No squirrel dared set foot on that accursed ground, the few nearby going so far as to skitter between the trees to avoid passing near the white house on Mallory Lane, and it wasn’t just the mammals that avoided it either. I spotted no lizards sunning themselves on the broken sidewalk, and no dragonflies humming above the bent grass blades. Even the air was empty. Blackbirds were perched on electrical wires along the street, but not a one got near the house on Mallory Lane. They squawked and jockeyed for position, but never along the wires that draped above the white house.
The closer we got to that evil place the stronger its pull became. I found my fingers tracing the car door handle, and I immediately pulled them back. The sense of morbid curiosity and dread fascination was intoxicating. My feet wanted to walk through those tall weeds, and my hands yearned to turn the door knob and step back inside that evil place, but my soul was frosted over in fear—it wanted no part with what dwelled at 69 Mallory Lane.
My driver sped past the tiny white house without paying it the slightest bit of attention—I envied the blessing of normalcy even as I pressed my fingers against the glass.
Was it my imagination, or did something move beyond the thick white curtains?
We took the next turn and left Mallory Lane behind us—gone, but not forgotten.
We pulled into the lot and he dropped me near the front door. Never more happy to see the boring mundanity of the builder’s front office, I practically leapt out of the back seat. “Thanks! You know how to get back?”
My driver nodded and gave me a wave before pulling back out onto the street.
I slung my bag over a shoulder and pushed on into the glorious air conditioning.
I’d worked for Kinder Construction, LLC for a few years now—ever since we’d moved to this side of town and I’d run into the owner, John, at a Girl Scouts outing when Cathy was younger. He was a pretty decent boss and a good dad—not perfect, but no one really was.
That weekend had been a harrowing experience with one of the last remaining Dryads in the Sunshine State. In short, the nigh-immortal oak spirit had been quite displeased to learn Mr. Kinder had torn down a few of her hundred-year-old besties. Two days of Girl Scouting, an attempted Magickal transmogrification, and a last-second wild fire, and John had been ready to give me a job on the spot.
We agreed on a sort of mid-level manager position, exactly the kind of thing I’d always said I’d never do, but at the time with Kris so young—and Porter still trying to handle life as a stay-at-home mom—sacrifices had to be made.
In the end, John and I had decided it was best to keep the Magick talk between us—no sense in making him look crazy, or bringing a bunch of suspicion to my doorstep.
“Morning, Gene,” said a sweet southern voice from behind the high walls of the reception desk.
Marjorie, our elderly receptionist, was sweet as pie and true Old Florida. She knew this part of the Sunshine State like few others, and as such was a wealth of information—provided you were willing to pay for the coffee.
“Hey, Marge.”
“Running a little late today?”
“Car trouble,” I said, nodding along with her sigh. “Oh, before I forget. You know a Claudia Wilson?”
“Yeah, sure do—real piece of work, that one.”
I glanced at the desk clock. “No time now, but will you be around this afternoon?”
“Sweetheart, I’m here all day.”
“Coffee’s on me, I’ve got some questions for you,” I said, giving Marge enough time to nod before racing past the grandeur of client reception and straight up the stairs. Kinder Construction had poured more than a few dollars into that receiving area, outfitting it with nice leather couches, a bubbling fountain, and even some beautiful floating water lilies, but none of those niceties made it to the back office.
At the top of the curving stairs I left the beauty of reception behind me and turned off onto a side hallway, razor-focused on the nondescript steel door at the end—it would be better to slip in the side door now that I was sure to be late for the morning meeting.
For just about anyone else, that would be a problem. The side door led through Information Technology—the domain of one Adam Grayson, equal parts caring man-child and crushing viceroy of techno torture. Anyone else daring to request entrance to these hallowed halls would be subjected to a series of complex riddles based on a vexing mixture of mythology, retro-video games, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and should that poor soul survive the riddles and find themselves on the other side, they’d still be neck deep in a minefield of sarcasm and cringe-worthy references to obscure trivia. All of this meant one thing—Adam didn’t get a lot of visitors.
I, however, was immune to all of his chicanery, as I had the one thing he wanted more than kombucha and beard butter—Magick.
I stopped in front of the door and stared at the small dome camera mounted at eye level.
“Hey, Adam.”
There was a short pause before the satisfying click of the door’s mechanical lock popped open.
I smiled—it was about time something went right for me today.
12
The Fishbowl
“You’re late,” said a voice not accustomed to same-species interactions.
Thanks, Adam. You’re a paragon of emotional support.
“Yeah, I see that,” I said, navigating my way through the complex maze of boxes, wires, and assorted techno garbage that made up ‘the fishbowl.’ His office was a sort of combination computer room and Grayson retention pond that had long ago expanded to a stomach-churning level. Back in those early days, we did what any sane set of employees would do when they couldn’t live with—or without—the guy who knows how to make all their computers work; we pitched in to add blinds to the long glass window that dominated the far side of that narrow room.
In Magick, as in IT, a little mystery is appreciated.
