by Jim Butcher
“Okay. How do we summon this lesser god?”
“We don’t. We can’t. Mythology is not reality, Ms. Nelson. It doesn’t matter anyway, because the angel”—Dr. Hariri touched the text with a white cotton finger—“approached the wizard.”
“Wonderful.” She swept her gaze around the room—at the books, at the papers, at the lamp. “All right. Back to square one. What does the lamp actually say?”
“‘Place me in the center of words carved round’—I won’t read the words you’re to carve.” He traced the etched lettering. “And after, ‘Summon the jinn to be sealed with immortal blood.’”
“Say again.”
“‘Summon—’”
“After that.”
“‘Sealed with immortal blood’?”
“Thank you, Dr. Hariri. You’ve been a great help.” She picked up the lamp and the summoning spell and frowned down at the paper. “Could you write this out phonetically?”
“He’s buying one of the last of the old warehouses on the waterfront.” Eddie Ease twitched in Vicki’s grip. “Said he needed room to build a palace. He doesn’t want to deal with the city, so I’m acting as his agent.”
“He’s not a he,” Vicki growled.
“Yeah, well, that’s his choice, isn’t it?”
To be fair, Vicki acknowledged, it was.
Vicki was impressed the jinn had found real estate in the Lower Don Lands that hadn’t already been gentrified. But then, jinn. It could be convincing in ways other buyers couldn’t.
The bulk of the warehouse had been given over to storage—a huge, two-story space with high windows and a stained concrete floor. The security lights provided an artificial dusk; plenty of light for Vicki to carve the words on the lamp into the enormous circle she’d drawn on the floor with a tire iron, a rope, and a piece of sidewalk chalk. Not her first rodeo—approximately a circle wouldn’t do. Retrieving the tire iron and setting the lamp in its place, she began gouging out the words of the spell as quickly as accuracy allowed, the concrete rolling up like lines of chunky orange peel. It was almost eleven. She didn’t have all night.
At two forty-three, she straightened, cracked her back, and moved to stand beside the lamp, paper in one hand, knife in the other, prepared to read the summoning.
“As if I wouldn’t know you were here.” The pillar of fire moved around the outside of the circle. “As if I wouldn’t feel words of binding in a space I’d claimed as my own.”
Probably for the best. Her French accent sucked; her phonetic Aramaic could only be worse.
“Do you assume you’re safe from me, Nightwalker, there inside the words you carved?”
“Talking pillar of fire,” Vicki pointed out. “I’m not assuming anything.”
“Clever meat sack.” It advanced toward her, crossing the spell.
Sealed with immortal blood was a little unspecific regarding the necessary volume. Figuring too much beat too little, she drew the blade of the knife across her left forearm, then her right. She hissed at the pain, and, about to be engulfed by fire, took the fight to the jinn, throwing her arms around the flames.
It screamed.
And it burned.
Vicki screamed and hung on.
The flames became a lion, fetid breath in her face as teeth tore at her shoulder.
The lion became a snake, length looped around her, her ribs cracking.
Through the pain, she wondered if she’d wandered into the wrong story. Or if the sidhe were jinn seen through a different geography and culture.
The snake became a fucking enormous crow with a beak like a pickax.
Tentacles . . .
Then a man. Broad shouldered, dark eyed, skin slippery with her blood. “I can give his youth back to you, Nightwalker.” It smiled knowingly. “I can give you two or three times the years you have remaining. Delay the time you’ll spend in darkness without him.”
What would she give to delay Mike’s death? To delay watching him die?
If she changed him, she’d lose him the way Henry had lost her. Vampires were apex predators and they did not, could not, share a territory. Not that it mattered; Mike would never agree to the change. He’d made that profanely clear on more than one occasion.
If the jinn changed him, made him young again . . .
. . . She would lose him the moment he realized she’d made the decision for him. It might be worth the risk with someone else. His youth restored, she could wait a year or two while he dealt with the betrayal of his trust. But that wasn’t something Mike would, or could, forgive.
She knew what the future held. He’d lose his strength. Muscles would weaken. Bones would grow fragile. Hands that now touched her with passion would turn to swollen joints and tremors. If he were lucky, his heart would fail before the rest of his body wore out a piece at a time. She would watch, forever thirty-four, as he diminished.
Died.
Rotted.
The last anchor to her humanity gone. No one left who’d known her before. No one left to say Enough.
Did it matter if he never forgave her, as long as he had a few more years before death claimed him?
Yes.
Because it wasn’t about Mike. It was about her. Always had been.
Mike would live the life he chose, and she would love him for however long that lasted. When he died—at the end of a mortal span, or next Thursday while trying to bring in a couple of Scarborough gang-bangers—she would mourn him. She would weep and she would rail and she would paint herself with the blood of the undeserving. Of the dark dregs of society who dared to live while he was dead.
And then she’d stop, because she was Vicki fucking Nelson, and if she was strong enough to watch the man she loved wither, if she was strong enough to watch him go into the ground because that was what he wanted, she was strong enough to do what she had to.
“Make a wish, Nightwalker.”
