Splintered

by Jamie Schultz

  He reached over and pushed the blindfold up to Van Horn’s forehead, grimacing at the touch of the man’s sweaty skin.

  “Edgar,” Sobell said.

  Van Horn swallowed. “Enoch.”

  “You have reparations to pay.”

  “I’ll pay them,” he said, almost before Sobell had finished speaking.

  “How do you propose to do that, Edgar? Some things cannot be undone. Most things, in fact, cannot be undone.”

  “Anything you want. I swear. Anything.”

  Had Van Horn always been so pathetic? Sobell had once looked to him as, well, if not a teacher, then at least a fairly experienced colleague who could help Sobell unlock the secrets of the universe. Now he seemed just a scared old man, and the only secret he was able to unlock was the one that lay behind the final door. No great skill, that. The trick was keeping that door shut.

  “That’s a start,” Sobell said.

  “What can I do? What do you need?”

  Here was the rub. It was all well and good to follow the demon’s directions and find Van Horn, but what next? How much should he share with the man? It wasn’t safe to share anything with the old fraud, but Sobell was at the point where some risks must be taken. Hard to believe this shriveled husk could help, but what else did he have?

  “A woman with serpents for arms. Thirteen vultures circling a stone slab. A man named Hector and a demon named Forcas. And blood.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “What do you know about any of those things?”

  Van Horn blinked. His gaze darted around the car, from the front seat to Erica to the still-swarming locusts outside, and back. “I—I don’t know. In conjunction with what?”

  “I need help,” Sobell said. True enough, though admitting it galled him.

  Van Horn paused in his frantic search of the car and studied Sobell’s face. His creased brow furrowed further. “You don’t look well, Enoch.”

  Sobell waited.

  “You were in the news recently. Trouble?”

  “Not the kind I need help with.”

  “Why did you open that jar? I remember when we found that thing. You don’t crack something like that open for a little private time.”

  Generally, I’d agree with you.

  “Not normally, anyway,” Van Horn said. “I can only think of one reason you, of all people, wouldn’t opt for more subtle magic.”

  “Aside from my natural flair for the dramatic?”

  Van Horn lowered his voice, until it was just audible above the muted buzzing of the locusts. “How long do you have?”

  “Who the fuck knows?” Sobell snapped. Then, more calmly: “Longer than you, if that’s the extent of your aid.”

  Anger flashed across Van Horn’s face, looking as out of place as a machine gun in the hands of a ballerina. A retort paused on his lips and then he visibly got control of himself. “We were friends once, Enoch. Can’t you just let it go? Let me go? For old times’ sake?”

  “Attempting to play on my sentiment is beneath you, not to mention profoundly futile. You of all people should know that.”

  Van Horn looked at his hands. He clanked his cuffs together nervously. Without looking up, he whispered something.

  “I didn’t get that,” Sobell said.

  Van Horn closed his eyes and then, with an effort that looked as though he was summoning every ounce of his tiny amount of courage, faced Sobell. “Yes, I can help you.”

  Relief flooded Sobell’s body, releasing tension from places he didn’t know he’d been tense. It wasn’t that Van Horn had decided to cooperate—Sobell had been prepared to make sure he cooperated, by whatever means necessary—but that he could help at all. Until that moment, Sobell had nursed a nagging fear that maybe Van Horn truly wouldn’t be able to do anything for him.

  “You got your . . . directions from a demon, yes?”

  Sobell nodded.

  “Yeah.” Van Horn paused for a moment, looking at the bugs bouncing off the glass. “You need another demon to help you along.”

  “Very astute.”

  “I know how to get to Hector. Forcas. Whatever it’s calling itself.”

  Thank whatever passes for God. “And?”

  “You’re not the only one hunting it, you know.”

  “I’d imagine it’s made a lot of enemies. Demons have a way about them. How do I find it?”

  “The woman with snakes for arms. That’s Mona Gorow.”

  Sobell mused on this a moment. “Oh.”

