by Eric Flint
Gina jostled her elbow; Katie shrugged the contact off and turned the page. Another record of a disappearance, this one without supporting evidence taped to the page. It filled up six pages. After that, a murder under mysterious circumstances. A kidnapping . . . and then some more pages on the Roberts disappearance. A broken, bronze-colored feather, also taped in, chimed when she touched it. She jerked her finger back.
One word underneath. "Resolved." And a date after Christmastime.
Doctor S., it seemed, thought he was a cop. A special kind of . . . supernatural cop.
"It sounds like Nick Knight," Melissa said. Katie blinked, and realized she had still been reading out loud.
"It sounds like a crazy man," Gina said.
Katie opened her mouth, and suddenly felt as if cold water drained down her spine. She swallowed whatever she had been about to say and flipped the journal to the flyleaf. There was indeed an address, on West 60th. "He's not crazy." Not unless I am.
"Why do you say that?" Melissa asked, gently, but Gina was looking at Katie too— not suspicious, or mocking, anymore, but wide-eyes, waiting for her to explain.
"Guys," Katie said, "He's a magician or something. Remember how he vanished on Gina? Remember the ink that you somehow just don't see? Remember the damned invisible rings?"
Melissa sucked her lower lip in and released it. "So did he kill that woman or not?"
"I don't know," Katie said. "I want him to be a good guy."
Gina patted her shoulder, then reached across to also pat the journal with her fingertips. "I say we go to his apartment and find out."
* * *
There were drawbacks to being a member of Matthew's society of Magi. For one thing, nobody else liked them. And with good reason; not only was the Prometheus Club full of snobs, capitalists, and politicians, but its stated goal of limiting and controlling the influence of wild magic in the world put him in sworn opposition to any hedge-witch, Satanist, purveyor of herbs and simples, houngan, or priest of Santeria he might want to contract with for ritual supplies.
Such as, say, a white, virgin cockerel.
New York City was not bereft of live poultry markets, but given his rather specific needs, Matthew wasn't sure he wanted to trust one of those. He'd hate to find out at the last minute, for example, that his bird had had a few sandy feathers plucked. Or that it was, shall we say, a little more experienced than Matthew was himself.
And then there was the recent influenza scare, which had closed several poultry markets. And what he really needed, now that he thought about it, was an illegal animal; a fighting cock.
He booted his desktop system —a brand new Pentium running Windows 95— entered an IP address from memory, wended his way through a series of logon screens, and asked about it on the Promethean message board.
Fortunately, even if Matthew didn't know something, it was a pretty good bet that somebody in Prometheus would.
Before close of business, he was twenty blocks north again, edging through a flaking avocado-green steel door into the antechamber of a dimly lit warehouse that smelled of guano and sawdust and corn and musty feathers. It drove the eyewatering stench of the cockatrice from Matthew's sinuses, finally, and seemed in comparison such a rich, wholesome smell that he breathed it deep and fast. He coughed, sneezed, and waved his hand in front of his face. And then he did it again, feeling as if the inside of his head were clean for the first time in hours.
There was a desk in a cage —not unlike the ones inhabited by the clucking, rustling chickens, but far larger— behind the half-wall at the far end of the dirty, hall-like room. Matthew approached it; a stout woman with her white hair twisted into a bun looked up from her game of Windows solitaire.
He cleared his throat. "I need to buy a cockerel."
"I've got some nice Bantams," she said through the grate. "And a couple of Rhode Island Reds." Not admitting anything; those weren't fighting cocks. "You got a place to keep it? There are zoning things."
"It just needs to be pure white." He hesitated. "Or pure black."
She reached up casually and dropped the shutter in his face. Of course. He sighed, and rapped on the grate, rattling the metal behind it. No answer. He rapped again, and again.
Five minutes later she cracked it up and peered under the bottom, through the little hole for passing papers and money back and forth. He caught a glimpse of bright black eyes and a wrinkled nose. "I'm not selling you any bird for your Satanic rituals, young man."
No, but you'll sell me one for bloodsports? Matthew sighed again and stuck his hand through the slot, nearly getting his fingers up her nose. She jerked back, but he caught the edge of the shutter before she could slide it closed again. His biceps bulged inside his shirt sleeve; his tendons dimpled his wrist. She leaned on the shutter, and couldn't shift him.
"Young man." A level, warning tone. She didn't look intimidated.
Oh, what the hell. "It's for the cockatrice," he said.
Her hand relaxed, and the weight of the shutter lifted. She slid it up; it thumped when it reached the top. "Why didn't you say so? About time somebody took care of that thing. Though I notice you didn't give a shit when it was just in East Harlem."
Matthew glanced aside. The cops were always the last to know.
She hesitated. "You'll need a human virgin too."
"Don't worry," he said, biting the inside of his cheek. "I've got that covered."
When he returned home, there was a woman waiting in his apartment. Not surprising in itself; Jane had a key and the passcode for the locks. But it wasn't Jane. It was the homicide detective, Marion Thornton.
