J.L. Doty - Dead Among Us 01 - When Dead Ain’t Dead Enough

by J. L. Doty

  “There’s a man at the front door, Mr. McGowan. He wishes to see you, and he offered his card.”

  McGowan turned toward Sarah. She was an attractive, older woman, though there’d never been anything between them but shared loyalty and mutual friendship. And trust; he trusted her implicitly. They met in the middle of the room, she held out the visitor’s card, and said, “And he’s clearly a Sidhe mage, Seelie Court, I’d say, and powerful.”

  McGowan took the card, knowing that since it was meant for him it would be blank to her eyes. For him it bore one, single word: Cadilus.

  She added, “I didn’t give him permission to cross your threshold.”

  Sarah was not strong in arcane powers, but McGowan had attuned the wards of his house to her so she could activate them even if he was absent. Even one so powerful as Cadilus wouldn’t attempt to breach such defenses. “Please tell Colleen Cadilus has come, and ask her to wait for us here in my study. I’ll see to this personally.”

  Sarah smiled and said, “I thought you might,” then turned and left the room. McGowan followed her out into the hall. She turned toward her office at the back of the house and he turned toward the front door. When he opened it, he found Cadilus waiting there casually, a sardonic half-smile on his face.

  “Old Wizard,” the Sidhe mage said politely. In front of mortals he always affected the appearance of a British diplomat: expensive, conservatively cut, dark, pinstripe suit, white shirt, dark tie. And though he hadn’t opted for the Bowler hat, he did carry a silver-tipped walking stick. His dark hair had just the right hint of gray at the temples, and he spoke with a refined accent. The pointed ears were hidden by a glamour, but McGowan knew the aristocratic nose, cheeks and jaw line were as close to the reality of Cadilus as any mortal would ever see.

  McGowan chose his words carefully. “Lord Cadilus, I’m honored. I’d invite you in . . .” he said, taking great care to insure there was no invitation in his words until the proper protections had been agreed to, “ . . . but I must have your parole before doing so.”

  Cadilus smiled, though the smile contained no mirth or joy. “We’ve been friends for so long, Old Wizard, you know I have only your best interests at heart. You can rest assured I’ll bring no harm to you.”

  McGowan shook his head sadly. “Your parole. Now. Plainly spoken, with none of the dissembling typical of Sidhe promises, or there’ll be no conversation between us today.”

  Cadilus shrugged and sighed. “While I am your guest, I’ll take no action against you, your family, friends, guests, acquaintances, colleagues or enemies. I’ll leave nothing behind, not a hair, a fiber, a whim or a wish, nothing magical, nether, or mundane. I ask of you only audience. You have my parole, and that of my queen. But only while I’m your guest.”

  McGowan stepped to one side and gestured down the hallway. “Well then, old friend. Please join me in my study.” He looked at Cadilus and smiled warmly. “I have some of that cognac you like so much.”

  Colleen was waiting for them in his study, but it was a different Colleen who stood before the fireplace looking into the flames as McGowan had looked earlier. She was turned away from them, and did not turn to face them as they entered. Her hair had been carefully arrayed atop her head, and she wore a dark-green gown of rich brocade. Embroidered into it were Druid symbols that shifted with the shadows cast by the dancing flames of the fire. Like any women she could take hours to prepare for such a meeting, and yet she’d managed to change her appearance to that of an elegant courtier in a matter of seconds. And McGowan knew full well it was no illusion or glamour.

  Cadilus stopped in the middle of the room and hesitated. Only Colleen could do that to an immortal Sidhe mage. He spoke tentatively, “Lady Armaugh!”

  She didn’t react in any way for several seconds, then turned slowly to face him. “Lord Cadilus,” she said coldly, like the noblest of queens addressing a common peasant. Somehow, in all her court elegance, she still projected a hint of the savagery of her Celtic ancestors.

  Cadilus stepped forward carefully, and dropped to one knee in front of her. She held out her hand and he kissed it gently, then he stood, and still holding her hand he said, “It’s been some time since I’ve had the pleasure of your company, Your Ladyship.”

