by E. A. Copen
I shut the door. “Morning to you too. I’d offer you coffee, but at the speed you’re talking, I think you’ve already had one cup too many.”
He lifted his bag onto the sofa and undid the clasps. “Yeah, nah. Haven’t had enough, mate. Spent most of the night trying to console Persephone, who’s bloody beside herself, you know?”
I cringed. That was my fault too. I’d taken her husband away from her, something I had no right to do. “Is she on board with the plan at least?”
“She is,” he said, digging through the bag, “but she’s not happy about it.”
That was good. At least one thing had gone right. The plan Josiah and I had come up with to take on Loki was shaky at best, and we’d need all the cooperation and help we could get. It required Persephone, especially, to put a lot of faith in me, a difficult thing after I’d betrayed her. I didn’t know how Josiah convinced her to go along with it, but I was glad he did.
Eventually, Josiah drew a silver knife out of the bag, a plastic container with holes in the lid, a mason jar with a small winged imp inside, and several smaller plastic containers with dried plants inside them. Once he had all his ingredients, he went about constructing a circle on the living room floor with a permanent marker.
I stood aside, watching him work in silence. “So, if you’re not supposed to know it, how’d you learn it? And what exactly is it?”
“It is a transportation spell.” He turned away from me to finish the circle. “It will dematerialize your physical body, breaking it into molecular-sized chunks, then transport you across the astral plane before rematerializing you on the other side.”
“So sorta like the transporters in Star Trek,” I said.
Josiah looked up from drawing the circle and wrinkled his nose at me. “Is that the one with the whales?”
“There was a movie that had to do with whales, yeah, but it’s way more than that. There are like half a dozen different television series now. Books. Movies. Games. Fandom conventions where you can go speak Klingon for a weekend.” I shook my head. “How do you not know this stuff?”
He shrugged one shoulder. “Didn’t grow up with a TV in the house.”
I blinked. “Dude…”
“No running water either in the Outback. Not that we could’ve afforded it.” He smiled slightly and stared at nothing in the distance. “Yeah, we were so poor the only entertainment some days was riding my kangaroo out to poke dead wombats with a stick. Course, all my mates upgraded to emus eventually. Saved all summer for one of them, but when I finally got me one, bloody bunyip ate her whole. Just came out of nowhere and gobbled her straight up.”
I squinted at him. “You’re pulling my leg.”
He stood and patted my shoulder on his way back to where he’d laid out all his ingredients. “Wish I was, mate. Wish I was.”
I was pretty sure he was having a laugh at my expense. Lead on the dumb American by simultaneously embracing and mocking Australian stereotypes perpetuated by the media. Australians were a confusing bunch.
Josiah had me bring him a mixing bowl, into which he dumped all the dried plants he’d brought and mixed them with a few drops of blood. “It’s not a pleasant thing, this spell. And not easy. More than one person has tried it and come out wrong on the other side. And by wrong, I mean arse-over-tits in a literal sense. Upside down and backward. Sometimes inside out, though that’s preferable to some of the other ways I’ve seen it go wrong.”
I imagined what an inside out human would look like and almost lost my nerve. “What’s worse than being turned inside out by a spell?”
He glanced over his shoulder at me. “When you get turned inside out like that, you only live a few minutes before you suffocate.”
I swallowed. “This doesn’t seem very safe.”
“Why’d you think I charge so much to come over here quickly?” He turned back to his mixing bowl.
“This is how you do that?”
He nodded.
“And you’ve never had it go wrong on you?”
“I’m more suited to it than most. Spell’s not meant for humans.” He quit mixing the ingredients and held the bowl out to me. “You need to eat this.”
“You’re shitting me.” I looked down into the bowl. It contained a mashed brownish-green paste that smelled like someone had thrown up in their pot stash.
“And keep it down,” he advised, picking up the container with holes in the lid. “You throw it up, I promise the spell won’t work.”
I slid my finger through the goo and gagged.
