“Where was he getting it?”
“At the time, I didn’t know, and anyway, I wasn’t thinking too good with fucking railroad spikes in my fucking arms. But now I know.”
I waited.
“He was tapping that shit from the place I been, D. He was getting his juice from the Beyond.”
The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. In my defense, they pretty much had to given that a skinless ghost was telling me about some kind of spooky death magic.
“There was something else, D,” Jamal said. “I think those spikes they nailed me with might have been magic, too. He didn’t want to even look at them, let alone touch them. Made the vampire do all the spike work. Maybe those spikes come from the Beyond, too, you know, and that’s why only the undead motherfucker could touch them.”
I shook my head. “Maybe, but they were just spikes when I looked at them. How did they feel?”
“How you think they felt, motherfucker? They felt like fucking spikes!” He showed me the ragged holes they’d left in his wrists and ankles, and I probably shuddered.
“Sorry,” I said. “I meant, did they feel magic, or, you know, bone-chillingly cold, or anything like that.” I saw the irritated look he was somehow managing despite the lack of a face. “Okay, never mind.” I considered for a moment. “The ritual, Jamal,” I said. “Did he squeeze you?”
“Oh, hell, yeah. He opened up that box on me and I could feel it, you know, stripping away my magic along with my skin.”
“The box…it’s called a soul jar. He got it from Papa Danwe.”
Jamal nodded. “He was talking the whole time it was happening. Said it held the juice of some King Tut motherfuckers back in the day.”
“Yeah,” I said, “it’s like an organ jar. I saw this show on the History Channel. They’d pull a pharaoh’s brain out through his nose and put it in a fucking jar. Only this one was made to hold a guy’s juice instead of his brain or whatever.”
Jamal rubbed his nose-hole and nodded. “I ain’t got cable, D, but that’s what he said, too. I’m just glad they didn’t do my brain like that, girl. The whole thing with my skin was enough. When he told me that shit, I thought he was turning me into a fucking mummy.”
“Is it possible that the killer was someone else, someone using a magical disguise to look like Adan?”
Jamal looked thoughtful. “That don’t sound right. We was hanging out for a couple weeks, you know, before. Sometimes I took him home, even chilled in his crib from time to time. That night, when we left the club, he drove. It was his car, you know, that red Porsche. So if it was a disguise, it was someone living in his crib, driving his car and whatnot.”
None of it made any sense. Adan couldn’t be the killer. It just wasn’t possible. And yet, Jamal was certainly convinced it was him. He wasn’t lying. He believed it. He just had to be wrong.
“Okay, what about the vampire? Where is he now?”
“I don’t know, Domino. I can’t haunt his pasty white ass, I guess ’cause he’s already dead.”
“But you can haunt Adan? So that means he’s alive. I mean, he’s not a vampire or anything like that.”
“Yeah, D, he’s alive. He’s really alive. Lit up like the motherfucking fire you set off on the playground last night. I figure it’s ’cause he murdered my ass.”
“What about the Papa Danwe connection? Did you ever meet Terrence Cole at the club?”
“Some of the Haitian’s niggers hung out there, seemed like they knew the vampire. I never saw Terrence there, specifically, but you know, I wasn’t there 24/7.”
“Okay, Jamal. I don’t know what this means, but I’m going to figure this shit out, man, so you can rest or whatever.”
“Yeah, that’s great, D.” He pulled out the knife again. “In the meantime, I’m gonna go get me some motherfucking skin.”
“Jamal, I can’t let you do that. I can’t have you interfering in my investigation.”
Jamal laughed. “You sound like Five-oh, D. Anyway, how you gonna stop me?” He disappeared through the wall of the bathroom and then stepped back through a moment later. “I’m a ghost!”
I sighed. “Yeah, Jamal, I know. At first cock-crow the ghosts must go, back to their quiet graves below,” I said, and bound Jamal’s shade to the toilet in the corner stall of the bathroom.
“Damn.”
“I’ll come back for you when I’m done. Shouldn’t be more than a few days. Work on the solidity thing. Maybe practice flushing or something.”
