Trickster

by Jeff Somers

  22

  enemies at the gate followed you kill you out of sight leave get out upstairs fire escape rusted it will hold go no go now go now behind the bar clipped is a shotgun it will misfire she is thinking of you soft warm dirty thoughts

  The voice was exactly like I’d heard it in the Skinny Fuck’s memories, except clear. Perfect. Like a snake had wriggled into my brain and lay against my eardrum. It had no tone. No inflection. It spoke continuously, without pause, without breath.

  I dropped the udug with a wince. It was like having someone whispering wetly in your ear. I looked at Mags. His face was a mask of concern. As if I was engulfed in flames only he could see. The voice was like listening to cancer, but I wanted to listen again. I picked up the leather strap instead and held the udug so it dangled between us. I got to my feet. “We need to go.”

  “You okay, Lem?” he said, scrambling up after me. “What’d it say?”

  I forced a smile. Mags needed petting. “I’m fine,” I said. “Listen—as long as I don’t overdo it, it’s fine, okay? That guy, he had this thing with him for a long fucking time. Forever. Had it against his skin constantly. I won’t do that, okay?”

  He nodded slowly, eyes wide. I had to manage Mags. He would think tackling me and knocking the udug out the window would be helping me.

  “Upstairs,” I said, gesturing at the dim rear of the bar, where a slender chain stretched across a narrow set of stairs. A sign was attached to the chain: EMPLOYEES ONLY.

  He followed me toward it. We moved at a normal pace: no rush, no hesitation. People picked up on the unusual. On the sudden, on the overly careful. When walking brazenly into an area you were clearly not supposed to be walking toward, the best way to do it was just to act there like you owned the place. “Why?”

  “We were followed,” I said. “Someone means us harm.”

  He accepted that. I added that to my thought catalog of Mags’s talents: He could just accept things. It was a more powerful skill than you might expect.

  I stepped over the chain and started up the stairs without looking back. The gloom closed over me immediately. I heard Mags making a mess of it, getting tangled in the chain. Then the moan of the old steps under his weight. Then someone down below, shouting, surprised. I started to run.

  At the top of the stairs was a door. It was unlocked, and I stepped through it into a small, crowded office. Two windows behind the desk. I jumped up on top of the desk and then down onto the floor behind it. Moving fast, I pushed the bottom sash of the left window up. Leaned down and through and pulled myself out onto the rusted, vibrating fire escape. Stood aside to let Mags join me. Voices behind us. The landing shimmied and bucked under our weight. I leaned out over the railing. Scanned the alley up and down. Didn’t see anything.

  “Come on.”

  I started down. Halfway to the street I started calculating the drop, because the fire escape was shaking so badly, rusty flakes raining down on us. My hands turned orange. Down on the damp blacktop of the alley, I had a sudden flashback. Watching the cops drive away from Hiram’s. The brake lights. Amir, Claire. Mags’s stupid fucking bird Glamour, lighting the place up for one crucial second.

  I moved my hand along the leather strap, worrying it until the udug was in my grasp again.

  left not the street they wait are patient back door of restaurant always open the dishwasher sells pills lovely pills many colors sells them out the back door for cash for blow jobs for favors owed the cooks spit in the big bowl of fried rice constantly a joke she thinks of you she wants you to rescue her and thinks how she will reward

  I let go, and felt drained, as if listening took physical energy. Instantly, I wanted to put my hand back on it, find out what else it was trying to tell me. “This way,” I croaked, turning left.

  At the end of the alley was the back of Happy Garden, a Chinese joint I’d never eaten at. The back door was open, a greasy screen door the only barrier. The smell was simultaneously good and sickening. We stepped through a tiny, tiled room with two mops and slop buckets sitting on the damp, muddy floor, and then we were in the kitchen. Three men in stained white smocks stared at us as we moved through the steam. I stared at the big bowl of fried rice as we passed it.

  No one paid us any attention in the restaurant proper. We emerged from the kitchen, walked through the largely empty dining room, and were out on the street in seconds.

  I started to clasp my hand around the udug again and then snatched it back. Turned left on impulse and started walking, Mags panting beside me, tongue out, tail wagging.

