The Curse Mandate (The Dark Choir Book 3)

by J. P. Sloan

  Sleater-Kinney strummed from a portable speaker down the stairs, and as I cleared the last step and poked my head into the cedar-lined walls of my work space, I found Ches hunkered over her desk, head bobbing to the music. I’d hired Tatapoulis to expand the basement after discovering most of the cellar beneath my building had gone unfinished. I now sported a hermeticist’s bunker of sorts, complete with a larger sigil-scribed workbench, three times my previous reagent storage space and bookshelves, and the dark-stained cabinet presiding over the entire scene.

  Emil’s Library.

  I eased around the workbench, trying not to disturb Ches.

  “Where were you?” she asked, announcing my utter failure at stealth.

  “New York.”

  She spun quickly in her chair, brows twisted into a knot. “You went to New York without me?”

  “And here I am without so much as a souvenir.”

  “Visiting your aunt?” she asked, turning back to her notebook.

  “No.” I stepped toward the Library, adding in a lower tone, “Business meeting.”

  The cabinet loomed, still somehow sucking in the light around it. I’d embraced its presence in my life as of late. For years, I’d kept it literally caged, sequestered in a mini-storage in Catonsville. It had been a frightening reminder of the fate of Netherworkers. But after recent events, I’d accepted my charge to keep the books closer. Safer.

  I reached into my pocket, fingertips touching the tiny brass key to the cabinet. Ches may have had a key to my house, and to the steel door that kept my work space secure from outsiders. But I was the only one who could open this damned cabinet. On my soul, wherever the fucking thing was, I was going to keep it that way.

  Ches leaned back with a huff, stretching her neck.

  “Issues?” I asked.

  “I hate Linear B. It’s like someone threw up the Greek language and decided to finger paint with it.”

  “You’ll get used to it. It’s kind of like jazz. Makes no sense until it gets inside your head. Once it gels, you’ll thank me for torturing you with it.”

  “How long did it take to gel in your head?”

  I looked up to the ceiling. “About eight years.”

  “Oh, joy.” She stood up and turned down the music. “Why can’t we just use French or Spanish or some language that isn’t older than Jesus?”

  “Kind of a good question, actually.” I leaned against my workbench and folded my arms. “These are the languages of the esoteric pioneers, the first human minds to ferret out the secret knowledge. We maintain the language partially because we don’t want to re-invent the wheel, magically speaking, but also because there’s a degree of resonance that’s built up over the thousands of years these practices have been honed.”

  “So, why isn’t there any new magic?”

  “Probably has to do with the state of the human mind. As a species, we’ve been on an arc from animism to spiritualism, then from theism to rationalism. Maybe it’s social pressure, maybe it’s evolution. Don’t know. But the human mind is slowly losing its ability to access the Arts. In another thousand years, we practitioners may be extinct.” I reached down and knocked on my bench. “Okay, pop quiz time.”

  Ches rolled her eyes and slumped back down into her chair. “Ready.”

  “Name the four spheres of magic.”

  “Affinity, Ego, Nature, and as that little romp to Gettysburg has just seared into my memory, Chaos.”

  I followed with, “Name three practices of Affinity Magic.”

  “Geomancy… thank you again, Deirdre. Religion. And charms.”

  I nodded, unfolding my arms to pace around the bench. “What is Padraig’s Dogma?”

  “There is no Magic but Ego Magic.”

  “And what does that mean?”

  She twirled in her chair a moment, her way of searching for an answer. She’d nearly made me motion sick when we’d drilled the Tarot last month.

  “It means, I guess, that James Padraig wasn’t a believer.” After a lengthy stare from myself, she added, “It means that anything that appears to be magic is just a figment of one’s imagination.”

  “You’re being a little hard on Padraig. He was a believer, in a strict sense. The idea of Padraig’s Dogma is that any worthwhile magic should be easily dismissed as illusion. The most powerful forms of hermetic tradition slide just beneath the notice of the average person. It works in tandem with natural law. If it looks obvious, then something has gone wrong, and it has necessarily lost some of its effectiveness.”

