by Phil Gabriel
Under her hair, her face went whiter and whiter. Soon she would pass out, release the artery, and complete bleeding out.
“Help me, please,” whispered Terri. At a nod from me, Akiko moved in and clamped Terri’s artery, similar to what she’d done a few minutes previously when saving my life.
“Thank you, thank you,” babbled Terri. “Sorry for the misunderstanding. Please call 911.”
I knelt in front of her and tilted my head at her. “Sorry for the misunderstanding,” I said in a mocking tone. “The only reason you’re still alive is so we can complete our bargain.” I held out the vial of dragon’s blood and the cash.
“Once I place these in your hand,” I said, “we’re done, and I’m leaving.”
Terri shook her head violently, the strands of her long hair whipping through the air, spraying blood across my bare chest. “Please don’t go,” she said, looking at the deserted street. At this time of night, no help would come in time to save her.
“We made love,” she said, reaching out to touch my cheek with her blood-covered left hand, sliding it down to leave a trail of blood on my bare chest.
“Yes. And then you tried to kill me,” I responded.
“I’ll do anything,” she pleaded, “if you help me.”
“You can die,” I said as I placed the vial and cash in her hand.
Standing, I motioned for Akiko to come with me, leaving Terri behind. Akiko shook her head at me. “No, Scott-Sensei,” she said. “I can’t leave her to die.”
Damn, the vow I had forced her to take as my student, plus her gentle nature, meant she couldn’t let Terri die.
Luckily, Terri couldn’t hear Akiko’s objection. As long as she feared her future, there was room to salvage this.
Terri’s eyes brightened as I turned back and hunched down in front of her. “Anything?” I asked.
“Yes, anything,” she said.
“Would you like to strike a new bargain?” I asked. “What do you have to offer?”
As she opened her mouth, I could see her quick calculation. After the destruction of her shop, the most valuable thing she owned was the vial of dragon’s blood I had just paid her. Since I had an ample supply, she couldn’t bargain with that. Her face fell as she realized she only had one thing left to trade.
“I offer my life,” she said, “a full year of life energy.”
I laughed. What a way to start with a low-ball offer. “You realize that for the attempted murder,” I replied, “I could take all of your life?” I continued, “You might have fifty years left. How about I take forty years? You’ll have a decade for regrets.”
“Three years,” she countered, lips trembling. “You’ll get psychic indigestion if you take my life without a bargain.”
“Thirty years,” I responded. “I have Pepto-Bismol in the hotel.”
Tears streaming down her face, leaving clean tracks in the blood, she offered, “Five years, and not a minute more.”
“Stop the tears,” I said. “They don’t affect me. Fifteen years. Not a minute less.”
“Seven years,” she whispered.
“Twelve years,” I replied, “and I’ll throw in fixing the damage to your face from the glass.” Her left hand dropped the bundle of cash and the vial of dragon’s blood and flew to her face, touching the gash that still bled freely. I caught the dragon’s blood before it could break and set it on the concrete.
“It doesn’t seem that bad,” she ventured.
“Oh, it’s bad. You’re going to have terrible scars, part of your nose is missing, and there’s a flap of scalp that will go bald,” I replied. “You’ll scare small children, and never again have a lover who isn’t repulsed by you.” Taking out my iPhone, I snapped a photo. “I’ll keep this to remind you.”
“Eight years,” she said. “Fix my face, save my life, and I’ll give you eight years.”
“Eleven years,” I said. “You better decide soon. The tourniquet that’s postponing your death is going to cost you your arm in another ten minutes.”
“How would I look, after?” she asked.
“Eleven years older,” I replied, “a few gray hairs, a few more wrinkles.”
“Old,” she said, “old and used up.”
“Older, yes,” I said. “Wiser. But unscarred and with the use of your arm again.”
“Why are you doing this to me?” she asked.
“Trying to kill a magician has negative consequences,” I said.
She still hesitated, unwilling to trade youth and beauty for life. I pulled out my phone to check the time, saying to myself, “Wonder if I can get a taxi to come out here?”
