“You know, smoke and mirrors?”
“Hilarious.” Eddie got up, dusted off his knees, and stared down at his handiwork. “Okay. That should do it. Let’s get this over with.”
The man stood on the steps of the old church, hating himself for what he had done. There was no going back, though. Seth Lockwood was gone and the girl with him. The scene of his great deceit, outside the old stone church, wasn’t lost on Cadmus Damiola, either. She’d run to Lockwood, seeing a savior until the very last second, when the illusion had fallen away and she’d realized sickly that he had betrayed her, delivering her into the hands of the man who would own her, not the man who loved her. By then it had been too late; the halo around Glass Town was in place and she was already one step out of time, and with every passing minute falling further and further behind.
“I’m supposed to kill you now,” the man beside Damiola said.
Ruben Glass.
Glass was an odd one, an entrepreneur who’d fallen in with thieves, but then greed did funny things to a man, didn’t it?
“But you’re not going to?” Damiola asked, walking down the steps.
“He’s not here to see whether I go through with it or not,” Glass reasoned.
“Funny,” Damiola said, taking the note from his pocket that Lockwood’s boy had delivered, setting the evening’s events into motion. He offered it to Glass. “I got this about an hour ago.”
The other man unfolded the paper and read the final two lines that ordered his own death.
“Well, that does put a different complexion on things, wouldn’t you say?”
“Seems he wanted both of us gone,” Damiola said.
“And logically, he wouldn’t have trusted either one of us to go through with killing the other.”
“We’re walking dead men,” the magician agreed.
“So what now? Are you going back to the West End? The show must go on and all that?”
Damiola shook his head. He had no intention of ever stepping foot on the stage again. If he wanted to live to a ripe old age the smartest thing he could do was disappear.
“And you expect me to just turn my back and walk away from you, now that I know you’re supposed to kill me?”
“You can do what you want,” Damiola said. “If you’re smart you’ll just get as far away from London as you can, and hope that the rest of Lockwood’s twisted little clan don’t come after you. Or you can stick around and try your luck. Either way, our fates divide here. This is the last time we’re going to see each other, Ruben. I can’t say it’s been a pleasure.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Eventually? Die. Between now and then, focus on trying to stay alive.”
Which was a sound plan.
Damiola returned to the lodging house in Bow, cramming every last thing of worth he owned into the battered traveling chest, intending to be out of there, out of the city, and away before dawn.
The flaw was always going to be one of the random factors he hadn’t foreseen, like the knock at the door.
“Come in,” he called, looking over his shoulder as he hid the last of his journals beneath the folds of a shirt so it couldn’t be seen by prying eyes.
Mrs. Hogarth opened the door.
She had a face like a week-old washcloth and a personality to match, but her rooms were cheap and clean. “Visitor, Mister Damiola,” she said, standing aside to let the newcomer in. “I’ll be downstairs if you need me.”
“Please don’t trouble yourself, we’ll be just fine,” the newcomer said, closing the door behind himself before the landlady could protest.
“Isaiah,” Damiola said. Isaiah Lockwood. Seth’s younger, and in many ways nastier, brother who was the heir to the empire now that Seth was gone. Isaiah Lockwood was also the man who loved the girl his brother had just disappeared into Glass Town with. Families, there was nothing more screwed up than them.
“Where are they?”
“Gone.”
“That’s not a good enough answer, Cadmus. I’ll ask you again, where are they?”
“Gone,” Damiola repeated. “I can’t say it more plainly.” He started to rise, holding his hands out, palms to the newcomer to show there was nothing up his sleeve.
“Bring them back!”
“There’s no coming back from where they are,” the magician said.
“I don’t believe you. No road is one-way. That’s not how it works.”