  “Yes, indeed. Why is it you seem to have had a falling-out with everybody?”

  “And she’s got my answer?”

  “Not exactly.” Van Horn pulled at his mustache, and his eyes were wide. The face of a man contemplating a dangerous action, wondering if he should take the next step forward—wondering if he’s capable of it. “I shouldn’t even be talking about this. I could be—I could be killed.”

  Making the threat aloud would be pointless. Sobell just waited.

  “She’s got something in her possession I might be able to use to find Hector. A tooth.”

  “If she has one of his teeth, she should be able to find him herself.”

  “You’d better hope not. If she finds him, she’ll kill him. Then where will you be?”

  Fucked. Hector would be dead, and Forcas would be kicked back to the abyss, or wherever demons spent their spare time. The only way to get to it then would be conjuration, and it would be insane to attempt that in his current precarious state. Wouldn’t Forcas love that, though? It’d be like leaving the welcome mat out for it. Move in and own Enoch Sobell for a while. The thought made him queasy.

  “She’s got a small army, Enoch. She hates Forcas with a passion, and she’s been making my life miserable just for being vaguely associated. Get the tooth, for sure, but don’t dare leave her alive.”

  “Why does she hate it so much?”

  “She’s in thrall to one of its enemies. I’m not really sure which one. Baphomet, maybe.”

  Sobell laughed. Of course. By the time he was done, he was going to piss off every demon in creation.

  “I see.” There seemed to be only one way to proceed, in that case. “Erica, will you kindly go retrieve Ms. Ruiz for me?”

  “What are you going to do to me?” Van Horn asked.

  “Remand you into the custody of your captors. I have work to do.”

  “Enoch, please, I can help you. Don’t—don’t do something we’ll regret. You know I can help you.”

  Sobell looked into Van Horn’s wet eyes, masking his revulsion at the little crescents of pink revealed by the man’s sagging eyelids. “That might be true. But you’ve already screwed me once, Edgar. It’ll be safer for both of us if you stay with Ms. Ruiz and company for now.

  “And you’d better pray your tip works out. I might not have much time left, but even if I don’t get this situation in hand, I have more than enough time to make a lot of people suffer a great deal before I go.”

  Erica returned with Ruiz. Ruiz did a poor job of masking her dismay when Sobell asked her to take Van Horn back to the vehicle and return, but she seemed relieved when he laid out the next job for her. It was simple enough, and certainly something in her area of expertise, so perhaps he shouldn’t have been surprised.

  Her dismay returned when he asked her to bring Genevieve over and leave them. It didn’t rise to the level of insubordination, but he made note of it. Best to keep an eye on these things.

  Genevieve sat in Van Horn’s former spot, and Erica sat in front, facing forward, pretending to have no part in the proceedings.

  “I’ve given Ms. Ruiz an assignment for you all,” Sobell said. “Theft of a simple object. She’ll brief you on the details, I’m sure.”

  He handed her an envelope. “Two pages of the Maleficum Maleficum. This particular tome is one of the more difficult to acquire, and still more difficult to master, but I consider it one of the essentials. It will be crucial for your development.”<
br />
  “Uh, what’s this for?” Her words were hesitant, but she took the envelope with all due alacrity. “I mean, thank you, but we’re even, right?”

  “These two pages are gratis. However, I have twelve more for you if you can perform an extra service for me during the theft.”

  The shock on her face was surprisingly rewarding. It also meant she understood the significance. For someone with her relatively limited contacts and resources, this would shortcut years of scrounging. He did appreciate a sharp pupil.

  “Twelve? Oh my God. Okay! What is it?”

  “The object belongs to a woman named Mona Gorow, and I believe she keeps it near her person at all times. She has considerable occult knowledge and skill. As a result, you will be needed to handle any magical defenses she may have erected. I can offer you some advice on that account.”

  “Easy enough.”

  “You will get inside with the help of your associates, get close to her, and kill her.”

