by Ira Bloom
“Truly, a tragedy,” the Ancient agreed. He paused for some moments, out of respect for the Sharp family. “You know, Barry, I feel that you are precisely the type of man I’ve been looking for since I arrived here in the United States. Do you have any familiarity with American tax law and international financial matters?”
“Well, I do estate planning, and I work with a CPA and a tax attorney.”
“That’s excellent,” Drake returned. “I have some assets in Europe that need to be liquidated and transferred here, and I’d like to send a representative, someone with stature, to sign documents as proxy and to assure that all the tax implications are compliant with American code. Rather large sums of money, in fact. I simply cannot go myself; there were some dissolutions of partnerships, and my presence would only exacerbate hard feelings. I need someone whom I can trust. I will see to it that you are very well compensated for your time.”
“I’d be pleased to do it, Drake,” Barry granted. “I have a hearing on the eighteenth, but after that I suppose I can clear my schedule.”
Drake Kallas again took Barry’s hand in his and looked him square in the eyes. “It has to be next week, Barry. This is far more important than your other business.”
Barry’s eyes went out of focus for a moment, and his head bobbed in agreement. “Yeah, this business is far more urgent than whatever that other thing was. I’ll get a postponement.”
“That’s excellent,” Drake approved, much to Barry’s pleasure. “How shall we proceed?”
“An itinerary would help. And I’ll draft a power of attorney. It will have to be notarized, but I have people. Do you have a signature stamp? We can have one made … ”
“I have one,” Drake assured. “And in the meantime, if any more of these insinuations should prompt the police to enquire about missing persons?”
“Just refer them to me,” Barry assured. “You had nothing to do with the disappearances of any young women.” In the truth of that statement, Barry was quite confident.
In the car, on the way back to their mansion, Drake praised Zack. “You’ve done well, minion. I have a sense for these things, and those three are exquisite.”
“I learned from the best,” Zack returned, hating himself for craving the Master’s praise.
The Ancient was not immune to flattery. “The youngest will be like a nuanced white Burgundy, and the oldest, a first growth Bordeaux in an excellent vintage. But the middle sister, that’s the treat. Young vintage port, unless I miss my guess.”
“So … ” Zack concluded. “It’s to be Katy, then?”
“Why choose?” The Master asked rhetorically. “The hat trick, I should think. I’ve just sent their father off to Europe.”
On leaving, Zack had kissed each of the sisters in turn. The kiss had been very chaste, just on the lips, but it was the first time Esme’s lips had touched his, and the sensation lingered. She’d felt the spark. People either had chemistry or they didn’t, and she was certain, from the kiss and the little squeeze he gave her, that the chemistry was obvious to both parties.
Still, Esme needed to check her potion, cross-referencing all the components against her organizational list. Friday night she’d channel the eldritch energies while she combined all the ingredients in a six-quart Le Creuset stockpot. She had only to boil the extraction down, with periodic chanting, to complete the potion. And then she was going to steal Zack’s heart.
Kasha jumped up onto the worktable. He sniffed a distillation in a beaker. “So I saw you kissing that boy, through the kitchen window.”
“Zack? Isn’t he dreamy?”
“I can certainly understand what all the fuss is about,” the cat agreed. “You know he’s a vampire, right? And the older one, too.”
“Oh my Goddess,” Esme exclaimed. “You’re worse than Norman. Zack has photosensitivity. Just because he’s pale doesn’t make him a horror movie monster.”
“No, but being undead and drinking people’s blood is a pretty good indication.”
“Well I don’t happen to believe in vampires,” she argued.
“Said the witch to the demon.”
“Just … lay off, okay?” she commanded, exasperated. “I really want this, and you’re not going to talk me out of it, so why don’t you go outside and kill something?”
Kasha jumped down from the lab table and headed back toward the cat door. “Talk you out of it? Moi?” He jumped up, level by level, to the top of the cat contraption, before he turned for the last word. “At least, not until I figure out how to play this to my best advantage.”
