Salt and Iron

by Tam MacNeil

  HOT, STUFFY air. Smells like asphalt and deep fry and barf. He’s sitting on the curb, on a side street. On one side there’s a run-down rental house, and on the other it’s the parking lot for the pub. He’s sitting. Feet flat on the concrete, butt on the yellow-painted ledge. Probably smart, because the world is lurching forward and snapping back like a second hand on a stuck clock.

  “Jamie?”

  He looks up. In the still moments between the lurch and snap, Gabe’s face resolves, looming like a moon above him.

  “Gabe, hey!” He smiles. “When’d’y. Whatar you doinere?”

  Gabe frowns down at him. James knows that look.

  “Mm in trouble, aren’t I?” he asks.

  Gabe doesn’t answer, or maybe he does. Hard to say, since James is throwing up again.

  “Good-bye, sandwich,” he says. Always was good at ID’ing a corpse.

  WHITE DOORWAY with brass numbers on it, up a couple of steps. Why do people always put doors up steps?

  ROB’S SQUASHED, flattened, grumpy face between the door and frame, blinking, bleary. “You’re fucking kidding me.”

  “The press have camped out at the Firm since Uncle Abe’s death. I can’t take him back there like this.”

  Gabe smells like aftershave and soap, and if James could get his fingers working he’d be unbuttoning that pale blue dress shirt. If he felt better he’d be horny, standing here like this, with Gabe, with his arms around him. Too bad he feels so sick.

  “Jesus Christ,” Rob says and rubs his forehead.

  Oh man, James does not feel good.

  Gabe shrugs under James’s arms. “I’m sorry, man. I didn’t know where else to take him.”

  Rob sighs. “Yeah, you did right. You’d better bring him in.”

  James figures if he pukes he’ll feel better. He gives it a try.

  HE WAKES up because a baby is crying. Not on the TV, not far away. Close and uncontrollable. It’s… horrible. It starts off crying and goes to screaming, and the screaming makes him want to panic, makes him angry, furious, desperate to shut it up, whatever it takes.

  He lurches upright in bed, and the world jerks and spins around him. He is aware in a sort of factual way that if there was anything left in his stomach he’d throw it up, but there’s nothing.

  The crying goes on and on and on. He staggers out of bed and then has the presence of mind to ask himself how the hell he got into a bed in the first place. He doesn’t remember getting into bed, and he’s never seen this particular bed before, and he maybe deliberately gave Gabe the impression he was fucking around with Brett, but he’s pretty sure he’s not actually. Pretty sure.

  He goes to the window and looks out, but the tree-lined street isn’t familiar. He doesn’t remember anything except…. Except Gabe showing up. He remembers that. And the car, the warm heated seats, and something about needing to get him somewhere safe and—

  The crying stutters and stops like a car stalling out. Thank God.

  He looks down at himself. Still in suit pants. No socks. The bed is still mostly made. His shirt and shoes are over on a cheap chair in the corner, under a cheap lamp beside the windows, which are closed and covered with a brightly patterned shade. He catches a glance at himself in the free-standing mirror wedged between the low bookshelf and the door. His face is ashy, eyes baggy and red, pants rumpled, hands dirty. He looks like hell.

  He feels like hell. Mouth tastes like hours-old vomit. Eyes feel like they’ve been sandblasted. Stomach an acidic knot right down to his bowels. He lurches out of the bedroom and hears someone saying “Shhh, shhh, shhh” as he staggers down the hall, looking for the bathroom. Praise be, it’s not that far away.

  He uses everything. Toilet, shower, sink. He only throws up a little. When he’s done in the shower and toweling off, just as he’s thinking he’s going to go back to the room he was in, get properly dressed, and phone Gabe and find out what the hell’s going on, someone knocks on the door. Quiet, respectful.

  “Just a sec,” he calls, finishes with the fly of his pants, and opens the door.

  Rob’s flattened face looks back at him. “Up and about?” he asks.

  James can’t think of anything to say.

  “Can you eat?” Rob asks. “Or are you too hungover?”