  Genevieve’s poker face was considerably poorer than Ruiz’s had been. She froze, her mouth hanging open slightly, eyes fixed on nothing in particular, as if her whole system had locked up. Given the nature of the directive and its likely conflict with her existing structures of morality and whatnot, it probably had.

  She thawed, slowly, her mouth working for moments before the words finally came. “I—I don’t think I can . . .”

  “Let me make myself clear.” He lowered his voice to a warm, sincere murmur, leaning closer and projecting just enough to be heard over the locusts. He wished for a table in a comfortable room, a place where he could face her that wasn’t so tightly constrained and awkward. It would make this easier for her. She’d feel less threatened. And if wishes were horses . . . He suppressed a sigh. “It’s very important that you understand this. I am, today, in somewhat constrained circumstances. I can’t simply ring up one of my usual contractors and get this job done.” He paused. “I trust you, and I find you a very capable student and assistant. I need this, Genevieve, and there’s nobody else I can task with this in whom I have more confidence than I have in you.”

  “I—look, I appreciate that, and, and, I’m honored, but I—I’m not a hit man. I can’t just . . . I can’t.”

  “It won’t be as horrible as all that. You’ll meet with Erica here in a day or so. She’ll give you an object and some instructions on how to use it. All you’ll have to do is get close. The dirty work will virtually handle itself.”

  “Enoch, I can’t.”

  Well, even the best employees sometimes needed the stick as well as the carrot.

  “I am given to understand that you and Ms. Ruiz have become close,” Sobell continued.

  “What?”

  “I will not always be under such constrained circumstances. When my situation is better, I will make every effort to reward those who have helped me.” He reached across to her and gently turned her face to his. Her cheek was smooth, and cool to the touch. “Do you understand?”

  “What?” she asked again.

  He made a pained face. This would irreparably damage his relationship with his pupil and surely put a sour note of resentment under all her interactions with him in the future, but what choice did he have? “Under normal circumstances, I much prefer not to insult the intelligence of my trusted employees, and I detest being so gauche as to make threats where implications suffice. These are not normal circumstances, are they?”

  “No.”

  “Then listen: carry out this task, and you will be rewarded, richly, in both wisdom and treasure. Fail, and of course our current arrangement will come to an end. I will make it known in the underground that anyone helping you is accursed in my sight. And one day I will lay waste to everything you care about. Now do you understand?”

  She nodded. He took his hand away from her face.

  “Good. Then go.”

  She left.

  Erica turned around in the front seat and gave Sobell a worried look.

  He responded with a smile. “That went well, don’t you think?” he asked.

  Chapter 11

  Traffic was worse than Anna had ever seen it. It took over two hours to go just six miles, because every damn thing was covered in locusts. Some were still flying, obscuring the road and bringing traffic to a crawl. A small proportion had spontaneously died and were piled up in awful crunchy drifts that Anna had no choice but to drive through. She kept the windows rolled down and the heater on, because the car kept trying to overheat. Locusts had clogged up the air intake. She and Genevieve stopped and cleared them out every so often, but more were always lined up behind the ones they got rid of.

  “I think I might want to kill him,” Anna said.

  Genevieve had been quiet for most of the ride, which Anna didn’t regard as a healthy development. After Anna’d gotten the instructions for the next job and left Genevieve with Sobell, she waited a long time, long enough for the locusts to thin out enough that she could make out the Prius’s shape. When Genevieve had returned, she had been distracted and impatient to get moving.

  Now Genevieve pulled herself out of her thoughts. “Van Horn?” she asked.

  “Sobell.”

  Genevieve gave a weak smile. “I think everyone wants to kill him eventually.”

  “What did he want with you? You were in there awhile.”

  “Magic stuff,” Genevieve said. “Honestly, I’m not sure I followed it all, but he was getting pretty tired of repeating it by the end.” Her voice was flat and lifeless. Drained, Anna thought.

  “Hey, uh, about the magic stuff . . .”

  “Please don’t, Anna. Now is not the time.”

  “It’s never the time, you notice that?”

  “Can’t it just wait until we finish the next job?”