Adam, the firm’s Lone Ranger of the digital realm, hadn’t moved from his command center. A short in stature but high in prosperity gentleman, Adam was well ensconced behind a wall of computer monitors that kept razor-sharp tabs on the entire organization as well as two or three of the top junk sites that were a bonanza for potential Magickal memorabilia.
Someone walking in off the street and seeing Adam in his element would have thought we made nuclear warheads or split atoms.
Nope, just the occasional commercial office buildings or sensible apartment communities.
Adam slid a pencil deep into the unkempt recesses of his man-bun before taking a long pull from an oversized plastic cup that proclaimed his love for ‘The Big Gulp.’ “Hey, you should look at this—”
“In a minute,” I said, tip-toeing through a sea of old motherboards, stacks of backup tapes, and flocks of long-discarded phones on my way to the window. I tilted open the blinds just enough to get a look at the main conference room. The meeting was already in full swing—God, I hated walking into a meeting late.
“They have donuts,” Adam said, his head appearing under my arm, the man-bun pencil poking at my side.
“How do you know? You never leave the fishbowl.”
“Email.”
I set my bag down and let the blinds slide closed. “What did I tell you about reading other people’s email?”
Adam slithered back to his chair like a dragon returning to their hoard.
“It was in the meeting request,” he said, rolling his eyes before taking another slurp from his oversized cup.
I frowned. “I take it you declined?”
The High Priest of the Keyboard gestured to his digital subjects whirring away in their glass and aluminum village. “I’m running a couple of complex searches. I’ll drop in for the last few minutes and get the untouched box of glazed that Marjorie always leaves me.”
“What was it you wanted to show me?”
Adam perked up and his bearded face took on an almost cherubic grin. “I think I found you something…” My junior apprentice paused for
what he certainly assumed was dramatic effect. “Something Magick!”
I’d brought Adam into the Magick fold a few years ago when it became clear to me he had at least a little sparkle in his cholesterol-laden blood. The exact details of which I prefer not to speak of, but it involved an exotic dancer, Goat Yoga, and the most crudely concocted Love Jerky I’d ever seen.
Who even tries to make Love Jerky? My apprentice, that’s who.
It’d taken me days and a host of different sigils to get his hairy butt back to normal, plus a whole month to save up enough cash to replace the grass he’d destroyed. As tough as Adam could be as an apprentice, he had been far worse as a goat.
Porter had wanted to send him to a petting zoo—my wife, ever the comedian.
“Well?”
Adam’s screens filled with photos from what looked like a yard sale.
“I came across these on a search through old social media photos,” he said, pointing at the card tables full of junk in the background, while the same time trying to ignore the buxom young girls that made up the foreground.
“I see, special internet search?”
Adam ignored me. “This guy puts on a yard sale during spring break every couple of years, but, that’s not the key part—look here.” My apprentice pointed to a brown smudge tucked inside the crook of a grinning spring-breaker’s arm.
I squinted. “What am I looking at?”
“You really should wear your glasses—”
“Can’t you zoom in or something?”
Adam sighed. “This isn’t TV, you know. First, I had to find this image, then I had to see if she’d posted a higher-resolution version of it.”
“So you had to creep through her entire photo-stream?”
“Yes, and on two services.”
I chuckled. “My heart bleeds for you…”
Adam waved me off with his hand. “Just taking one for the team. There were a lot of spring break photos to go through, but I’ll recover. Look at this.”
My apprentice adjusted his screen to reveal a perfectly taken photo of the table, packed to the gills with oddities, but with a single item sticking out in exquisite detail—a broken-up brown log, riddled with pockmarks and termite damage, and a rusted metal spike sticking out of the top of it.
“You see that there, on the spike?”
“I don’t know, can you zoom in?” I asked, leaning against Adam’s shoulder to get a closer look.
“The image is at a high enough resolution where I believe I can load it in a—”
“Adam!”
“Zooming…”
The spike filled the screens, and etched in the nail head was exactly what I’d hoped to see—a perfectly obscured Magickal symbol.
“John Henry’s last spike…” I said, letting the words fall from my mouth with hushed reverence.
“Huh?”
“You don’t know who John Henry is?”
“Did he play for the Rays? You know I don’t do sports.”
“Railroad, steel-driving man, any of this ring a bell?”
Adam tilted his head to one side. “Ah…”
“Damn it, man, you need to read some folklore. So much of Magick is tied up in it.”
Adam ignored me and turned back to the picture. “So… what does it have to do with us?”
“John Henry’s last spike was part of a Magician’s feud going back over a hundred years.”
“Really? It’s a rusted piece of metal…”
“Correction, it’s a rusted piece of metal with the Magickal power to end anything.”
“Huh? That thing was part of a feud?”
“Yes. Are you familiar with Henry Plant, you know, railroad baron of West Florida?”
“No…”
“The guy practically built this town, haven’t you ever wondered why like half the place is named after him?”
“Oh, right. That Henry Plant—why didn’t you say so?”
Nice try.
