The Curse Mandate (The Dark Choir Book 3)

by J. P. Sloan

  She swiveled to face us. “My grandchildren call them moon bounces. Seems language is ever-shifting.” Turning back to face the front, she added, “As are the prevailing winds of fortune.”

  “Fortune’s a fickle bitch, I’ll give you that.”

  “Best to be the one holding the leash, wouldn’t you agree?”

  The car pulled into a heavily wooded drive. I wouldn’t have noticed it if Reginald hadn’t turned in. After a single curve of maples and locust trees, the drive reached a tall wrought iron gate. Beyond the gate and the guardhouse lay a wide expanse of unremarkable lawn. It sloped away from the front of the property so sharply we couldn’t see anything beyond the dip. Everything about this property screamed concealment.

  No one manned the guardhouse. We sat in front of the gate for several minutes with no sign of activity beyond. Wexler and Reginald seemed content with the situation, so I assumed this was normal.

  At last, a golf cart with two suited goons in sunglasses slipped into view at the curve of the lawn. Reginald unlocked the doors, and Wexler stepped out. I followed suit.

  Malosi tried to, as well, but his door seemed to have remained locked.

  Wexler leaned in through my open door.

  “You’ll stay in the car, Mister Malosi. That was our agreement.”

  He crossed his arms and stared forward, his jaw set.

  The golf cart hummed up to the gate, which opened on its own.

  I asked Wexler, “You sure I’m coming back, right?”

  With a chuckle, she replied, “He’s invited you here, Mister Lake. That rarely ever happens. I think you’d know by now if the Ipsissimus wanted you neutralized.”

  “I suppose that’s true.”

  One of the goons stepped up and gestured for me to approach the golf cart.

  “You’re not coming, then?” I asked Wexler.

  “I wasn’t invited.”

  Her face stiffened into some inscrutable mask of patience and quiet resentment. As I turned with a nod to Malosi through the windshield, I wondered if Wexler had ever set foot inside these gates. My feelings of dread eased as I rolled that thought around my skull. This meeting was a bigger deal than I had previously assumed.

  That easy feeling vanished, however, when I stepped through the gates, piercing a particularly prickly and draining property warding. Were I not invited, I doubted I could have stayed conscious.

  The golf cart ride down the path was even quieter than our ride down from Baltimore. The thin asphalt cart path led down the curve of the lawn, and soon the front gate was out of sight. Almost immediately, the high gables of a slate-shingled chalet style roof sliced into view above the maples at the far end of the lawn. The house was enormous. Stately. Foreboding. Precisely what I expected from the head of the Presidium.

  I released a low whistle.

  The goon who wasn’t driving swiveled his head and smirked.

  The cart path split near the wide cobblestone drive holding three impossibly expensive cars. I almost attempted a remark about the Bugati sitting near the front door, when the cart took the path leading away from the house. I kept my mouth shut.

  The Potomac slipped into view behind a copse of trees. It was the charming, rocky part of the Potomac, bubbling as it swept past the crags midstream. The path wound its way to a squat building near a concrete-paved inlet from the river.

  Boathouse.

  As the cart hummed to a stop, we all stepped out, and the goons assumed flanking positions beside me. With another flat gesture, I was ushered to the side of the boathouse. A pair of barn doors along the far end of the building hung open on their sliding rails. Sunlight only illuminated the space nearest the barn doors, and beyond was darkness. I checked with my escort before stepping inside.

  “Uh, hello?” I ventured as I inched into the space.

  A cough to my right and the clearing of a throat were my answer. I turned to find a short, emaciated man hunkered over a workbench. A round fluorescent work lamp clamped to the bench hovered near his head. He wound one hand in rapid circles as he loomed over his work. The intense focus was jarring. What working had the Ipsissimus decide to practice at the precise moment I stepped into his boathouse? Surely it would be a message of some kind. Watch your step, boy, or you’ll end up at the end of whatever tiny little slice of Hell I’m cooking up. I extended my senses as much as I dared, but detected absolutely no energy. No intent. No will.

