by Tricia Owens
He was seventeen. He deliberately talked like he was a crusty old professor and I'm sure he got a kick out of fooling people over the phone, but the truth was that he wasn't yet a legal adult. He was my height, which was not tall for a guy, and extremely skinny. His head seemed too big for his body, and his pale, slicked back hair made him appear bald under certain lights. Oversized, watery blue eyes and a small mouth also contributed to the impression he was a living bobblehead doll.
Today, or maybe every day, he wore jeans and a maroon grandpa cardigan. And of course he wore a bowtie. I mean, it was standard for such a cultivated look, right? His was red and blue plaid. It wasn't crooked.
"Are you coming in or aren't you?" he asked, still trying to sound imperious and mostly succeeding. It was the kind of tone, at least, that would discourage you from making fun of the Hushpuppy loafers he wore.
As Melanie and I stepped inside the shop and Orlaton simply walked away as though he couldn't care less what became of us, I thought about how many of his eccentricities had developed because of a need to impress his clientele.
Everyone he conducted business with was older, sometimes centuries older. Important magickal beings in the city depended upon him. They expected him to be weird and defy categorization because the old time occultists were like that. Too many brushes with the dark side had warped them. So in a strange way it comforted them that Orlaton was twisted, too. It was expected.
Though Orlaton hadn't yet been exposed to enough black magick to truly be warped, I knew better than to write him off because of his youth. There was no way to ask, "Hey, are you a genius, or what?", but I was pretty sure Orlaton was. And a genius mind paired with an obsessive interest in the occult equaled someone you didn't want to turn your back on.
Though I could still get a kick out of inviting him to a bar, knowing he wouldn't be able to order anything except a Coke.
The inside of Tomes was appropriately dark and gloomy. I chose to give Orlaton the benefit of the doubt and assumed the lighting helped prevent deterioration of what must be some seriously old books. In truth, he probably kept it that way just for the atmosphere.
It was claustrophobic, with floor to ceiling shelves burdened so heavily with hardbound books that you figured a loud sneeze or fart would bring everything down on top of you. It also smelled. Like old books, sure, but also herbaceous and smoky, bringing to mind pagan rituals in a forest. Which made sense. Orlaton not only provided books to his occult-minded clientele, he also provided them with a venue in which to perform their dubious activities.
One of which was happening now. Melanie and I edged past the book stacks into a rotunda in the middle of the shop where it was extra dark, like someone had curtained off all the light. I didn't see any curtains, but I did see a heck of a lot of shadows that were just a little too dark to be ordinary shadows. These were more like clouds of unconsciousness: you fell into one and you were irrevocably lost.
They hovered all stormy-like around the six robed people in the center of the room who were holding hands and quietly chanting. Braziers drizzled smoke from the north and south points of the circle. A single candle burned in the center.
This kind of magick wasn't my thing. I didn't look down on it or anything; I just didn't know anything about it. Lucky came from me. He was a manifestation of a power I couldn't get rid of even if I tried. To use magick, the only effort required of me was to keep myself from becoming power-drunk.
Occult activity like I saw now was similar in my mind to doing research for a term paper. I still had nightmares about college that were worse than any that a horror movie could inflict on me. Essays and rituals both required you to read boring, dry text in search of a few relevant sentences which you then had to figure out how to apply in modern terms.
No thanks. There was a reason I'd dropped out of college.
As I hung back with Melanie, the pair of us partially concealed by the pools of darkness, Orlaton walked to one of the robed figures in the circle who wore a sort of parchment talisman on a string around their neck. He murmured something to them. The person nodded and the group chanting ended.
Orlaton stepped back. He was as grave and watchful as a headmaster overseeing corporal punishment, seventeen going on fifty-two. The other occultist began to speak.
"We call forth Svein Birkeland," intoned the figure wearing the talisman. It was a woman, though her voice was so low and monotone that I couldn't guess her age without seeing her face. "Svein Birkeland, come forth. Answer to us, Svein Birkeland."