  Ches stretched a grin across her teeth. “So, no fireballs then?”

  “Moving on. Nature magic.”

  She snapped her fingers. “This is where you lose me. I keep asking what’s the difference between witches and us, and you keep saying ‘Nature Magic.’“

  “Which syllable do you not understand?”

  “Okay, so, you make hexes and charms. I get those. Affinity magic. Twists of Cosmic laws tying one thing that can or should happen to another that might or mustn’t. “

  “I should get some of those little gold star stickers to put in your notebook one of these days―”

  “Shut up. So, what about witches? Aren’t they doing the same thing when they light a candle or burn some incense?”

  I stepped to my shelves of reagents, pulling out the jar of myrrh, clearly marked with enormous letters in Sharpie. “These are components to us, ingredients for a recipe that allows us to alter reality. Sometimes we nudge it, sometimes we bend it over our knee and spank it hard. But to us, that’s all this is.” I gave the jar a jingle and set it back on the shelf. “Crap, we’re running low. Remind me to get some more myrrh when the Swains get back.”

  “Where are they?”

  “They had a date with a giant mouse in Orlando.”

  “They’d better bring me a souvenir, or I’m going to think you guys just don’t care about me.”

  “Anyway… Nature magic. To a witch, the ingredients aren’t just ingredients. They’re the spell. Witches stitch themselves into Nature―capital N―as if it were a deity in itself.”

  “Is it?”

  “More like a parallel structure, a separate set of rules they identify as Nature. But to us, it’s just another sphere of practice their forerunners stumbled across. It’s the oldest magic, but also the most limited. They surrender control of their effects to the mental confines of what they call Nature. It becomes a power source, but also dictates what they can do and when.”

  “It’s unpredictable?”

  “Not entirely. They obey the cycles and flows of the natural world. You get sun and moon worshipers, or witches that flavor their workings according to the four seasons. If I could come up with some analogy… with hermetic theory, we spend years researching metallurgy and chemistry in order to craft the perfect cannon to fire our spells. Witches? They’ll smack a bear on its ass and make sure they run faster than the person they want to get eaten.”

  Ches scowled. “So, how is that different than Chaos magic?”

  I folded my arms again, and lowered my voice, as if to avoid the mention of Chaos being misconstrued as an invitation.

  “When you piss off a bear, you basically know what’s going to happen. With Chaos magic, well… you don’t know if the bear’s going to eat you or slap on a tutu and dance Swan Lake, or if the grass will suddenly eat your feet or turn into lemon candies, or if you’re even real or just some mad god’s temporary sense of wish fulfillment. Chaos magic is a sphere of magic, but it isn’t a practice. No one practices Chaos. It just doesn’t make sense for anyone, and it can blow up in your face as quick as it’ll help you. It’s the practice of lunacy.”

  With half a squint, she asked, “So, where does soul magic fit into all this?”

  My stomach tightened just a touch. “It doesn’t. That’s Netherwork.”

  “Netherwork doesn’t fit into your system?”

  “It doesn’t fit into any decent school of practice. Netherwork has nothing
to do with Man. It’s entirely powered by―”

  “The Dark Choir, yes. I’m just wondering why you still dance around it? Like it’s some kind of land mine?”

  “Ches, you have to realize, all organized systems of hermetic practice seek to add to the human experience, either by mastery of secret knowledge or the achievement of gnosis. It’s a humanist pursuit. The Dark Choir are creatures of ancient evil, and to them we’re not noble beings. We’re not masters of any kind of knowledge. We’re basically lunch.”

  Ches’s eyes drifted slowly down to her lap.

  I continued, “So, if you’re looking for someone to round out the holes in your esoteric education and give you a firm foundation in honest hermetic pursuit, shit, I’m your man. But if you want to continue in the pursuit of Netherwork, then you’re going to have to take your chances back west with Gillette, because I’m having none of it.”

  She held up her hands. “Message received, Captain White Light.”

  I took in a solid breath, and clapped my hands. “Besides, you’re doing very well,” I announced. “Honest practice suits you. I am to be congratulated.”

