by J. C. Staudt
I raise a new detection spell. His outline glows to life, defined in magic. I slide my arms beneath the now-visible figure, knees and armpits. I lift him, a limp sack of potatoes, stocky and muscular. He must weigh as much as I do even though he’s a few inches shorter. I’ve got one hand on the front doorknob when my bedroom door shudders. I turn, pulling the door open as I do so. Another thud.
For a long moment, nothing happens. I take a step toward the open doorway.
The poltergeist blasts through the bedroom door in a shower of splinters, tearing the hinges from the wall as it banks right and careens toward me. The door stutter-steps across the floor and seesaws over the back of the couch, sliding into the coffee table. I drop the invisible corpse. Since Ersatz is still roosting on my shoulders, I cast a spell without his permission and send a shaft of flame in the ghost’s direction.
My fire swirls in a thick braid, pummeling the poltergeist and shoving it against the brick rear wall. It slips free, and I swivel my spell to follow it across the room, dousing my furniture along the way. Ersatz is shouting something, but the fire is bright and hot and loud, and I’m too preoccupied with keeping the ghost away from the body to listen. My spell drifts across the aquarium, shattering the glass and toasting half the mice inside.
Ersatz hops off my shoulder and casts a spell of his own. Without fuel, my fire sputters out and coughs its last. The poltergeist slams into me, knocking me flat on my back. Ersatz’s spell hurtles past, a wall of force which misses its target entirely and smacks the front door shut like a battering ram.
The poltergeist drifts into Arden Savage’s body, its blue outline blending through the protective cover of the invisibility spell. I grab one of the corpse’s legs, which begins to twitch and flex under my grip. I clamber onto the body and pin its arms to its sides. It doesn’t resist at first, just keeps twitching and flexing as the poltergeist feels around its new home.
Then it speaks. A low rasping sound, half-growl and half-wail. The demon’s language is harsh and jagged. I don’t understand a word of it, though somehow I doubt he’s complimenting me on the color of my eyes. When the corpse lifts its head and strains toward me, I tuck my chin and drive my forehead into his face, hoping to strike him a knockout blow. My skull meets the corpse’s nose, which buckles with the crunch of a footstep in dense snow.
He screams and begins to struggle against me. His strength is surprising—or maybe not so surprising for a creature of the underworld inhabiting the body of a muscled twenty-something. His arms escape my grasp. With uncanny agility he slips a knee between us and launches me across the floor. I roll to a stop on my hands and knees, detection spell evaporating due to my lapse in focus.
I throw myself toward the spot where the body lay a moment before.
Nothing there.
The invisible corpse is on its feet, scraping over the threshold and fleeing up the pavement steps. By the time I make it through the open doorway, all that’s left of him are the sound of his footfalls retreating down the sidewalk. He’s heading south, toward downtown. Ersatz comes outside and stands with me at the top of the patio stairs.
“Did that just happen?” I ask.
My dragon looks up at me blankly. “Shenanigans are indeed afoot.”
I slump my shoulders. “So I just created an invisible demon-possessed bounty hunter, then gave him a gun and unleashed him on New Detroit.”
Ersatz gives me a perturbed little smirk. “That about sums it up.”
Chapter 10
Upon re-entering my apartment, I become aware that pieces of it are on fire. My couch, the broom I laid against it earlier, my coffee table and the splintered bedroom door, one of the dining room chairs, and the antique chest of drawers I inherited from my grandfather on my mother’s side are each alive with flame. The exposed-brick wall is scorched with a thick slash of smoky black. The mice who’ve survived my flame spell have been freed from their glass prison; they scurry along the baseboards to raid the wasteland of shattered jars and marshmallow cereal strewn across the kitchen floor.
“Welp. There goes my security deposit.”
Ersatz casts a few simple water spells. They’re all it takes to put out the fires and ruin the affected pieces of furniture for good. The wood will char and warp, the synthetic upholstery will melt and molder, and the scorched brick will never regain its warm earthy hues. A few of my dishes and drinking glasses have survived the fall from their respective cabinets, but by and large my kitchenware is destroyed.