Damiola looked up toward the wardrobe door, wondering if it might not be possible to show the young man and just be done with it. The boardinghouse was on the outskirts of what had been—until a couple of hours ago at least—Glass Town. Not that anyone here would remember it in the morning. It would simply be as if the streets had folded in on one another, effectively sealing the place away, the joins along the seams invisible. But for a few moments at least, perhaps he could open a window of sorts into the fast-disappearing Glass Town? He opened the wardrobe doors, standing between them, and began the invocation, barely vocalizing the words. Isaiah was across the room and at his shoulder in the silence between two heartbeats, arriving in time to catch a fast-failing glimpse of Glass Town through the doors. “See for yourself.”
Isaiah pushed past him, rushing headlong into the closet as though it really were a door into another realm—only to be hurled bodily back and sent sprawling across the threadbare carpet of the lodging room floor. The air stank of magic. People had forgotten what magic smelled like; they assumed the overpowering aromas of freshly mown grass and the sickly sweet scent of baking pastries were just that, not understanding that they were sensing the last lingering traces of magic in the city.
Isaiah tried to scramble back to his feet, but his legs betrayed him.
The wardrobe was just a wardrobe once more; the fleeting glimpse he had caught of Eleanor Raines in her red dress burned onto his mind’s eye forever. Isaiah stared at the wooden boards at the back of the closet and at the last items of clothing still hanging there, waiting to be stuffed into the magician’s traveling chest.
“What did you do?”
What had he done? That was the question that was going to plague Damiola for the rest of his life, no matter how long or short a time that might end up being.
“What I had to,” he said.
“What was that place in there? Hell? Is she dead?”
“To you, yes.”
“No.” Isaiah shook his head. “I won’t accept that. I can’t accept that. There must be something you can do. She was just here. I saw her.”
“She’s gone,” Damiola said again, not unkindly. He offered a hand for the younger man to take, then helped him up. “Even if you could walk through that wardrobe door into Glass Town, you’d never end up when she is, even if you made it to where. The best thing you can do is just accept that as the truth and move on with your life. I know it sounds callous, but frankly we’re both men of the world, and this is nothing more than a painful lesson: sometimes the bastards win.”
That was when Isaiah drew the gun, a snub-nosed British Bull Dog. The piece was old but lovingly maintained. An heirloom from the Great War. Isaiah could smell the grease that had been used to oil the barrel recently. He was shaking—part in anger, no small part in fear. The pocket revolver had an effective range of fifteen yards. They were less than five feet apart. It would be more than effective when it came to ending the magician. “On your knees,” Isaiah demanded.
Damiola sank slowly to his knees, careful not to make any sudden movement. He didn’t want the young man’s itchy trigger finger making a mess on the carpet if it could be helped.
He put his hands on his head and laced his fingers.
He felt the cold steel of the barrel press against the back of his head, just beneath his fingers. For a moment he thought about trying to wrench the gun from Isaiah’s hand but before he could, the young man said, “I’m going to ask you again, bring her back. And if you can’t do that, then open that doorway again so I can g
et to her.”
Damiola could have lied. He could have made all sorts of promises to buy time to save his life, but for a man who made a career of deceit he couldn’t bring himself to conjure up even a half-truth.
“It doesn’t work like that. I can’t just open a doorway. Glass Town is gone. It’s history.”
“It was just here!”
“And now it’s not.”
“I don’t believe you. It’s just a trick. An illusion.”
“It’s the single greatest feat of magic performed on this soil in centuries,” Damiola said. It sounded like a boast. It wasn’t. It was a fact. Magic had long since left England, lost with the arrival of concrete and steel and the revolutions of agriculture and industry. “Believe me, it’s more than just a trick.”
“What if I kill you? What then? Does your magic die with you? Is that how it works?”
“Pull the trigger, it won’t change anything,” the magician said. “I can’t help you. She’s gone.”
Isaiah did as he was told.
“All right,” Eddie said, sitting cross-legged at the circle’s edge, “watch the mirrors. He’ll show up inside one of them.”
Faust paced around the outer rim of the warded circle. He lit the charcoal disks in the brass braziers. Before he was halfway around the circle the scent of sandalwood and the uglier aftertaste of wormwood filled the small room, conjured by the plumes of gray smoke.
