The North Valley Grimoire

by Blake Northcott

  Calista leaned over his shoulder. “Such as?”

  “That sounded like a question, and questions are for clients.” He shooed her away with a backward flick of his hand.

  She unzipped her knapsack and pulled out a thin envelope, extracting a wad of bills for his inspection. When The Cobbler heard the rustling of currency he spun back around and jutted out his palm. His obnoxious gimmie-gimmie finger wave continued until the cash was in his hand.

  He crossed one leg over the other, thumbing through the bills with a noticeable frown.

  “There’s almost eight hundred,” Calista mumbled.

  Wyatt stopped counting, huffed loudly, and extended the bills back in her direction. His face was blank.

  “It’s all I have left! Come on, that’s got to be worth something.”

  Wyatt puffed out his cheeks and counted the money once more, this time making a show of licking his thumb and casually flipping through each banknote as if to verify their authenticity. “You know what happened the last time a client showed up and didn’t have enough Benjamins?”

  “Y-you shot them?” Kaz guessed, his voice cracking like puberty.

  The question hung in the damp basement air for a beat.

  Calista swallowed.

  “No,” Wyatt finally said. “I politely asked him to leave. But I liked that guy.”

  “Two thousand dollars bought me fifteen minutes last time,” she complained.

  The Cobbler twisted in his chair, straining to shove the wad of cash into his pocket. “I’m in a charitable mood. You get two questions.”

  She pointed at his monitor. “What about the timer?”

  “Was that one of your two questions? I’m doing you a favor here, Sports Bra.”

  She hated to admit it, but he actually was. Being extorted by Wyatt was irritating, but their cork board had led them nowhere.

  “All right,” she said archly, “what do you know about a break-in at The Pentagon?”

  He smiled, creasing his eyes. It was an, ‘oh, you’re so cute’ grin, no doubt used to remind his clients that they were adorably clueless. “There are no break-ins at The Pentagon. It’s not possible.”

  “This was an inside job.”

  He spun back around and began typing. “Give me five minutes, and we’ll see what’s what.”

  It only took three. The Cobbler dove into the dark web and searched reams of text, speed-reading through message boards. Then he accessed a video archive. There were no thumbnails—just time stamps and vague descriptions.

  “Someone ripped off a couple files and put them on a thumb drive,” He pointed at the cluster of unintelligible jargon on his screen. “They scan employees coming and going, but on rare occasions, things slip through. Here, check it out.”

  The low-res security footage was taken from an overhead camera, pointing down a featureless corridor. A thin figure in jeans and a hoodie rushed past, clutching a cardboard box close to their chest. Most of their face was shadowed by the hood.

  “Can you enhance it?” Kaz asked.

  “There’s no ‘enhance’ button. This isn’t a goddamned TV show.” Wyatt rolled the clip back and paused when the thief was closest to the camera, standing in the best available light.

  Calista scrutinized the heavily pixilated image. “It’s a man, I’m pretty sure. Thin, lanky …”

  Kaz wiped his face and sighed. “That narrows it down.”

  Not much to go on, but it was a start. Calista paced the basement for a moment, trying to formulate the best possible follow-up question. This was the last of her funds, and in all likelihood, her last chance to speak with The Cobbler before he fled. She had to make it count. “What was in that evidence box?”

  Wyatt retrieved an inventory list without much effort. According to the document, the stolen box contained some loose stationery, a paperback novel, a pocket watch, and a few desktop trinkets. Nothing of any intrinsic value—probably why it was so easy to sneak out. The thief’s seemingly innocuous haul raised even more questions: why would anyone think a box of Nolan Foxcroft’s office junk could lead to the capture of a man who’d been off the grid for a year and a half?

  The mole was fresh out of leads, too—grasping at straws. They had no clue how to track Foxcroft, or where he was hiding.

  Or the mole knew something that Calista didn’t.

