by M. D. Massey
I sauntered up to the beast he was working on. “A Gremlin, huh? Horsepower and ugly, all in one package. Ed have a buyer for this, or are you just pulling parts?”
He shook his head and pulled out a worn leather tobacco pouch and some rolling papers, proceeding to roll a cigarette with surprisingly steady hands. A month prior he would never have been able to manage it, not the way his hands used to shake. It was yet another sign of his recovery. I had to credit him that, at least.
“Naw, just a personal project. Something I’ve been messing with to pass the time.” He lit his cigarette and took a long drag, pointing it at me as he licked a fleck of tobacco from his lip and spat it out. “You look like someone looking for advice.”
He was baiting me and he knew that I knew it. I hadn’t wanted or needed to come to Finn for anything since Jesse died, because I still blamed him for her death. He blamed himself as well, but no amount of self-castigation on his part was enough to make me forgive him. The request I was about to make sat like a lump in my throat, a bone stuck in my craw that I couldn’t spit out and couldn’t swallow.
I took a deep breath and steeled myself. “I need your help.”
Rather than rubbing it in, he simply nodded and puffed once on his cigarette, latching the Gremlin’s hood and tossing his rag into the front seat after wiping his hands one final time.
“Give me a minute,” he said, and walked off toward the old van he stayed in at the back of the yard.
I sat on a stack of used tires and rims to wait, and Rufus showed up and laid his head on my lap. I scratched him behind his ears and was thankful for the company. Dogs had always understood me—or at least I felt like they did, which I suppose was just as comforting. I reached into my Craneskin Bag and pulled out a liver treat for him.
No sooner than Rufus had gobbled it up, Roscoe came trotting out from behind the rusted frame of a Ford pickup, tongue lolling and tail wagging. I tossed him a treat as well, and then treated them to a short game of fetch until Finn returned. Both dogs lost interest in me when the old man arrived, falling in behind him like a presidential detail. The old druid still had a way with nature’s creatures, that was certain. He was wearing jeans that were almost clean, leather work boots, and a white tee under a long-sleeve retro western shirt. He almost looked presentable.
“How’d you know I needed you to come with me?”
His eyes narrowed and he looked away. “You’d hold it against me if I said.”
He spat and began walking toward the office, waving at me over his shoulder.
“C’mon, we haven’t got all day. I got the keys to the yard truck. Take me to see what has you so bent out of shape.”
I filled Finn in on the way over, and on our arrival I parked around the corner from the abandoned house to avoid notice. We snuck in through the alley as I had done earlier. Normally Finn would cast a see-me-not spell to hide us both, but his magic was still weak and unreliable. A few years of heavy-duty heroin use would do that to you, apparently. He didn’t have much to say about it—except that it would come back, eventually. And since I didn’t have enough juice to hide us both, we snuck in the old-fashioned way.
Probably wouldn’t matter much if anyone saw us anyway—they’d just assume we were using the house to smoke meth or crack. We both looked just shy of respectable, which meant that we blended in fine with the neighborhood regulars. We snuck into the house without a hitch. No sooner had we entered the building than Finn was waving a hand in front of his face.
“Son of a bitch, but that smells bad. You can never get used to the smell of decomposition. I don’t care how much time you spend around dead bodies.” He sniffed again, moving his head back and forth until he homed in on the bedroom that contained the necromantic evidence I’d found.
“Hmmm. Whoever this person is, they sure aren’t subtle about their craft.”
Finn walked down the hall and gently pushed on the door. As the door cracked open, he staggered back and leaned against the wall to steady himself.
“Are you alright?” I asked.
“Sorry,” he muttered. “It’s just affecting me—the magic.”
He glanced at me and his brow furrowed. “That isn’t bothering you at all? You’re not affected by that,” he gestured toward the room, “in any way whatsoever?”
I shrugged. “No, not at all. Does that mean something?”
