by Richard Hein
She watched me with an all too calm demeanor. Her hands folded into her lap, brilliant eyes regarded me from beneath dark frames. “I did ask, damn it. This is my life, Samuel. You’ve been kicking and screaming this entire way, but this is likely life or death for me. My brother is already dead. You saw what happened this morning, but you’re not willing to share things that could be vital to keeping me alive.” Her eyes flicked to the bottle. “It’s not like I got you any drunker than you would have been anyway. I didn’t take advantage of you, I got you what you wanted, hoping to get what I wanted.”
I turned away, feeling my skin flush. My eyes fell on the bottle, lying there in silent accusation. For a frantic moment, I wanted to snatch it up and hurl it at a wall. The problem was, it wasn’t even the fact she was right. On any given night, I’d have fallen asleep to the sweet lullaby of vodka whispering to me. That hurt, but it was an ache I was prepared for. There was a pain that twisted in my gut, keener than anything her words could have offered up.
I’d actually enjoyed myself this evening. Apparently, I’d wanted to talk, to smile. To laugh.
“I’m one sentence away from calling you a cab, sending you back to Christina, and washing my hands of this,” I said in a quiet voice. I couldn’t turn around. I wasn’t even sure I could fully blame her. My eyes wouldn’t leave that damnable bottle on the floor. Empty or full, I hated what it represented, but she was right in too many ways. Her life was on the line. I’d decided to help out to try and keep her alive, but the past kept clawing at me, the wounds never quite healing and preventing me from doing just that. She’d used what she had to get what she needed. In my prime, I’d have done the same. I just couldn’t excuse the lack of trust. It had to work both ways.
She waited in silence. Good. I bent and picked up the bottle, carrying it to the kitchen. I stomped on the pedal that lifted the lid on my garbage can, dangled it over… and hesitated.
With a sigh, I opened a cupboard over the sink, slid the small amount of clean cups I had around and let the bottle find a new home.
“Why me?” I said, leaning against the doorway from the kitchen. My gaze was hopefully iron. Colder than the apartment. “You’ve been adamant it be me this whole time. What’s your angle?”
Kate pushed up from the floor and slid onto the couch, never looking away from my eyes. “I’ve always been on the level with you there, Samuel. Ben’s journal named you specifically. Not just the OFC, but Samuel Walker. I have to know why. All I know is that you’re important to this, and are tied to his death somehow. Whatever things were tormenting him, whatever that bronze knife was, you’re caught up in this. I’m sticking with you until I know why.”
You and me both, I thought. I chewed at my lip. What was the best way to proceed? Kate was certainly a handful. Little fear at confronting things from beyond our universe, no qualms about liquoring me up to get what she wanted. If I weren’t tangled up in this, had I been watching it happen to someone else, I’d have loved seeing her in action. She watched me, unflinching.
“So, you manipulated me into talking,” I said. “Good job. Now your turn. Fess up. What are you hiding?”
Her face turned to stone. “No.”
“No?” I stomped forward two steps. “Just… no?” I gave a bitter laugh. “Oh, that’s good, Kate. I’m grabbing my phone. 1-800-CALL-OFC. Right now.”
Kate held up a hand. Her eyes slipped away from mine. Shoulders hunched, she chewed at her lip while lost in thought. I took in a slow breath. She looked… vulnerable. Most of my anger evaporated, leaving behind stony ground that little could grow in. I’d seen the fiery Kate. I’d seen the vulnerable Kate.
Both were starting to wear on me.
“I promise I’m not holding anything back that might help with Ben,” she said at last with a slow sigh. “I’ll swear on anything you want me to.”
“A stack of bibles and a box of kittens would be a good start. Go on.”
Her eyes pressed closed. “I don’t press you about your whole past thing. This has nothing to do with Ben or you. I don’t even remember what all it is. But, fine, if you’re going to press…” Kate took a slow breath and pressed a hand to the side of her head, fingers rubbing slow circles there. “I was in a bad car accident just out of high school. The headaches are a side effect from it, okay? I never… I never got completely better. Dizzy spells too. There’s still lingering problems from it. It’s hard for me to keep things together sometimes.”
