by Jeff Somers
I walked through the time line in my head. We’d done the Warding before we’d gone to Abdagnale’s place. Before Pitr had died. So it had really happened, still.
I was pretty sure.
She chewed that for a moment. It was dark and quiet and the only streetlight was half a block away. The rest of the building blazed with light. Hiram’s blown-out windows were dark and forgotten. The alley smelled like garbage and rain.
“Why?”
I thought of Hiram. I hadn’t seen much of him in those later years. I’d ignored him, resented him, made no effort to stay in touch with him—and yet at the end, when I was desperate, I’d had no compunction about begging him for help in spite of it all. Now he was gone, and I still wasn’t used to that.
That made me think of Pitr. My Pitr wouldn’t even have a stinking, rotting apartment as a headstone. No one but me would remember him, and soon enough I’d be gone, too.
“I didn’t want anyone else living there,” I said honestly. “And I didn’t want to have to go through all the shit Hiram stole, burned out or not. So we just hid it. Come on.”
Claire followed me across the alley to the bottom of the fire escape, where we’d barely escaped Cal Amir two years prior. I started climbing.
“What about everyone else who lives here? They just don’t think about it?”
She was right behind me. I hadn’t heard her jump onto the ladder or start climbing. I tried to control my heavy, out-of-shape breathing but couldn’t manage it. “Pretty much,” I agreed. “They just don’t think about it.”
The windows to Hiram’s kitchen were empty, and so the world had invaded his pristine space. What I remembered as a clean white room with appliances that were rarely touched, aside from the burner where he brewed his tea, had become a nesting place for birds, unaffected by my Wards. I felt those Wards as we crossed the plane from outside to in. They weren’t heavy artillery, just some simple tricks to inspire people not to notice this place.
As Claire pushed one leg through the window, I felt the Wards vanish. Just be absorbed by her, a walking magical black hole. I felt exposed, because for the first time in years anyone could see Hiram’s apartment, would notice it, think of it, wonder about the smell.
The whole apartment was a damp, rotting mess. The floors were covered in mold and felt soft and spongy under my feet. Doors had sagged off the cabinets, and the whole place smelled like shit. As we climbed in, a riot of disturbed birds flew up in a panic, causing two seconds of sheer crazy as they fluttered around, escaping the way we’d come.
“Fuck,” Claire said, “you couldn’t come up with any goddamn magic to keep the place clean?”
The areas not directly exposed to the elements were preserved under a layer of white dust. The walls were scorched from Hiram’s battle with Amir, the debris from the explosion all that was left of the furniture. We crunched through to the tiny closet he’d used as his office. As we moved, all the Wards and Glamours we’d laid on the apartment vanished one by one, but that shit had worked: No one had been here in all the time we’d left it. I could remember Pitr and me working the place over, both of us eager to leave, to get out of Hiram’s mausoleum. For a second I wasn’t sure I could trust the memory. I remembered things that had not actually happened. How could I be certain of any memory if I didn’t know what moments the kurre-nikas had altered? What else I didn’t know about because my memories came from a different version of the world?
In the tiny office, even the invisible keys that protected the safe melted away as she entered, exposing everything. I glanced at Claire and considered this new idea that she was the last of herself. Which wasn’t much different mathematically than the day before, when I’d thought, like most people did, that all of us were the one and only—and thus the last—of ourselves. This following right on the new idea that we all had various versions of ourselves, that when Renar had tweaked reality with her kurre-nikas she’d created a new me, leaving the old me behind. Terminus. There were no other Claires, and despite having no fucking idea what that meant, it made me sad.
“You know why I’m doing this, right?” Claire said suddenly, leaning in close to watch my hands, her smell cigarettes and something vanilla. “I’m doing it ’cause I pay my debts.”
I nodded, not looking at her. I was very still.
“I want to be clear, because I get the feeling that for you we’re some sort of love story.”
I nodded again. I loved Claire’s nearly sociopathic directness. I did. But I wanted to cast something that would shut her up. Except it was increasingly clear that I’d never manage to cast another spell on Claire Mannice ever again. I reached down and pulled Hiram’s old floor safe open. She knelt down next to me, our sides touching. “Oooh, pretty!”