  Ches stood up and smirked at me. “Congratulations. Now go make some coffee. I’m going to fall the fuck asleep down here.”

  “The Kenyan blend or the cinnamon hazelnut?”

  “Kenya.”

  I turned back to the stairs. “Oh, there’s a thing Monday morning.”

  “What kind of thing? You really need to learn how to be more specific. It’s like playing Mad Libs, talking to you. ‘Ches, there’s a noun tomorrow. You should verb adverbially.’“

  “The Tavern. Julian has an event planned. Some legislator is going to announce a run for reelection.”

  She gave me a thumbs-up along with as unimpressed a smile as one could conjure.

  I continued, “I’d like you to come along.”

  “What’s the angle?”

  “No angle. Just… you haven’t been to the bar, yet.”

  “I have classes.”

  I sighed. “Not a problem. It was just a thought.”

  My palms still buzzed with her energy as I climbed the stairs back to the “real” world. I pieced together my coffee pot, a weird knot forming in my chest.

  No, I wasn’t disappointed. It wasn’t rejection. She just didn’t want to waste time with a bunch of politicians. And there was nothing to learn from the whole thing. Light Street Tavern wasn’t her business. It was mine.

  Still, though.

  She wasn’t wasting time with my business at all, anymore. It annoyed me that this observation made me feel uneasy.

  “Nothing to see here, Dorian,” I mumbled to myself as I made coffee. “Move on.”

  ather Mark drummed his fingertips against his chin as he watched me from across his desk.

  “I’m not entirely sure a soul can be destroyed,” he said. “It is an eternal essence, rendered by the hand of God, Himself. Any notion of an eternal afterlife is hinged on the assertion that the human soul is eternal. It may find itself disposed one way or another, but what could actually destroy it?”

  I answered, “Ancient-ass monsters.”

  “Well, most mature belief systems have rejected the notion of personified evil, Dorian. Evil now being more the sum of human cruelty than the Devil and demons.”

  I leaned back in my chair, taking in Mark’s office. Several diplomas hung in tidy frames along the stile-and-rail oak paneling that gave the room a whiff of academia.

  “I’m not as worried about the afterlife as I am this life.”

  Mark smiled and finally stopped drumming his chin. “You’re afraid you’ll become something cruel if you don’t have a soul?”

  “Well, yeah. I feel like I’ve made progress, somehow. Ever since Osterhaus, I feel like I’ve become a better person. Which is really screwed up when you think about it.”

  “Why is that screwed up? Isn’t that what you want to happen?”

  I glanced down to my lap. “Because that’s what happened to Emil. At the end, he was trying to make things right. Trying to train me not to be a Netherworker. He was trying to save his soul, and he failed. It wasn’t righteousness. It was fear.”

  “And you feel afraid, too?”

  I sneered. “You think?”

  Father Mark stood up and strolled to the tall, thin window in his office. He looked out over the street behind St. Aloysius. He was doing his best with me, and I was grateful. But he was still calling his plays from a very limited view of the larger esoteric reality. From our weekly meetings, however, I felt his horizons had expanded.

  As had mine.

  He tapped the glass with his knuckle. “But there’s a difference, from what you told me. Your old teacher didn’t lose his soul, right? He had stained it. Tarnished it. He had committed to evil practices, and then regretted it.” Mark turned back to face me. “That’s not you, Dorian. You believe your soul is disembodied, not damned. From an outsider’s perspective, who’s to say you’re evil?”

  “I have committed evil practices. I cursed a man, and he died. That’s murder, isn’t it? Doesn’t get more evil than that.”

  “But was it?” he chided, returning to his desk. “Murder? You told me that he had your soul in his clutches. Not just your soul. He had a hundred souls, and if you hadn’t intervened he would have consigned them all to… well, nothing good.”

  “You’re saying it was an act of magical self-defense?”

  Mark smiled and dropped into his chair. “More than that, Dorian. It was an act of heroism. You put your soul on the line to save the others. Self-sacrifice? Not evil.”

  “Well, you’re being awful charitable, Padre.” I added with a squint, “And you don’t actually believe I cursed him, to begin with.”