In the bedroom, I’m astonished by how much damage the poltergeist managed to do. My sheets are slashed to ribbons; springs poke through the torn padding of my mattress; several of the crossbeams in my box spring are snapped; a hairline fracture runs up the bathroom toilet from floor to bowl; my worktable and lab equipment are overturned; and the shelf above them, which once contained all my precious vials of magical dust, has been torn off the wall by its mounting brackets. Hey, at least the lights are on.
There’s some residue smeared across the worktable. I make a handprint in it and cast a new detection spell. The room is covered in glowing blue sand. I spend some time gathering the unbroken vials and find a mere five out of the thirty-or-so I’d amassed. The tube of imp’s blood has been smashed into dripping plastic shards, yet the tube of demon’s blood is miraculously whole.
I stumble upon another small miracle when the Book of Mysteries turns up in one piece beneath the fallen worktable. My spellbook has not shared the same fate. I can’t help but utter a defeated groan under my breath when I see it. Like my bedsheets, the pages of my spellbook look like they’ve been attacked by hungry sharks.
Years of study. Years of notation and practice. A passion project encompassing my late adolescence and early adult life, gone in a blink. Ersatz scuttles into the room, whistles at its condition.
“Is it wrong if I hate that poltergeist with every fiber of my being?” I ask, holding the tattered remains.
“Only if you intend to do nothing about it.”
“I’ve never wanted to not do nothing about anything more than I do right now.”
He raises an eyebrow.
“I’m going after that son-of-a-bitch. I don’t care whose body he’s in. When I’m done with him there’s going to be nothing left to possess.”
“Clearly you aren’t thinking straight,” he says. “It’s late. We should rest before we attempt to do battle with a supernatural foe.”
“Now’s no time for napping. We need to get rid of the evidence. That godawful hearse needs to go back to the bounty hunter’s house in case the cops find him before we do. Maybe it’s better if we crash at Quim’s tonight. I don’t think we can stay here, unless I want to lick glassy peanut butter off the kitchen floor and sleep on my melted couch with an empty garbage bag for a blanket. Let me pack the necessaries and we’ll get going.”
I empty my backpack of cleaning supplies and fill it with magical ones: the Book of Mysteries, the five remaining powder vials, and the tube of demon’s blood. I pick my way across the minefield that is my kitchen floor and find my unprocessed residue samples safe and sound in their respective Tupperware containers on the top shelf of the fridge. I pack those too.
My range bag is beneath my damaged bed, where I stowed it last night when I got home from Whittaker Brothers. Since I’m about to drive a stolen car across town on an expired driver’s license, I’ll leave the gun here for now. Better not to complicate matters in case I run afoul of any cops along the way.
I lock the apartment door and cross the street with my keys in my pocket and Arden Savage’s keys in my hand. The hearse’s keyless entry system unlocks the doors as I approach. I slide into the driver’s seat and toss my backpack on the floor while Ersatz slithers onto the passenger-side dashboard, riding shotgun.
It’s been a long time since I’ve driven a car. I learned on my mom’s old German-made stick-shift, before she died and they repossessed the vehicle to pay off her debts. Come to think of it, I haven’t dr
iven since. Public transit is so convenient in the city I didn’t bother renewing my license after I moved back.
Without a doubt, this is the nicest car I’ve ever been in, a late model with an upgraded trim package featuring all the bells and whistles. Hell, I’ve never seen a car this nice before. As I search beside the steering wheel for the keyless start button, a small toggle switch on the underside of the steering column catches my eye.
“Hello. What’s this?” I wonder aloud as my fingers come to rest on the switch.
“If you don’t know what it does, don’t touch it,” Ersatz advises.
You’d think after everything I’ve been through tonight, I’d be smart enough to listen to him. I’m not. The switch is tiny; it seems harmless enough, especially with the engine turned off and the car in park. It’s probably meant to temporarily deactivate a car alarm or something.
I flick the switch.