I swallowed. “Fair enough. Sometimes you can’t be too sure. It’s a bad time to be evasive about things. I’m sorry, Kate.”
The silence curled around us for a moment. “By morning, Daniel will be back with reinforcements,” I said, breaking its hold. “Full Seneschals. The whole red carpet, just for you. That coffin-headed thing we saw and the presence of an Archangel likely cut through every bit of red tape along the way to the top.”
She waited. Good.
“We can do some investigating on our own until then. There are resources out there that the OFC won’t touch. They’re not the only players in the game.” I sighed. “Things I wouldn’t have done when I was working with them, but if we want answers while we wait…”
Her face brightened, but I held up a hand.
“There are conditions now,” I said, voice growing colder. “You tried to brute force your way through me. I’m not your damn asset, Kate. As of this moment, we’re not partners. You do as I say, or I wash my hands of this and I stop caring how my name got in that journal of your brother’s. I won’t let you parade that out every time you want a carrot to lead me with.”
“If you’d have just—”
“This is not a negotiation session, Kate,” I snarled, taking another looming step. “I was starting to…” I cut off. I was starting to like this. To like the way we worked together. Except time had proven that always ended in agony. I took a breath when I saw some of the rosy color in her cheeks drain away, rubbed at my eyes, and nodded. The closet door opened, and I fished the bronze weapon from my other jacket. The metal gleamed as I lobbed it underhand onto the couch next to her. “These are the new rules. You work with my rules, or wait for Daniel and work with the OFC’s. I guarantee that doing things my way will be less strict.”
“I thought you said doing things your way would wind up with me dead.”
“Still the most likely outcome,” I said in a very even tone. “Except you’ll probably find out everything you want to know before the end.”
“Fine,” Kate said. “Full disclosure between us about what we’re working on. Past is past, but the present is an open book here. No more playing games, Samuel.” Her eyes narrowed. “You recognized the thing that showed up at Ben’s house.”
“Yes,” I said simply. I started to gather up the remains of our dinner. “It’s a creature I ran into with someone I used to work with a very long time ago. You can sleep on the couch. I’ll get some spare blankets from the closet and take the floor. Tomorrow we’ll start checking into a few things. I know people that can tell us more about that shiv of yours.” I paused and met her eyes. “As soon as it gets too dangerous, we wait for Daniel. We won’t have the OFC or a personal angel to protect us. We’re just going to go look for some information.”
“That’s fair.”
I tossed the remains of dinner, gathered up some spare blankets and flicked off the light. My back started to protest as soon as I hit the floor. The ceiling wasn’t terribly interesting, but I stared at it nonetheless, laying there in silence for quite a long time. My thoughts churned, anger at everything and anything roiling within me. I wasn’t sure how long had passed when I glanced over at Kate, but she was doing the same, eyes open and fixated on the ceiling. Her lips moved, though I couldn’t hear what she was saying.
The creepy factor ratcheted up to an eleven.
I pushed out my senses, listening for the feel of magic, but all I felt was the happy gurgle of the dinner we’d eaten. Nothing. Still, it was time to take her to the
twins. She had manipulated me pretty deftly. I wasn’t exactly the hardest to get one over on, but I couldn’t stop wondering if there was something living in her mind, directing her in all of this.
Sleep was a long time coming.
Chapter 10
Pike Place Market is full of magic. Never let anyone tell you otherwise. The air is filled with it. You can’t help but breath it in. That eclectic gathering of everything imaginable, of shops and nostalgia and people from all walks of life… It’s impossible not to feel it when you’re there. I mean real magic, not the sort you use to blow stuff up or ruin lives. The sort that sticks with you for years to come, the kind that makes memories and impresses itself like an indelible mark in your soul. I’d felt it when I’d first gone there with my parents around eight, and it had stuck with me ever since.