Monday night at last. Becoming an irresistible beauty was a thing that Esme would do just once in her life, and she intended to watch her transformation in the mirror. The potion had been the most difficult, time-consuming project she’d ever undertaken, but she expected stellar results. She’d strained the solids off the potion with an unbleached coffee filter and distilled the remaining liquid a final time while chanting ancient rhymes that sounded like gibberish. The end product was about an ounce of liquid and brownish, per spec. It was in a small brown glass vial with a cork stopper. Kasha had sniffed at it and pronounced it good.
Esme positioned herself in a chair in front of her closet door, which had a full-length mirror on it, and pulled the stopper out of the vial. Kasha had chased all the other cats out of the room so they wouldn’t misdirect any of her mojo. She’d smudged the room with sage and mugwort. “Here goes nothing,” she proclaimed, holding the vial up. She was jittery with nerves. She was really going to do it. In a moment. Okay, in another moment.
“I did explain to you about the price for invoking this magic, didn’t I?” Kasha mentioned.
Esme moved the vial away from her lips. “No. You didn’t. It’s too late, I’m going through with it. You should have said something before I spent three weeks working on it.”
“Sorry,” said the cat. “I’m sure it’s nothing. Carry on.”
Esme stood and paced. The price of magic. Precisely the thing her mother had always warned her about. “So tell me already,” she demanded. The stupid demon was tormenting her.
“Think nothing of it.”
Esme scanned the surface of the lab table for something to hit him with, something heavy enough to dent his thick skull. “Are all demons this exasperating?” she asked.
“Demons? No, it’s a cat thing.”
“You’ve gained weight. I think you should go on dry food for a while.”
“I really have no idea what the price will be,” Kasha gave. “You might turn evil. Or it may be nothing at all. On the other hand, he’s a vampire who’s going to drink your blood and ultimately kill you, so whatever the side effects are, it’s a fairly moot point.”
“I don’t believe anything bad you say about Zack,” she said. Though the hairs on her neck were standing on end. Turn evil? Her mother had warned her not to do that.
“Of course not. He’s mesmerized you. Anyway, it will probably just lower your IQ by thirty points—”
“Lower my IQ by thirty points?” she yelled. “And you almost didn’t tell me?”
“I really don’t know. But the universe usually doesn’t allow people to be as smart as you and as beautiful as you’re going to be. There’s a trade-off. I suppose we could consult someone … ”
“Who? My mom?”
“I know a guy,” Kasha said. “But we’ll need to summon him.”
It took most of Tuesday afternoon for Esme to assemble the pentacle to the specs in the family grimoire on her hard drive. “Does the size matter?” she’d asked Kasha for guidance.
“Microcosm, macrocosm, it’s all the same to a demon. Just make sure the lines are perfect. And we’re doing the containment runes in Hebrew, they have to be perfect, too.”
Kasha was extremely impressed with the finished product when he returned later that night. “That’s genius, Esme. What do you call that?”
“A portable pentacle,” she explained. “I’ve gotten the top grad
e on every project in school for ten years, not to mention blue ribbon in every science fair. This is nothing; you should have seen my diorama of Lincoln and Booth at Ford’s Theatre.”
“It’s so shiny. How’d you get the Hebrew letters to sparkle like that?”
“Glitter. I used one of my mom’s old hatboxes, because it was round, then I printed out the runes from the computer and glued them around the inside. Then I traced them all in Elmer’s glue and sifted glitter over it until it dried.”
“The angles have to be perfect.” Kasha walked around the open hatbox, inspecting it.
“I used a compass,” she explained. “I cut out a perfect circle from plywood with a jigsaw to fit the inside the box. Then I traced a concentric magic circle inside, used a protractor to make the pentagram, and hammered nails through from the bottom at the points of the star. I traced the lines of the star with a ruler, put down more glue, and sifted ocean sand on top. When the glue dried, I had a perfect pentangle made of sand, and we don’t have to worry about the lines being broken, because they’re permanent. The ceremonial candles are centered on the nails.”
