlowe turned beet red, and Eddie had to admit he felt satisfaction seeing him flustered for a change.
“Why…why, Eddie…I would never…I mean, really!” Marlowe stammered.
“I know, pops,” Eddie found he was unable to enjoy his victory. “You really are a good guy. You just presume a lot.”
“I fear for you, Eddie. Far worse, I fear for us all.”
“You and me both.”
Twenty
Outside the townhouse, Eddie pulled out his phone to call Luis. But to tell him what? That he was going to another place without him?
Eddie quickly moved his unmarked car back to the lot, as he decided the subway would be the faster way to go.