She broke the circle formed with the other occultists to walk forward. After yanking the paper talisman from her neck, she held the slip of paper over the candle that sat in the center. The parchment incinerated instantly in a flash of green light. The woman stepped back and reformed the human circle. The air didn't smell of burned paper but of blood or something similarly earthy and coppery.
Melanie edged closer to me and hugged the gargoyle statue tighter to her chest, apparently forgetting that it had once been a vicious creature. The darkness around us began to spread like spilled ink on paper. The air felt thicker, as though the oxygen levels were out of whack.
"Svein Birkeland, answer to us!"
We all felt it simultaneously: an unnatural chill that crept in insidiously, caressing bare flesh and slipping beneath our clothing to raise the hairs on our arms. I shivered. Melanie gasped with dismay. Orlaton's brows drew down, making him resemble a grumpy old professor.
"Are you the spirit named Svein Birkeland?" the robed woman called out.
A blast of Arctic wind put me back on my heels. The robes of the occultists flapped violently around their legs. I glimpsed painted toenails and ankle bracelets.
"Svein Birkeland!"
A deep, disembodied voice replied, sending fingers of dread dancing up my spine. I wasn't well versed in the occult, but I knew the voice of a dead guy when I heard it. Melanie and I were the unwitting observers of an act of necromancy.
"Jeg svarer til ingen kvinne."
"Here, we speak in English," the woman said. "And so shall you."
After a long pause, the voice spoke again. Anger chilled every syllable.
"I answer to no woman…"
"You will answer to us because we have summoned you," the woman replied in a commanding voice.
The temperature in the room dropped even further. Our breaths fogged the air. I was about ready to duck out because I hated being cold.
"No woman has the power to command me!"
"Svein—"
"I will hack you in twain. I will rend the limbs from your body!"
"Charming guy," I whispered to Melanie, but I was spooked. This Svein guy sounded psychotic.
"Svein Birkeland—"
"I ANSWER TO NO WOMAN!"
Abruptly the chill in the room vanished. The dark shadows hovering around us brightened to the murky charcoal of normal shadows, and the sense of dread I'd felt melted away.
"What an asshole." The woman who'd been speaking pushed back the hood of her robe, revealing her scowling expression. "Is it me, or did he sound like he was throwing a temper tantrum?"
"Who was he?" I dared to ask.
The woman blinked in surprise at seeing me and Melanie but quickly got over it. "We believe he was the first serial killer in Norway, back in the early nineteen hundreds. Eight women with ties to him were murdered within the span of two months. Today is the anniversary of the first murder."
"What? Why in the world would you want to contact someone like that?" Melanie wondered aloud.
"Because we're attempting to learn where he buried his victims so we can bring peace to those women's spirits," Orlaton snapped, making it sound like Melanie and I were morons for not guessing that. "Now please be quiet and let the adults converse."
I nearly grabbed the gargoyle statue and hurled it at his head, but I was too afraid of hurting Hopeless. I settled with grinding my teeth as Orlaton joined the group of occultists and began discussing what had gon
e wrong.
"He's not going to help us," Melanie said with a sigh. She raised the gargoyle and spoke directly to its frozen, snarling face. "Sorry, whoever's in there. Orlaton, is an idiota. Chances are you're going to have a nasty demon roommate for the rest of your life."
"Orlaton will know something," I insisted. But I didn't know who I was trying to convince: Melanie or me.
After ten minutes or so of deep discussion, the occult group finally broke up and began shedding their robes. They were all women and they all looked normal, as in you'd pass them on the street and have no idea that they spent their afternoons brainstorming ways to raise serial killers from the dead. Two of the younger girls wore UNLV tank tops. They looked relaxed, maybe a tad hungry. Maybe they were now going to head to Celestina's and have their tarot cards read while noshing on some jerky.
"Now," Orlaton said with a long-suffering sigh that suggested he'd rather be buried two miles beneath the Earth's surface than deal with us, "what's all this about a demon?"
Melanie shoved the statue at him. "You tell us."