  The thought of food is enough to knot his stomach up and threaten his throat with vomit. “I… I could probably do coffee,” he says softly.

  Rob nods and steps away from the door, and that’s when James sees he’s holding a child in his arms. He stares. Rob looks back at him.

  “You never seen a baby before?” he asks after a minute.

  “Yours?” James asks.

  “No, I stole her from some homeless guy. Yes, mine.”

  He shakes his head. “I had no idea.”

  “Of course not,” Rob says. “We’re calling her the Howler Monkey,” he adds, “Howls for short. She’s cutting teeth.”

  “We?”

  “Me and Yuko.”

  “What?”

  Rob shakes his head. “Why do you think we always work opposite each other?”

  “Honestly?” James asks, feeling stupid. “I thought you guys hated each other.”

  Rob laughs at that. The baby makes a fussing, squirming sort of noise and settles again.

  “Come on,” Rob says. “Coffee’s basically on tap since Howls arrived.”

  He follows Rob down the narrow hall, to stairs, and then down those too, to the kitchen, which is white and airy. There’s a bouquet of flowers on the table, mostly roses, a few other things, and the scent of the flowers is competing with the smell of coffee.

  “Didn’t know you liked flowers,” James says. He says it in a teasing voice, like the asshole that he is.

  “You could wallpaper this house with the things you don’t know about me,” Rob answers. He shifts Howls from arm to arm and sits down at the table. “But in this case, they’re for Yuko. Howls is six months on Monday. Anyway, you slept here, so that means you basically live here. You can get your own breakfast. Mugs are up there.” He gestures with his chin. “Milk’s in the fridge. No cream, unless you want to go buy some. No time to get groceries lately.”

  He gets himself a coffee, leaves it black, sags into the chair opposite Rob. Rob sniffs the baby, which James thinks is a little weird, but it’s his baby, and what does James know about it? Rob looks over at James.

  “You’re gonna die if you keep this up,” he says.

  James takes a drink of his coffee.

  “You hear me?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” he mutters. “Yeah, it’s no good for me, I’ll regret it when I’m older, I’m gonna….”

  “I mean it.”

  “You and everybody else, Rob.” He doesn’t mean to snarl, he doesn’t mean to sound like his dad, but he does, and he does. “It’s not your business.”

  “You land on my doorstep in the middle of the night, it is my business,” Rob says, matter-of-fact. “You puked all over Gabe, and then you puked all over me last night. I’m used to getting puked on, but I’m pretty sure Gabe’s scarred for life.”

  James’d laugh if it was anybody but Gabe. Rob catches his eye and holds it.

  “You trying to kill yourself? Because if that’s what you want, I’ve got a gun you can borrow.”

  He almost drops the mug. “Jesus Christ, Rob,” he snaps. “That a fucking joke?”

  “No.” Rob jerks his chin at James. “Pour me one. Mine’s with sugar, no milk.”

  James gets up and gets a second mug, pours the coffee and stirs in the sugar and sets it down. Rob takes it.

  “You either want to live or you want to die,” he says. “If you want to die, I want you off my team. If you want to live, you’d better figure out how you plan on living.”

  James stares at Rob for a long moment. Maybe he ought to be ashamed of himself. Probably should. Maybe he ought to be angry, but he can’t muster it up. He’s not sure why it’s not there.

  “I can’t,” James s
ays then. He didn’t mean to say it, just sort of blurted it.

  Rob’s quiet for a while, fussing with Howls’s barrettes. James licks his lips and settles down at the table. “Look, I’m sorry. About last night, and this. I had a… first Uncle Abe’s killed, and then something else kinda big happened. I cut loose a little too hard. I didn’t mean to track my shit all through your life. I’m really fucking sorry.”

  “Don’t care,” Rob says. “Figure it out.” It stings like a slap. Rob seems to know it. He looks back at James and shrugs. “It’s nothing personal. I hate seeing dead men walking is all.” Then he frowns. “And don’t swear in front of my little girl.”

  The phone on the table rings. Rob shifts his daughter to the other hip and picks the phone up. “Rob here,” he says. “Uh-huh. Yeah, he’s up now. Yeah. No. Okay. See you in fifteen.”