  “Where are we going?”

  I didn’t know. I wanted the udug to give me information, but I thought back on my experience reliving the Skinny Fuck’s life and realized the udug was difficult to steer. To control. It told you things, addressing pressing needs first, but it gave you a lot of unrelated information along the way. Information that might be useful, but you had to pick out the immediate stuff from the stream. I didn’t want to have the demon whispering in my ear all that time, giving me directions. The whispering was horrible, like having an ant in my brain, tunneling. But I wanted to listen. It was terrible, and I wanted it.

  But I had no time.

  I closed my fist around the udug again. It was slimy against my skin. It was warm and comforting. I almost imagined it moved.

  they are waiting word is out Rue’s Morgue your name is on their lips they are waiting waiting the warehouse on the left left left second floor green bag forgotten fifteen thousand in diamonds Harry Miller will kill his daughter tonight a man in Topeka hates you goes to sleep thinking of you she is waiting she regrets letting the night go without touching you your father is

  I snapped my hand open.

  “Jesus,” I croaked. My heart was pounding. I wanted to clutch the udug against my chest, listen to everything it had to say. I wanted to throw it into the fucking river, watch it sink. Let it whisper its secrets to the fish.

  “Lem?”

  I looked at Mags. I hadn’t realized I’d stopped dead in the middle of the sidewalk. People stepped around us, staring. I put my hand out and found Mags’s shoulder.

  “Rue’s,” I said. “Let’s get another goddamn drink.”

  • • •

  We stepped in to the familiar, smoke-filled front room of Rue’s Morgue and there were people around us immediately. Hands on my shoulders. Gently pushing. I was guided to a table and lowered into one of their unstable old wooden chairs. A tumbler of whiskey was set in front of me. Old Neilsson sat down across from me as Mags was dropped into the chair next to me.

  I blinked at the old bastard. Anxiety ate up my stomach and I looked around carefully. Thought about my blade, about Mags. Wondered if we’d be able to get some gas going if the old fuck wanted revenge.

  I looked back at him and smiled. Spread my hands.

  “Neilsson!”

  Letting my mouth shut with a click, I realized I had nothing else. No plan, no golden words.

  Neilsson leaned forward. He was a thin, ancient old fuck, with thick, bushy white hair turning yellow on the edges. Yellow fingers from years and years of cigarettes. Scars on his face, on his arms, hands—everywhere, I knew. When Neilsson finally kicked off, the coroner was going to have one for the books. A big nose that hooked down. A wide, wet mouth. Bright blue eyes that had lost nothing in clarity and power. When he was sober, Neilsson could cast a Glamour better than anyone. Could con the balls off a bull.

  When he was sober. I looked him in the eye. He was sober now.

  “Is it true?”

  I blinked at him. “What?”

  “Jesus! ‘What?’ he asks!” Neilsson said as someone placed another tumbler of whiskey in front of him. He ignored it. This told me that this was a serious meeting. This was important business, if Neilsson was going to let a drink sit in front of him. There was a rumble of noise through the crowd.

  Neilsson reached up and produced a cigarette from his ear, where I would have sworn none had been. Held
it between two gnarled, stained fingers. “Renar, kid. Mika Renar and her pet, fucking Cal Amir. The Biludha-tah-namus. Is it true? Jesus, we been looking for you two bastards.”

  I blinked. “You heard about—”

  He pounded one fist on the table. “It’s everywhere. There’s panic in the streets. Shit, boy, look around—everyone in the goddamn city is here. War council.”

  I twisted around. He was right. I didn’t know all the names, but I knew most of the faces. Men and women, Tricksters, all of us on the hustle. Some had gasams, some were solo. Some bled others, some were like me—or like I had been—and only worked their own gas.

  Turning back to Neilsson, I reached for the glass. No one of consequence. No saganustari, no enustari. Just Tricksters.

  I drained the glass and placed it carefully back on the table. Without looking up, I nodded. “It’s true.”

  The room exploded into noise. Everyone talking at once. They knew what it meant. The end of the world, the end of the living world, so that Renar would live forever. The end of them, which was the real point.