  Another clearing of the throat, and the frail man muttered, “Just be a minute.”

  I stepped closer, squinting over his shoulder.

  A flat board with nail pegs sat beneath his gloved hands. He gripped a pair of needle nose pliers in his right hand, using it to wind a thread in dizzying patterns over the pegs. I shook my head when I finally deduced what the Hell he was doing.

  “Fly fisher?” I ventured.

  He made two tiny knots, then reached for a pair of scissors.

  “Indeed.” He held up his new fly lure with the pliers, admiring it in the sunlight. “You?”

  “Can’t say I’ve had the opportunity.”

  “Shame. Only thing worth doing on this damned river.”

  He slipped the lure into a divided tray of tiny cubbies, and finally turned to me. His thick glasses made his eyes pop, rendering the rest of his gaunt face in cartoonish relief. He reached out bony fingers, and I shook his hand.

  “Joe Adrastos,” he declared.

  “Dorian Lake.”

  The Ipsissimus swiveled at the waist to grab two aluminum arm braces I hadn’t noticed were leaning against his bench. He slipped his arms into the braces and hobbled forward.

  “Follow me,” he said.

  I obeyed, watching as his feet slid uneasily along the cement floor of the boathouse. He led me to the far end, cloaked in shadow, before reaching up and sliding open another door. My eyes squinted against direct sunlight as the river swept below a deck of chairs and wooden tables.

  A woman in a white skirt and navy blouse stepped forward to hold the door open. I noted as Adrastos stepped onto the deck that the gesture was intended for me, not Adrastos.

  “Gin and seltzer, Margarite. And whatever Lake’s having.”

  I watched Adrastos as he eased down into a chair, then snapped my attention back to the woman waiting for my drink order.

  “Oh, uh… scotch.” As she lingered, I realized I needed to be more specific. “Speyside single malt, whatever you got.”

  She nodded and slipped out of view.

  Adrastos set his braces alongside his chair and cracked his knuckles. His eyes drooped as he ran his hands over the arms of his chair.

  “Clearly, we’ve been watching you, Mister Lake.”

  “I gathered.”

  “You’ve shown a remarkable amount of growth in the past year. Those barking for your removal aren’t barking quite as loudly, anymore. And for good reason, I suspect.”

  That was good to hear.

  “I’ve done my best to keep off your shit list.” I winced. “Pardon my language. I mean, I don’t know. Is it―”

  “It will take a lot more than the odd ‘shit’ to offend me.” He sighed. “It seems I’ve surrounded myself with odd shits intent on offending me, at any rate.”

  “Bad luck.”

  “I feel it’s best to begin our conversation by clarifying a point or two regarding the late Lillian Hsu.”

  My stomach knotted.

  He continued, “I found her practices and methods to be personally distasteful in the extreme. However, that alone is not sufficient cause to neutralize an individual. Her recent ambitions put our organization at odds with a similar but much older cabal in Beijing. Which presented a threat to national security, a threat our mundane government is ill-equipped to handle. Hence the extreme prejudice.”

  “The fu dogs?”

  “Ancestral enslavement, to be more accurate. Again. Distasteful.”

  The attendant returned with a tulip glass of effervescent gin cocktail, and a tiny snifter o
f amber liquid. She handed me the snifter before taking great pains to settle Adrastos’s glass onto a tiny end table at his side.

  “Thank you, Margarite,” he droned without looking at her.

  She lingered in front of us until each of us took a sip. I gave her an appreciable nod, and she seemed content to withdraw once again.

  The scotch was, in fact, transcendent.

  “I want you to understand our rationale,” he continued, “regarding Hsu. We are not quick to kill, Mister Lake.”

  “You seemed quick enough to kill Cecil Rawls.”

  He lifted his chin, searching the ceiling. “Rawls?”

  “Reporter for the Sun. He and his entire family were killed in a car wreck last summer.”