“Not now, fuckwit,” Josiah said. “You eat that now, you’ll shit it out before you can do the spell. There’s only enough there for one go. You’d better make sure it’s in your body, undigested, before you attempt this, so don’t eat it until right before. It’ll dry out between now and then. You might be able to bake it into something. I recommend brownies. That ought to hide the flavor.”
“Thanks, I guess.” I placed the bowl on the counter while he sat on the sofa and let his tarantula climb onto his shoulder. “I eat this, and then what?”
“Then you do the magic I’m about to show you. But before I do, I want to make sure you understand something. This magic is forbidden to humans. If anyone finds out you know how to do this—angels or demons, either side—then they won’t hesitate to eradicate your entire bloodline. You understand what I’m saying, mate?”
I nodded.
“And if I hear you’ve been telling anyone, I’ll be the one hunting you down. Are we clear on that?”
“What the hell kind of magic is that secretive, Josiah?” I huffed.
Josiah stood and walked to the center of the circle with his spider perched on his shoulder like a parrot. “You know your Bible, yeah? Remember Sodom and Gomorrah?”
I stepped around the circle so I could face him. “Yeah. God destroyed the two cities because they were sinful. Fire and brimstone. All that.”
“They were kingdoms, not cities, and there were four destroyed, not two. Everyone always gets that wrong.” He sighed. “But the other thing, the reason those four kingdoms were struck from existence, had very little to do with traditional sins and everything to do with angels. You see, some were sent to Earth to watch, and rather than do as they were told, they fathered children with human women, and taught them secrets. Forbidden magic, Lazarus. The kind that could unravel reality in the wrong hands. The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah was a tactical strike by Heaven to ensure the survival of the rest of humanity, wiping from existence all that forbidden knowledge.” He smirked. “Well, most of it. What remains is fragmented. Imagine though the things we might know if the bastard upstairs hadn’t been so greedy with his knowledge.”
“Well, if it turns people inside out, it’s probably for the best,” I said. “We going to do this or what?”
“Step into the circle.”
I did as he instructed.
Josiah inhaled, cut his thumb, and closed the circle. “I’m going to teach you a word. If you survive learning it, you’ll be able to do the rest of this.”
Survive learning a word? That was ominous. I knew there were magic words in the world, a secret language of spells, the usage of which was usually passed from generation to generation in prestigious wizard families. I’d always figured it was just another form of magic, not anything deadly, though that made sense. There was a reason they were called spells.
Words have a lot of power. Use the right word at the right time, and you can change someone’s life for the better. Utter the wrong words to the wrong people, and you’ll snuff out life as we know it. That was just life. Add magic to the mix and words were exponentially more powerful. A promise could be mortally binding, for example.
I didn’t know any of these secret words. My family didn’t trace its lineage back to any of those prestigious wizards. I was a simple necromancer turned Pale Horseman, just trying to make it in a god-eat-guy world.
“Are you ready?” Josiah asked.
&
nbsp; I wasn’t, but I nodded anyway.
Josiah spoke a single word. Though I heard it, I couldn’t wrap my mind around the sound of it. It was too complicated, both audible and silent, but laced with magic.
Power spun out of his mouth like a hurricane, knocking me back to the edge of the circle. Magic drilled into my head, burning, tearing, threatening to rip me apart from the inside out. My brain felt like I had snorted steel wool. The magic rubbed raw against the inside of my skull, flowing like water, and burrowing into my spine.
It was as if I had dropped the electric ball of magic on its highest setting, only worse.
I have to get control or I’m dead. Somehow, I had to, though I didn’t know how. How do you control a word? I didn’t know anything about it.
But I did know how to control magic.
I reached for it, the same way I would’ve reached for other magic. It slipped through my grasp like sand the first time, but I grabbed the tiniest thread on the second attempt. The silky thin power snapped into something rigid and hard as steel, buzzing in my head. The pain stopped flowing through my body and settled in my head where it pulsed.