  He shrugged. “Look at it from my point of view. The welds were fatigued from a cut-rate contractor. It was a spectacular accident, and you were inches from dying alongside your enemy. You must have needed to see a purpose in it.”

  “Coincidence?”

  He nodded.

  With a sigh, I said, “That only means it was effective. Don’t get me wrong. I’d love to delude myself into thinking it was self-defense. If the Cosmos wants to toss me that kind of mulligan, I’d feel a lot better about things.”

  “But you don’t think it will?”

  I thought about the Presidium. They still seemed to be on the fence regarding my actions. Maybe the Cosmos was, as well.

  I checked my watch. Just a couple hours until Durning’s press conference at the Tavern.

  “Gotta cut this short. I have a thing.”

  Mark stood up with me and shook my hand over his desk. “Next Monday?”

  “I’ll bring doughnuts.”

  I hopped out onto the sidewalk to make the long walk to the Tavern. One unexpected benefit of taking my weekly soul-searching with Father Mark was that St. Aloysius was only about fifteen minutes on foot from Light Street. The late spring sunlight cut the chill out of the harbor air enough to make the stroll tolerable. Almost pleasant. I crossed into the shadow of one of the tall buildings on Monument Street when the hairs on my neck started doing The Wave.

  The air wasn’t that cold in the shade, and it was nearly noon.

  I shivered and paused to take a look up the street. This wasn’t physical. This was energetic.

  I stood still on the sidewalk as only a couple pedestrians wound around me. I had to center and open up my senses. Christ, this was exactly what I was drilling Ches on all week. Energy palpation. Something was pinging me hard from nearby, and if I couldn’t tell the difference between my own energy and theirs, I could end up with a nifty little hex hanging around my neck. Once I had my chakras nice and tight, I turned a nonchalant circle, feeling the push and pull of the ambient energy on the block.

  The push was most certainly more of a pull, and it was tugging from directly across the street. I gave the far sidewalk a sly glance, trying not to look the part of a hermetic tourist. Something caught my atte
ntion, but I couldn’t see it. More accurately, someone.

  I knew who it was instantly. It was the one who had been watching me for roughly half a year, now. This “shadow man” had robed himself in such an exquisitely executed glammer, I still hadn’t caught a solid look at him. Hell, he could have been a “shadow woman,” so thorough was this charm. And as glammers work best when they slip beneath notice, or hover in the corners of eyes, this audacious display of direct light-bending affinity magic was as much a declaration of ability as it was an invitation to look.

  And look I did.

  The form of a man sketched itself into my subconscious, but for the life of me I couldn’t make out his features with any more distinction than the lines of mortar on the bricks across the street. There was no overt shielding, nothing to announce “Hello, world… I’m violating natural law.” Just an impossible-to-remember face.

  And with the speed of a thought, the entire glammer fell. I saw him. I finally saw the shadow man.

  I’d caught my first real glimpse of him last November. It was the night of the election. He was camping out across the street from my home, just watching me. He’d offered me a gesture, a literal tip of his hat. It was as confusing as it was frustrating. This man had gone to great and subtle lengths to make me feel like a magical infant, and by this point I was beginning to buy into it.

  He was older. Not just older, elderly. His crystal blue eyes perched in tiny wrinkled pouches of ruddy skin. A neatly trimmed pelt of white swashed across his narrow chin. The hunch in the top of his spine brought his head low in a hermit’s crouch, but nothing about his dress or his condescendingly cordial smile made him look humble.

  I feared this man.

  He possessed the unassuming command of an apex predator. And in any intelligent hermetic circle, age was widely embraced not as a sign of weakness, but of terrible strength.

  Shadow Man moved along the street toward a corner deli and stepped inside. Was this an invitation? Of course it was. He’d never bother to drop his glammer if he didn’t expect me to confront him. I willed my feet to the nearest corner and crossed the street. When I reached the deli, he had reappeared with two cups in his hands, clattering as his fingers shook, and sat down at one of the cheap plastic tables the deli owner probably considered “patio dining.”