  They returned to North Valley. By the time their cab had reached the front step of Calista’s apartment the sun had gone dull and coppery, dipping below the distant trees. It cast frigid shadows across the entrance. She invited Kaz upstairs for sushi and study—their typical Sunday night ritual. They waited for the elevator.

  “You know who that looked like in the video?” Kaz mentioned it as a casual aside, like referencing the weather.

  Calista stared into her watery reflection; it peered back at her from the elevator’s muted chrome doors. “It looked a little like Beckett.”

  “He did show up right when all of this started.”

  “Yeah, you mentioned that once before.” She stabbed her finger into the glowing red button. The elevator was on the seventh, leisurely descending floor by floor. Her toe rapped the marble tiles.

  Kaz went on. “Plus, if you think about it, Beckett does look a little shifty. Don’t you think he’s shifty?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know.” She gave the button one final poke and bounced gently on the balls of her feet. Her apartment’s lobby was a gaudy, outdated affair—yellowed walls and checkered tiles and a chandelier missing a handful of its prisms. The fixture was so dusty that motes drifted from it like sawdust when a breeze wafted in.

  “And the body type looked a lot like Beckett,” Kaz added.

  “Why do you want it to be him?” Calista shouted. No one else was in the lobby. She wouldn’t have cared if there was.

  Kaz buried his hands in his pockets. “I don’t want that, Callie.”

  “Of course you do! Because if Beckett is the mole, it lets your girlfriend off the hook.”

  “You’re saying Aphra changed herself to look like a Beckett-shaped guy, and broke into The Pentagon?”

  The elevator doors slid open. Mister Kilmer poured out, skating behind his matching Great Danes. Kaz and Calista deftly side-stepped as he skidded past.

  They waited until they’d stepped into the lift and were in motion before continuing.

  “Aphra has access to The Pentagon,” Calista reminded him. “She wouldn’t need to break in. And she’s completely unhinged. Malek is using a hex to keep her under control, but she’s a maniac. If anyone is trying to track Foxcroft, it’s her.”

  Kaz shook his head. “You think just because Aphra has an access card it’s automatically her?”

  “I heard Agent Malek tell his director they could turn Foxcroft in for a reward. Millions of dollars. He’s on the most wanted list in a bunch of countries, and they’ll pay anyone who captures him. If Malek knows that, so does Aphra.”

  “Well if Aphra is a suspect, so is Malek. He could be using you to lead him to Foxcroft. Then he cashes in.”

  The elevator bounced to a gentle stop, and the doors pulled open. They stepped into the hall. It reeked of smoke, and a fire alarm wailed in the distance. Mister Kilmer’s apartment, she assumed; his cooking set off the alarm twice a week. Probably wanted to take the dogs for a walk until his place aired out.

  Calista rubbed her stomach while they sauntered towards her apartment. “I don’t want to argue,” she said. “I’m just exhausted. And I skipped lunch, so I’m getting cranky.”

  “I could use a refuel, too,” Kaz conceded.

  They reached her door. “I’ll see if Frank wants to go in on some sushi with us.” She extended her key and pressed it to the deadbolt. The door creaked open before she could twist. The beeping grew louder.

  She bolted inside. A haze of smoke hung in the air, and between the incessant beeps of her fire alarm she heard a faint crackling, like a campfire. She followed the sound into her room, wheezing into the crook o
f her elbow, waving smoke from her path.

  Her tiny metal garbage can was crammed with notebooks, coughing gouts of gray into the unventilated space. It was everything she’d ever written about sigils and wards and hexes and enchantments. They were in flames, curling into ash.

  And her grimoire was gone.

  26. Tipping Point

  A SPLASH OF WATER doused her garbage can. The sopping wad of pulp hissed and sagged against the metal, bits of blackened paper drifting in rivers across her floor. The notes were unsalvageable.

  Kaz unlatched the bedroom window and shoved it open.

  Calista upended her mattress, threw her pillows aside, and clawed through her bookshelf. She scoured every place the grimoire couldn’t be, because she knew exactly where it was. Someone—the same person who’d been searching for Nolan Foxcroft—was just here. And they’d gotten what they came for.