It was my last good memory of my childhood. Things had gotten bad for awhile after that, and I’d scraped by until I’d found the OFC. They weren’t the best times of my life by any stretch, but by comparison to the years that followed, they were the sun peaking through the rainy clouds. Sometimes, magic is just the warmth of memories from better days.
Of course, it didn’t hurt that there was some of the other kind of magic there too.
Everyone always talked about the fish. Down below, crammed into a couple of levels that faced out over the water, were the shops that excited the imagination. Some had been there as long as I could remember. There was the magic shop where my dad had gotten me a hokey little starter set, which I had given the token weak effort before chucking it into the closet. There was irony in that somewhere. The comic and novelty shop still maintained its vigil, now watched over by cardboard stand-ups of various television icons from pop culture. A grizzled man that might have been half sasquatch, given the locale, did caricatures for donations on the hardwood avenue that wove it all together.
“These are my people, Kate,” I declared, spinning in a circle, arms outstretched. My people gave me wide berth. “Can’t you feel it?”
“I live in Seattle,” she said. She poked her head into a shop sporting a clutter of items shipped in from various overseas countries, or cunningly crafted to look as such, and made a face. “Do you honestly think I’ve never been here before? Are you going to take me to a Starbucks next?”
“You have no sense of wonder,” I glowered.
We meandered through the crowd to a little hole in the wall shop with a door a sickly shade of green. At least the paint was peeling, making it a tad more palatable. A sign hung on an older iron post above it. There was no name, just a single symbol, the pyramid with the all-seeing eye within it. Kate glanced at it, skeptical.
Hesitation swept over me as my fingers hovered over the doorknob. I needed to know a few things before I opened her mind up and found something rooting around in it. Did I really want to know the answers? My thoughts flicked back to the way she’d liquored me up, just to trick information out of me, and my resolve hardened.
“So, you often whisper sweet nothings to yourself before drifting off to sleep?” I asked, watching her face carefully.
“Yeah, actually,” Kate said, brushing a lock of hair back behind her ear. “I recite poetry. Helps me relax when I’m stressed. It was a trick I learned after the accident.”
“I… Huh,” I said. “Okay.”
“Samuel Walker. Are you watching me sleep?”
I flushed. “There wasn’t a lot of sleeping. For all I knew, it looked like you could have been praying to a dark god. Cthulhu. The IRS. Some horrific evil of some kind.”
“I was a bit on edge after the way things ended,” she said. Her cheeks tinted a little as she turned away, eyes drifting back to the sign. “I couldn’t sleep. We all have rituals.”
“As long as yours aren’t summoning things up, that’s fine. Is there anything else you want to tell me before we go in here?”
Kate crossed her arms beneath her breasts and frowned. “You should stop wearing band-themed shirts. You’re not in your twenties.”
I growled and pulled open the door.
“Welcome, enlightened travelers,” a lightly accented voice announced as we stepped into a shop slightly larger than my bathroom. One wall held shelves, completely covered in items you’d expect inside of an occult shop, with a smattering of weathered books and a couple of things I didn’t at all recognize scattered about for good measure. The opposite side held a very bland counter with a cheap cash register that probably took credit cards only by one of the finger-eating manual imprinters, and two generic men in equally unremarkable suits.
“Do you seek knowledge forbidden? Is your lust for power… Ah, nine Hells. It’s Samuel.”
“Hey Stefan,” I said. I had to scoot sideways to let Kate in beside me and get the door closed again. “Dieter. This is Kate, an associate of mine that needs a bit of expert help.”
They almost could have been twins. Identical, nondescript twins, the sort you wouldn’t look twice at. Both executed a formal bow, their rather long blond hair brushing the glass counter.
“Oh, Samuel,” Stefan said with a warm smile, “flattery gets you everywhere.”
“Stefan, you poor child,” Dieter said, shaking his head.
“Before we talk, I need a favor,” I said, hooking a thumb at Kate. My heart trembled, worry gnawing at it like a dog that’s gotten its favorite bone. “Can you do your thing, Dee? I need to make sure it’s all good.”