He shook his head slightly. “Must have something to do with the curse. Refresh my memory—how many cases did you and Jesse work that involved necromancy?”
His voice only caught slightly at the mention of her name. I decided that I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of noticing.
“Just the one: that goth kid who found those spells in his grandmother’s attic. Remember that case? He was killing all his neighbor’s pets, then raising them back from the dead. Kind of an exercise in magical masturbation, to be honest. We tracked down all the animals, burned them to a crisp, and then destroyed the spell book he was using just to be sure. You hired a witch to mind wipe him, and that was the last we heard of it.”
I’d hated that case. The whole time we’d worked it, something had felt off in the pit of my stomach. The closer we’d gotten to where he performed the rituals, the worse it got. The nausea and sensation of wrongness had remained until we’d destroyed every last bit of evidence.
I felt none of that sensation now. Not cool.
“So, what you’re saying is that I should be feeling those same sensations of discomfort that I felt during that case?”
Finn rolled a smoke, licking the paper and smoothing the seam down before putting it to his lips. He lit it with a cheap pocket lighter and leaned against the wall as he took a drag.
“Worse, actually. What that kid did was child’s play compared to the rituals done here. This necromancer has been honing their craft for a long, long time.”
The old man pushed off the wall with an effort and entered the room, shivering as he crossed through the doorway. He stopped dead in his tracks when he saw the runes on the walls and floor.
“Have you seen any of this magic before?” I asked.
He shook his head, but his eyes said otherwise. I decided to let it be, for now. Finn knelt in front of the summoning circle and extended a hand toward it, stopping at some imaginary boundary that I hadn’t noticed.
“Do me a favor and reach over this circle.”
I did, and felt nothing. “Am I supposed to be affected by it?”
He squinted and pursed his lips. “Normally, yes. A druid’s magic relies on the natural order of things—life, and the continuity thereof. Necromancy is the exact opposite of what we do. We use life and the energy around us to perform magic—gathering it, focusing it, and magnifying it. Necromancy, on the other hand, interrupts and diverts it. In other words, druidry is harmony with nature, while necromancy is a distortion or destruction of the natural order.”
I rolled my eyes. “I remember my basic magic classes, Finn. The question is, why is it affecting you and not me?”
He puffed on his cigarette and blew smoke around the room. Wispy tendrils probed the circle and withdrew, while others conformed to the shape of the runes on the walls and ceiling. As smoke surrounded each symbol, it took on a pale silver luminescence. With each rune that was altered, I noticed Finn stand just a bit straighter. The tight lines in his face relaxed.
“I don’t care to speculate just yet. Give me some time to look into this, and I’ll share what I find once I have more information.”
He waved his cigarette at the circle on the floor, which had not been surrounded by his magic.
“Since you’re not currently affected by this filth, we can use that to our advantage. Break the circle and symbols on the floor, and while you’re doing that I’ll take a look at this ghoul you killed and dispose of it as well.”
I snapped some pictures with my phone, thinking they might come in handy later. Then I did as he asked, smudging out the runes and glyphs inside the circle o
ne by one. As I broke each rune, the smoke and luminescence around a corresponding rune on the wall or ceiling dissipated.
After I scuffed out the last symbol in the circle, I pulled a can of spray paint from my Craneskin Bag and marked out all the remaining runes. Now no one who stumbled across this mess would be able to copy it. The last thing we needed was some teen stumbling across this place and reproducing it elsewhere. Accidental magic was more dangerous than intentional magic, and preventing it from happening was always a top priority on jobs like this one.
Finn walked back in just as I finished. “I took care of fatso for you. She’ll be completely decomposed by this evening.”
“Just because she’s a ghoul doesn’t mean you have the right to body shame her. She was human once, you know.”
He scowled. “Would you prefer that I created a safe space for her instead?”
I shook my head. “Never mind. How’d you manage to get rid of her?”
“It’s a simple cantrip—I could show you, if you have time.”
“Maybe later. Just tell me how to track this necromancer down so I can deal with him.”