Jamal was cursing me as I unlocked the door and went out to rejoin Adan. I tried to hold up my end of the conversation as best I could while my mind worked over the story Jamal had given me.
Adan was the killer. I repeated it to myself, over and over, trying it out. It just wasn’t possible. The killer was a sorcerer. Adan wasn’t a sorcerer. Therefore, Adan could not be the killer. I’m no Sherlock Holmes, but that logic seemed locked up pretty tight.
And yet, Jamal had seen him do it. If he believed Adan was the killer, what evidence did I have that he was wrong? He should know, after all. And Jamal hadn’t just seen him do it—Adan had been hanging out with him for several days at least, maybe weeks, before he hit Jamal. That ruled out the possibility that the killer was an unknown sorcerer who magically disguised himself as Adan long enough to do the killing. Maybe I could see a way to make that angle work if I twisted it just right, but it would take a lot of twisting.
Leaving aside the impossibility of it all, I tried to reconcile all of this with the man I was sharing dinner with. He was kind, and smart, and funny and honest, and his otherwise hopeful and bright outlook on life was tinged with just a little bit of sadness and loneliness. It made him both strong and vulnerable at the same time. It made him irresistible.
And yet, somehow, it seemed that this same man had murdered at least two people with calculating premeditation in one of the most brutal ways I could imagine. He’d used a death ritual, channeling juice from the Beyond, to take their magic before he’d taken their lives.
I didn’t work for the Peace Corps. I’d seen plenty of murders and done some myself. Some of my coworkers were sociopaths. But even in the outfit, there were limits. You just couldn’t work with someone who likes to skin and crucify people, any more than you could keep a rabid dog as a pet. I’d heard about guys who went over that line, and they always got put down just like the dog.
This was real evil. If most of my world was shades of gray, this was all the way in the black. But what bothered me most was that I couldn’t see even the slightest hint of it in this man.
Given my mood, the conversation wound down before long. We were both stuffed, but Adan insisted on ordering a Washington with cinnamon apples for takeout.
“We can save dessert for the next date,” he said. Despite everything, I caught myself smiling at him and meaning it.
We drove back to his loft and I walked with him up to the door of his building. It was about midnight, and the air was cool. I was wondering if he would try to kiss me. I wasn’t sure I didn’t want him to kiss me, even with what I suspected.
Adan ended my speculation when he leaned into me and kissed me on the mouth. His lips were soft, and firm and wet against mine. He tasted like garlic and chicken, but that was just the fucking pizza.
I’m weak. I responded before I even realized what I was doing. I pulled him to me and kissed him harder. He put his arms around my waist and pulled me close. I felt his thighs and hips press into me and I heard him sigh.
Then I heard him growl.
He bit down on my lip, grinding it between his teeth, and I tasted blood. I tried to pull away but his arms were locked around me and he was pressing his weight into me, driving me back against the wall of the building.
He drew his head back and laughed, spraying saliva in my face. It was so cold it felt hot on my skin. His eyes were completely black.
“Maybe I’ll fuck you when I take your skin,” he said. It wasn’t Adan’s voice. It was
as empty and inviting as death.
I reached for some juice and started to spin a spell. I’d re-charged the pinkie ring, but he was too close for the repulsion talisman. The arcane threads of a combat spell started weaving together in my mind.
And just like that, his eyes cleared, his rough hold on me loosened and Adan was back. He hugged me and kissed me on the forehead, breathing in the scent of my hair.
“That was intense, Domino,” he said, and laughed softly. “I think I forgot where I was for a minute.”
“Uh, yeah,” I said, “me, too. I think.”
He squeezed me—the nice kind, where I get to keep my skin. “Call me tomorrow?”
“Uh, yeah,” I said.
Adan smiled at me and gave me a peck on the cheek. “Bye,” he said. Then he unlocked the door and went inside. I watched him go and wiped blood from my mouth with the back of my hand.
Okay, so my boyfriend was possessed.
Seven
I sat in my car all night watching the front of Adan’s loft. I wasn’t sure exactly what was going on, and I wasn’t sure what I could do about it, but I wanted to know if Adan snuck out in the middle of the night to go skin someone.