“Yeah, he was embroiled in a feud with Henry Flagler down in South Florida for years. Neither of them was what you’d call the best Magician, but they were both insanely wealthy, and they accumulated Magickal items like the fishbowl here accumulates old hardware.”
“Let’s skip back to the insanely wealthy part—when are we going to cover turning lead into gold?”
I patted Adam on the back. “Yeah—that’s a myth.”
“What?”
“Sorry, no lead into gold.”
“So how did these railroad guys get rich?”
“The old-fashioned way,” I said in a hushed tone.
“Which is?” Adam asked, leaning in, his eyes full of anticipation.
“Inheritance!”
“Gah, Gene, that’s a terrible story.”
“Whatever. There’s Magick in that spike, I know it.”
“Really? An old railroad spike?”
“A Magickal old spike,” I said, correcting him. “Flagler and Plant fought like hell over that spike. Rumor is Flagler sent an assassin to take out his rival and collect the spike. As the story goes, Plant trapped the assassin in the Old Tampa Hotel, but somehow the spike got away. It’s been lost for over a hundred years…”
“Until now.”
“Right, until now. Where is it? I’ve got to get my hands on that before it disappears again. All these New Dead can wait—this is more important.”
Adam’s voice squeaked. “New Dead?”
“Yeah, two in less than twenty-four hours, if you can believe it. I had to open a Hellgate to get rid of one of them, and the other I left on the on-ramp. So, where’s the spike? Can you print me the directions?”
“Remember, these pictures were taken last year, but yeah I can send you the location. He’s doing another yard sale Saturday, the question is—”
“Will it still be there…” I said, finishing this thought.
“What about the New Dead, Gene?” Adam asked, more than a hint of concern in his voice.
“That’s right—find me everything you can on the Brighton 8,” I said, picking up my bag and zipping it shut.
Funny, I don’t remember opening it.
“I’ve got to make an appearance in this meeting. Listen, good work—really good work. Maybe we should go out for a drink after I get the spike. You know, to celebrate.”
“Really?” The anticipation in Adam’s voice was palpable.
“Why not?” I said with a wink as I slung my bag over my shoulder and slipped out the ice box door.
To remove 69 Mallory Lane from the world forever… I’d celebrate that with just about anyone—even New Dead.
All of this excitement must have spurred on some serious adrenaline because my bag felt light as a feather.
13
Sticks and Stones
It was impossible to sneak into the conference room—John Kinder was a smart designer and he’d made sure of that. I decided to go with an alternate tactic and instead walked in with feigned confidence. Now don’t get me wrong, he definitely wasn’t going to fire me or anything, but John wasn’t a fan of late arrivals to his meetings.
The meeting room held a long oval table surrounded by stiff-backed swivel chairs and most of the Kinder Construction team. There was the foreman, Reggie, a tough-as-nails former concrete hauler that I swear had troll-blood somewhere in his family tree. He was a good guy, but his hands looked like the kind that routinely ground bones to dust for his sack lunch. Charlie was there as well, representing the gaggle of bookkeepers and accountants. While his close proximity to the single most mind-numbingly boring activity in the known universe meant he had about as much Magickal energy as drywall, it didn’t stop him from looking for all the world like Old Dead. Charlie was tall and unbelievably thin, and when Cathy was little she had been terrified of his pasty-white skin and long skinny fingers. So was I when I first met him, but over the years I’d grown to appreciate the sheer mundanity of Charlie Wickers. Sometimes it was nice to know there were places with no Magick left in
the world—accounting was one of those places.
John had asked a few other members of his management team to join. Our land development guy, Omar, was there. Omar was a master of finding good property and convincing the owners of said property to depart with it for just the right amount of cash. When he’d first arrived I’d been sure we were dealing with someone Magickal, but after a few surveillance lunches I removed the mental flag I had on him—Omar wasn’t Magickal, but his eyebrows might be. They were like two perfectly unkempt wooly caterpillars that lounged above sparkling eyes. As the older man talked those furry creatures would wake from their slumber and begin the dance of wooly head fairies.
People rarely said no to Omar and his dancing eyebrows.
Last but not least, John had asked the lawyer to come in. She was a smart cookie, even as lawyers went, and I didn’t mind working with her. She was easily the best-dressed member of the team, and with her bright red skirt-suit and tightly managed blond hair, Sharon was an attractive woman, but I felt for any of the field guys that had to meet with her. She was about as warm and fuzzy as the computer servers busy whirring away in the fishbowl.
Then there was me.
I would have liked to say I was the company’s best Magician, but since anyone outside of John who knew that might commit me to Shady Acres mental hospital, I went with my more mundane title: Eugene Law, a professional fixer of problems and doer of things that need to be done.
It was my job to keep the business running right by handling the one-off supernatural issues that cropped up from time to time. Ostensibly, this involved making sure we didn’t run afoul of any Magickal beasts, upset any ancient Native American burial sites, or dump toxic gypsum into ground water and get the Alligator Men in a tizzy. Lastly, it was my job to keep an eye on the techno-machinations of the Boy Wonder—the email must flow and the spreadsheets must spread.
Dead Set Page 6