She reached into the safe and pulled out a gold bracelet inlaid with green and red gems. I had no idea if it was paste or real, an Artifact or just something that had caught Hiram’s eye. Claire slipped it on her wrist with all the bravado of someone who’d been stealing since birth. I started picking through the rest of the safe’s contents. I’d left everything. Even the money, wads of cash in rubber bands. Cash was cash, there was nothing magical or sentimental about it, but taking anything from Hiram’s panic hole had felt like stealing.
For a second, I thought of the Udug, heard its slithery voice in my ear. Wanted to hear it again so badly my balls ached.
Then I spotted the little white box. I knew everything Hiram had ever stolen. I’d lived in the house for years, and even after our estrangement, I knew on my infrequent visits exactly what was new, what had been acquired recently. The white box had been on Hiram’s desk that first day when I’d shown up and asked the fat old man to be my gasam, to teach me. That first day with Pitr standing behind him, staring at me so fucking angry . . .
If that had still really happened.
At some point the white box had migrated, first to the shelves in the office and then, finally, into the safe. I realized with a start that I hadn’t been aware Fallon and Hiram had known each other well enough, or long enough, for Hiram to steal things from the Fabricator.
After a moment’s hesitation, I reached into the safe and took hold of the box. It felt normal. No current running through it, no Wards on the lid. I wondered if just being near Claire had killed it, short-circuited it. It was heavier than I would have expected. But it didn’t crawl against my skin the way the Udug had. I studied it for a moment and then slipped it into my pocket. I let my eyes roam over the remaining trinkets in Hiram’s safe, wondering what else might be of value.
“How come him?” Claire suddenly asked. “If Fallon can use this to snatch anyone, why not her? Snatch her, hit her over the head, be done with it.”
I didn’t blame her. If someone was trying to murder me ritualistically—and even change reality so that they already had murdered me ritualistically—I might be voting for their murder, too. “First of all, she’s enustari, Claire. Even if she doesn’t expect it, she’d be fucking hell to beat in a battle. Always go for someone you know you can beat. And second, Renar can’t negotiate.”
“Why does that fucking matter?”
I let that hang. I didn’t want to answer.
“Excuse me.”
We both turned. An older woman was standing in the room behind us, dark skin, bright red and very fake hair. She was wearing a black cloth coat a little too long for her and carrying a tiny, shivering dog in her arms. She was wearing a pair of cheap red slippers, the kind you bought in a drugstore and got change for five bucks.
The expression on her face was best described as alarmed. “What,” she said, eyes everywhere, “have you done?”
44. DETECTIVE JAMES WAS STANDING AT the bar, drinking a shot of bourbon with a Coke chaser. There were three empty shot glasses in front of him. One of the Bleeders was playing bartender, instructed by Fallon to treat him as a guest.
“Mr. Lem Vonnegan,” the cop said in a pleasing baritone without turning around. “I ever tell y
ou me and Jim Holloway were old friends?” His face cheerful in the mirror opposite him. “I guess not, as I’ve been here just four hours or so, waiting on your friend. You maybe remember the man? Picked you up a few years ago.”
Alarm flashed through me. Holloway. Marichal. Two cops in over their heads and totally unaware of that right up until Claire killed them both. In self-defense, sure, but I had a feeling Detective Stanley James would give two small shits about the distinction.
“Sure, I remember,” I said. “It was right before . . . before everything went to hell.”
Mad Day. A stupid name, but it was the one the cable talking heads had started using, with their slick graphics and grainy footage, so it had stuck. Death toll in one day: six hundred fifty-nine thousand people. A few hundred thousand a week for months afterwards. Cities—hell, countries—had disappeared under that weight. I remembered Pitr Mags crashing into the precinct to save me, a cannonball. Indestructible.