  Neilsson shouted them down with an old drunk’s authority, waving his arms. When he had quiet, he looked back at me. “What’s being done, kid? Why aren’t the big shots on the march? Jesus, this crazy bitch is going to kill us all, and there ain’t a saganustari anywhere in the fucking city, far as I can tell. Where’s the fucking cavalry?”

  I told them. I told them about Gottschalk. About the meeting in Texas while we were locked in the basement, a deal being made. The goddamn Illuminati dealt in, Renar cutting them in on the ritual so they could all live forever. I told them no one was coming.

  Neilsson took it in. The room fell silent like it was all part of the old man’s brain, ruminating. Then he nodded once, decisively, and leaned forward.

  “We’re in.”

  I blinked. “In what?”

  “You’re going up there, right? You’re going to throw a wrench into the business? We’re in. We’re all in. This is our fight as much as it’s yours. Fucking mages looking to put us all in the ground . . . We got to put them in the ground first.”

  I stared. Looked around. Grim faces. Serious faces. Even Mags looked moved, wise, like a man who had seen death peeking around the corner but had opted not to alter course. I understood why they thought this mattered, why they thought a room full of fucking small-time grifters with a spark could go up against Mika Renar and Cal Amir and every other ustari of any caliber. Because I had the same feeling. We had nothing to fucking lose.

  “Is this it?” I said by way of doing due diligence. By way of making them feel it, understand it. “Not a single ustari, huh? Anyone with a whiff of power, sitting at home tonight, blue balls waiting for immortality to light them up? Just us freaks, then.”

  A soft ripple of laughter swept through the crowd. Then a tall old man shouldered his way from the rear. He looked like he’d been in a fight, and lost. His lined old face was purple and yellow. His hands, long fingers and big, gnarly knuckles, were scabbed all over. One front tooth was just a bloody shard.

  “There’s me,” Ev Fallon said softly.

  23

  We were forming an army of assholes. The udug reminded me of this every time I touched it.

  In a fit of collective insanity, I was the general of the operation. By virtue of being the only one of us aside from Fallon to have any direct experience with Renar or her house. And because all of a sudden everyone thought I had ability. Everyone suddenly quoted Hiram. Hiram telling everyone, apparently, that I was a bitter disappointment to him because I had a gift. I had a way with the Words. I could whittle any spell down to a quickness. But I wouldn’t bleed people.

  Only, now I was bleeding people.

  I sat in the back room of Rue’s. A bottle of single malt, a thick glass tumbler, and an ashtray on the table in front of me. Pitr Mags overflowed a chair, leaning against the wall behind me. Apparently asleep. Mags had a talent for looking asleep. It was part of the protective coloring that had kept him alive this long despite his congenital idiocy.

  Ketterly had floated in with Daryl. All the grifters had taken pity on Daryl, who was still pining for Claire with the adolescent kind of stoicism that inspired pity. Me, I was keeping my eye on the boy. The glyphs on Claire were one possible explanation for his ongoing devotion, but I was beginning to wonder if Daryl was really just the sort who naturally fell in love with tall leggy girls with short dark hair and a few homicides under their belt. Hell, I thought, that described me, and no one had Charmed me into anything. I didn’t know exactly why the thought bothered me—that if we took the Charm off he’d still be mooning about with a bouquet of fucking flowers in one callous hand for her—but it did. And I kept reminding myself that just because I could cast an anti-Charm on him without even having to bleed for it didn’t mean I should.

  It was getting harder and harder to remember that.

  They came one after the other, offering up their services. I was dividing them into Bleeders and folks who actually had some skill, some tricks that would be useful. When I needed a little help, I pushed my hand into my pocket, where the udug was strangely warm, and touched it for a second or two. It told me something about the person in front of me, then kept trying to say something about Mags.

  she has forgotten a spell you will find useful yes you must push her hard to remember the horses remember the horses Pitr Mags is

  I removed my hand every time. I didn’t want to know. I didn’t care if the end of the sentence was going to stab you in the face—I didn’t want to know.