I sank to my knees, grasping my splitting head and trembling. My breath came in panicked rasps. I couldn’t hold onto the power forever. If I didn’t get it out of me and fast, my head might explode.
“Zacar!” The word exploded out of my mouth without any direction from me. It was as if it had come alive and willed itself into existence all on its own.
I doubled over and collapsed with my cheek resting against the cool floor at Josiah’s feet. Every breath coming out of my lungs burned, and my head ached, but at least I was alive to feel the pain. “Did anybody get the number on the chocobo who ran me over?”
“What the fuck’s a chocobo?” Josiah’s lighter clicked.
“Never mind.” I rolled onto my back and stared up at him. If I thought the rest of my body would cooperate, I’d have tried to stand. “Please tell me it doesn’t do that every time.”
He puffed on his cigarette a few times before flipping the lighter closed and pocketing it. “Sorry, mate.”
“Figured as much.”
Josiah stepped over me and broke the circle. “You handled it pretty well. The more times you use it, the more used to it you’ll get. It’ll never get less dangerous though, so careful with it, yeah?”
I finally pulled myself up and rested my arms on my knees. “What if I can’t do this, Josiah? What if… What if I can’t get there in time for both of them?”
“Then you’re human.” He shrugged and sat on the sofa. “People fail. You might have more power than most, but that doesn’t mean you’re perfect, mate.”
“But Loki could hurt Emma. Or Titania might destroy my daughter. How am I supposed to live with either of those outcomes?” I nodded at him. “How do you live with making choices like that? With not saving some people?”
He stared down at his cigarette, burning a long column of white ash. “I tell myself there are just some people you can’t save. People that don’t want to be saved. People that God, the universe, karma, or anyone has just decided to fuck with, and nothing I did or didn’t do could’ve changed that.”
“And does that work?”
“Sometimes.”
Somehow, I didn’t find that very encouraging.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Josiah left and I got to work. Waiting until Loki’s masquerade would be the easiest way to find Emma, but it wasn’t my only option. If I could get to her before then, I wouldn’t need to use the dangerous brain-eating spell, and everything would be easier.
Unfortunately, looking up the Krewe of Loki didn’t give me any results. I could find that they existed, but not where their masquerade was supposed to be. They didn’t have a parade route posted, so maybe they didn’t have one. Not every krewe did. There was no member roster, no contact information… Not even an updated listing for them going back several years, which meant they didn’t register with the city.
I closed the borrowed laptop and sighed, leaning back in the recliner and rubbing my eyes. Doing all that research on no sleep was getting to me, but I couldn’t afford to rest now. I still had too much to do. There were people I could talk to, ask them about Loki’s party.
Not that knowing where the party was would do me much good. There were no guarantees that’s where Emma was being held. Loki could’ve moved her into a pocket dimension, or anywhere in the city. The only way I’d find out beforehand would be to find a Valkyrie and question her, but I didn’t think I could beat one in a fight. I might be able to sneak up on one and hit her with a knockout spell, but then what? Torture her for information? I wasn’t that kind of guy. It just wasn’t in me.
Maybe I should talk to The Baron. He might know. I’d have to talk to him anyway since I’d need a suit to wear to the masquerade. Somehow, I didn’t think just showing up at Adelard’s would be a good idea. He’d probably turn me away.
I got up and went downstairs to the bar. It was too early for Paula to be in, but she wouldn’t mind if I borrowed a little rum. I slid back behind the bar and poured two glasses. Normally, I’d grab a cigar, do some chanting, and hope for the best to get Baron Samedi to show up, but as a wanted man, I didn’t want to be walking into any gas stations. People would be on the lookout for me. Thirty grand was a lot of money to people in New Orleans, a year’s wages or more for most. They’d turn me in without a second thought.