In a perfect world, I’d have been able to use magical surveillance, like my eye spell. As I’d discovered at the club, though, Adan was heavily warded. The spell wouldn’t even get a fix on him, let alone follow him around. So I had to do my surveillance the old-fashioned way. This really wasn’t such a bad thing. I liked stakeouts, and I didn’t get to do it often enough. I liked following people. I liked sitting in my car, listening to some tunes, wondering what surprising shit a person would do next. The odds were good that Adan was going to do some pretty surprising shit.
About ten o’clock the next morning, the door of the underground garage slid up and Adan’s red Porsche pulled into the street. He slid into traffic heading east, and I followed.
I used the traffic spell, but I put a little spin on it. This was a kind of hybrid of the spellcasting I usually did and the completely spontaneous on-the-fly magic that was second nature to a really accomplished sorcerer like Shanar Rashan. It involved altering the spell subtly to produce a similar but slightly different effect. I went with whatever quotation I’d associated with the spell, but changed some of the words to create the modification. The result never sounded as good as the original quotation, but it got the job done.
“Life is too short for red lights,” I said. The modified chaos spell snapped into place around me, insuring that I’d be able to stay one car behind Adan without getting cut off by some asshole or hitting an ill-timed traffic light.
Adan’s first stop was a driving range about a mile from his loft. He parked the Porsche in the lot and pulled his clubs out of the trunk. If anything, he looked better than he had the night before, even dressed in a T-shirt and athletic shorts. He was beautiful. He was also possessed, but nobody’s perfect.
After watching him go inside, I circled the block and fired up my parking spell. I slid into a space-and-a-half across the street that had been occupied by a black Hummer on my first pass. Then I waited.
And waited. Adan had been busy the last couple days, so I wasn’t about to begrudge him a little me-time. Maybe hitting little white balls with a metal stick was the perfect therapy for victims of possession.
I was starting to think I should go in and take a look, that maybe he’d been possessed again, when I saw him come out, dressed in street clothes now, and hop in his car. It didn’t look like he’d tried out for the PGA Tour or anything, but he did have a healthy glow about him.
The next stop was the mall, which I might have guessed. Shopping is regarded unfairly as a strictly feminine pursuit, but this was L.A. and young men with a lot of money and nothing better to do weren’t afraid of a little retail therapy. Besides, a guy couldn’t dress as well as Adan did without putting in some time. I parked my car in the garage a few rows behind Adan’s and followed him in.
An hour or so later we were only on store number three, my feet were aching, and I’d decided that stakeouts were fine as long as I could sit on my ass in my Lincoln and didn’t have to hike all over town. I was sitting by a fountain eating a giant pretzel and watching the entrance of Burberry when I finally admitted that this wasn’t getting me anywhere. It was already after two o’clock, and I had no way of knowing when or even if Adan would be possessed again.
I stood up and tossed the remains of my giant pretzel in the trash. I noticed I’d gotten mustard on the cuff of my jacket. Swearing, I dipped a napkin in the fountain and dabbed until the stain was a duller shade of yellow.
I pulled out my cell phone and walked off a ways, lurking behind the mall directory and keeping an eye on the store. Anton answered on the third ring.
“Hey, Domino, you find the guy that skinned Jamal?”
“No, Anton, not yet. Listen, I need you to meet me at Beverly Center.”
“Okay, what for?”
“I’ll explain when you get here.”
“Okay. There is the huge traffic outside, but I should get there in thirty minutes.”
“Just hurry, Anton.”
“Okay.” A few seconds of silence. “Where are you?”
“Jesus, Anton, I’m at the fucking mall. Right now I’m standing by a fucking fountain, but I have no idea where I’ll be in half an hour. Just call me when you get here.” I usually tried to keep the ghetto out of my language as best I could, but I didn’t have a lot of patience where Anton was concerned.
“Okay, okay, Domino, sorry. I’ll hurry, and I’ll call you.”
Twenty-seven minutes and two stores later, I got a call from Anton. “I’m here, Domino. I’m at fountain, but I don’t see you. Did you see the pretty girl working at Victoria’s Secret?”
