Chaffney folded his arms. “She is, yes.”
“Name?” I asked tentatively. Why did I feel there was more going on here than I knew?
Malachi turned back to me. “Yes, Asmodeus. Demon in Christian mythology. And Jewish. Had its roots in Persia. Asmodeus was the prince of the Revengers of Evil—for what that’s worth—often portrayed as a winged man.”
“Malachi named her when be cast the loyalty spell,” supplied Chaffney. “He … asked a high price for her loyalty.” He studied Malachi Lee levelly. “She was worth it. I’ve never regretted it.” He unfolded his arms, and with that the strange tension seemed to melt away. “I thought you’d like to meet them,” he said.
“Yes.”
“They came into the city yesterday afternoon. Me, Emilio, and Harry were standing overpass watch on the east side. I’m afraid Emilio started getting ideas about her horn.”
Malachi frowned. “That’s not good.” He looked at me. “You don’t need any trouble from him. He’s no trouble by himself, but he has too many friends. Let me know if he bothers you.”
“Thanks, but I think I can take care of my own problems.”
“Suit yourself. But the offer still stands.”
The big Chow barked. Malachi bent and ruffled its thick fur. “Sorry, boy. Didn’t mean to be rude. Pete, this is Faust, faithful companion and partner in hard times.”
“Hi,” I said, half-indulgently.
Faust barked once.
“Did you cast his loyalty spell?” I asked.
For a moment he looked angry. “No one did,” he said. “We’re friends.” He patted the dog again. “Faust, this is Ariel. She’s a unicorn, and as long as you know her I want you to treat her and guard her as you would me.”
I thought that was a strange thing to say, but the dog barked once to Malachi and again to Ariel. She woofed once in return. I cast her a sidelong glance—I don’t know if she really spoke dog-ese or if she was just humoring our host.
“Ariel’s a good name,” said Malachi. “Did you pick it?”
“Yes. I liked it.”
“Shakespeare would have loved it.”
I shot him a puzzled look.
His eyebrows crept up. “I thought that’s where you got it. Shakespeare. The Tempest. Ariel was a magical character.”
“Oh.” I felt stupid. “I saw it on a book with a picture of a unicorn on the cover. I thought it fit her.”
“Oh, it fits her, all right. Come inside.” He shook his head wonderingly. “I’d like to find out what it’s like to be the Familiar of a unicorn.” He turned and held the gate open for us. Faust, Chaffney and Asmodeus, Ariel, and I—a dog, a leatherjacketed man with a falcon on his shoulder, a unicorn, and a twenty-year-old virgin—walked into the yard. Malachi locked the gate behind us and caught up to Russ. He extended his arm. “Do you mind?”
Russ spread his hands. “Go ahead.” He shrugged his right shoulder and Asmodeus flapped onto Malachi’s proffered arm. He stroked her head with a finger. “Faust—you two go play.”
The bird flapped from Malachi’s arm and sped across the yard, flying close to the ground. Barking, Faust ran after her.
I shook my head. What a day.
*
The front door was rigged to kill anybody who walked in after it was armed. The door opened outward. Tied to the inside knob was a string that turned a corner round a pulley, went through the trigger of a loaded Wildcat crossbow, and was secured on a nail driven low into the wall. The bolt was aimed belly-level at the door. Once it was opened, the string tautened, the trigger pulled, the bolt flew, and there was a body on the front porch. There was no way you’d be able to slam the door or duck in time.
“What if somebody stays behind the door when they open it?” I asked. “The bolt’ll hit it and they’ll just come on in.”
“Faust is my watchdog at night.” He reset the string on the knob after we were inside. “He usually stays in the yard. Anybody in front of that door has to deal with him first. You can see the iron grillwork set in the windows. There’s no other way in; all other doors have been bolted shut and reinforced from the inside.”
“What if somebody kills Faust and comes in? It could happen, you know.”
“Then they’ll have me to deal with.”
“What if you’re asleep?”
“I’m a light sleeper.”