  “Ah, yes. That was regrettable.” Adrastos considered me for a moment. “He had uncovered connections between our organization and Sooner. We had plans for Baltimore, Mister Lake. Plans that had taken years to see into fruition. When confronted, Rawls threatened us. We had little choice.” He added with a sip of this gin, “I do wish his family hadn’t been involved. We dealt with the one responsible for that unnecessarily brutal oversight in-house.”

  “An oversight, huh?” I grumbled. “He had children.”

  “Alas, we are not quite as omniscient as our reputation leads one to believe.”

  “That so?”

  He replied, “We are the silent defense of this nation, Mister Lake. Not some arbitrary gatekeeper of the secret knowledge.”

  “At this point, I imagine you can keep whichever gate you’d like.”

  “We couldn’t keep Quinn Gillette from entering Baltimore, could we?”

  I pursed my lips.

  He took a long pull of his drink. “We have to be careful with our assets.”

  “Assets?” I asked.

  “Netherwork is a filthy, destructive practice. Left on its own, it would plunge an entire society into another Dark Age, such as we saw in the histories of Europe and the Levant. The freedoms we cultivate in our society simply may not extend to hermetic practice. However, to extend a metaphor, the best method to prevent a forest fire is to selectively burn away the brush. Maintenance, Mister Lake. We require regular maintenance of our own fold. Too much power in too few hands?” He chuckled. “It’s a recipe for tyranny. We realize that. It’s one of the reasons the office of the Ipsissimus is elected.”

  I quickly sipped my scotch. He was the elected leader of the Presidium? My utter ignorance of the matter became painfully clear to me in that moment.

  Adrastos gave me a moment to respond, and as I held my tongue, he continued.

  “It seems the virtuous few who are tasked with eliminating darker magics are by definition poor executioners. Hence it behooves us to preserve a body of dependable Netherworkers.”

  I nodded. “Oh. Those kinds of assets. Like Osterhaus?”

  “Neil was a simpleton, and as such he was predictable. Which made him reliable.”

  “I wondered why you let him operate for so long.”

  With a sigh, he said, “Those cabinets full of soul contracts provided something of a lure for unsavory elements. Those who would buy them, traffic in them. With our guidance, he brought several foreign interests to us, and we allowed him the occasional genuine sale to maintain his business. An arrangement that suited everyone, that is, until Hassam Al-Syriani.”

  I buried my face into the snifter.

  “Alas,” he continued, “that same predictability was employed toward his downfall. Many within the organization called for your removal because of that, and again when you managed to derail our plans for the Baltimore mayorship. But better angels prevailed.”

  “Was Brown one of these better angels?”

  Adrastos choked a little on his gin.

  “Brown?” he gasped. “His contempt for you borders on alarming. But he is only one voice. There are others, of course.”

  “And Wexler?”

  He turned toward me as far as he was able. “If you wish to gossip about the opinions and proclivities of our members, then this conversation will become very brief.”

  I tucked my chin. “Sorry. It was just…enlightening.”

  “I think you know more than you realize. You’re looking for confirmation. And confirmation isn’t why we’re here.”

  “Why are we here?”

  “Assets, Mister Lake. We’re here to discuss assets.”

  I took a moment. “Was Frater Zeno one of your assets?”

  “Yes. His dedication to his own ego is so absolute. It requires little effort to prod it toward our ends.”

  “So, Zeno’s a Presidium hit-man?”

  Adrastos’s face soured. “Not as such. We employ mundanes toward that end. No, his use to the Presidium lies in his contact with the other side.”

  “Ah. So it wasn’t respect or fear that kept him operating so close to D.C.? It was need.”

  “He has been quite useful to us. And he’s done good work.”

  “Not so much anymore,” I grumbled.

  “Oh, I’m confident he can be restored. Assuming we can navigate the recent unpleasantness.”

  “Yeah. That.” I took the last sip of scotch and set the glass aside. “Was Carmody one of your assets, too? That’s why you let him relocate to the East Coast?”

  Adrastos swiveled back to face the river. “He had potential. Again, you ensured that option was no longer available to us. Indeed, our list of assets has been crippled as of late.”

  “So I’ve noticed.”

