by Jeff Somers
“Hi,” he said in a strangled voice.
After a moment, I nudged Claire. She shot a look at me, then looked back down at her hands on the table. “Uh, hi.”
“You’re beautiful.”
“Uh, thanks.”
I swiveled in my chair and pushed the empty one at our table out towards him with one foot. “Hiya. I’m Lem, this is Mags, and this, this, is Claire. Have a seat. Claire needs a favor.”
Mags waved at him. “Hi!”
Our hayseed smiled around at us, dopey. It was bright, with this clear blue light pouring in from the front and making him into a shadow. He nodded and dropped into the chair easily, graceful. Football, undoubtedly, and he was young enough that daily practices were still fresh in his memory. He settled his smile on Claire and looked happy to just sit and smile at her for the rest of his life.
I snapped my fingers in front of his face until he looked at me. “What’s your name, boss?”
“Daryl,” he said without taking his eyes off Claire. “Daryl Houy.” He pronounced it Hoo-eee.
“Make him stop staring at me.”
I smiled at Daryl, our hero. “Claire requests you not stare at her, boss.”
He blinked and finally turned his head to look at me. “Why not?”
I leaned forward. “Doesn’t matter. Listen, Claire needs someone to buy her breakfast. Three breakfasts, actually.”
His face lit up.
We are not good people.
“Hell, yeah! What can I get for y’all?”
Y’all. We were in Texas.
15. DARYL DROVE A SHITBOX FORD pickup that had undoubtedly been his father’s or uncle’s shitbox pickup before him. It had the polished feel of something well worn. It smelled like beer and stale sex and had an empty gun rack mounted in the back.
I was mashed behind the driver’s seat on the world’s most uncomfortable bench. It made a mockery of the words extended cab. Mags was next to me, practically in my lap. He had pushed himself forward so he was between Daryl and Claire as we bounced along what the state of Texas had the balls to call roads. What Texas needed, I thought, was some fucking Jewish mayors and a load of mobbed-up goodfellas to get something done.
“What y’all want out at the Gottschalk place, anyway?” Daryl shouted over his shoulder, his eyes locked on Claire. She was pushed as far against the passenger door as she could manage. “It’s hard as heck to get out here.”
“Eyes on the road, Daryl. Claire needs to ask Mr. Gottschalk to do something for her,” I said.
“What? Maybe I can help?”
I shook my head. “Sorry, boss. Claire needs Gottschalk.”
“He’s a weird one, I warn ya,” Daryl said cheerfully.
I was beginning to have a grudging affection for Daryl. He was just a kid, lanky and easy in his movements, and cheerful. It was like he hadn’t yet figured out that high school was over and he’d be working his highway job for the rest of his fucking life. Part of me hoped he never realized it, up until the day he died.
“Been out on that ranch as long as I been alive. Never comes to town. Sends some of his devotees in for supplies sometimes. Bald freaks in white robes. Robes!” He glanced sidelong at Claire and frowned. “I ain’t proud of it, but when we was kids back in school, we used to have a little fun with those freaks. There’s the place.”
I followed his tanned, toned arm and saw it in the distance: a big house or a small ranch, whatever you wanted to call it. Out in the middle of fucking nowhere, just yellow dirt and rocky outcroppings and scrub grass everywhere. The house was made from the same yellowish stone you saw everywhere else; it looked solid and eternal, like the world might take a few thousand years to wear it down and wipe it clean.
Inside the fence, which was a tall but flimsy-looking chain-link job topped with nasty barbed wire, a dozen or so people were working. Six of them were tending a large garden off to the left, doing the hard work of weeding and tilling and the judicious use of chemical warfare on insects of all kinds. The rest were engaged in what looked like repair work on various pieces of equipment, including a beaten-down old truck that predated Daryl’s shitbox racer by at least two decades.
The gate was open, and we drove through unchallenged.