“Oh.”
Five
It is an astonishing fact that there are laws of nature, rules that summarize conveniently—not just qualitatively but quantitatively—how the world works. We might imagine a universe in which there are no such laws, in which the 1080 elementary particles that make up a universe like our own behave with utter and uncompromising abandon.
—Carl Sagan, Broca’s Brain
“I’m not sure it had a cause,” said Malachi. “I think it may have just … happened.”
We sat—with the exception of Ariel, who stood—in Malachi Lee’s living room. The furniture was shabby: springs broken, linings showing, chair legs wobbly, threads hanging from the upholstery that had pulled loose from the bottom of the couch. The walls were undecorated, except for one that was covered by crammed bookshelves. All kinds of books, from cheap paperbacks to leather-bound, gold-stamped hardcovers. Many had been stolen from the Atlanta Public Library; no wonder I hadn’t been able to find some of the ones I’d been looking for.
“How could the Change have ‘just happened’?” I countered. “Change implies cause, and cause implies source. Things don’t just happen.”
“Then I have to ask my question again: what caused the old universe—call it the Newtonian universe. Until you can answer that I’m forced to conclude that things either do happen without cause, or that they have causes we’ll never be able to understand or prove. I don’t think there’s anything supernatural’ at all about the world as it is now. It just works under different laws of physics.”
“‘Different laws of physics,’” said Ariel, “and ‘supernatural’ seem synonymous to me.”
He frowned. “All right, I’ll grant you that. But the end result is the same. ‘A difference that makes no difference is no difference.’ I cast a spell and it works whether you call it supernatural or different operant physics. I conjure a demon and it appears. No matter what the cause, the result is the same. To say it can’t be is to say Ariel can’t exist—yet there she is.”
“Thanks. I was starting to think you guys were about to tell me I couldn’t be here. I’m told that’s rude.”
Chaffney pursed his lips. “But what about when you conjured that demon, Pete? I mean, what were you trying then? Were you trying to do magic, or—”
“I was curious,” I interrupted, not wanting to be reminded of the affair. “I just wanted to see what would happen. I don’t need proof that magic exists—why should I?” I hooked a thumb at Ariel.
Malachi stood. “You tried a conjuration?”
I nodded.
“Yeah, tell him about it, Pete,” Chaffney said. He looked at Malachi. “He told me about it in the library last night. It’s a great story. Go on, Pete. This is Malachi’s thing.”
Malachi rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “I would like to hear it.”
I sat back in the threadbare chair. “You tell him,” I told Ariel sullenly. “I’m tired of telling people about it.”
She snorted, but told him the whole mess pretty much as I had related it the previous night. The story gave me the creeps; I didn’t want to repeat it. Not that listening to it was much better. The more I relived it the more I realized I must have got off lucky.
There was silence when she finished. Malachi Lee searched my face for some reaction. “That’s what happened?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
He shook his head. “You’re very fortunate, you know that?”
“I’m beginning to appreciate it, yes.”
He went back to looking thoughtful and then walked to his bookcase, searching titles with sweeps of his index finger.
It stopped in front of a black, leather-bound book. He pulled it out, opened it, and turned pages until his eyes rested on something that seemed to satisfy him. He read for a minute, nodding to himself, then handed the book to me. “Is this the conjuration you used?”
The book was a dead weight. To touch it was to hold something grimy, like the oily dust that collects in garages. The archaic print, the yellowed pages—everything was the same as that other book. Even the leather was as worn and cracking. And the conjuration—no way I would forget that spell. It didn’t matter that I hadn’t known the meaning of the words; they looked foul and sounded worse. “Yes, this is it.”
“You’re sure?” He looked as if he hoped I would deny it.
“Positive.”
He took the book from me and held it open before Ariel. “Ariel?”
She barely glanced at it. “I think it is. I don’t remember very well.”
“Sure you do,” I said. “You’re the one who picked it out. You said you were curious about that one. You remember.”
“I don’t read Latin,” she said.