  He hangs up and dials again.

  “Yuko, hi, baby. No, he’s up. No, just got a callout from Gabe. You want me to call Torren or…? Okay. Okay. See you in ten.”

  He hangs up again and gets to his feet.

  “Callout from Gabe?” he asks, because Rob doesn’t seem to be interested in telling him.

  Rob looks at him. “Yeah. Something going down in the old sugar warehouse on Riverside.”

  James nods, getting to his feet. “I’ll get a—”

  “You’re not coming.”

  “What?” He turns, looks at Rob, then at Howls. “I’m not a fucking babysitter, Rob.”

  “You think I’d trust you with my little girl? After last night?”

  James stares. “Are you kidding me?”

  “I’m serious,” Rob says before draining the coffee. “Far as I’m concerned you’re suicidal. You’re off my team ’til you sort yourself out.”

  “Are you kidding me?” he shouts.

  Rob kisses Howls on the forehead and sets her down on the floor. Then he comes toward James, covering the distance between them in two strides and jabbing a finger into James’s face.

  “I don’t know why you went on a bender last night, and I don’t care. If you’re on your feet this morning, there’s a good chance it’s because you’re still drunk. You’re a liability already. I don’t need you drunk too. You’re off my team ’til you prove you’ve got your personal shit under control.”

  Jesus. Jesus. This is going to get back, back to his dad. His dad, who’s already furious. To Abe, who’s going to ask him what’s wrong. He needs to fix this, make it go away. “Rob, listen, I told you I was fucking sorry—”

  “Save it,” Rob says. “The people on my team trust me with their lives, and I trust them. I don’t trust you anymore, James, not with their lives and not with mine. And what did I tell you about swearing in front of my goddamned daughter?”

  He stares at Rob, mouthing wordlessly.

  “Yuko’s coming in ten minutes. I want you out of here by then.”

  He nods. He licks his lips. “Okay,” he says softly. Discretion. It’s a kindness, it’s a gift. Rob’s an ally, even if he is angry. “Okay. Thanks.”

  “I’m not hiding this from her,” Rob tells him. “You’re a mess, and I don’t want you to be her problem too. You got it?”

  He nods again. “Yeah,” he whispers. “Yeah, got it.”

  HE LEAVES Rob’s place just as Yuko’s pulling in on her motorbike. He waves at her, as if there’s nothing weird about having stayed there overnight, as if being thrown off the team was just one of those day-to-day things, as exciting as making a spreadsheet. She doesn’t wave back.

  He takes himself to Rosie’s Diner to get something into his stomach. Orders eggs and buttered toast and bacon. Orders coffee, black. Stops himself before he asks if they ever do boozy coffee. C’mon, you fucking asshole, he tells himself while he digs into a late breakfast, while the others are shinbone deep in a raid, doing work he ought to be doing. Just think about something else. What’s the goddamned matter with you, anyway?

  If he had a drink it’d steady him. He’d be able to go down to the riverside warehouse. He knows exactly the one. He’s seen time split over it before. That’s another one he told his dad about, another one he said they should see about getting torn down. Another one he was told they couldn’t do anything about. Something to do with zoning and ownership. Another one of those monster-magnet places.

  He knows the whole place. He knew it was going to be a problem, so he got the plans from city hall and learned them. He could go and he could work and he’d be useful. He could prove himself. He’s too shaky to do it now, but if he had a little something he could, and he wouldn’t feel so awful.

  Why can’t you fucking keep it together?

  He finishes the meal and doesn’t linger. Buys a new shirt at one of the little shops on William Street and wears it out. He looks almost decent when he goes back to the Firm, not that the press takes much interest in him. He makes it up to his apartment without incident. Nobody even notices him. There’s a bottle of bourbon in his kitchen, and he only has a little. Just enough to steady his hands.

  This is a goddamned problem, James, he tells himself.

  Then he changes into his gear, hard-wearing black trousers, a thick shirt, the stab vest over it, jacket over that, steel-toed boots, a bag of iron filings, a handful of the hand-forged nails, and a paper package of salt. He puts himself on the roster by the back door and heads out.