  Every time I touched the udug, my heart pounded in my chest, my hands shook. I hated it. But it was getting easier to tolerate it, and easier to guide. It was all about willpower. You had to concentrate. You could force it to stay on subject. But the second you slipped, the second you lost focus, it veered off and started whispering about something else. It told me where fifty thousand dollars was buried out in Queens. It told me which women I knew would sleep with me if I asked. It told me about women I didn’t know who would sleep with me. It told me Neilsson was already halfway to drunk and would be passed out within two hours, and that I could not trust him. It told me that the winning lottery numbers tomorrow would be 34-5-7-19-23-1 in the state of Rhode Island. It told me the winnings would be six and a half million dollars. It told me where my father was. It told me he hadn’t thought of me in six years. Not even a thought.

  I nodded at the woman sitting across from me. The udug hadn’t told me what, exactly, her spell was. “You’re in,” I said, reaching for the bottle. “Remember the horses.”

  She froze, halfway out of the wooden chair. She was a beat-up old battle-ax. Bleached, wiry hair. A layer of makeup that would defy most modern tools. She was wearing too many coats, though the precise number of them was mysterious. Her mouth had the perpetually wet look of badly fitted dentures. But the udug had told me she had at least one useful spell, so she could keep her sleeves rolled down.

  She stared at me for a moment, startled, then turned and shuffled back to the main part of the bar.

  As she left the room, a kid was sauntering in. I hated him on sight. Sixteen, seventeen, all pimples and swagger. He smirked at me as he dropped into the chair across from me, and it made me feel mean.

  I put my hand on the udug.

  jimmy marbles they called him jimmy marbles he masturbates three times a day thinks no one knows everyone knows all the people in his building he forgets to close the shades ask him about the dog ask him about Boogie where’s Boogie where’s Boogie

  I lifted my hand. I didn’t want it to tell me he knew some amazing old spell, time travel or nuclear holocaust or something. I smirked back at him, feeling mean.

  “Tell me about Boogie,” I said. “The dog.”

  The transformation was instant. His smirk dripped away, leaving a hollowed-out stare. He sat there for a moment, visibly shaking, then stood up and without a word turned and left the room. I watched him go, triumph souri
ng into anger and regret. What the fuck had that accomplished?

  But it had felt good.

  This was becoming a mythmaking session. No one but Mags knew about the udug. To everyone else I was becoming more Messiah-like with each passing moment. I could see the long con: Using the udug, I would know things. Just know things. Combined with a few easy tricks, a couple of mu that were more flash than substance, and I could build up a following. A cult. Throw in a few dedicated Bleeders, I’d be rich. An ustari—maybe even saganustari if I learned a few big spells. And I could learn big spells. Hell, I could write big spells.

  I wouldn’t be some fat asshole like Gottschalk, or a fancy dandy like Amir. I’d bring everyone with me. A rising ship and all that. All these Tricksters, I’d bring the circus along for the ride. My court. I saw myself, hotel to hotel, first-class everything. Me and Mags and Claire and room service and limousines and one day Renar sends a note, asks for an audience. Invites me to a meeting of the Illuminati, wants my input on how

  the world should be ordered and Claire will be impressed Claire thinks she is above silk sheets and endless credit lines and private jets but Claire will

  I jumped, pulling my hand off the udug. I hadn’t consciously touched it. I hadn’t realized I was daydreaming. Sweat covered me from head to toe, soaking into my clothes.

  I shook my head and the vision dissolved. I felt cold. Clammy. Anything that sprung from the udug and its whispered, monotone advice would be poisoned. Rotten. I put it on the table, behind my bottle.

  “Jesus,” I spat, pouring myself some booze. “What the fuck are we going to do up there? Renar’s an Archmage, for fuck’s sake. We’re fucking con artists. We can’t all steal her wallet.”

  Mags said nothing.

  I drank off whiskey and waited for Neilsson and Ketterly to send back the next asshole. Fucking Tricksters. Barely a combat spell among them, and the ones they did have were fucking jokes. I wouldn’t take two dozen of them to assault a liquor store, much less Mika fucking Renar.