“Genius. Now listen, Esme. You have to do the ceremony, but don’t worry about all the Talmudic mumbo-jumbo, you can do it in English. This is the twenty-first century, we’re all pretty cosmopolitan now. And none of that ‘I command you to appear in the name of Mephistopheles’ stuff. In fact, don’t ever mention any of the demon lords by name, especially with an open pentacle.” Kasha swished his tail nervously. “I need that like a tumor on my ass. Just be polite, introduce yourself, mention my name, ask for Shikker, and say you’d like a courtesy consultation.”
Esme smudged the room, this time with sage and lavender. She lit the candles of the pentacle and made obeisance to the north, south, east, and west. With a demon cat to channel her intent, Esme felt herself making contact immediately.
“Uh … hello?” she asked the pentacle. “Is anyone there?”
The candles flickered. Esme felt a sensation like maggots crawling under her decomposing flesh. There was a palpable absence of sound, like shadows screaming in a billion silent voices, and the wafting scent of brimstone. Kasha nudged her with a paw to proceed.
“My name is Esmeralda Silver, I’m here with Kasha. Uh … please don’t be offended if I’m doing this wrong, it’s my first time. We’d like to have a courtesy consultation with Shikker.”
There was a puff of smoke from the middle of the pentacle, and a toy-sized imp appeared. He had row upon row of nasty sharp teeth like a shark’s in an enlarged mouth, and twisty horns that appeared to have no coherent direction. He was clad only in a loincloth. He was rust red all over and had wrinkly, leathery skin, like an elephant’s hide. Eerie blue flames danced over him, especially around the horn region of his head.
“Oy,” said the imp, looking up from his tiny perspective within the hatbox. “Kasha, you schnorrer, first time I’m up here in fifty years and you’ve called me for a farshtinkener pro bono?”
“Shikker, it’s not like that,” the cat cajoled. “I think I’m onto something big here.”
The imp was looking around the hatbox at the Hebrew runes. “Hey, sparkly! Nice touch. You got anything to drink around here?”
“Esme, this is my lawyer, Shikker. Give him the offering.” Esme retrieved a test tube full of amber fluid, sealed with a rubber stopper. “Just hand it straight down.”
“It’s nice to meet you,” Esme said, doing as instructed. Shikker grabbed the test tube out of her hand as she lowered it. He ripped the stopper out without decorum and stuck his prodigious nose into the test tube. “Scotch,” he mentioned with approval. “My favorite.” He took a huge swig. With his diminutive size, drinking from the test tube was equivalent to Esme drinking out of a ten-gallon aquarium. “Chivas Regal,” he noted, smacking his lips.
“The guy knows his Scotch,” Kasha said. “Don’t ever go on a binge with Shikker here, he’s nuts. Remember Frisco, ’64?”
“They hate when you call it Frisco,” Shikker reminded him, swigging Scotch.
“That’s why I do it,” Kasha confided.
“I’m not surprised to hear from you,” Shikker said. “I hear you’re behind on your quota. Rumor has it your old boss has half the accounting department auditing your account, waiting for the exact second when he can unleash the hounds of hell to drag your sorry ass back to the nastiest pits of Tartarus.”
“I’m working on it, okay?” Kasha hissed. His tail flailed in agitation, ears pivoting back and forth as if desperately straining for the sounds of baying hounds.
“Nu,” Shikker said amiably, with the satisfaction of torment delivered. “Fregen der kashes.”
“This is regarding my present contract, under the name Becky Proctor. You did the paperwork.”
“Too bad they don’t trust you to do your own anymore,” the imp chortled.
“The contract was for three generations of service. Esme is the last generation. My question is, if Esme here becomes a vampire and lives to be a thousand years old, the contract is still good, isn’t it? I can stay topside for a thousand more years, right?”
“What in the hell are you talking about?” Esme protested. “Who said anything about me becoming a vampire?”
“She’s in denial,” the cat explained.
“I schlep all the way here from the other realm for this pilpul?” Shikker waved the Scotch about imploringly at Esme, for sympathy. “Two hundred years this nudnik spent in contracting, and he forgets the first rule of making a pact between a human and a demon.”
“I didn’t forget it,” the cat denied, miffed. “The human party has to put his soul on the line in the contract. Which Becky did, for three generations. What, are you telling me a vampire doesn’t have a soul?”