“Why four, why not one?”
“To keep him inside. He can run, but the only place he’s going is to another glass trap. Better to be safe than, well, I had one get out, once. Trust me, once was enough. You don’t dick around with the dead unless you’re toting some major juju.”
“They call that a learning experience,” Faust said.
Eddie wasn’t arguing. He put his palms on his knees, upturned, and closed his eyes. “Just shut up and let me do this.”
“Sure,” Faust said, lingering at the edge of the room. “I’ll be a right little church mouse. Pretend I’m not here.”
But Eddie wasn’t listening. His voice dropped to a breathless whisper, so soft it took a moment for Faust to make out the fact that he was calling Damiola’s name. Again, and again, slowly rocking back and forth as he cast the name into the void, sending his words in search of the long-dead magician. He listened for an answer. Faust wasn’t a fan of messing around with the dead. It had a whole Pet Sematary vibe to it. This guy had been gone for a long time. There was no knowing what that did to a man’s mind. Even if Eddie found him, would there be enough of Damiola left inside his shade to actually treat with?
The smoke from the braziers thickened, twisting and knotting in the air like gray velvet streamers. It curled around the magic circle, becoming a veiled curtain, reflected endlessly in the standing mirrors.
The flesh of Faust’s arms prickled, fine hairs standing on end, the room awash in static electricity. He felt something else, too; a gust of elemental power that left his spine crackling with pinprick fires. In his mind’s eye he saw a room in a boardinghouse, a man on his knees, gun pressed to the back of his head, a chill wind blowing through the open doors of an old closet like they were cemetery gates. The intensity rose, pressure building relentlessly inside his skull, pressing on the plates of bone, crushing down on them, as though a tornado suddenly filled the room, the barometric pressure of it threatening to cave his skull in even as the incense smoke gyred and whirled, faster and faster—
“Fuck it,” Eddie suddenly snapped. “He’s not there. I tried. Believe me. I looked in places no living soul should ever look. We’re talking haunted dreams for the rest of my life, but I couldn’t get a lock on his spirit.”
The energy dissipated, the crackles fizzling and sizzling out like a damp squib.
“I’m sorry.” Eddie sagged. “I tried, but the dead have never heard of him—”
“Eddie,” Faust said, his eyes riveted on the thinning cloud of smoke.
“There’s something wrong when the dead don’t know you . . . It’s like he’s hidden from them.”
“Eddie,” Faust repeated. “You might want to open your fucking eyes, my friend.”
The smoke curled lazily away from a dark shape at its core, a thousand snakes of shadow coiling around the figure of a man—no luminous spirit, but flesh and blood—kneeling in the middle of the magic circle. He had his fingers laced behind his head, waiting for the bullet that would end his life. It was as though he’d been torn out of Faust’s vision from moments before.
“Okay, that,” Eddie said slowly, unable to take his eyes off the kneeling man who had just materialized in the circle, “is not supposed to happen.”
Cadmus Damiola unlaced his fingers, slowly, and looked around the room, unable to mask his confusion. He saw Faust and asked, “Am I in Hell? Or is this place . . .” He could barely bring himself to say it, and given the state of the room Faust couldn’t exactly blame him. “Heaven?”
“Neither, maybe both, depending if your luck is in or not,” Faust said. Damiola obviously didn’t understand the joke. “Las Vegas.”
The magician didn’t look any the wiser.
“It didn’t exist when you died. Or . . . more accurately, when you didn’t die. Tell me, what’s the last thing you remember, before you showed up here?”
“The barrel of a gun pressing into the back of my head, on my knees, waiting for the bullet . . .” Damiola felt the back of his skull and the obvious lack of a hole. “He couldn’t have missed, it’s impossible, not from that distance. So he killed me and I ended up in this Purgatory.”
“What year is it, right now, this second?”
“Nineteen twenty-four.”