Her lips drew back. “You have nothing I want,” she snarled, and slammed her forehead into his nose.
He swore as he jerked back, eyes wide, nose bleeding.
Tossed his head, became fire again as a drop of blood fell . . .
. . . and hit the lamp.
Vicki stumbled, arms empty, a little faint from pain and blood loss.
Sealed with immortal blood.
“Points for originality,” she muttered, and touched the growing lump on her forehead. “Also, ow.”
Licking her own arms, as undignified as it felt, put the coagulant in her saliva to work, and by the time she’d eradicated the spell—not the sort of thing she wanted left lying around; that never ended well—the bleeding had stopped. A spray bottle of bleach took care of the DNA evidence—splatters of blood on a torn-up floor would be investigated sooner or later. Probably later, given the backlog in the labs Mike kept complaining about, but, still, no point in being careless.
The lamp . . . Three wishes and, after, the jinn would still be confined.
Glass falling.
Mike thrown through a window.
And the sort of metaphysical SOB who thought nothing of lives lost.
She picked up the lamp, holding it carefully so as to keep from even suggesting the faintest possibility of a rub. The brass felt warm, satin smooth, and smelled alive. She touched it to her cheek, bit through her lip, and wrapped the sneaky SOB carefully in three layers of green plastic garbage bag.
It was 5:37. Sunrise was at 7:25. She should wake Mike so they could spend at least part of that two hours together, both of them conscious. She’d fed on the way home—another packet of drug money donated anonymously to Covenant House. The edge taken off before Mike insisted on their reaffirming he was alive. For however much longer he had.
He threw an arm up over his head and the sheet slipped down around his waist. The gray threaded through the thick m
at of his chest hair turned silver in the predawn light.
Maybe watching him sleep was a little creepy.
Vicki slipped out of her clothes and slid into bed on his right side, tucking her face into the curve of neck and shoulder, listening to his heartbeat, lips against his pulse.
The lamp was downstairs in her basement crypt, safely hidden.
Not the least bit tempting . . .
SOLUS
by Anton Strout
“Pixies!”
The word echoed across the elevator on tiny wings of hope. Something had to kill the awkward silence between me and the man assigned the Herculean task of keeping me alive these days.
Connor Christos’s attention shifted from counting the passing floors. He gave me a sidelong glance meant to shut me down.
“No,” he said.
Short. Curt. The pit of my stomach sank, and it wasn’t because of the motion of the rising elevator car. Breaking through to him was quickly becoming my personal pastime, my quest, the windmill-giant task to my question-jousting Don Quixote, but I fought to shake off my mounting failure.
“Gnomes?” I tried next, undeterred. These damned Department of Extraordinary Affairs stuffed shirts would like me, dammit.
Connor’s eyes went back to the numbers on the wall, the display rolling through the seventies. “Uh-uh.”
“Beholders?”
My mentor paused for a moment before he answered and scratched his head, which only mussed the lone gray streak that ran through his otherwise sandy sea of hair.
“Not even sure what that is,” he said. “But probably not.”
“It’s from the Monster Manual,” I offered.
He shrugged, the shoulders of his tan trench coat rustling in the silence of the elevator. “If that’s a new training pamphlet going around the office, I must have missed it.”
I shook my head. “Not quite,” I said. “It’s from D and D.” Then, catching his blank stare in the mirrors of the door, “Dungeons and Dragons?”
“Ahh,” he said, his eyes lighting with recognition. “Well, don’t believe everything you read, kid.”
His eyes shifted back to the ever-fascinating crawl of numbers as silence once more fell between us.
I took it as a small victory, if not a bitter one. I had hoped to impress. One of the perks of being a psychometrist was absorbing knowledge that I would have normally written off as useless. When I came across a used Dungeons & Dragons book a few weeks back, it gave me a chance to show Connor I had at least taken an interest in versing myself on a whole paranormal world I was unfamiliar with. As a new recruit in Manhattan’s Department of Extraordinary Affairs, I thought my initiative might earn me a pat on the back, but apparently not.
Frustration filled me right down to my nerves. How else was I supposed to learn the truth from pure fantasy out there on the supernatural streets of New York City anyway? So far in these first few days of partnership with Connor, the only thing I had learned was how to brood. If the Department quizzed me on how to be barely tolerated by a mentor, I’d easily have an A++.
I bit my tongue for the next several floors. It was clear Christos came predisposed to hating on me for reasons I could not fathom, and given my fruitlessness at finding out why, I instead took a moment to regain my composure before going back to my previous line of questioning.
“Mermaids?” I asked, pressing my luck.
He sighed, turning to face me for the first time during our entire ride. Although his face didn’t look much older than my twenty-three years, his deep-set eyes held a lifetime of otherworldly horrors in them that aged him considerably when he met mine.
“Unconfirmed, at least not since early sailor records we keep down in the archives,” he said. “Most agents write them off as the delusions of old-timey hard-core drinkers, victims of long-seabound scurvy, or possibly those stricken with a bit of syphilitic madness from their adventures when in port. If I were you, Mr. Canderous, I wouldn’t worry about those fishy ladies of the sea. You’re better off, though, assuming all fantasy creatures are real.”