Finn looked away, dropping his cigarette butt to the floor and crushing it under his heel.
“You can’t, at least not until he shows up again and raises more dead. But this person is bad news, Colin, and I don’t suggest that you take him on alone. My advice is that you go talk to Maeve and see if she can’t provide you with some assistance—both in tracking this fucker and in disposing of him once you find him.”
I sighed. “Just what I need, to become further indebted to Maeve.”
He scowled. “She only has as much power over you as you allow. Besides, she needs you as much as you need her. Once you accept that, her hold over you will be broken. But enough talk—I’m starving. Let’s go get some tacos.” He pulled the keys out and jingled them in front of my face.
“I’m driving, so I guess that means you’re buying.”
Too tired to argue, I nodded in agreement and followed him out of the house, reflecting on how his rolling gait and clothes made him look like a washed up rodeo cowboy, not a two-thousand-year-old sage and druid. Something told me I was out of my depth with this case, and I suspected I’d need his help again before this thing was done.
Hard as it would be to ask, I figured he owed me that much.
Chapter Seven
I tried calling Luther on the way back to the yard. No joy. He was old school, like old-old school, and rarely answered the phones at the cafe when he served customers.
“I don’t do take out, so I can’t understand why someone would call,” he’d say. “Can’t they just come in and speak in person? I swear, technology has spoiled people on manners and common sense.”
He reminded me a lot of my mother when he got on his soap box about it.
Anyway, as expected I didn’t get an answer, so I wasted no time in getting over there after I drove Finn and his tacos back to the junkyard. The place was busy with a lunchtime crowd when I arrived, so I waved at Luther from behind the line and pointed at the back room. He must have recognized the concern on my face, because he frowned slightly as he nodded.
He handed things off to one of his part-time baristas and tapped me on the shoulder as he walked by. I followed him to the rest room area, where he unlocked a door marked “MANAGEMENT” and waved me inside. Beyond sat a cramped office space that he rarely used. He rolled back a bookcase that sat in the corner behind his desk, revealing a set of stairs that led up to his second-floor apartment.
“I figure it’s serious business, by the look on your face when you walked in. Lock the office door behind you, kid.”
I obeyed and marched up the stairs after him. I’d been in his apartment before, but it had changed somewhat since the holiday party I’d attended the previous year. His place had been brightly decorated back then, but now it seemed more drab and less inviting. I imagined that was because his ex, Victor, had moved out. Luther had never explained why, and I didn’t ask about it.
I assumed it might have had something to do with immortality and Victor’s lack thereof, which was a common theme among vampire-human relations. Once a human was clued in to the world beneath and they found out their lover could grant them immortality, it was bound to cause problems at some point. I mean, who wants to grow old while their lover never shows so much as a wrinkle as the years progress? But as far as I knew, Luther had never made another vampire; I’d never met any of his progeny, and he’d never mentioned any, either. He was also a closed book in regard to his personal life, and I made it a point to respect his privacy.
He sat ramrod straight on the edge of a Victorian-style pearl leather sofa, and looked me in the eye. Taking the cue, I sat across from him on a very uncomfortable matching leather chair. That was one thing about the older undead; they forgot all about how important comfort was to humans. Walk into any ancient vampire’s home, and you were bound to find it furnished with couches and chairs that would make school cafeteria benches seem lush.
“So, what is it? Is it one of mine?” The way he was sitting stock still creeped me out. I supposed he was expecting the worst—was this how Luther acted when he was nervous?
“No, nothing like that. But, it’s bad. It looks like we have a necromancer on our hands.”
Luther fixed me with an unblinking stare for what seemed like an hour, but it must have only been thirty seconds or so. If I didn’t know any better, I might have said that his skin grew ashen, but it was probably just a trick of the light. Most vamps used make-up to appear more lifelike, and combined with practiced gestures and forced patterns of breathing, it allowed them to pass for human. Luther always had a slight blush on his cheeks and a natural way of moving, especially around humans; he’d had centuries to practice, after all. I’d never seen his carefully polished facade falter, and to anyone but the most practiced eye, he appeared human in every last detail.
