Salt and Iron

by Tam MacNeil

  Three witches are standing against the wall by the time he comes in. There’s an old guy, with graying hair in a style about twenty years out of date and a rattish face, and two younger women who might be his daughters and who’ve done better in the looks department than their dad did. Benecio Marquez has already got all three of them cuffed in iron, so there’ll be no more magic here. Well, not from them, anyway. There’s a Thing, an evil, that’s always been part of the landscape here in New Glamis. James has never seen it, but rumor has it that both his mom and dad have. And maybe even the generation before. The Thing’s been here at least since the van Helsings settled here. At least, that’s how the story goes. It’s part of what makes New Glamis a hot location for magic, magicians, and the sidhe. It leaves pools of magic where it nests, and feeds big power into little witches. Like these.

  There’s not much to the three witches here. They’re a little grubby and a little scratched up from their arrest, and they shift and twist where they stand, as if the iron burns them. They’re not sidhe or they’d be screaming, flesh on fire where the iron touches. It doesn’t burn, but all magic users have some sidhe in their blood, and it bothers them nonetheless.

  He wonders a little about that. The fact is, he’s not so good with iron himself, and he wonders about it, like he wonders sometimes about the way the air seems to split and move like the mirage above a hot country road and other people say they can’t see it. Migraines is what he says now, when the shimmering gets bad. Migraines. Everybody knows he gets them, and nobody asks. Which is good, because he tries hard not to wonder too much about it. In those rare times when he’s being honest with himself, he knows what it means, so he avoids thinking about it. Right now he avoids thinking about it by looking around at other things, things that don’t shimmer like a heat wave.

  There’s an altar in the middle of the room. Rob’s having a good look at that, already taking pictures with his phone for evidence, and Gabe has, after a quick hello to his dad and a glance at the witches, gone to stand over a carefully inscribed circle of salt and colored sand that lies like a carpet in the middle of the otherwise bare wood floor.

  The circle’s pretty spectacular, neon-pink and yellow circles inside of circles, with salt patterns breaking through. James is so busy looking at it that he trips. Someone’s laid a broom across the threshold, and he didn’t notice it. Gabe looks up at him, comes over and takes his arm.

  “Hey, you drunk?” he whispers.

  James smiles at him. “Didn’t expect the broom,” he says. It’s true.

  Gabe sniffs him. “But you are.”

  “Gabe, c’mon. Where was I? I was in a brothel. Her name was Cutie, by the way. And she really is.”

  Gabe rolls his eyes.

  “So yeah, of course I’m drunk. I wasn’t expecting to have to work. I mean, not like this. Other work, yeah. I was kinda expecting to work most of the night.”

  “You are a goddamned perv,” Gabe says with a tiny little smile, and James knows things are all right between them. “But seriously, be careful. These weren’t amateurs. That’s a hell of a salt circle. They were working some heavy-duty magic here. So don’t fucking trip into that, because if you do I don’t know what’ll happen to you, but it probably won’t be good.”

  “Ten-four,” James says. He looks at the circle again. Big circle, multicolored, the sand almost lurid, the pattern almost like voodoo work but not quite. “You ever see something like that?”

  “In those colors? No. But the incantation looks like it’s chronomaturgical. Can’t read it, though, so I figure it’s something homebrew.”

  “Extra dangerous,” James says. “Got it.” He looks around. There’s a shimmer in the corner over where the workbench is, near Rob. He avoids looking at it by looking back at Gabe. “You know, it doesn’t really look like your dad needed an extra hand.” He nods over at Benecio and the witches. “He’s got it. We coulda all had the evening off.”

  Gabe shrugs. “Three witches,” he says. “Your dad said it’d be a good idea to have all hands on deck, and he’s the boss.”

  “He sure is.” James grunts. “Speaking of all hands, where’s my glorious brother?”

  Gabe cracks a grin at him. “As opposed to the inglorious brother?”

  “In my imagination, there’s a bigger family fuck-up than me out there. I just have to find him.”