James turned around, nodding. He was smiling, but there wasn’t anything very friendly about it, and I didn’t like cops in the first place. Definitely not cops like this one, who dressed beyond their pay grade and acted like their shield meant they could do whatever the fuck they wanted. The sort of cop, I was pretty certain, who carried a set of brass knuckles in his pocket just in case some citizen complained.
“Sure!” he said. “See, Jim got killed shortly after he sweated you. For obvious reasons, the case never got a real workout, you know? But he was a friend, and I’ve been trying to work it in my spare time, right? Shit, police work is all for show these days anyway, ain’t it?” He shook his head in a world-weary way. “You know, two days ago an old man—must have been ninety years old, truth—got out his old rifle from when he was in the service and shot everyone in his building. Went door-to-door, knocked, and blew whoever opened up straight to hell. Then cleared the apartment. Then went on to the next one.” He shook his head. “You know what? He must’ve made one hell of a noise, you know? All that knocking and shooting. Thing is, no one ran. No one called us. And no one thought, Shit, no way I’m answering when he knocks. He killed everyone. Does that make any fucking sense? Any sense at all?”
It did. Because the world was broken. I had broken it.
I opened my mouth to say something, then thought that it actually did make sense if everyone in the fucking building was Charmed. A man in a white suit in the jungle, collecting blood for his boss. Why not a man in a white suit in Manhattan doing the same? The idea dovetailed perfectly with everything else and made me feel smart.
When I didn’t answer, he shrugged. “So your name is like the last name in his notes. You walked out of the precinct after a little scuffle, right? Jim didn’t make too many notes on that. Just said you came in, got a little sweating, and then you left. Bam! Few days later, Jim’s dead.” He sighed, a big theatrical production. “Shit, police just a gang now. You got a gang”—he waved one huge hand around the room—“I got a gang. No difference anymore.”
He downed his shot and made a show of looking around. “Seems like you moved up some, huh? Own this place now?”
A few years ago this would have been intimidating. A few years ago I would have shit my pants and prayed for an intervention. Instead of answering, I pointed at him. “Give me your gun.”
He frowned. “Excuse me, now?”
“Your gun,” I said slowly. “We need it.”
He smiled. It was an impressive smile, big white teeth and bright red gums. “How bad?”
In my pocket, I had the switchblade positioned against the inner seam, ready to slice my thigh if I pushed the button. A simple mu sitting on the back of my tongue, ready to turn him into a newly erected statue of Detective Stanley James if necessary.
“You’re standing here,” I said slowly, “waiting to be dismissed by Ev Fallon, right? Because he owns you.”
James didn’t flinch, but the smile had become a mask, lifeless. Humorless.
“I don’t know what he’s got on you. Magic, money, shame, whatever, it doesn’t fucking matter, Detective. He’s got something. Else you wouldn’t be standing here like some fucking valet, would you? So, I can go and get Mr. Fallon and ask him to ask you for your gun. Or we can cut the shit and you can just give it to me.”
He stared at me with bloody eyes. A second later, he shook his head, forcing a laugh, and pulled open his coat. Reaching in, he produced a stainless-steel semiautomatic pistol with a black grip. He spun it around and gave it to me handle-first.
“Never liked those Glocks they tried to push on us. This is a good all-American gun. You know anything about guns?”
I shook my head, feeling the weight. It wasn’t heavy at all. “Never needed one.”
James winked. “That’s right. Jim Holloway was fucking strangled, wasn’t he? From behind, his own goddamn handcuffs.” He turned back to the bar. “You tell your man Evelyn that we are dangerously close to me considering my debt paid, okay?”
I took the gun back to the banquet room, feeling the eyes of the Bleeders on me. They were all standing around, smoking cigarettes, chatting. Doing nothing because Billington wasn’t around to organize them. I shut the door behind me and found that Fallon had taken off his jacket and cleared the furniture to the edges of the room, except for a single chair. He glanced from the gun to me, then to Claire, who stood behind the second bar with Daryl. The small white box sat on the chair.
Suddenly, from beyond the door, shouts and commotion. Noise resolved into cheers, then applause, and a familiar female voice booming out instructions. The cheers warped into the sound of industry, and then the banquet room door banged open and Mel Billington strutted into the room, trailed by Remy and Roman.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” she shouted. “Don’t fucking fall all over yourselves looking for us. I mean, it’s not like we were fucking abandoned in the wilderness or something.”