“I am?” The idea that I’d need to memorize the totalities of the Monster Manual drove a mind-numbing spike straight down into the center of my brain.
Connor nodded. “One of the prime tenets of working for the Department of Extraordinary Affairs is Believing is seeing. Don’t rule anything out, because that’ll be right about the time that ruled-out monster eats your disbelieving face right off. Trust me on this.”
“Okay,” I said, paling at the thought, wanting to move the conversation on. “How about zombies, then?”
“Also real,” Connor said with a shudder. “You haven’t taken Shufflers and Shamblers yet?”
I shook my head. “The department isn’t offering it until next month,” I said. “Although I suppose I’m encouraged that they think I’ll survive on the streets until then.”
“Typical Department of Extraordinary Affairs,” Connor said, shaking his head. “Where keeping agents alive is job two. Or three.”
“On-time training alone would cut the Incident Reports paperwork in half,” I said.
Connor glanced over at me, annoyed again. “Are you trying to apply logic to our line of work, kid?”
Kid. Did being twenty-three technically count as being a kid? Hell to the no, I thought, especially when coming from someone I guessed was in his mid-thirties. Before I could cut into him, my stomach lurched as the elevator slowed to a halt and its doors opened.
Wind. Strange that I could feel it as we stepped out, but it became clear immediately: we were on the very roof of the building itself. A set cobblestone path lay at my feet, and as odd and out of place as the stonework looked, it was nothing compared to the multispired stronghold that stood off across the vastness of the roof. If I were looking at a photo in front of me, I would have laughed at the cut-and-paste job of slapping an entire medieval structure onto the top of a modern Manhattan skyscraper, but seeing it there for myself struck me with awe instead.
“We have castles?” I asked, trying to keep cool and mask the sheer wonder in my voice.
Connor nodded. “Where there’s money, there’s eccentricity . . . and castles.”
My position as part of Other Division presented challenges every damned day, but processing an elaborate Disney-style castle jarred me in a way that the rooftops of Manhattan usually didn’t. Standing upon them often brought a strange comfort to my soul, or at least to the soul of my criminal past, anyway: casing joints, finding convenient escape routes . . .
Black, tarred weather sealant or concrete ruled the usual places I frequented. Stately sights such as this one rarely entered the picture.
“How do you even know about places like this?” I asked, trying not to lick my lips at the promised opulence of it all. The criminal opportunist might be suppressed these days, but he definitely wasn’t dead.
“We’re the Department of Extraordinary Affairs, Simon,” he said. “Dealing with places like this is the new norm. Extraordinary is right there in our name, and I think you’ll agree this fits the bill, no?”
I nodded, a wicked grin spreading across my face. “I can’t believe this is my job.”
“Technically, it isn’t,” Connor said as he started walking away. “We’re off the clock on this one.”
“We are?” A tension released in me that I didn’t realize I had been holding in, and my shoulders relaxed. Trying to impress my partner/boss-of-me on the job was one thing, but knowing this wasn’t actually work helped take a real load off me. “Then why are we here?”
“This?” Connor said, stopping to point at the castle. “This is just a spot of fun. A bit of paying it forward, if you will. Consider it field training. Plus, if you screw up, we won’t end up generating an avalanche of paperwork back at the office.”
“Such a vote of confidence,” I said. “
I’m touched. Really. So, again, why exactly are we here?”
“You’ll see,” Connor said, and continued off in the direction of the castle once more. “For now, just keep quiet.”
I was all for paying it forward. Lord knows I had been selfish enough with my psychometric powers over the years—to the point of near jail time. Doing good for goodness’ sake felt like a calming bath meant to wash away the sins of my past, and my step lightened as the two of us crossed the roof.
The scale of the castle against the New York skyline made it seem deceptively close, but getting to it felt like forever. Only when we were near the stone steps leading up to an enormous set of dark wooden doors did I spy any signs of life nearby. A lone woman in a houndstooth suit sat next to a row of tree-lined planters at the top of the stairs, and only when our footsteps were in earshot did she look up from a laptop precariously balanced on her knees. The ponytail of her severely pulled-back black hair bobbed nervously as she fumbled to close her computer, shoving it into a hideous gigantic handbag sitting at her side.
She stood as we ascended the stairs, meeting us by the doors as she pulled her suit coat and trim of her skirt into a less wrinkled state and gave a nervous smile to Connor.
“Thank you for coming so quickly, Mr. Christos,” she said, almost at a whisper, her voice tinged with a little Brooklyn or Long Island.
“Of course, Bev,” Connor said. He rapped his knuckles against the solid stone archway of the door. “Time is of the essence and all that. I know how precious your commission is to you.”
“Hey!” she said, with a little mock offense to it. “That hurts.”
“The truth usually does,” Connor said as he looked up at the building. “I can only imagine what state the place must be in for you to have called.”
The woman nodded. “The Sedgwick Estate is a landmark catch for any Realtor, carefully brought here by the family nearly a century ago from England and painstakingly reconstructed. There is little like it in all of New York, I assure you. The estate sale of one Agatha Sedgwick was going well until . . .”