  Without moving a muscle her eyes glanced down disapprovingly at the hand he still held. He released it, and she said, “But you’re not here for the pleasure of my company.”

  McGowan turned to the bar and poured three glasses of cognac. Colleen had known exactly how to put Cadilus off balance, or at least as off balance as an immortal Sidhe mage could be. McGowan had long suspected she and Cadilus had once been lovers. It also appeared Cadilus had done something to poison the relationship, and still regretted his mistake.

  McGowan handed them each a glass, got them seated in two high-back chairs, decided to remain standing. Cadilus took a sip of the cognac, looked at McGowan. “It is excellent cognac, Old Wizard.”

  Colleen said, “Nor are you here to discuss the quality of the old man’s cognac.”

  Cadilus nodded his acquiescence almost imperceptibly, then spoke slowly. “My queen wishes me to inquire after some arcane incidents recently manifested on the Mortal Plane.” He paused and looked carefully at Colleen, then at McGowan. “Incidents in which you played some role, Old Wizard. Are you trafficking in demons now?”

  McGowan swirled the cognac in his glass. “And why would you ask that, Lord Cadilus?”

  Cadilus ignored his question. “These incidents involved your daughter, and a young sorcerer of which we had previously been unaware. And someone in this house opened a portal to the Netherworld, a portal of the kind that might portend chaos and destruction in our realm as well as yours. Is this young mage a demon, or demon possessed? Need we concern ourselves that he might be a danger to us all? Need the Seelie Court act in this matter?”

  McGowan watched Cadilus stroll down the sidewalk away from his house, and as the probability of the Sidhe’s existence on the Mortal Plane diminished, his image slowly grew translucent, then disappeared altogether. The old man and Colleen had verbally sparred with the Sidhe for more than an hour, attempting to gain as much information as possible, and yield only enough to keep the Sidhe Courts out of it.

  Back in his study Colleen had returned to wearing her Druid garb. He asked her, “Do you think they’ll stay out of it?”

  “For the time being,” she said. “But they’re going to watch closely.”

  McGowan stepped up to the fireplace and looked into the flames again. “I didn’t like that question about Conklin being a demon. It’s natural for them to ask if he’s demon possessed, but to ask if he’s actually a demon. I don’t like that.”

  “Neither do I,” Colleen whispered. “Especially since it’s a concern I share.”

  McGowan turned to her sharply. “Why do you say that?”

  McGowan could see fear in her eyes as she spoke. “Because I’m not sure he’s human. Because I don’t know what he is. And he could be quite dangerous.”

  Paul struggled to find consciousness. In a bleary state half way there he recalled a sequence of half-formed, disjointed memories of some doctor working on him. He recalled something about a “serious concussion,” and some of the memories clearly belonged more to the land of delusion. Then there came a stretch of time in which he laid in bed, conscious, but with no volition to move, like sleeping in on a Sunday morning with the unfettered knowledge there were no demands on his time that day. And then, between one heartbeat and the next, he made that last leap to full consciousness.

  It must’ve all been a dream. The story was just too fantastic to be real: demons and vampires and leprechauns, wizards and witches and sorcerers. He hoped Katherine McGowan was real, but he couldn’t believe the rest of this crap. The answer was clear enough. He’d hallucinated his wife and daughter so much lately he’d gone over the edge, had completely lost touch with reality and was lying in that bed in that straight jacket in that nut hous
e he and Katherine had talked about.

  He was lying in a nice, comfortable bed, covered in soft, maroon sheets. He sat up slowly, though his abdominal muscles complained painfully, had been strained a bit in his exertions. He was alone in a large bedroom with the kind of furnishings and decor that were far beyond his meager means. Someone had carefully bandaged his ribs and stitched up several cuts in his arms and shoulders. He threw back the sheets and paused for a moment to inspect the bruises on his legs and more stitched-up cuts. A clock on a nearby table told him it was early evening, though he didn’t know which evening.

  He swung his legs off the bed and that hurt like hell. He sat there for a moment to catch his breath and let the pain subside, then climbed to his feet like a frail old man and was not surprised to learn his legs were still a bit unsteady. He wore nothing more than a lot of bandages. He spotted a pile of clothing folded neatly on a nearby chair, with a pair of his sneakers on the floor beneath it.