  “Tell me,” he said, gesturing with his glass, “are you not angry at the recent developments? Angry with the Presidium?”

  I eased forward in my chair. This question was chock full of trip-wires. He was testing me.

  “I’ll tell you what I think,” I began. “I think someone’s decided the Presidium is weak enough to attack.”

  He lifted a brow.

  I steeled my intestines, and continued.

  “That media bombshell with Durning? That was some kind of opening salvo, something to stir the pot and put the Presidium on the defense.”

  The barest lift of a grin haunted the corner of his mouth.

  I continued, “I suspect whoever put Durning up to this, whoever put that list of Presidium names into his hands, had something on Durning dirty and sticky enough to make him commit political suicide. Then they took him out, stopped his heart with a simple curse. And it was all to kick up a Hell of a dust cloud over the Presidium. What’s more, I suspect these are the same people who’ve been firing jinxes across the area. The same people who planted a niding pole inside a piece of public art in order to take out Zeno’s lodge. The same people who are taking out the rest of your assets. You’ve pissed someone off, sir. And these people are taking their time with some very vicious magic.”

  Adrastos nodded. “I’m impressed. So many are quick to the simple conclusions.”

  “I have some experience with this sort of thing. Which brings us to the point, doesn’t it?”

  “What do you perceive the point to be?”

  Here it went. “You’ve run out of assets, and you want me to get in the game.”

  “If I understand things correctly, Lake, you’re already in the game. I’m here to offer incentive.”

  “Incentive, huh?”

  He finished his gin, and Margarite swept back in to gather our glasses. When she disappeared once again, he continued.

  “The Presidium is prepared to offer you a mandate to eliminate these renegades.”

  “Renegades?”

  “Chaos magic. Not exactly an orderly business.”

  “What makes you think I can do it, if you can’t?”

  “We’re hamstrung, Mister Lake. There are interests involved who make the current climate of hostility difficult to navigate without significant internal upheaval.”

  “What’s my incentive? As if I couldn’t guess.”

  “Sorry?”

  “My soul. I assume you’ve had access to my soul for qui
te some time, now.”

  Adrastos snickered. “Oh, dear. Oh, Mister Lake. If such a thing were that simple, we’d have secured your soul long ago, and sent you back to your mediocre practices.”

  “What, then?”

  Adrastos labored in his seat to reach for his braces, pulling himself upright with some effort. I fought the urge to assist, recognizing it was neither needed nor likely wanted. He moved for the railing of the deck overlooking the sparse trees separating us from the Potomac.

  “Your disciple’s brother. It comes to our attention that he has been cursed.”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “A curse isn’t something that’s easily broken. Not without very specific circumstances aligning for the cursed.”

  “I noticed that.”

  Adrastos swiveled to face me. “There are means, however, to mend the damage the curse has rendered. Specifically, Mister Baker’s wife and children.”

  I eased up from my chair, waves of unease sweeping through my chest.

  “You don’t mean…”

  “No, no. Nothing harmful. Quite the opposite. We have considerable influence in the Multnomah County District Court. What influence we enjoy on the West Coast, it seems, comes at a price. We’d be willing to expend some of our, shall we say institutional capital, to ensure Mister Baker retains full privileges with his children.”

  I settled back into my chair.

  This was solid. No bullshit that I could tell. No magic bullet, no wave of a wand. I knew they could push a judge when they wanted to. And he was correct in that the Presidium was considerably weaker in the Northwest. This would’ve been an expensive move for the Presidium, especially in a time when they were showcasing their weakness to the world.

  Which told me how much they needed my help.

  “Ricky stays in his kids’ lives,” I reiterated.

  Adrastos nodded.

  “What are my conditions for success?”

  “Identify and eliminate the parties responsible for the recent attacks on the Presidium.”

  “That easy, huh?”

  He didn’t so much as smirk.

  I continued, “And I can use Netherwork, if I have to. No repercussions.”

  “If it serves the interests of the Presidium. This is not a carte blanche to drown our soil in dark magic.”