There’s a click, followed by a hydraulic lifting sound. The long marbled floor panel in the back begins to rise from the vehicle bed, angling like the lid of a wooden box.
I look at Ersatz. “I’ll be right back.”
I get out and pop the trunk. The floor panel and casket rollers are nothing out of the ordinary for a funereal vehicle, but the hidden niche beneath them is straight out of a horror film. Two pairs of thick leather cuffs are bolted to the bottom of a long, narrow compartment lined with sound-dampening foam. One pair is near the foot of the container, while the second pair is about halfway up. A nylon strap joined by an adjustable seatbelt buckle is bolted in at shoulder height. A folded red handkerchief lays in a knotted loop beside it.
This compartment was meant for me. That’s when I notice the trenchcoat and the wide-brimmed hat sitting in a neat stack behind the driver’s seat at the front of the vehicle. It was him. I close the back gate and return to the driver’s seat in stunned silence.
“What?” Ersatz asks. “What is it?”
“You’re not going to believe this.”
“Consider my disbelief thoroughly suspended in light of tonight’s events.”
“He’s the guy who’s been following me.”
“Someone’s been following you?” Ersatz cries.
“Oops. Guess I forgot to tell you. Yeah, I noticed someone in a long coat and hat standing outside the gym last night. Apparently that was Arden Savage. His coat and hat are back behind the seat here.”
Ersatz scrambles over for a look. “It’s all starting to make sense now.”
“Not really. We still don’t know who sent him.”
“Visiting his home may be our best chance of finding out.”
“I’m pretty sure I know the area, but I’d better map the route just in case.” There’s a decal on the hearse’s front windshield denoting residency at Phipps Plaza Tower, a swanky downtown high-rise built only a few years ago. The hangtag on the rearview mirror displays what must be a numbered parking space, B26. When I tap Arden Savage’s address into my phone’s GPS, the location marker matches up.
I press the car’s start button. The engine purrs to life, as smooth as the vehicle’s hundred-thousand-dollar price tag. Flicking the toggle switch beneath the steering column closes the hidden compartment behind me.
“Might I recommend caution,” Ersatz says.
“I got this,” I assure him.
The car proves my ineptitude by bucking as I pull forward from the parallel parking spot. Ersatz grips the dashboard and closes his eyes with a smoky sigh. Things go smoother once I get a feel for how the hearse brakes and accelerates. I follow the GPS’s directions toward the bounty hunter’s place of residence while maintaining the speed limit like a good citizen who doesn’t want to get pulled over and apprehended for being a murdering car thief.
Along the way I keep my eyes peeled for Arden Savage’s invisible poltergeist-possessed corpse. Believe it or not, I don’t see him. The invisibility spell won’t last forever; a few hours at most. Until then, I might as well be looking for a ninja in a black curtain factory.
When I pull up to the private underground parking garage at 1901 Grand River Avenue, Phipps Plaza Tower soars to the heights above me. The gatehouse inside the entrance is empty at this late hour, but after a brief pause the gate arm detects the chip in the hangtag and lifts to let me inside.
B26 is one of the only empty spaces in the garage. After parking the hearse and retrieving my backpack, I lock the doors and circle the bumper for a closer look at the car in B25. It’s a Maserati, Arden’s other vehicle; sleek curves and luxury styling in a deep, rich scarlet. It’s like something out of a Bond movie.
When I press the Maserati-branded fob on Arden’s keychain, the tail lights throw me a seductive wink. I slurp back a trickle of drool. I’m so tempted to take her for a spin. I might die setting a city-wide speed record, which would be so worth it. Just sitting in the driver’s seat might be enough to sate my lust for the time being, but Ersatz is having none of it.
“Don’t lollygag,” he says, scuttling past me toward the elevators. “You’re in deep enough already.”
That dragon. Always ruining my fun.
Chapter 11
“I’m a terrible person. I am a terrible person. I am a terrible. Terrible. Person.”
Ersatz taps his claws on the elevator’s smooth mahogany wall paneling. “We’ve established your terrible personhood. No need to prattle on.”