She had an outdoorswoman's squint and silky brown hair that framed her long cheekbones in feathered wings; it made her look like a bright-eyed Afghan hound. She showed him her badge and handed him back the keys before he was fully in the door.
"The victim was an alcoholic," Marion said, relocking the door as Matthew put his chicken on the counter. It was in a cardboard animal carrier. Occasionally a glossy jet-black beak or a malevolent eye would appear in one of the holes along the top. It scuffed and kicked. He pushed it away from the counter edge and it grabbed at him, as he thought of a line from a Russian fairy tale: Listen, Crow, crow's daughter! Serve me a certain service—
"The nun was a drunk?"
"To put it crudely. And we found another possible for the same bogey, about three days ago. Elderly man, never married, lived alone, drank like a fish. We're continuing to check back for others." She flipped pages in her report pad. "Here's something interesting. He was castrated in a farming accident when he was in his teens."
"Oh," Matthew said. "It's always virgins, isn't it?"
"For dragons and unicorns, anyway," Marion answered. "But I'd guess you're correct. And more than that. Heavy drinkers. Possibly with some talent; a link my . . . secular . . . colleagues won't come up with is that Promethean records show that we considered inviting both of these victims for apprenticeship when they were young."
"So they saw things," Matthew said, thinking of Henry, living on the monster's doorstep. If the thing had a preference for sexually inexperienced prey, that would explain why it hadn't eaten him yet. Well, if Matthew was prepared to make a few conjectures. "Do you think it wanted them because they drank, or they drank because they saw things?"
"We operate on the first assumption." Marion picked her way around him, leaned down to peer into the animal carrier. She pulled back as a grabbing beak speared at her eye. "Vicious."
"I sure hope so."
"Jane said you had a possible ID on the bogey?"
He knelt down and began peeling the rug back, starting beside the inside wall of the living room. "The black cock isn't enough of a hint?"
"Basilisk."
"That's a weasel. Cockatrice, I'm guessing. Though how it lured its victim into hurling herself from her window is beyond me. You're describing very specialized prey."
She straightened up and arched, cracking her spine. She picked a spoon off the breakf
ast bar and turned it, considering the way the light pooled in the bowl. "Call it one in ten thousand? Then the Greater New York metropolitan area has, what, two thousand more just like 'em?"
"Something like that," Matthew said, and pinched the bridge of his nose. A dust bunny was stuck to the heel of his hand; he blew it off. When he opened his eyes, he found her staring at him, tongue-tip peeking between her lips.
"Want to make sure we're safe?" she said, with a grin. The spoon glittered as she turned it beside her face. "I'm off duty. And your chicken won't mind." She held up her left hand and showed him a plain gold band. "No hassles."
He bit his lower lip. Matthew had practice. And years of careful sublimation— which was, of course, the point: sacrifice made power. He also had a trick of flying under the gaydar, of making straight women think he was gay and gay men think he was straight. All just part of the camouflage.
He hated having to say no. "Sorry," he said. "That's a lovely offer. But I need a virgin for the cockatrice already, and it beats having to send out."
She laughed, of course.
They never believed him.
"Come on," he said. "Help me ensorcel this chicken."
* * *
Doctor S. lived in Midtown West, on 60th near Columbus Ave. It was kind of a hike, but they got there before sunset. It wouldn't get dark for an hour, but that was only because the afternoons were still long. By the time they paused down the block Katie's stomach was rumbling. That milkshake was only good for so long.
The spot they picked to loiter had a clear view of the front door of Doctor S.'s brown brick apartment building. "Nice place for a junior professor," Melissa said, and for ten seconds she sounded like she was from Boston, all right.
Katie looked at Gina and made big eyes and whimpering noises, but it was Melissa who went and got convenience store hot dogs, diet Pepsi, and a bag of chips. They ate in the shade on the north side of the building, the heat soaking from the stones, their hair lank and grimy with the city air. Katie scratched her cheek and brought her fingernails away sporting black crescents. "Ew."
"Welcome to New York," Gina said, which was what she said every time Katie complained.
Katie had nearly stopped complaining already. She scratched her nails against her jeans until most of the black came out and finished her hot dog one-handed, then wiped the grime from her face with the napkin before drying her hands. It worked kind of halfway— good enough, anyway, that when Melissa splashed ice water from a sport bottle into everyone's cupped hands and Katie in turn splashed it onto her face, she didn't wind up feeling like she'd faceplanted into a mud puddle.
The second handful, she drank, and only realized she had been carrying a heat headache when the weight of it faded. "All right," she said, and took the bottle from Melissa to squirt some on her hair. "Ready as I'll ever be."
"Unfortunately, apparently Doctor S. isn't," Melissa said, reclaiming the bottle to drink. She tilted her head back, her throat working, and as she lowered it a droplet ran from the corner of her mouth. "No, wait, spoke too soon."