  Gabe laughs. “Abe’s arranging a new evidence locker. Go make yourself useful, Deadweight.” He gives James a playful shove. “Help Rob with the cleanup, and stop feeling sorry for yourself. You just got drunk and had sex. That’s supposed to make people happy.”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  He picks his way carefully around the edge of the salt circle to where Rob is standing at a scored and paint-splashed workshop bench. Whatever he’s standing in front of is potent enough to be shaking the air like heat waves.

  James knows this kind of thing personally and academically. Divination, particularly fixing time to destiny, is a specialty of his. This kind of shaking means a distortion in reality. It’s a place where time breaks and destiny is flapping around like a pair of pants on a washing line. The trouble is, the second he touches whatever it is that’s making time break like this, it’s going to stop flapping around, and you don’t have to have a PhD in divination to know that means time’s been fixed to something. The fact is, he’s a fixer; touching anything that’s mucking with destiny pins the destiny in place. It’s not something he wants to do, it’s not something he can control. It’s like leaving fingerprints on a glass, just a fact of life. He handles loose destiny and that’s that, for better or worse.

  That little trick of his? That makes him every bit as much an aberration as the three witches who are currently being arrested, pierced with iron, and will probably end up shipped off to a labor camp in Alaska. So that’s a secret he’s going to take to his grave.

  “Hey,” James calls, and Rob looks up, one hand suspended above the cards. “Yeah, maybe don’t touch those. Might be words on them. I don’t want you to get stuck and then have to read you out.”

  Rob frowns faintly. “Thought you needed a whole book to put somebody under a spell. You think I could end up in thrall to a couple words?”

  “If they make a picture in your head?” James asks. “Sure.”

  “Sounds crazy,” Rob mutters. But he rubs one finger against the flattened bridge of his nose, which is something he only does when he’s nervous. “You think gloves would help with this kind of thing?”

  James grins. “Reading” in the “reading-in” and “reading-out” sense is a bit on the esoteric side of things for Rob, who started off as a traffic cop and ended up in Special Operations and eventually got recruited by the Firm. “Yeah, no,” James says. “Not unless you put them over your eyes. Let your friendly neighborhood van Helsing do it.”

  Rob shrugs and moves aside. “You nearly bailed coming through that door,” he says, his flattened face softened a bit by a wry smile. “You drunk again?”

  “Still. And I just had this conversation with Gabe,” James says. “I’ll be careful, and it’s your fault I’m here like this, because I wouldn’t have come if you hadn’t picked me up. Plus I’m the only one who gets to deal with the hangover tomorrow, so stow it.”

  Rob shrugs. “Didn’t realize work was such a goddamned imposition.”

  “Actually, I’m glad you called me in,” James says, and he’s being honest. “It’s easier than having to read you out if you got read-in. And anyway, I was about done.”

  “Okay, now you’ve gone from being friendly to sharing way too much information.”

  James grins at him. He knows Rob’s not nearly as straitlaced as he likes to pretend. He’s not exactly sure what Rob’s hiding, but he’s very quiet about his personal life. If James were nosier, he’d find it irresistible.

  “Bonnie Nettle runs a good shop,” James says, because he never could resist being an asshole. “You should try it sometime. It’s been years since I s
aw you stepping out with somebody. Getting laid would probably be good for you.”

  “Yeah,” Rob says. “Thanks. Anyway, work?” He points to the workbench.

  “You should probably turn around,” James says, and Rob nods and turns his back to the cards. James looks them over. “Tarot cards,” he says, shrugging. They’re not mass-produced fakes, either. They’re hot with magic. Totally screwing up the air above the workbench. He takes a long look at them before touching them. James has a habit. Well, not a habit exactly. James has a tendency to affect the things he touches, if those things are magical and tied to fate. He’s always done it, probably ever since he was a baby. Touch anything that’s not affixed to a certain destiny and boom, suddenly a destiny is confirmed. Might as well have been written in the stars. It’s not like he wants to do it, it’s not like he’s trying to do it, and it’s not like he hasn’t tried to learn how to stop. It’s just that, as far as he can tell, there’s not really a cure of that sort of thing. So he hesitates. Because destiny is flapping loose around those cards, and when he touches them, that’ll be that. A destiny will be fixed. Even if nobody else can see it, even if nobody else ever knows, James will.