  Seven

  GABE’S MISSING James already, even before they’ve gotten inside the old warehouse. James always has a kind of a sense for things, for where trouble’s going to be. Gabe spends half a second wondering if that’s a feature of being a fixer before he goes inside. It probably is.

  Now he knows what’s been going on, even without having had much time to think about it. It’s pretty clear to Gabe that they’ve all been benefiting from James’s abilities, even while James was trying so damn hard to hide them. And he might not know much about divination—after what happened to his mom he got really into salt circles and just barely scraped his certification in the other stuff—but he knows the law. Future-fixing is illegal, free will is socially important, and since divination fixes the future in ways nobody really understands, divination of any kind is a no-no. Unless, of course, you’re a professional in the field. Then you get to study whatever the hell you like. Sort of the same way cops learn about how to dispose of bodies. It’s not nice, it’s not fair. It’s part of the privilege of being a van Helsing. It’s part of what makes James such a damn hypocrite. But whatever happens, however this plays out, James is going to need the force of his family name behind him to keep him safe.

  It never occurred to him that people who could divine didn’t mean to do what they did. It wasn’t so much could divine as do, in the way some people dream the same dream over and over again. Not by choice, not even by habit. Just do.

  So all this time, James has probably been fixing their success. Fixing futures where they find the monsters and kill them, where they find the sidhe and witches and they bind them. And now here they are, without a diviner. And they’re doing it on their own, au naturel. And it’s not going so good right off the bat.

  His dad was waiting for them when they arrived, Benecio’s team already assembling in the empty street, the big old warehouse sagging like a set piece behind them, and the river rolling humid and stinking along behind that. Running water washes away magic; everybody knows that, just like everybody knows the plan without needing it said. They’ll fan through the old warehouse, moving through and clearing rooms like a SWAT team, pushing the magic users or the monster or the sidhe toward the water. They’ll sweep down and to the back ’til the creatures inside are trapped against the water, and they’ll have to get in and start swimming or they’ll have to give up.

  They don’t usually fight, the monsters or the magic users, though sometimes the sidhe will. It doesn’t happen very often. But something about this is making Gabe uneasy. Maybe it’s just that they don’t have James, and he’s not certain of anything anymore, now that
he knows James wasn’t just lucky.

  His dad waves him over, and he goes. “You’re with me,” he says. “Tim, you and Matthew. Therese and Sam. Rob, you take Steve. This is big,” Benecio says. “This is bigger than I’ve ever seen before.”

  So it’s not just him who’s feeling the foreboding. He looks at his dad, and his dad looks very serious, more than he usually does before a job like this. There’s no jokes or laughing from the others, either. Everybody’s picking it up, and being short one isn’t helping. Therese takes a claw hammer and levers up the graffiti-covered plywood piece that does the job of the missing front door and sets it aside. They hesitate for a second, all of them; then Benecio goes in. As long as Gabe has been on these missions, his dad has always gone everywhere first. Gabe follows him, and hairs on the back of his neck rise up the minute he goes through the door.

  It’s an old warehouse, so there are offices at street level, with enough streetlamp illumination coming through the boarded-up windows and the cracks in the walls and the roof to be able to see without the flashlights. And there’s something else. There’s a thickness in the air, like an electrical charge, like static. When he touches the handle of the next door, he gets a little shock. He doesn’t yelp, that’ll bring the others running, but he looks at his dad, and his dad looks back at him. Benecio’s mouth is flat, his eyes hard. He hasn’t seen his dad look like this since what happened to his mom.

  They clear the room, hear the others shouting rooms clear too, all of them moving back and down, through hallways, through offices. Gabe pushes open a small side door, finds a bathroom long unused, the mirror hanging from one hook.

  “Smash that,” Benecio says quietly.

  He does. Odds of anything coming through unsummoned are pretty damn slim, but there’s something wrong here, with the place. With the floors that rise and fall where the wood is warped, where the air is charged and feels thick and hot. He doesn’t want anything coming through the mirror and getting behind them.