It took about thirty seconds to go from the front gate to the driveway that circled in front of the door. Up close, the house was falling apart. The siding was falling off. The roof looked rotten and had a sag to it that didn’t look good. The windows were old and out of plumb. The paint, where there was paint, was peeling, and the sills were all rotted. By the time we opened the truck’s doors and started out of the cab, three men had emerged from the house and stood facing us from the sun-faded wood of the porch.
They looked alike: shaved heads, white robes, and no shoes. They were what an unimaginative man would come up with if asked to describe a cult member. The one in the middle was a little taller, and he smiled down at us.
I didn’t like his smile.
“Welcome,” he said. “You are welcome here. Can we be of assistance?”
I stepped around to be in front of everyone. “We’d like to see Mr. Gottschalk.”
The rest of the freaks had stopped what they were doing and stood in silence, staring at us. I looked around, feeling squirrelly.
“Do you have an invitation? Master only sees people by appointment.”
I shook my head, slowly reorienting on the Head Freak. “No,” I said. “Tell him Hiram Bosch sent me.”
Without any further objection, the Head Freak bowed slightly, turned, and disappeared back into the house. I moved up to the porch stairs. One of the other freaks who’d come outside stepped down to me and held out his hand, palm up. In it was a small pebble.
“Master Gottschalk gave this to me,” he said quietly, staring at me with an unblinking half-smile on his face. “Isn’t it wonderful?”
I looked at the pebble, then at the kid. He was maybe twenty. He had razor burn on his neck and smelled like baby powder.
I turned away and walked back to where Mags, Claire, and Daryl stood uncertainly by the truck.
“Charmed,” Mags said.
“A heavy Charm, too,” I agreed, standing with my back to the house. “All these bastards, gassed to the gills, all the time. That’s a shit ton of blood. This is worse than Carith Abdagnale’s grift in New York.” Abdagnale was famous as a pimp, running constant Glamours to lure in unsuspecting lechers to feed her blood supply.
“Are all of you this creepy?” Claire whispered, hugging herself tightly.
I thought of Abdagnale again. “Most.”
“How do people like this just . . . exist? How come no one does anything?”
“We’re good at staying just under the radar. Even the Archmages know better than to make too much noise. Besides, what do you think would happen? We get back to town, call the cops. Explain to them what you think’s happening. See what it gets you.”
I turned suddenly. Another of the shaved-head freaks had crept up to my elbow. She was as young as the rest and ugly, a fat, short girl with an acne-scarred face. A nice smile, though, dopey and turned on me like a low-watt bulb. She was holding her palm up to me like the first one had.
“Master gave me this,” she said shyly.
In her palm was an old, slightly bent bottle cap.
I looked away, nodding. “That’s nice.”
I’d never seen so many people charmed so hard. All of them, I had no doubt, under a spell, thinking they were happy, thinking they had an amazing gift from their Master. Thinking it was fine to bleed for him—several times a week, probably—so he could cast the same fucking spell on them over and over again, keeping the Charm fresh.
We are not good people.
I thought of Daryl and reminded myself that we were going to let him off the hook in a few hours.
I looked over at the kid. He was standing a few feet from Claire, hands jammed into his pockets, his face dark and pensive as he stole glances at her. He looked fou
rteen. Like he was at that first high school dance again, awkward and terrified and angry all at the same time, because the cute girls were ignoring him. I thought there was a fifty-fifty chance he would end the day in tears.
“If I wanted to come back here tonight,” Claire said in a low, flat voice, “and burn this fucking place down, would you help?”
She meant it. I remembered the detectives’ car back in New York, fishtailing, the brake lights dancing. She would do it.
I heard the Head Freak behind me. “Mr. Vonnegan,” he said. “Master Gottschalk welcomes you. Please, follow me.”
I turned around to find him smiling, and he beckoned to us. Using my name was a cheap trick, but I appreciated cheap tricks.
I leaned in to Daryl. “Claire wants you to wait here with the truck. Don’t let anyone steal it.”
He frowned. “I want to stick by her. Keep her safe.”
“Claire wants you to stay with the truck.”
After a second, he looked at Claire. Stared at her until she finally sighed unhappily and looked back at him.