Instead, I sat the glasses down on the bar and said his name three times. To draw a supernatural entity’s attention, the best way is to speak their name. Do it three times, and it was as good as summoning them, though they weren’t obligated to show. Had I done the ritual, he’d be all but forced to make an appearance. Saying his name three times was more like tapping him on the shoulder. He didn’t have to turn around, but he’d be really annoyed.
Nothing happened. I sighed and turned my back to the bar to search the shelves. Maybe I needed a better rum.
“Are you ever going to get the ritual right, or should I just give up?” said Samedi behind me.
“Depends.” I turned back to him. “You ever going to pay me what I’m worth?”
Samedi snorted and lifted the shot, downing it. “What do you want?”
I explained the situation to him. It was likely he knew most of it already, but one couldn’t assume anything when dealing with a Loa like Samedi. Sometimes, they liked it when you spelled things out for them.
He rolled his eyes when I asked him if he knew where Emma was. “Ms. Knight isn’t my responsibility, Lazarus. I warned you not to get involved with her.”
I put my hands on the bar and leaned in. “It’s not right to let Loki jerk me around, Samedi.”
“No, it’s not. If ever he were to get leverage over you, enough to force your hand, that would mean you were compromised as a Horseman and therefore ineffective. I would have to kill you.” He picked up the second shot of rum and studied it for a moment. “You know, no one has heard from Hades since yesterday morning. You wouldn’t know what happened to him, would you?”
I swallowed. “No idea where he is.”
He nodded and tossed back the drink. “Funny thing is, Persephone said the same thing. She’s his wife. You’d think a wife would know the whereabouts of her husband.”
“Does Brigette know you’re here?”
Samedi shrugged. “Good point. Still, if I had disappeared for an entire day without warning, Brigette would be more distraught than Persephone seems to be.” His stool creaked as he leaned forward. “I don’t know exactly what is going on with you, boy, but I know you’re skirting a line. It’s written all over your face. I like you. Don’t make me kill you.”
“Kill me.” I forced myself to chuckle. “And how would you do that?”
“I would strip the mantle from you, hand it to someone else, and order him to hunt you down.”
I froze halfway through pouring myself a drink. The casual way Samedi said it worried me. It me
ant he’d done it before and would do it again without a second thought. I had to be careful not to let him find out what I was up to with those names on Loki’s list.
I finished filling the glass and set the bottle aside. “Emma’s an important person. Friends with a lot of powerful people. Not just me, Samedi. You know her partner’s an angel. If something were to happen to her, it could be bad.”
He sighed. “I can look for her, but I make no promises about finding her.”
“That’s all I ask,” I said, nodding. “On an unrelated note, I’m going to need a suit. I’m going to Titania’s masquerade tonight.”
“To rescue your daughter, no doubt.”
“Am I supposed to just ignore it when someone starts hurting the people I love?”
“You accept it as the cost of doing business, and you deal with it. But none of this would be a problem if you were following the rules, Lazarus. You cannot do your job effectively with all of these helpless humans around you. Your job is not to protect them. It’s to maintain the balance between gods and mortals.”
“What about Remy and Emma? They’re mortals.”
The Baron slammed his cane into the floor and stood, towering over me. “What happens to them is inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, Lazarus! Emma is one human woman and Remy… It would have been better for everyone if she had not survived! Her very existence is an imbalance. But you can’t think of things in those terms, can you? You’re too selfish. Perhaps I was wrong to bestow the mantle upon you.” He tilted his head back and stared down his nose at me. “Perhaps it’s time I took it back.”
My fingers closed into fists. I stared at them on the bar, willing them to stay still instead of punching him in the jaw. He’d strip my power for sure if I did, and I couldn’t afford to let that happen. Without my Horsemen powers, I was helpless to save Emma and Remy.
I clenched my teeth. “If Loki has his revenge, there will be an imbalance. If Titania is allowed to use Remy like a weapon—as I’m certain she intends to—there will be an imbalance. Saving both of them is the only way to do my job, regardless of the fact that it’s personal.”