“But last night you told Russ you knew what it meant.” She avoided my gaze. “What’s wrong?”
“You knew what this was, didn’t you?” Malachi asked her.
The barest dip of her horn.
“You knew what this meant and you let him go ahead? Why?”
She turned away. “I thought I understood the risks.”
“Why?”
Her head swiveled back and she looked darkly into his eyes. “I thought I could handle it!”
“You thought you … . You mean you didn’t even tell him?”
“Tell me what?” I asked.
“He wouldn’t have done it! And I couldn’t have. I can’t make the motions, or—”
“Do you need to test your power that much?” She was silent, but there was something in the way her eyes flashed at him that I’d never seen before: it was almost … resentment. A woman scorned, perhaps. But she said nothing and the question hung thickly in the air.
Malachi turned to me with the book. “Do you know what this means?”
Ariel interrupted. “You don’t have to—”
“He deserves to know. Do you, Pete?”
“Judging by the results I got from using it,” I said carefully, “I would assume that it’s a spell for conjuring a minor demon.”
“Oh, it’s that, all right.” His lips pressed together tightly. “This is the translation of the conjuration you used.” He cleared his throat. I glanced questioningly at Ariel but she wouldn’t meet my eyes.
“I summon thee, O Dweller in the Darkness, O Spirit of the Pit. I command thee To make thy Most evil appearance. “In the name of Our mutual benefactor, In the name of Lucifer the Fallen I conjure thee By his blood-lettered sacraments, By Hell and by Earth, To come to me now, In your own guise To do your will. “I adjure thee in the name of The foulest of masters By his loins, By his blood, By his damned soul, To come forth. “I order thee By all the unholy names: Lucifer, Satan, Beelzebub, Belial, Shai-tan, Mephistopheles, Thy hair, thy heart, Thy lungs, thy blood, To be here To work your will Upon me.”
He closed the book.
Ariel still wouldn’t meet my eyes. “‘To work your will upon me’?” I whispered. “Ariel, how could you?”
A ripple flowed down her flank. “I had to know. I’m sorry, but I had to know if I could beat it.”
“You’re sorry! That conjuration practically offers my life if a demon comes!”
She lowered her head until her horn almost touched the floor. When she raised it again there was a crystal-bright streak beneath each ebony eye. Tears stung in my own eyes at the sight. “Oh, Pete,” she said softly. In her voice I heard that lost-little-girl voice from when I first met her, saying “bwoke” with such hurt pleading. “I was much younger then, and foolish. It was done from my ignorance and insecurity. I never meant to play games—stupid games—with your life, Pete. You know that.”
“I thought I knew that.” I was numb inside.
“Pete! You don’t mean that.” She looked in desperation at Malachi. “Why did you have to tell him?”
Calmly: “He deserved to know. You should have been the one to tell him.”
“It was stupid; it was a stupid thing for me to do!” She stepped toward me but I held up a hand.
“No. I … think I’ll take a walk or something. I want to be alone.” I wanted so much to say that yes, it was okay, it was no big deal, of course I loved her. But I couldn’t, not the way I felt then. It wasn’t so much that she’d used me, but that she’d never told me.
She was still talking, but she sounded far away. The walls closed in on me; I wanted out.
“Pete, please! It was long ago; I was still growing up. I didn’t understand what any of it meant.”
I paused at the door. “You still could have told me.” I turned to go out the door.
Everything happened with horrifying suddenness, but with the slow motion of a dream. It felt choreographed, executed with precision timing. I grabbed the knob and turned it. Behind me Malachi yelled “No!” and I thought, fuck you, you can’t make me stay, and I opened the door. I looked back as I did, just in time to see a white blur as Ariel cleared the space from the living room to the front door in one leap. With a movement almost too fast to follow she twitched her head, batting at something with her horn. I started to wonder what she was trying to do. The thought never had time to complete itself because a muscular giant buried a sharpened pickaxe in the middle of my back.