The elevator speeds us toward the fifth floor, where Apartment 503 is waiting to be opened by the Schlage on Arden’s keychain. “What if he has roommates?”
“We’ll work around them.”
“How?”
Ersatz studies me for a moment. He casts a spell, then leaps onto my shoulder and brushes my cheek with his snout. “That ought to do it.”
A wave of discomfort runs through me, followed by an uncontrollable shiver. “What did you just do?”
“Look up,” he says.
I look up. In the elevator’s mirrored ceiling, my reflection is not my own anymore. I’m the spitting image of the man I killed; a taller, thinner Arden Savage. “Are you kidding me?”
“A stunning likeness, don’t you think? Give or take a few inches.”
“And a few pounds. It’s a good idea, except I know nothing about the guy. How am I supposed to impersonate him?”
“There’s an expression.”
“Is it ‘I’ve got a bad feeling about this’?”
“Fake it ‘til you make it. You don’t need to know everything, so long as you can pretend you do.”
“I’ve got zero chance of pulling this off.”
“Okay, that? Don’t do that.”
“It’s true.”
“As long as you keep thinking that, it is.”
“What am I supposed to do if someone asks me my favorite color? Or what I had for breakfast? Or how I spent my evening?”
“Do you and I go round asking one another tedious questions all the time?”
“No. But you don’t care what my favorite color is.”
“Neither do most roommates. We aren’t certain anyone lives with him; we’re only taking precautions in case someone does. Now for heaven’s sake, calm down. You’re defeating yourself before you’ve started. Deep breath. Chin up. If there’s anyone inside that apartment, they’ll have no reason to believe you’re not Arden Savage unless you give them one. Fake it ‘til you make it. Remember that.”
“Fake it ‘til I make it.”
He nods. “That’s the ticket.”
The elevator jitters to a halt. The doors slide open with a ding. Ersatz stays where he is on the wall.
“Aren’t you coming?” I ask.
“I’ll surveil the hallway in case anything runs amiss.”
“Sounds good.” I urge my feet to move, but I’m unable to convince them they’re not just fine where they are.
The elevator doors close.
Ersatz scrambles across the wall and presses the Doors Open button. “Right, then. Out you go.”
“Wait a minute. What am I going to do with my backpack?”
“You’ve always been adept at thinking on your feet, Cade. Don’t let your nerves stifle your creativity. You’ll think of something.”
Instead of telling him I’ve reconsidered this whole plan, I breathe deep and take my first step onto the hallway’s plush patterned carpet. I feel like Neil Armstrong on his first moon landing—I’m aware of the importance of my mission, yet every step terrifies me.
Elegant wall sconces light my way down the wide corridor to apartment 503, the second-to-last door on the left. I check behind me to make sure I’m alone before pressing my ear to the door. For a second I swear I can hear muffled voices, but the sound dissolves so fast it’s hard to tell. I could just knock on the door and see if anyone answers. I’m supposed to be Arden Savage, though, and Arden Savage doesn’t knock on his own front door. He unlocks it and goes inside like he owns the place. Or rents it.
My blood is beating in my ears as I slide the key into the lock and turn it to the left.
Wrong way.
To the right. The lock clicks. I push the door open.
A television glows in a dark living room at the end of a long entryway. A young woman is lying on a crisp leather couch beneath a flannel throw, resting her head on a gray satin pillow. Bare feet and sweatpants stick out from the bottom of the blanket. Her dark hair is wrapped in a bun held in place with chopsticks, and her off-the-shoulder sweatshirt leaves a swath of creamy skin bared to the TV’s blue sheen.
She looks over and gives me a curious half-smile. No turning back now. I step inside and set my backpack down in the foyer, half out of habit, half out of not knowing what else to do with it.
“Hey,” says the woman. She mutes the volume, silencing the tough-guy detective on her crime drama. She glances at the backpack, but doesn’t mention it. “You alright? I left you a voicemail.”
“Sure,” I stammer. “I’m fine.” I set my keys—Arden Savage’s keys—on the side table in the entryway, figuring that’s the sort of thing I’d do if I were him.