“Is that the best I can do?” she asked.
“What the hell,” I said. “I’ll throw in repairing the nerve damage, stopping the shakes in your hands. You’ll have your art again.”
“For nine years,” she prodded.
I stood. “Eleven years or nothing.”
I turned to Akiko, invisible to Terri, and said, “I tried, but she’s too stubborn. Some people would rather die than make a Deal.”
I went back into the shop to pick up my undershirt and shirt. I came back out buttoning up the shirt. Terri still sat on the sidewalk, staring down at the money and vial of dragon’s blood. “Oh,” I said, “you’re still here?” The look she gave me would have curdled milk.
Akiko was still shaking her head at me. She hated seeing anyone hurt, even if they deserved it.
“The ghost wants you to live,” I said. “She’s a good person.”
A taxi turned our way at the corner, and I raised my hand to stop him. “I’m not.”
The taxi driver, seeing the extensive damage to the shop and someone on the ground, swerved and sped up, leaving me behind. “Damn,” I said, “I’m going to have to walk back.”
“Scoooott,” said a voice behind me, sending a shiver up my spine, “what are you doing covered in that woman’s bodily fluids?”
“Kitty-Sue!” I said. “What the hell are you doing here?’
Crossing her arms, Kitty-Sue said, “Jackie sent me. She said you needed me.”
Hope flared in Terri’s face at the appearance of Kitty-Sue. “Help me; this guy attacked me.”
Kitty-Sue took a deep breath, looking even angrier. “I can tell exactly what happened. Do you want me to finish her off and get rid of the body?” she said. “I know some guys that do that kind of work.”
“Aren’t you going to help me?” Terri asked in her little girl voice.
With a flat stare that had cowed killers, Kitty-Sue said, “No, bitch. I’m his bodyguard.”
Looking at the money and the vial of very rare dragon’s blood on the ground, Kitty-Sue said, “Are you making a Deal? You really need me. You’re too nice, and people take advantage of you.”
“I handle my own Deals, Kitty-Sue,” I said. “Anyway, we couldn’t come to an agreement, so we were just leaving.” Turning to Akiko, I said, “Akiko-san, just cauterize the artery and leave her here. Someone will call 911 soon.”
“Can’t anyone else help me?” pleaded Terri.
“Akiko,” I said, “do you want to make a Deal with the murderer?”
Looking down at her toes, Akiko said, “I’m sorry, but I don’t have the skills she needs.”
Looking back at Terri, I said, “Sorry, the ghost can’t do it. You won’t meet my price. And all other New York healers are as dead as your grandfather.”
“Eleven years,” Terri said. “Fix my face, fix my arm, fix the nerve damage. Is that all?”
“Hell,” I said with a shrug, “I’ll fix your window, too.”
“I accept the Deal,” she said.
Nodding acceptance, I got to work, first extracting eleven years of life energy from her by touching her chakras with my hands. With the repaired tattoos, that took only moments. Reserves topped up, I started on the repairs, the laying on of hands. The arm was encouraged to repair itself, the slice in her artery closing smoothly and the tendons snaking back i
n place and reattaching themselves. Her fingers started moving again as the nerves were restored. I smoothed the skin flap on her head back in place, willing the section of torn scalp to reattach and heal. The skin on her face was smoothed over and healed without a scar, and I forced the tip of her nose to regrow.
Delving deeper, I encouraged the nerves to rejuvenate, eliminating her nervous tremor. I checked for weak spots in her arteries and veins, eliminating several possible problems. I accelerated the production of blood, restoring all that was lost in the accident.
I healed all of her minor and major skin cuts. Hell, I even restored her tattoos, including the ones given by her grandfather.
Finally, I took my hands off her and checked out my work. Aside from the new wrinkles and the patch of gray hair at her temples, she looked pretty good.
I stood with a groan and looked around. Kitty-Sue was watching the process with a predatory stare. Akiko had already started on repairing the window, as promised. All the small bits of glass had been piled up in front of the empty frame, leaving only a few large pieces.