He looked away, finally, noticing my discomfort. “Can you dispose of this—this abomination? Before it gets out of hand?”
“I’m not sure. Finn says this necromancer is powerful. I’ll likely need to bring in some help, but I’ll do my best.”
His chin dipped slightly. “Good. That’s good. Thank you. I’ll make sure you have everything you need.”
For the first time since I’d known him, Luther appeared out of sorts. And he was freaking me out.
“Please, keep me posted. In the meantime, I’ll call someone reliable to ward the cafe, and instruct my people to have their homes warded and to stay inside as much as possible. The last thing we need is an incident.”
“I’d do it for you, but I don’t know all that much about necromancy. Sorry, Luther.”
He smiled, but the way he was acting gave me chills rather than putting me at ease.
“That’s fine, Colin. Just focus on finding him. I don’t need to tell you that if one of my people were to fall under the control of someone so evil—well, it would be a catastrophe.”
“Understood. I’ll do my best.”
As I stood to go he remained seated, not moving or breathing at all. I suppressed a shiver. Then his head snapped toward me, unnaturally quick, and his eyes fixed me with an almost predatory look.
“You’ll understand if I don’t show you out? I have some people to contact, and much to do.”
My voice faltered a little as I replied. “Sure, ahem—no problem. I’ll call when I find something out, alright? Just make sure to answer your phone. Or get a cell phone, and call me so I have your number.”
I stalled at the door to the stairs. “Luther?”
His head turned slowly to acknowledge me.
“I’ll make this right.” He nodded once more, and I headed out the door to find this monster who gave other monsters pause.
On leaving Luther’s, I stopped to check my voicemail. Hemi had left me a frantic message, saying he was at central booking and being held for questioning in a murder case. Since I was the only real
friend he had in town, he needed me to find him a lawyer to get him released and cleared. Great, one more favor I’ll have to ask of Maeve. He was a stand-up guy, so no way was I going to leave him hanging.
I hopped on my scooter and headed for the queen’s mini-mansion, racking my brains for a way around asking Maeve for assistance. I pulled up to her place about twenty minutes later, dreading what I was about to do. The problem was, Hemi was a supernatural, and therefore had probably gotten mixed up in the case under supernatural circumstances. Such situations required a lawyer who was clued in to the world beneath. Since I didn’t know any supernatural attorneys, and since Maeve was beyond wealthy and the most well-connected individual I knew, I was pretty much stuck with asking her for a referral.
The last thing I wanted was to get further into debt with Maeve. Finn could jabber all he wanted about how she only had as much power over me as I allowed, but the truth of it was she had me over a barrel. Maeve had recently revealed she was nearly the sole benefactor and financier behind my mother’s career as an artist, and she’d amassed a tremendous collection of her work over the years. If she wanted, she could ruin my mother’s career at any moment by flooding the market with her pieces. I couldn’t allow that to happen, so for now I was Maeve’s errand boy.
I headed up her front walk, her new security staff eyeing me the entire way. After I’d killed her previous security guard, Ookla’s son, she’d opted for a pair of gargoyles to guard her entrance. Strange choice, but smart. They were loyal, tough, and would be on guard 24/7. I wondered if I could take them. The trolls hadn’t put up much of a fight; perhaps the stone guardians would present more of a challenge. No need to find out today, though.
I never had figured out how Ookla’s son and Crowley had been connected. They’d been trying to start a war between the fae and the local wolf pack, as a distraction to throw Maeve off Crowley’s trail. There had been other players involved, and I suspected one of them was Maeve’s granddaughter many generations removed, Siobhan. That was the only way to explain the connection between the mage and the troll. Unfortunately, my “investigation” had turned up nothing in the way of concrete evidence against Siobhan.