“A vampire has got bubkes for a soul,” Shikker said, drinking from his test tube. “If your tsatske here becomes a vampire, your contract is kaput.”
“Really? No soul? How do they stay animated?”
“By ingesting the life forces of their victims,” the red demon explained. Impossibly, he’d already managed to drink almost a fourth of the Scotch. “Yeah, I’ve had some experience with vampires. They hang on to their souls for a few years while they absorb the souls of their victims by ingesting their lifeblood. They become a kind of receptacle for all the souls they’ve stolen, and their original soul sort of fades away into the crowd. The stolen life forces are the source of their powers. The more souls they absorb, the more powerful they become. The souls stay there inside the vampire until somebody kills it, then they go where they would have gone in the first place, to heaven or hell. The vampire’s soul sort of un-comingles itself, and everything gets sorted out. We always drag the vampire’s re-amalgamated soul to hell, that’s a no-brainer. But most of the stolen souls go the other way. Vampires tend to prey on the innocent.”
“So the contract would become invalid if Esme became a vampire,” Kasha said.
“Yeah. It’s a shame.” Shikker shook his head gravely. “If some genius could figure out how to harvest a vampire, it would be quite a haul. All those unclaimed souls, even if you lost ninety percent of them to the heavenly host, you’d still make a pretty shekel.”
“Yeah,” Kasha mused. “Somebody should work an angle on all those unclaimed souls.”
“Well, I should be getting back. I’ll just take the rest of this Scotch to go.”
“Hey,” Esme said. “I thought we’d called you in for a consultation about my beauty potion.”
Shikker shrugged. “Not my area of expertise.”
“But I worked really hard on it, and I want to know what will happen to me if I take it.”
“You’re a bit of a yutz, aren’t you?” Shikker asked. “Listen, bubee, it all depends on your intention. If you give a beauty potion to some poor schmo who needs it, out of the goodness of your heart, there’s no fault in that. But if you’re asking a demon lawyer are there any loopholes, because your intention is malum in se, uh … you c
apiche?”
Between her magic and law studies, Esme understood the Latin. “Wrong in itself?”
“Smart girl. I think you have your answer. You’ll get what you deserve. And then some.” And with that, the candles extinguished themselves and Shikker was gone.
“Your friends are the coolest,” Esme told Kasha as the sulfurous smoke the imp left behind billowed up in a tiny mushroom cloud. Already, all the talk of vampires was fading from her memory. “I’d like to have him back, just to hang out. Do you think he’d visit again, if I got a really good bottle of Scotch?”
“He likes the 18-year-old Macallan,” the cat advised. “But don’t be fooled, if you let him out of the pentangle, he’ll eat your face.”
“Yeah, I guess so,” she sighed. She was exhausted. “Because he’s a demon, right?”
“No, that’s a lawyer thing.”
“What do you think, Aunt Becky?” Katy asked, holding up the little brown vial.
Aunt Becky’s wispy, ephemeral form hovered over the love potion. “Looks like a winner to me, child,” she replied in her eerie, raspy voice. “I hope this boy is worth the immortal soul you’re damning to hell for eternity.”
“Don’t worry about me, Aunt Becky. This is true love, the most redeeming force in the universe. He just doesn’t realize it yet, is all. He needs a push. And then I’ll love him forever, a perfect love. What could be wrong about that?”
“How do I know? I’ve been dead for decades. And I have no moral authority to lecture you. I had a lot of talents in my day, but good judgment wasn’t one of them.”
“I know you’ll approve, when you meet him.”
“When are you giving it to him?” asked the apparition, gathering her ectoplasm about her.
“It’s almost Wednesday. There are three more school days until winter break. I’ve made a date to meet him in private on Sunday, which is the solstice.”
“An auspicious day,” Aunt Becky’s spirit agreed. “Mix the potion with some juice or tea. He has to be next to you when he drinks it, because whoever he’s with, that’s who he’ll love. He’ll imprint on your scent, and his hormones will ramp up whenever you’re around. And he’ll obsess about you when you’re not around. We should get started on the antidote right away. He’ll get so annoying, you’ll want to be rid of him pretty soon.”