With a distasteful expression on his face, Orlaton accepted the statue with his fingertips. He began studying it from several angles. "What's the provenance?" When I stared at him blankly, he sighed again. "Where did you get this?"
"A customer brought it in. He said his sister bought it for him in Europe. He didn't say anything about it coming to life or attacking him…do you think my shop's energy set it off? Activated it, maybe?"
"Your shop…" Orlaton shook his head but didn't elaborate. I had a good idea what was on his mind, though.
Who wanted to be neighbors with a cursed business like mine? Curses could be fickle and begin to spread or transfer. If you thought herpes was bad, wait until you picked up a curse that shriveled your private parts and turned them into tiny mice. While still attached to you.
Not that I thought Moonlight was afflicted with any curse that was quite so…personal.
After a few more minutes of looking at the gargoyle, he said, "Are you aware that gargoyles are cold-blooded?"
"Is that something someone was supposed to tell us at some point?"
"Snakes, lizards, gargoyles—typically they're the vessels of demons."
He was trying my patience, big time. "That's what we said: there's a demon inside with him."
"And I'm saying that gargoyles are a cursed species that typically contain the hearts of demons and nothing and no one else. Your so-called victim shouldn't be in there. It makes me wonder…"
Orlaton pursed his lips and narrowed his eyes. It was such a dramatic, thoughtful look that I wouldn't put it past him to have actually practiced it in a mirror.
"Whoever's in here claiming they need help may not be someone you should befriend," he said. "Have you considered the possibility that he's trying to mislead you for his own nefarious purposes?"
Of course I hadn't. Hopeless didn't look evil. I knew evil. I'd held its gaze. The guy inside this gargoyle could be a real jerk but he wasn't evil. Not how I defined it.
Orlaton's warning did give me pause, though not for the reason he meant. I wasn't worried about Hopeless. I was worried about the fact that everyone seemed ready to burn him at the stake when he hadn't done anything to anyone.
Careful, Anne.
I took a deep breath. When I perceived that someone was being bullied I naturally wanted to defend them. That was all well and good if the situation was as it appeared to be. But did I have a legitimate reason to intervene, or was I giving someone I didn't know too much of the benefit of the doubt? What if the gargoyle really wasn't anything I should be messing around with? What if Orlaton was right and Hopeless was a sneaky manipulator?
"He seems fine to me," I said carefully. "When he was in control, he didn't try to hurt me. I got the impression that the gargoyle only attacks when the demon seizes control. But he can fight it and push it down."
"Whether he's fighting the demon for possession rights is beside the point. A gargoyle is not an ally; it's a potential enemy."
"You're only assuming that. We won't know until we get that demon out of there." I had to take a stand, otherwise nothing would get done. I planted my hands on my hips, my turn to look imperious. "Can you exorcise it or not?"
The mood in the room instantly began to change, and not in a good way. Orlaton wasn't magickal, but I could have sworn the walls were somehow creeping inward, the bookcases looming over me, the ceiling sinking down.
"Do not take that attitude with me," Orlaton said softly, his bug-like blue eyes suddenly no longer goofy behind their lenses but intense and piercing. Spooky.
Though he was only a teenager, I felt a chill move across my skin. I nearly took a step away from him. I was reminded that Orlaton and psychopaths had far too much in common for me to ever feel at ease around him. Sometimes being too smart was a very bad thing.
"You came to me for my assistance," he whispered, "and I am giving it to you. But I could just as easily rescind the offer and watch you succumb to the demon you're entangled with."
"This is important," I said, allowing apology to shade my voice, though I couldn't bring myself to outright say that I was sorry.
If Orlaton respected anything, it would be backbone. In his own way, Orlaton was a predator.
"Someone's life may be at stake. I only want to help him. But I need you, Orlaton. Please. Can you do anything?"
Seconds passed. Finally, the sense of encroachment eased and I could breathe easier.
"I need to know more about its origins," Orlaton muttered.
"So you can't do anything now?"
"I said I need to know more about where it came from. Who sold it to you?"
"His name is Christian. I have his number." I shook my head, disgusted with myself. "I should've called him right away about this."