  The locusts swarmed thicker—a gust of locusts, Anna thought—and a few dozen came in the window before Anna could get it rolled all the way up. They settled on the floor, on her lap. One in her hair. She did her best to ignore them. It was amazing what a person could get used to.

  “There’s always going to be a next job. That’s why that shit is so dangerous. Always one more reason to reach into the bag of tricks. Until one day—poof. You make yourself disappear.”

  “Yeah, okay. Whatever.”

  Rather than fight, again, Anna put it out of her mind as best she was able. She needed to concentrate on her driving anyway. The pile of bugs had gotten so large ahead that traffic narrowed to one lane to go around it.

  “Yay, magic,” she muttered.

  * * *

  “Here’s the job,” Anna said. She, Genevieve, and Nail sat near the center of the ruined building they currently called home, far enough away to be out of earshot of Van Horn. Anna had taken a seat on a short stack of pallets, Genevieve sat on a clear space on the floor, and Nail stood. “The swag is a tooth. Incisor, he says, root and all.”

  “What’s he want it for?” Nail asked, surprising Anna. He never used to ask that question, but she supposed the last job had changed that.

  “I don’t know,” she said. She looked to Genevieve, who didn’t notice. Genevieve had been checked out since meeting with Sobell, her mind wandering, and every new statement seemed to interrupt her anew, except the ones she missed entirely. It made Anna want to kick something.

  Anna waved a hand in front of her face. “Any idea?” she asked.

  “Huh? The tooth? No.”

  “’Kay.” Nail didn’t look too happy about that, but he inclined his head in a way that said, Go on.

  “It is currently,” Anna said, “in the possession of a woman named Mona Gorow. Know her?”

  Nail shook his head. Genevieve said, “Not really. Heard the name around.”

  “Evidently, she is an Enoch Sobell–class pain in the ass, so I guess we can expect all the fun and excitement that goes with that.” She waggled her fingers to suggest otherworldly powers and whatnot. Genevieve’s expression soured further. At least she’d been paying attention.

/>   “Pays sixty,” Anna said, “divided up evenly. Who’s in?”

  Genevieve nodded, of course. Nail, too, after a moment. Anna would have liked to tell Sobell he could go piss up a rope, and with all the skulduggery around even setting up a meeting, she had begun to suspect that he wasn’t in a position to insist. Then the man had released a biblical fucking plague on Los Angeles just to ensure that he could have ten minutes of conversation unobserved, and Anna realized that both Genevieve and Van Horn were right: this was not a guy you wanted to cross, even if he looked as if he couldn’t really argue at the time. He would remember. There were a lot worse things in the Bible than a few oversize grasshoppers.

  “Okay. Guess we’re all in, then. The only other thing I’ve been told is that the item in question is very important to Mona Gorow, so she will likely keep it close.” She tried on a smile. “The rest is just business as usual.”

  Nail hiked a thumb toward Van Horn’s room. “What are we supposed to do with him?”

  “Hang on to him. Apparently, Sobell thinks there’s too much heat for him to risk being nailed for kidnapping on top of everything else.”

  “I ain’t excited about getting popped for kidnapping, either.”

  “Yeah. Well, we can either hang on to him or let him go. I don’t feel great about that second one.”

  “Me neither.”

  “All right, then. We start the new job in the morning.”

  * * *

  “I want to sleep in a bed,” Anna said. She rolled over again. From her new position she could see the vague gray shape of the pile in the corner, the one that she suspected harbored creeping things. How had she not cleared that goddamn thing out of here yet?

  “Am I bothering you?” Genevieve asked. She’d been sitting in the corner for the last hour, paging through a handful of yellowed old papers over and over again by the low light of a lantern, writing in her journal and generally looking angry enough to kick a hole in the wall. At least she’d rejoined the land of the living.

  “No. I just want to sleep in a bed.”

  “What do you want me to do about it? I can’t fucking disappear Van Horn, can I? Remember why we’re here in the first place? None of that’s changed.”