  After a moment, he touches them. There’s no other option. The cards are smooth and cool, standard size for a modern tarot deck, just a little larger than playing cards, but the deck is tiny. It’s been cut, or it’s incomplete. “Not playing with a full deck,” James says and then hears himself and adds, “Heh,” and Rob laughs faintly too.

  He turns over one of the cards, and it’s a roughed-out sketch of Justice, unfinished, no color, no text. “Huh,” he says. He turns over another one of the cards. Then another. “Looks like it’s mostly major arcana.”

  “Magic?”

  “Definitely. But tarot’s mostly symbolic. There’s probably not enough text to worry about getting read-in.”

  Rob turns back to the table and looks down, squashed face curious. “They making a homemade deck?”

  “Looks like it. It’s….” He looks back down at the table, realizes something with a jolt. The cards aren’t just homemade generic divination tools, they’re incredibly specific. He looks again at the card he just turned over.

  “The Lovers” is written in a sort of art nouveau script above, well, Rob and Yuko, two operatives who, as far as James knows, absolutely hate each other’s guts. Somebody’s idea of a joke. The next one is a very good likeness of James’s Great-uncle Abraham, dressed in a red robe and carrying a book, one hand extended in a gesture of benediction. The Hierophant. “Jesus,” James says.

  “What?”

  “Well, I think it’s a good sign somebody’s taken a pretty serious interest in the Firm.” He holds up The Lovers so Rob can see it.

  Rob stares. “What. The fuck.” He turns to the witches. The three of them are just starting to shuffle out of the room. “What the fuck is this?” he shouts.

  One of the women, the one with the ink-stained fingers, lurches toward them. She looks at Rob, then the card, then flutters her hands at him and James.

  “Listen, please,” she says, “I know it looks creepy, but I didn’t know you were real people. I just like to draw. Probably saw you on TV, that’s all. I don’t actually know who any of those people are.”

  “You have never, ever seen her on TV,” Rob says softly.

  The woman looks miserable, eyes wet, stained hands spread. “I just dream them, and then I make the cards. It doesn’t mean anything.”

  Rob’s hand closes to a fist, like maybe he’s not convinced and he’d like to be. Nothing like pain to get somebody to say the thing you want to hear. James should know.

  “Hey, hey,” he says, catching Rob’s arm. “These guys are going in front of a judge tomorrow.” He gives Rob what he hopes is a significant look, and Rob scowls. Rob points at the woman.

  “You are so fucking lucky,” he whispers before Benecio starts back toward them to find out what’s going on.

  “I got it, Dad,” Gabe calls, forestalling Benecio’s questions and his disapproval. “C’mon, get moving,” he tells the woman. Then he turns, frowning at Rob and James. “What’s going on? Everything okay?”

  James looks down at the deck, spread out so the intricate card backs are all he can see.

  “For some definitions of ‘okay,’” James says. “But this deck of cards is fucking weird.”

  He turns the next card over. The Sun. Both he and Gabe snort. The man on the card is Abe, naked except for a flowing red cloak, which is doing the censor’s job. Another card, this one blank, unfinished, not even sketched. Another. This one is The Fool, and it’s a picture of him.

  “Ouch,” Gabe whispers.

  It stings, the idea that even people who don’t know him know all about him. It stings like hell, but James knows better than to show weakness. He shrugs. “Story of my life,” he says, and he even musters up a grin. The next card is The Emperor. That’s his father. The Empress, that’s his mother. Strength is Gabe’s dad, naked just like Abe was, but instead of red, Benecio is draped in blue. In the picture he’s either getting to his feet or going to his knees, a twisted, lion-mouthed creature reaching for him from the shadows.