I tried hard not to smile. “You were left at a motel,” I pointed out.
She grinned, looking dirty and rumpled, like they’d been Charming their way south and east without pausing for rest. “That place was deadly. We left to sleep under the stars in order to survive.”
I grinned back. Idimustari—we were like roaches. We could not be killed by normal means.
“We will need blood,” Fallon said, gesturing at the chair by way of explanation.
Billington winked at me. “Good to see you, too, old man.” She cocked her head. “Maybe I need a bit more before I tell the kids to open the floodgates, huh?”
“No,” Fallon said. “It must be Mr. Vonnegan’s sacrifice.”
She hesitated and looked back at me. I swallowed a sudden ball of anxiety that made no sense. I’d bled before. I was fresh. “Go have a drink. Keep an eye on the cop out there.”
She blew out an explosive breath. “You got it, Chief. Need-to-know and all that. I get it.”
I looked at Remy and Roman, who stood, hats literally in hands, looking dirty and stiff. “You, too. Out. Get a drink.”
They looked at me impassively until Billington gestured at them. Then they nodded, waited for her to pass, and followed her out.
“She is a good general,” Fallon said, sounding almost jaunty. “It is important to have someone who organizes. Who keeps everyone in line.”
I nodded, staring down at the white box. “So how will this work?”
Fallon followed my gaze. “Gespu,” he began. “There were once dozens of these. Fabricators before my time—known then as Thaumaturges—created them frequently, as a Rite of Passage. These and other Artifacts and Fabrications. Simple bindings, really, with powerful effects. There was once a concentration on simple things that had great effect. Much of this knowledge has been lost.” He looked up at me and blinked. “It is simple. You open the gespu, speak the name of the person you wish to summon, and bleed. He will be Summoned.” The old man paused to purse his lips. “The amount of sacrifice required will be determined by how much he resists.”
I nodded. �
�So he might resist me to death?”
A crisp nod. “Certainly.”
“And I can’t take volunteers?”
“The gespu requires a connection between you and the subject. Ideally, you will picture him as you bleed.”
The fucking universe was fucking greedy.
Fallon smiled tiredly. “Artifacts and Fabrications make things easier, in a way,” he said gently. “But there is always a price, and it must be paid somehow. You can put in the work, or you can put in the blood. It is an old saying.”
“Fine,” I said, and crossed to the chair, taking off my jacket. “Daryl? Claire?”
Without Pitr, my Trust Circle had gotten small. I had an army milling about in the bar and in the general area, but they weren’t really mine. Every time I gave an order, they all looked at Billington for confirmation.
They glanced at each other, a lovers’ glance, and I swallowed a pang of anger at seeing it. Not because I was jealous. Just because it wasn’t fair. She stepped around the bar and walked over to me.
“He’ll be in the chair?” I asked Fallon over my shoulder.
“Yes.”
I looked at Claire. “Step out of the room,” I said.
She squinted at me. “If you fucking think—”
“Spells go sideways around you,” I said. “That’s why you’re here. To be a secret weapon. We cast this and you’re standing here, we’ll get a goddamn purple gorilla in this chair instead of him. Or nothing.”
She looked from me to Fallon, over my shoulder, and then back again. “Fucking fine,” she finally said, turned, and walked to the door. She didn’t open it, though. She leaned against it, crossing her arms. I sighed and looked at Daryl, standing behind the chair like he’d seen this movie before and was afraid of it.
“When he shows up,” I said, “you make sure he doesn’t make a sound.”
Daryl nodded. It wasn’t convincing.
Fallon was next to me, his own tiny penknife in hand. He leaned down and opened the small white box, then took hold of my arm. He was brusque, businesslike. A man who had bled plenty of people. With a single deft movement, he opened a vein and my blood began pouring out of me, down my forearm, through my hand, and into the white cube. It should have filled the tiny box in seconds, but it didn’t.