  He shook out the shirt and pants. They weren’t the clothes he’d been wearing, but they were his so someone had gone to his apartment to retrieve them. He found the clothes he’d been wearing in a wastebasket near the bed: cut to shreds by the paramedics, torn further by his misadventures, caked with blood and sweat and that dirty brown grit from hell. He dropped them back into the wastebasket.

  He dressed quickly, which wasn’t at all easy, and turned out to be a painful exercise that left him panting to catch his breath while the pain from a dozen injuries slowly receded. He found a small bathroom attached to the bedroom, was appalled at what he saw when he looked in the mirror. The left side of his face was badly swollen, had turned into one giant, yellowish-brown bruise. Cuts above his left eye, neck and cheek had been stitched, while several other cuts had been left to heal on their own. He carefully splashed water on his face and felt a little better.

  He noticed his wallet and keys and a few coins sitting on a small writing desk against one wall. They hadn’t been in his pants when he’d retrieved them from beneath the bed in the hospital, so someone had gone to the trouble of retrieving them for him. He tested the bedroom door, found it unlocked and opened it cautiously, then stepped into a short hallway with three more doors like the one through which he’d just come. One end of the hall opened onto a broad staircase, the kind of space usage found in only the most expensive places in the city. Feeling like an intruder, he limped his way carefully down the stairway to what appeared to be an entrance foyer. A large door inset with leaded glass panels clearly opened to the outside world.

  In the other direction he heard someone talking calmly. His recent delusions had made him paranoid enough to want to know what he was involved in, so he limped and tiptoed quietly down the hall to the back of the house. He stopped just short of the end of the hall and hung back in the shadows there. He could see just a little bit of the room beyond, barely enough to know it was a kitchen.

  “Thank you for staying with Katherine last night?” That was McGowan’s voice.

  The hippie woman answered him. “She seems to be ok. A lot of cuts and scrapes and bruises, but nothing serious.”

  “And young Conklin?”

  “The only thing of real concern was the concussion. But I healed that. We’ll have to let the bruises and cuts and sprains heal naturally. How long are you going to keep him asleep?”

  He heard McGowan sigh wearily. “I need to think. I’ll remove the sleep spell after I’ve had a chance to think.”

  Neither of them spoke for several seconds, during which Paul heard what sounded like someone stirring a spoon in a glass or coffee cup or something. The hippie broke the silence by asking, “What’re you going to do with him?”

  The long silence during which McGowan didn’t answer stretched out into an ominous statement of its own. When he finally said, “I don’t know,” Paul almost jumped, almost made some noise that would have alerted the two of them to his presence.

  “He deserves a chance, old man. From what Katherine told me, he saved her life three or four times.”

  He snarled at her angrily, “And she wouldn’t have been in the Netherworld in the first place if it hadn’t been for him, god damn it.”

  He heard her sigh. “Promise me you won’t kill him.”

  “I can’t promise that. Not if he’s a rogue.”

  That was all Paul needed to hear. The old Paul would’ve walked into the kitchen and tried to reason with the man, especially since the old fellow, at least in appearance, seemed eminently reasonable. But that was the old Paul, the one who hadn’t had the enlightening experience of looking down the business end of a howitzer as an ugly Russian thug that looked like Joe Stalin pulled the trigger. That was the Paul who hadn’t been chased through the halls of a hospital by a vampire, the Paul who hadn’t stood face-to-face with a hoodoo in hell, the Paul who hadn’t just heard a distinguished looking gentleman casually discuss killing him. It was at that moment he decided to adopt a new philosophy for living: better paranoid than dead.

  The new Paul tiptoed back up the hallway, slipped quietly out the front door and headed down the street. What he didn’t hear was the end of the conversation.

  “But then,” McGowan continued, “the little people have taken his side so he can’t be a rogue, probably isn’t dangerous.”

  She added, “They wouldn’t side with him if he was anything at all dangerous, not in a bad way.”