Katie stepped behind the pole of a street lamp— silly, because Doctor S. wasn't even looking in their direction— and caught sight of his stiff little blond ponytail zigzagging through the crowd. He was wearing another sort-of costume —Katie wondered what he wore when he wore what he liked, rather than what suited his role— a well-cut gray suit with a fabulous drape. A woman in a navy pantsuit, whose light flyaway hair escaped its pins around a long narrow face, walked alongside him. Her stride was familiar. She had a white cardboard pet carrier slung from her left hand; Katie could not see what was in it, but it swung as if something was moving slightly inside.
"Isn't that the cop who showed up where the woman jumped?"
Katie glanced at Gina and back at the woman, a stuttering doubletake. It was. Not the same outfit, and her hair was clipped back aggressively now —though it wasn't staying restrained— but the woman was conspicuous. "Well," Katie said, feeling as if she watched the words emerge from a stranger's mouth, "we could follow him and find out where they're going."
* * *
Neither Matthew nor Marion was particularly sanguine about attacking on a cockatrice in the dark. They had to take the subway across the island (at least the cockerel was quiet, huddled in the bottom of its carrier) but still ascended to the surface with light to spare. It roused the bird; Matthew heard it shift, and Marion kept her fingers well clear of the air holes. It was, as promised, aggressive.
Matthew shoved down guilt and substantial apprehension. There was no other choice, and power grew out of sacrifices.
They found the courtyard without a problem, that tunnellike entrance with its broken gate leaving rust on Matthew's clothes as they slipped through. He wasn't wearing his usual patrol clothes, a zipped camouflage jacket and boots enchanted to pass-unnoticed, but a gray silk suit with a linen shirt and a silver, red, and navy tie. A flask in an inside pocket tapped his ribs when he moved. He looked like a dot com paper millionaire on his way to a neck-or-nothing meeting with a crotchety venture capitalist who was going to hate his ponytail.
His clothes today, and the quick preliminary ritual they'd performed in his living room, were not designed to conceal him, to occlude his power, but rather to draw the right attention. If you squinted at him with otherwise eyes, he would shine. And other than his rings and the earrings and the pigment in the ink under his skin, he wasn't wearing any iron, as he might have been if they went to face something Fae.
Iron was of no use against a cockatrice. Except in one particular, and so two steel gaffs wrapped in tissue paper nested in the bottom of Matthew's trouser pocket. He touched them through fabric like a child stroking a favorite toy and drew his hand back when they clinked.
"This is it," he said.
Marion set the carrier down. "Nice place you've got here, Matthew. Decorate it yourself?" From the way her nose was wrinkling, she picked out the acid aroma of the monster as well.
Henry and his comrade at arms were nowhere to be seen. Matthew hoped they had taken his advice and moved on. He hated working around civilians.
Without answering Marion, he kicked aside garbage, clearing a space in the center of the court. The windows overlooking it remained unoccupied, and if for some reason they did not continue so, Marion had a badge.
She helped Matthew sketch a star overlaid on a circle in yellow sidewalk chalk. They left one point open, facing south by Marion's compass. When they were done, Matthew dusted his hands, wiped them on his handkerchief, and reached into his pockets for the spurs, the flask, and something else— a leather hood of the sort used by falconers to quiet their birds.
"Ready?"
She nodded. "Where's the lair?"
He patted himself on the chest— "the s.o.b. comes to us"— and watched her eyes widen. She had thought he was kidding.
They always did.
Well, maybe someday he could catch a unicorn.
"It's okay," he said, when her blush became a stammer. "Let's get the knives on this chicken."
It took both of them, crouched on either side, to open the box and hood the bird without harming it. It exploded into Matthew's grip as Marion pried open the flaps; he caught at it, bungled the grab and got pecked hard for his pains. Somehow he got the bird pressed to his chest, a struggling fury of iridescent black plumage, and caged it in his blunt hands. It felt prickly and slick and hotter than blood under the feathers. He smoothed its wings together and restrained the kicking legs, while Marion dodged the jabbing beak. Once in darkness it quieted, and Marion strapped the three-inch gaffs over its own natural spurs.
When they were done, it looked quite brave and wicked, the gleam of steel on rainbow-black. Marion stroked its back between Matthew's fingers, her touch provoking a tremor when she brushed the back of his hand. "Fucking abomination."
She meant cockfighting, not the bird. Matthew set the cockerel down and moved his hands away. It sat quietly. "How do you think I feel?"
She shrugged. Still crouched, she produced a pair of handcuffs and a silken hood from her tan leather handbag. Matthew bent over to pick up the flask. "God, I hate this part."
He prized it open with his thumb and upended it over his mouth. The fumes of hundred-and-fifty-proof rum made him gasp; he choked down three swallows and stopped, doubled over, rasping.
Matthew didn't often drink.
But that would be enough for the spell.
Light-headed, now, sinuses stinging from more than the reek of the cockatrice, Matthew handed Marion the flask and then his spectacles, feeling naked without them. He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, fine hairs harsh on his lips. Four steps took him through the open end of the pentagram.
He turned back and faced Marion. With the silk of the hood draped over his forearm, he handcuffed himself— snugly: he did not want his body breaking free while he was not in it.