Dieter stepped around the counter and shuffled the two steps to Kate. “May I?” he asked, holding out his hands toward her. She glanced at me with eyebrows raised. I nodded, and she cautiously took his hands.
Dieter’s eyes fluttered closed, and his head drifted back. Long moments swirled by. Kate shifted from foot to foot.
“Is, uh, he doing something?”
“Plenty,” Stefan said. “Dieter’s just thorough.”
She nodded, eyes drifting around the shop. “So, you sell magic? I thought that was dangerous?”
Stefan’s laugh was genuine. “Oh, goodness no. We sell crap to the flies, dear. You’d be surprised at how many people consider themselves clued in on the secrets of the universe. It’s pretty lucrative to cater to them. Mutter a few quasi-Latin phrases over some crystals or twisted bits of iron, add in a newsletter talking about the New World Order, a dash of Freemason symbology and you’ve got yourself a renewable resource.” He paused. “Stupidity is so salable.”
She craned her neck to glance at me leaning against the door. “You’re okay with this? Pretending to sell magical crap for money?”
I snorted. “No different than any of the other gimmicks out there bilking the population from their money. A fool and his money are soon parted.”
She grunted.
“There is nothing upstairs,” Dieter announced, breaking his hold with Kate’s hands. He turned away and stepped back behind the counter, but not before surreptitiously wiping them on a folded expanse of cloth that appeared from within his suit jacket. “Her head is empty.”
“What?” I spluttered. Kate gave me a sharp look. My suspicions had been growing that she might have had someone riding shotgun in her mind, but Dieter would have known for sure. It was a load off of my mind, tension knots detonating free from shackles I hadn’t even realized were there. That means that all her oddities, all her eagerness…
Kate was just Kate. I looked at her as if seeing her for the first time. Her sincerity, her enthusiasm… My lips actually wanted to curl into a smile. I could have kissed her right then. Earnest, simple Kate.
“Real class act, this pair,” Kate said to me with a glower that could have peeled paint. “Would you like to insult my shoes next? They’re the ones that are going to kick your collective asses.”
Dieter sighed. “Sincere apologies, Kate. I was verifying that there were no external influences altering your actions. Nothing is lurking within your mind. I had assumed that Samuel had clued you in before, because to not do so is awfully rude.”
I let his d
isapproving glare roll over me like it was a pep talk at the Monday meeting back at the office. I’d gotten good at that, and even gave him the same smile that said I cared but didn’t.
“No fun in that,” I said with a shrug.
Kate’s head snapped up. Narrow eyes settled on me. “So, what happened to the ‘full disclosure’ thing we talked about last night? We’re supposed to be working on trust and you keep this secret?”
“Right, because if your head was a clown car full of evil, telling you what I was planning would be the smartest thing. I didn’t know if you had something possessing you, Kate. It wasn’t malicious, it was cautious. If I’d have tipped my hand and you’d been possessed, things would have gone real bad.” I scrubbed a hand through my hair. “From here on out it’s full disclosure. Scouts honor.”
“She’s aware, then?” Stefan said. He straightened his tie and gave me a rather pointed look. “Of your particular business inclinations.”
“Hold on there,” Kate said, the heat flickering to life once more. “Don’t start talking like I’m not here. I’m not his damsel in distress, I’m his business partner.”
“You’re not my partner,” I said. I could feel the cold iron of my heart clenching at the roiling emotions once more. “We already established that. You might be somewhere near sidekick territory, though. You’re handy with ancient knives.”
Stefan’s composed features cracked with a tiny frown, as if he’d just smelled something unsavory. “Must be something rather off the beaten path, then, if you couldn’t take it to the OFC.” He turned to Kate. “We also sell actual magical services to those truly in the know. So few and far between, but the markup more than makes up for it. You should see our place in Queen Anne.”
Bastards.
“Stefan, could you show Kate something in a magic wand?” Dieter said.
Kate’s eyes lit up, then narrowed. “You learned I wanted to see one from rooting around in my head?”