  McGowan capitulated easily. “Ok, I won’t kill him. In fact, I’ll protect him until I can find out what it is about him that’s got the little people giving up their traditional neutrality. And then I’ll try to teach him how to protect himself.”

  Katherine limped down the busy San Francisco sidewalk, knowing she’d been foolish and vain to drive her own car. But she liked the Jaguar, especially since that dead-beat ex of hers never approved of the extravagance. When they were married she couldn’t afford extravagances, mainly because he could, with her money. No, she should’ve been practical and taken a cab right to the front door of her father’s house. She also shouldn’t have worn the damn stiletto heels. But the Louis Vuittons looked good on her.

  She was a block away from her father’s place when she saw Paul emerge, skulk down the steps to the sidewalk, turn down the street and sneak away. Every nuance about him was furtive and clandestine, and her father wouldn’t have let him leave on his own, unprotected and unguarded. So he must’ve snuck out of the house, though she couldn’t really blame him for being a bit paranoid. But still, her father was the one man he could count on, the one person who might help him get through this alive.

  She was too far away to shout his name, and when she tried to run or speed up, the limp and the heels made it clear that wasn’t going to happen. But he was limping too, so she followed him, hoping to catch up to him when he stopped at a streetlight.

  Anogh watched Paul leave the Old Wizard’s home. And he watched the old man’s daughter watch Paul leave, then decide to follow him. And he watched Simuth ignore them both, watched him allow Paul to stroll casually up the street without so much as a glance, Katherine about a block behind him. And then there was the Seelie mage watching Simuth and Paul and Katherine, a high mage, powerful and dangerous, obviously sent by Magreth to watch and observe.

  Ag had ordered Simuth to watch the Old Wizard’s home. So Simuth, in his arrogance, was focused on the powerful old man, and not the least bit concerned with this young fellow or the old man’s daughter, both of whom appeared to be, at best, minor practitioners. But the Seelie mage seemed focused on the this Paul Conklin. He hesitated for only a moment of indecision, then turned and followed close on Katherine’s heels as she followed Paul, well hidden by a glamour that turned away any mortal eye, and turned away Simuth’s eyes as well.

  Though he might want to, Anogh could not assist the Seelie mage. The tenants of his oath to the Winter Court prohibited that quite clearly. But, without specific instructions from Ag, those same tenants did not obligate him to openly oppose the Summer Court. So
Anogh followed the mage as he followed Katherine, as she followed Paul.

  The events of the last few days had taught Paul to be wary. But he had to try hard not to skulk suspiciously down the street. He was so paranoid at this point he feared if he looked too wary or fearful, combined with his bandaged, battered and bruised face, he’d attract the attention of every cop in town. And that, he knew, was just more paranoia.

  He wanted to get to the east bay, so he turned down Nob Hill on Powell Street, headed for the Powell Street BART Station. But he needed cash, because cash couldn’t be traced, and he didn’t know how powerful his enemies were. So he stopped at an ATM and withdrew a fist full. He knew not to turn and start counting a bundle of twenties walking down the street, counted it carefully in the shadow of the ATM, then shoved it into his wallet and turned to continue down the street.

  “Paul.”

  He stopped at the sound of his name, stopped because he recognized Katherine’s voice. He turned around, watched her limp down the street toward him, looking incredible in a dark pinstripe suit. She’d chosen a man’s style of suit, pants, white shirt and tie. But this was no man’s suit, cut to emphasize her figure, and the pants ended in stiletto heels that looked to be expensive. He decided it wouldn’t be politic to mention the practicality of stiletto heels combined with a limp.

  “You snuck out of my father’s house, didn’t you?” She didn’t seem as angry as she sounded.

  “Ya! Of course I did. He wants to kill me.”

  She grimaced and shook her head. “No. Absolutely not. He wants to help you.”

  “Then why did he say he wants to kill me?”

  Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “He said that? I don’t believe it.”

  “Believe it, sister.” She was irritating him so he played the stiletto heel card. “With all the bruising you took, don’t you think the heels are a bit impractical?”

  Her eyes flashed angrily, so he added, “Though I do have to admit you look pretty good in them.”