I pulled out my phone. But when I tried ringing him, I got a recording telling me the number could not be completed as dialed.
"What's going on?" I muttered. I tried again. Same results.
"Did he input the number wrong?" Melanie asked. "I've done that, just totally got the number wrong. One time I did that for, like, two months! I thought no one liked me anymore since no one called."
"How would I know if he did?"
But she got me thinking. I pulled up Christian's entry and checked the number.
"Dammit." I let my head fall back. "Six digits. He added a phone number with only six digits."
A wave of humiliation rushed over me. But I didn't surf it for long. Anger and suspicion rose up to replace it. Christian hadn't needed to give me a fake number. He hadn't needed to give me a number at all. So why give me six digits?
"I suspect it wasn't an accident," Orlaton said, barely able to control his smirk.
I wanted to smack it right off his bobblehead face. I consoled myself with the knowledge that he'd probably never received a phone number from someone who wasn't a cultist of Cthulhu.
"Can't we just throw the statue in a pentagram and compel the demon out of there?" I asked as I motioned toward the rotunda where I would have bet good money lots of unsavory rituals had occurred. "Why does this have to be so complicated?"
Orlaton looked offended by my suggestion. "This isn't The Exorcist. A bit of chanting and holy water won't magickally solve your problem. This is complicated. It becomes magnitudes less complicated when one is provided with information about why and how this demon came to co-inhabit this gargoyle." He straightened his bowtie. "I refuse to do anything further without such information. The risks I take are carefully measured, and in this case the danger runneth over."
The danger runneth over…this guy needed a girlfriend, stat.
"What exactly do you need, Orlaton? Spell it out and we'll come back with it."
"The name of the gargoyle, for one. I can look it up in my guides and see if its history provides any solutions or complications. I can't imagine there are more than a few dozen living gargoyles in the world so it should be easy enough to iden
tify. I need to know which demon we're dealing with, and I want to know who's responsible for placing it in there and how, if possible." Orlaton handed the statue to me. "Learn all of that, and I'll try to squeeze you into my schedule."
I turned to go, but I paused and looked back. "What happens if we can't get you the information? Are you going to let the demon take over this gargoyle? Let it run rampant through Las Vegas and draw attention to our community? Bring down the wrath of the Oddsmakers?"
He went very still. "Do not lay this on me, Miss Moody. Someone sold it to you. You should have done your due diligence before accepting it. Just as I would have done."
He was right, but only to a point. The nature of Moonlight meant I accepted all sorts of weird items. How was I to vet everything that came through my door?
I should have let it go, but his superior attitude plucked my last nerve.
"C'mon, Orlaton," I said, like we were buddies. "You're telling me that with all these books and grimoires in here, you didn't once accidentally buy or trade one that was cursed? Because I find that very hard to believe knowing how possessive and secretive most witches and warlocks are. They don't believe in sharing, either their knowledge or their tools. Not outside their covens."
A shift of the eyes to the left. I followed Orlaton's line of sight to a riveted metal trunk that sat on the floor at the base of one of the bookshelves. Like a pirate's chest, it was sealed closed by a large, ancient padlock. The padlock was probably only window dressing. The real locks were magickal, and they would hurt you if you tried to break them, if not outright kill you.
"I've made my mistake. I will never make it again," Orlaton murmured.
His cheeks were white. His shoulders had hunched. As I looked at him, dread crawled up my spine like a spider. There had been horror in his voice. A wretched sort of anguish. Anguish still bound up in fear.
I looked at the chest again. It didn't look so simple anymore. Now it looked like someone's nightmare.
"What's inside it?" I asked, reluctant to hear the answer.
His eyes shimmered behind their lenses. "Do you really want to know?"
Orlaton had taken this somewhere darker than I'd intended this conversation to go. I wanted to back away from the haunted knowledge in his eyes even as a part of me wanted to defend him. Orlaton was no wounded bird, but something in that trunk had hurt him. Badly. I couldn't begin to imagine how terrible—how wickedly devious—it must have been to have slipped beneath his guard.