“Boss,” said Kitty-Sue, “she has that sneaky look.”
As I looked, Terri blanked her face. Could she still be thinking about getting even? After trying to kill me, failing, and getting healed? Time for some insurance. The shape of a random piece of glass reminded me of an old fantasy story, giving me an idea.
Terri was getting up, now full of energy. I put my hand on her shoulder, keeping her on the ground. “Just one more thing,” I said, picking up a shard of glass a bit more than a foot long. It tapered down to a needle tip. This was going to take some concentration.
With my left hand on her shoulder, I held the glass in front of her face, before placing it on her chest above her heart. The tip dug into the fabric of her shirt and nicked the skin of her chest, drawing a bead of blood. I placed the heel of my right hand on the flat back of the glass. “This is going to hurt,” I said as I pushed the glass through her chest until it came out her back.
The pain must have been intense. I let her suffer a moment, then tilted her head down so she was looking at the glass dagger. I tapped the glass one, two, three times and it faded away. Her shirt had a hole where the glass had pierced her, but the skin was unblemished.
“This is insurance,” I said, staring into her green eyes. “The blade is still there. You will feel an occasional twinge to remind you. You can live a long life. But I make you this promise: if I die, you will also die.”
She scrabbled at her chest for a minute, trying to feel the glass and pull it out, almost ripping her top off in her panic. All to no avail. She looked up with trembling lips, the knowing smirk absent. I stood and offered her my hand to help her up. Instead, she scrambled backward with a look of terror on her face.
Finally getting to her feet, she licked her lips before she could talk. “Take it out, please.”
When I shook my head, she looked at Kitty-Sue. “Can you take it out?”
“Honey,” said Kitty-Sue, “I’m not a magician.” She dropped her glamour for a moment to show her fangs, ears, and swishing tail. Then she continued, “I don’t know any creature that can do what he just did, let alone reverse it.”
“How, how, how about the ghost?” Terri pleaded. “Can she take it out?”
At Akiko’s headshake, Kitty-Sue translated, “She says no.”
While we were talking, Akiko had been working on the window, encouraging the silica to return to the frame and meld together again. In the lower left corner was an empty section, like a jigsaw puzzle piece missing, in the shape of the glass dagger I had used on Terri. Stepping to a nearby alley, I grabbed an empty wine bottle from the trash. Walking over to the almost restored window, I sent a whisper of power through the green glass of the wine bottle. The glass liquefied and flowed into the window crack, filling the missing space. A quick look over the glass and the patterns engraved showed that Akiko had done a great job restoring everything. The shop’s protections were now better than before.
“See,” I said, gesturing towards the window. “As promised, your window has been restored, even the protective glyphs. Except for that little piece. That will serve as a reminder.”
We parted without saying goodbye, the murderous tattoo artist and the magician.
A few blocks later, Kitty-Sue spoke up. “Boss,” she said, “I don’t mind killing. But what you did was cruel. Tying her life to yours, she’ll never know from one minute to the next if she’s going to die or not.”
At Akiko’s giggle, Kitty-Sue jerked her head around, surprise evident in her face. Was the gentle Akiko turning into a monster?
“It’s not true,” said Akiko. “There’s no dagger in her heart! It was fake. No spell can do what he said.”
Looking at me, Kitty-Sue said, “What about the promise that if you die, she will die? Was that a lie? So, you can lie?”
“No lie,” I said. “After I die, she will die. Maybe an hour later, maybe a decade later. Nobody knows when. But it won’t be because of an imaginary dagger.”
We walked another half block, Kitty-Sue muttering to herself, deep in thought. Finally, she let out a little snort, then a giggle, then stopped to bend over laughing. I had tricked my trickster girlfriend, a rare occurrence.
The laughing stopped abruptly. “Just because you made me laugh,” she said in a voice that sent chills down my spine, “doesn’t mean I’m not going to get even for you cheating.”
Twenty-Three
Enchantments at the Exchange
The next morning, we headed back to our favorite spot in Central Park for another meditation session.