“Stay with the goddamn truck,” she said. Paused a heartbeat. “Please.”
He shrugged, suddenly nonchalant. “Sure, okay.”
We followed the Head Freak into the house. It smelled like cat piss and rot. The first was explained immediately, as Gottschalk had about a hundred cats in the place, running free. They all looked fat and imperious, and only a couple scampered away when we trooped in. Most of them just sat there eyeing us coolly. One fat black-and-white one rubbed up against me as we picked our way carefully through what had once been a dining room, and I reached down to scratch his ears as I passed.
Gottschalk was in the master suite of the house, way in the back. He was fat. Not circus fat, just fleshy and jowly, sitting up in a huge bed piled high with pillows and blankets and cats, a dozen or so of which were curled up on him, against him, around him. He was about eighty years old and hadn’t wasted any blood on making himself look younger. There was a stale smell in the air, which I chose not to examine too closely. The room was dim and stuffy, overcrowded, the bed immense. It must have been delivered in pieces and assembled in the room, it was so large.
The sheets looked yellow and stiff. I made an impulsive, heartfelt vow never to voluntarily touch them.
Gottschalk himself was dissipated: too fat but saggy, as if he’d been fatter not long ago. His hair was patchy, three or four sprouts of it surrounded by peeling pink scalp. His eyes were watery, his lips wet. His hands trembled as he flashed them about. Two of his acolytes stood silent and still in each corner, like furniture.
“Ah! A Fellow Traveler,” he drawled, his accent a strange combination of Texas and German. “Mr. Vonnegan, I find it fascinating that Hiram sent you to me, as Hiram Bosch is now dead.” His watery eyes moved past me, and he sat up a little. “Oh! What is this! Come here, my dear. Let me look at you.”
“Hiram called it Biludha-tah-namus,” I offered helpfully as Claire stepped forward, arms still wrapped closely around herself.
“Do not speak!” Gottschalk thundered, shooting me a red-faced expression of fury. “Speak when I speak to you, boy!”
I shut my mouth, judged how quickly I could get to the old bastard and put my hands around his neck, and decided I could stay cool. Gottschalk would change his tune when he knew what was happening. But now I knew where Hiram had gotten his bedside manner, and I felt a pang of sadness that I’d never be able to tease him about it.
Claire walked over to the old man without hesitation. Her hands were in her pockets now, the right one curled into a fist, a lump under the fabric. Curled around something—a weapon. A roll of quarters, a small knife—something, I knew. Gottschalk might be able to strike her dead with five words and a slash from one of his Bleeders, but he would have to be awfully quick. We had a saying you picked up when you started hanging around magicians: You can’t speak yourself out of a bullet.
Gottschalk reached towards her as she got close, but she stopped a foot and a half away, and he made no effort to compel or cajole her to come closer. He studied her with a curious expression on his slack, wrinkled face, some bizarre combination of revulsion and admiration.
“I have never seen such intricate marking,” he muttered. “Yes, yes, I see the pattern. Intricate, intricate. You are the keystone, here. There is a lot of static energy bottled up behind you, my dear. Tah-namus, he said. My goodness, the intricacy—” He blinked his watery eyes and snatched his hands back. “Tah-namus.” He looked at me, sitting forward slightly. “Biludha-tah-namus! Are you certain?”
I shook my head, but he was already looking at Claire again. Claire stood there ramrod-straight, ass in and tits out, eyes locked on Gottschalk. She looked ready to launch herself at him.
“It fits, though, it fits,” he muttered. He frowned at her. “Who marked you thus, child?”
“Child is fucking creepy,” she said. “I don’t know—”
“Mika Renar,” I said over her. “Or maybe the little prince, Cal Amir.”
“Renar. Devious little bitch.” Gottschalk looked at me and smiled. His teeth were yellow and chipped and looked more like fangs. His gums were bright red, making it look like his mouth was bleeding every time he opened it. Like he was chewing off his own lips as he spoke. “This cannot be allowed to pass. The Tah-namus! She will destroy us all.”