“No, Anton, I guess I missed that. I’m outside D&G.”
Moments later, Anton ambled up to me, clutching an oversize waffle cone.
I glared at him. “Glad you had time to stop for a bite to eat, Anton.”
“Domino, I’m sorry, I came in right by ice cream and they were giving the free samples.” He nibbled guiltily on the cone. “It only took a minute.”
“Okay, listen. Adan Rashan is in the store. I want you to follow him. If he leaves the mall, you stay on him. He’s parked in the garage. You don’t fucking lose him, Anton.”
Anton let the instructions sink in. He nodded, but he looked doubtful. “You think Adan skinned Jamal?”
Yes, I thought. “No,” I said. “Just stay with him. I have to take care of something. You stay on him until I can hook back up with you.”
“Okay, Domino.” Anton looked around and finally sat down on the edge of a planter, watching the store and eating his ice cream.
“And Anton,” I said. “Whatever you do, don’t let him see you.”
“Okay, Domino.” Anton scooted around the rim of the planter until he was partially obscured by the Cretaceous-size fern. He nodded at me and winked.
I found myself wishing for a spell that would pump a few extra watts into Anton’s lightbulb. Some days we could all use one of those.
Back in the parking garage, I noticed a man dressed in black standing by a Ford Taurus station wagon parked a few rows behind my Lincoln. I remembered seeing the car at the driving range earlier. It was black except for a primer-gray hood. The man saw me looking and quickly got into his car. When I started walking over to him, he panicked and fumbled with the ignition. He finally got the car started and backed out of the parking space.
“All progress is experimental,” I said, and killed the engine.
I leaned down and peered in the window at him. He was maybe twenty years old, with natural blond hair spiking from his head. He had a little blond soul patch on his chin and piercings in his eyebrow, nose and lip. He was wearing black jeans and a black T-shirt with a red anarchy symbol.
“You should probably tell me why you’re following me,” I said.
“Fuck you, bitch.” The kid was scar
ed, but he obviously wasn’t going to cooperate.
“Friends have all things in common,” I said. The spell would make the kid trust me, feel like he could tell me anything.
“I…I…” the kid stammered. “The voice…it said…” His eyes rolled back in his head and his body jerked once. Then the kid died. A thin line of blood trickled out of his nose.
I swore and quickly dropped the wallflower spell over us. I pushed the kid over in the seat and checked his jeans. No wallet, no ID, nothing. I went around to the other side of the car and checked the glove compartment. A few parking tickets and some CDs, but that was it. I dropped the fingerprint spell on the car and walked away. The wallflower would last for maybe fifteen minutes. With a little luck, I’d be out of the area before someone noticed him and called the cops.
I’d recognized the magic on the kid immediately. I knew the smell of that black juice, and anyway, I’d run into vampire compulsions before. Fred was onto me.
When I got back to my condo, I went directly to my office—really just the second bedroom where I have a desk for my laptop—and fired up the TV.
I have two televisions in my house. The first is a forty-six-inch plasma bolted onto the wall in my living room. The second is a little thirteen-inch Zenith black-and-white that I’ve had since I was a kid.
One of the first real lessons Rashan had taught me when I joined the outfit was that a sorcerer needs a familiar. A familiar is a minor spirit the sorcerer binds to herself, a spirit that aids her when there’s a big job to be done. The familiar’s most useful role is to flow a little extra juice on the sorcerer’s behalf, allowing her to work with magic that would otherwise be above her pay grade.
Rashan taught me how to summon a familiar spirit and then took me into the desert to perform the ritual. Traditionally you bind the spirit into an animal or an inanimate object such as a jewel, a lamp, a skull or whatever. I didn’t have anything like that, so I brought my TV.
And that’s how a jinn wound up in the Zenith. There are three things worth mentioning about this. First, I scored pretty high on the familiar-summoning final exam. Most sorcerers come up with a minor spirit with less intelligence than a mouse. The familiar is really nothing more than a spare set of batteries. I got an unimaginably ancient and powerful earth spirit—been around since the dawn of time, knows more about magic than I could learn in, well, do the math.
Mob Rules Page 11