“But your tattoos are back,” Kitty-Sue said. “Why do you still need all of this meditation?”
Searching for an analogy, I said, “The tattoos are repaired and I have some excess energy from Terri’s life force, but without being able to ‘fill up’ here in New York, my tank would soon run dry.”
After meditation, we had breakfast. Over coffee and tea, we discussed our plans.
The New York Stock Exchange’s data center is located in Mahwah, New Jersey. We needed access to the site and server room. You can’t just walk into the nerve center of the world’s economy without a serious background investigation.
Fortunately, I had the resources of a billionaire behind me. Frost had provided identities and access cards for me and Kitty-Sue. Our cover story was that we were there to upgrade Selene Select Partner’s co-located switch.
Plans set, I had to make a tough call. Looking over the table at my student, I said, “Akiko-san, you would be a great help here. But there’s too much danger.”
“What danger?” she asked with a wrinkled brow. “Nothing can hurt me.”
Not quite true, but that wasn’t the point. “Not danger to you,” I said, “danger from you. One moment of your excess magical energy interfering with those computers could easily set off a financial crisis bigger than the Great Depression.”
Akiko looked at Kitty-Sue with jealous eyes. “And Kitty-Sue? Will she go?”
“Her type of magic doesn’t interfere with electronics,” I explained.
Akiko’s lips firmed. She wasn’t happy, but realized the need to split up. “Hai, Scott-Sensei. I will stay outside with the van. If you call, I can be inside in seconds.”
We got a panel van with the Selene Select Partner logo, as well as a set of Juniper switches for the job. After picking up the equipment, we found a convenient parking garage to do the modifications to the switches.
With Akiko’s assistance, I modified the switches by adding my quantum entangled glyphs to the communications ports.
The security to get into the facility would be much tougher than airport security. Our badges would be examined carefully—both the photos and the fingerprints on the back—compared to computerized records, and finally swapped for internal-use-only badges with magnetic stripes.
The only wrinkle was that the security system had biometric identifiers. Ms. Cappuccetto had b
een worried when she passed the badges over because they had the fingerprints of the real engineers, not us. I had assured her it would be no problem.
For me, it would require a trickle of magic to convince the fingerprint reader that my fingerprint matched. Kitty-Sue merely looked at the fingerprint on the back of her card for a moment, brow furrowed in concentration, stared at her fingertips for a second, then nodded. “They match now, boss,” she said.
“You’re sure?” I said. “Remember, the prints on your fingers have to be a mirror image of the prints on...” I trailed off at her raised eyebrow. Silly for me to try to tell a shapeshifter how to do her job.
The drive from New York to New Jersey took about two hours, and we arrived near nightfall.
We passed through three separate gates, each more thorough than the last, before parking in a designated slot and unloading our equipment.
As we were getting out, I said, “Kitty-Sue, we have to leave our phones here. They’re not allowed in the facility.”
“Why?” she asked, reluctant to be separated from her gadget.
“Modern phones are mini-computers,” I explained, taking her phone and adding it to mine in the van’s glove box. “They can be used to load viruses on the servers. No gadgets: no phones, no tablets, no electronic devices.”
At the facility, we had to wait while the equipment case was unpacked and examined. The security guard, an older black guy, apologized for the delay. “Sorry, we have to follow the rules.”
I leaned against the desk. “No problem at all,” I said. “We’re hourly. Take all the time you need.”
Our badges were examined and fingerprints checked against the database. I was tense when Kitty-Sue stuck her finger into the reader and it flashed red. She gave the guard her “I don’t know how that happened” wide-eyed look. The guard leaned over her right shoulder, very close and said, “Don’t worry, miss, sometimes the reader gets dirty.” He pulled a no-lint tissue from a box on the desk, sprayed it with a cleaner, and wiped down the reader. This time the light turned green. Kitty-Sue smiled her thanks at the guard, who was visibly flushing. It took him a few seconds to realize she was waiting for him to get out of the way. He reluctantly stepped aside.