He clapped his hands. “Thomas!” Struggling mightily, he pushed himself up higher against the pillows, panting. “You will stay with me until we resolve this. I must research the glyphs and seek counsel with others—we must be careful! Exceedingly careful!”
The Head Freak reentered the bedroom, smiling like a dope, hands clasped in front of him. “Yes, Master?”
I looked at him. “What’d he give you? A piece of broken glass?”
“Thomas, these three will be our guests for a few days. Please see them to the guest suite and make sure their needs are attended to. Bring me the telephone and send in Carol and David. Thank you.”
Claire sank back towards me. “I do not want to stay here,” she whispered.
“You must, child,” Gottschalk said fiercely. “You are too dangerous to be walking about free. You are the linchpin to the end of the world! More important, you are the linchpin to the end of me.”
“Well,” Claire said in a reasonable, almost conciliatory tone, “fuck you, then.”
She turned to leave.
“Anschlag! Thomas!”
The Head Freak appeared in the doorway, already slashing his own arm with a large fancy-looking blade. Behind me, Gottschalk spoke three syllables, and Claire froze on the spot.
“Whoa!” I shouted, throwing my arms out like an asshole. But Gottschalk spoke Asshole, and I needed to be clear. “No need for this! We came here for your help, Mr. Gottschalk.”
I was standing right next to her. She moved her eyes to me.
She was finally afraid.
“You understand,” Gottschalk wheezed, sounding like a little shouting had strained the paper-thin walls of every one of his organs. “You, yes. Hiram was not a very good student. He had no ability. A plodder. But he respected our traditions, and I believe he has imbued you with similar respect. But her. This bitch is not one of us—she is chattel, so marked. I cannot take chances.” He offered me those horrible teeth again. “You have a cow, you do not let it roam free. You pen it. Make sure its milk is for you alone.”
I looked at Claire again. Her eyes were locked on mine. Pleading. She looked young suddenly. The way she was perfectly still, with just her eyes moving, she was like my girl, the first girl, standing in front of Hiram, shivering so subtly you had to stare at her to be aware of it.
“I vouch for her,” I said slowly, my eyes on hers. This was a bad move. I could feel it in my bones. I pictured Hiram’s empty bathroom window.
Gottschalk thought it over. I admired Claire’s eyes, bright green. The door and hallway outside the bedroom were crowded with Gottschalk’s morons. An army of the
m.
“Very well, Mr. Vonnegan,” he said. “Her behavior is your concern, then.”
With a few muttered syllables, Claire snapped into motion. She’d been straining against the spell, trying to launch herself free, and crashed into me. I hugged her to me for a second, in case she had any wild ideas.
“We need him,” I whispered to her. “You want those marks off. I kind of want the world not to end. We stick.”
She turned her head and whispered into my ear. “That motherfucker puts a hand on me, Chief, I’m going to collect that bill from you.”
“You say things like that, Claire, and just make me love you.” I’d made it flippant, but I regretted it immediately. Claire Mannice was the type of girl, I thought, who’d had soft guys like me following her around, being mopey, her whole life. I didn’t want to be just another one.
We followed the Head Freak down the length of the house to a narrow set of stairs. Down to the basement. I didn’t like it. I didn’t like a damn thing about it the moment I saw it. The stairs were old and unsteady, rattling under us. The basement was cold and damp and had been clumsily subdivided with a cheap, thin wall and a single cheap door set into the middle. The Head Freak—Thomas—opened the door and gestured us through, beaming.
The rooms behind the door could be called rooms in only the most generous usage of the term. They had walls. They had floors. There was no line of sight. They were three connected spaces defined by thin, uninsulated drywall, lit by bare bulbs, and lacking finished floors—the grit of concrete dust bit under my shoes. They had been furnished, the first room sporting two sagging, dispirited couches and a coffee table that had recently been used as a chew toy.
“Anything you require?” Thomas asked pleasantly.
“Better rooms,” Claire said. “Now get the fuck out.”
16. CLAIRE WAS TALKING ABOUT HER sister. That was nice.