  “This is fucked right up,” Gabe whispers.

  Rob grunts his agreement. James turns over the last card.

  Death rides a pale horse, and his standard is a circle of thorns like a coil of barbed wire. He has wings coming out of his back, his head, and his feet, like some kind of seraphim. There are people kneeling before him, people James knows. Abraham and Maria van Helsing lie under the horse’s feet. Rob kneels, hands clasped in supplication, begging, and James himself stands, hands outstretched to the figure on the horse. The rider’s eyes are looking at the viewers. James stares. The rider is Gabe.

  “Jesus,” Gabe whispers when James looks at him. Gabe’s mouth has fallen open, the white of his eyes showing all around the brown. “Jesus,” he whispers again. “What the hell is this?”

  “Look,” Rob says quietly, “can we move these? I don’t think anybody else should see them.”

  James nods. “Yeah. Let’s get them put away. They’re pretty much dry. Who’s got an evidence bag? Not a clear one.”

  Rob pulls one out of his pocket, and James thanks him and starts packing up the cards. Rob heads off to the wagon to oversee the piercing of the witches, and Gabe finishes up with the salt circle. Then James and Gabe take the brooms that were lying around and break the circle, swirling the colors into a mess on the floor, ruining the carefully drawn script, the interconnected lines. They mess up the circle, find a couple unfinished sketches for future cards, and methodically tag and bag all the books and printouts and journals lying around. They’re always careful, in a bust like this, to make sure to get everything that could have even a whiff of magic on it, or anything somebody might get read-in to, or learn bad habits from. They’re thorough. It takes them all damn night.

  THEY’RE LEAVING as the cleaners are coming in, as the sun is coming up over the big old manor house and throwing yellow light down through the trees. James has a glance at the facade on the way out.

  Even the daylight can’t make the tumbled-down place look anything but creepy. All the tangled vines that drape it, the paint peeling away like scabs, the way it sags at the angles so nothing ends quite where you think it should.

  He’d asked his dad last year if they should get the city to tear it down. That and the church across the road, which is in a similar state of dilapidation and disrepair. Couldn’t do it. Something about red-tape jurisdictional stuff, he can’t really remember the specifics. He’s too tired to think now, and he might have been drunk at the time. All he remembers is that they weren’t allowed to bulldoze it.

  Should have done it anyway. Places like these just attract witches and ghosts and no end of troubles. He turns his back on it, but he’s pretty sure he’s going to be out here again, and probably soon.

  YUKO IS waiting with security at the door when they get back to the Firm.
James doesn’t care much for her. She’s not friendly, she’s abrupt, and unlike Rob she doesn’t seem to care one way or another about the Firm. She’s just interested in whatever job’s in front of her. So he doesn’t like her, it doesn’t matter. It’s not like that’s a reason to be rude. He musters up an exhausted smile.

  “Hey, Yuko, what brings you down to street level?”

  She smiles back at him. It’s not warm; both of them are being professional.

  “Your father’d like a word. He wants you to go right up.”

  James nods. “I’ve got evidence for the cage.”

  “He said to send you up right away, evidence and all.”

  James frowns. “Everything okay?”

  “Other than I’ve been told to send you up and you’re not going?” she asks. “Nope.”

  That’s Yuko all over. Hard. Ass.

  “On my way, then,” he says and steps around her and through the doors.

  THIS PLACE used to be a bank, way back. And then the Firm bought it and put offices on the main floor. That was in the late 1900s, after the younger branch of the van Helsings came over to America in the wake of Great-great-great Uncle van Helsing’s well-publicized doings in Whitby. They settled first in New England and then came south and settled in New Glamis. They came flush with fame and riches, and it kind of never stopped being that way. In a world full of minor gods and ghosts and sidhe, the monster-hunting business is always good.

  Back in the day, they used to rent out the marble-clad lower halls to the city, and then in the thirties they took it back, and now it’s a spacious entryway; security and admin work down there. Below there’s the cages—the old iron bank vaults made sound and used for storing magic-related evidence.