I looked down at myself as I fell. Something protruded from my stomach. I wondered what it was, but was interrupted by the distant thump of my body hitting the front porch.
Gee, I thought, it doesn’t even hurt.
A giant black heel came down from the sky and blotted out the sun.
Six
Will the unicorn be willing to serve thee, or abide in thy crib? Canst thou bind the unicorn with his band in the furrows? or will he harrow the valleys after thee? Wilt thou trust him because his strength is great? or wilt thou leave thy labour to him? Wilt thou believe him, that he will bring home thy seed, and gather it into thy barn?
—Job, 39: 9-12
It was dark out there.
That’s all I remember thinking for a long time, that it was dark out there, that I was at the bottom of an ocean of black water and was fighting my way up to distant daylight. It was formless black and stagnant, no eddies or swirls.
Starless, I thought. Starless and Bible black.
I couldn’t feel anything. Why couldn’t I feel anything?
Because someone stuck a giant hypo in your back and shot you full of Novocain. Whole body. Numb. Numbnumbnumbnumb.
Oh, yeah. It’s frightening to walk in the dark if you can’t even feel your way around. What did that remind me of? Oh, sure. “The Pit and the Pendulum.” Good old Poe.
Was there some deeper hole out there in that blackness, waiting for me to find it?
(Pete.)
Whoa. Where did that come from? I didn’t say it. Did I?
(Pete.)
No, I didn’t say that. Wonder who—
(Pete, I’m trying to help you. You have to want me to.)
I tried to talk. Mouth wouldn’t work. Full of cotton. I turned the mental volume all the way up and shouted GO AWAY! I LIKE IT HERE. IT’S COMFORTABLE. If only I could feel something … .
Instantly I regretted the thought. I could feel again, all right, and what I felt was pain, pain and nothing else, not even any room for relief at being able to feel pain. The pain was a white spearpoint of light, a hot poker rammed into my back and spreading as though gunpowder laced my veins, and everywhere the light touched it set the gunpowder off. It hurt and I cried. What had I done?
The light burned through the fuse of my veins until it had seared through my entire body, reaching my head last. The points of sewing needles were jammed against my upper bicuspid molars and I was forced to bite down hard. Whit
e heat tried to melt all the bone of my skull, and everywhere the burning white touched it left a space, an empty spot, where the blackness used to be.
(Good, Pete. Help me.)
Vise grips clamped onto my lower back and stomach. They tightened and tightened and tightened. Internal organs were pushed together, a wet, rubbery, sliding feeling, and something gave like an overfilled water balloon: poosh! I vomited. It fell away into that blackness without a splash.
(Closer, Pete. We’re getting closer.)
Closer to what? Fuck you, anyway, I liked the dark better. It didn’t hurt. That’s what I get for listening to voices in the dark. Who cares if I can see the light? Who cares if I can feel it? It hurts! I need more than that. I need … .
(Tell me.)
I can’t! I don’t know what it is. I need something … . A child’s thing … .
(Tell me what you need, Pete.)
A … teddy bear? No, but close. Something—something I can hold on to in the dark, something … silken. I need a guide … . Something only I can touch because I am special. But there’s no such thing; magical companions don’t exist.
(Pete, listen. Please listen, Pete.)
From far away, like an old gramophone recording (those don’t work anymore, I thought), came a voice, the voice of a lost child:
(For the sword outwears its sheath,
And the soul wears out the breast.)
Somewhere something stirred. A forgotten memory pricked up its soft ears. Silver.
(And the heart must pause to breathe,
And love itself must rest.)
Yes … hooves, and—sparks, streams of sparks, falling like glowing red snowflakes onto asphalt. And a name—
Ariel! The name was cast to me and I seized it before I could be pulled back under. Ariel. Help me, bring me back!
(Always remember that I love you, Pete.)
I was picked up and thrown into the middle of the blackness, and it shattered. The dark fragments fell away, and beyond them was light, not painful light, but the pure light from an ivory horn.
I reached out to touch it and pitched forward. Darkness reigned again.
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