Eddie pushed himself up to his feet and began anxiously pacing around the edge of the circle, wringing his hands. “Aw shit, man. Shit. This is bad. Shit. This is really bad. Faust, we didn’t grab his spirit, we grabbed him. Just before he was supposed to take a bullet.”
“Then I guess it is his lucky day.”
“Jeez, Faust, don’t you get it? We just completely fucked the space-time continuum. Who knows what happens now? A zombie horde out on the Strip? Aliens? Fuck it, man, we’ve completely changed the history of the world.”
Faust walked over and offered Damiola his hand, pulling him to his feet on unsteady legs.
“I wouldn’t worry about it,” Faust told Eddie.
“Wouldn’t worry about it?” He spun around to face Faust, his face a mix of panic and manic fear, as if the ax had just come slamming through the door and Jack was poking his grinning face through the wound. “When you fuck with time the Nazis win World War Two and everything we know and love unravels. Happens every time. We’re gonna look out of that window and there’s gonna be, like, a swastika flapping in the wind.”
“And Hitler riding a dinosaur,” Faust said with a wry grin. “You’ll have to forgive my friend,” Faust told Damiola. “He’s watched too many B movies. Curse of a misspent youth. I’m Daniel Faust, by the way. And to answer the question I know you’re burning to ask, I’d guess you’re about ninety years past your sell-by date.”
Damiola took a halting step backwards, shaking his head. “Ninety years? How is that even possible? Or—” Something seemed to occur to him. “Perhaps it is. Your friend here has the medium’s gift, doesn’t he? That would make sense. I’d been immersed in the flow of time. Up to my elbows in it, having just brought the halo into place, slowing the passage of time within Glass Town, effectively lifting it out of time . . . It is conceivable, and judging by the fact that I am here now, likely, that your friend’s call reached me while there was still the residue of that great working in my bones . . .”
“Presto!” Faust said. “Excellent timing, too.”
Damiola didn’t disagree, pun or not. Instead he considered his next words carefully, not sure he wanted to know what the future had in store for him. Curiosity won out. He said, “You know my name. Does anyone else? It is hard to believe that the world has not moved on so much th
at the subtleties of my art no longer entertain the masses.”
Faust just smiled.
“Eddie,” he said, “do you still drive that shitbox Toyota?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Give me your keys. I think a nice evening drive might be enlightening.”
And that was how Daniel Faust ended up walking on the Las Vegas Strip at midnight with a man who should have been a ghost. That was the joy of the witching hour. Anything was possible.
Damiola stared up, wild-eyed, in the canyon of blazing light. It was all so garishly bright, a world of neon that probably looked closer to Hell than any of the old masters’ renditions did. He grabbed at Faust’s sleeve and pointed up at a dizzyingly impossible structure ahead of them with his other hand.
“That . . . is a pyramid.”
“It most certainly is, though not exactly authentic. No slaves were harmed during its construction, though it probably cost more than Giza. See that spotlight at the top? Believe it or not, you can see that from outer space.” He paused. “Oh yeah, there’s that, too. We go to outer space now. Or we did. It’s been a while since anyone walked on the moon, but we just got some pretty awesome photos from Pluto the other day. Interesting times.”
Damiola turned in place, trying to take it all in, but there was so much to see, and all of it utterly unlike the London of the 1920s he’d left behind.
“And this was all built in a desert?”
“Middle of the Mojave,” Faust assured him.
On the corner, a crew of guys in loud orange shirts that read GIRLS TO YOUR ROOM—CALL NOW handed out tiny slips of cardboard. Damiola reached out, taking one without thinking, and blinked at the photograph.
“This woman,” he said. “This is . . . indecent.”
“Indeed it is.”
“How can it be allowed? There must be laws . . .”
“You can get anything you want in Vegas. Anything. Which brings me to the important part of our nocturnal perambulation.”
Damiola followed Faust up an escalator to a fenced walkway that crossed over Las Vegas Boulevard. Below, an endless snarl of taxis inched by, adding their flickering brake lights to the symphony of neon.
Urban Allies: Ten Brand-New Collaborative Stories Page 8