  She made a discovery beneath her bed. Among the blankets and dust bunnies—and Brady, who was unharmed, curled into a terrified ball with his hackles at full attention—there was a sheet, which had apparently floated from the flaming garbage can and drifted out of harm’s way. It was singed around the edges, but otherwise unscathed: Moretti’s Golem. All that remained was a spell so utterly cataclysmic she couldn’t possibly put it to use. She folded the page and stuffed it into her back pocket.

  After opening her living room windows the air lost some of its haze, and the incessant chirping from the smoke detector petered out. She rounded the corner and saw her uncle in the kitchen. He was face down.

  Calista raced to his side, screaming his name, shaking his shoulders. She attempted to roll him, but it was like trying to upend a refrigerator filled with wet concrete. With Kaz’s help, they flopped him onto his back. Frank’s chest rose and fell in wheezing, labored breaths—but he was breathing, and that was better than the alternative. A nasty purple goose egg decorated his forehead, around where his hairline would have been, and he was slick with sweat; his dark sweater clung to him like plastic wrap.

  Kaz was calling 911 when Frank came to. His eyes blazed open, pupils dilated. He hacked globs of liquid onto his chest.

  The next twenty minutes were a blur of activity: panicked neighbors formed a semi-circle around her front door; EMTs arrived and struggled to load Frank’s massive frame onto a gurney; Calista held her breath as they drained his lungs; the ambulance sirens wailed as they sped to the hospital; and Frank moaned, clutching his belly. She was about to lose someone else to this battle—someone who never asked to be part of it in the first place.

  A catalog of spells blistered through her synapses. In her fragile state, hands quaking, eyes darting around the inside of a speeding ambulance, she could vaguely recall a few healing enchantments. One in particular stood out: a Viking spell used to treat the injured when they returned from war. There’s no point, she thought. That spell was designed to mend cuts, salve wounds—this wasn’t something she could stitch. It was internal. There were scores of spells that targeted ailments, but healing magick required precise language and delicate penmanship. If she tried to perform a ritual and failed—a good possibility without her grimoire as reference—her efforts would be fruitless. And a spell fizzling out would be the best case scenario. An errant pen stroke or mispronounced vowel could exacerbate Frank’s condition, or cause him to catch fire, or liquefy, or a hundred other nightmare scenarios. In her current state, Calista didn’t trust herself to remember exact phrasing or precise line work.

  The EMTs took blood samples and checked Frank’s pulse, occasionally saying something disturbing, like, “His vitals are in a freefall.” In between moans and convulsions, he intermittently vomited mouthfuls of syrupy liquid, each cough sounding more painful than the last. In her apartment’s dim lighting, Calista assumed it was blood—it had roughly the same consistency, but was more gelatinous. Now, he was expelling gobs of gooey black tar, like hot asphalt to pave a highway. It reeked of sulfur.

  One of the EMTs shouted something and Calista wasn’t listening—she was lost in her own horrific thoughts.

  “I said, did he eat anything unusual?” the woman repeated. She shined a flashlight pen into her uncle’s open mouth.

  “I don’t know. I wasn’t home when it happened.”

  The medics tried to mask their confusion, but they weren’t fooling anyone. They had no idea what was happening to their patient.

  The ambulance screeched to a halt outside of the hospital’s emergency room, and the doors flew open. The EMTs shoved the gurney onto the sidewalk, extending the wheels below. Three doctors in blue scrubs were waiting. One of them fitted a respirator over Frank’s mouth, and he batted it away.

  A young doctor tried to restrain the massive flailing arm. “Sir, you need to calm down!”

  “My back,” Frank gurgled, coughing up another glob. His lips and goatee were stained charcoal black.

  The team unstrapped him and rolled his giant frame. One of the EMTs yanked at his sweater, exposing his skin.

  “Possible GSW to the thoracic,” someone ventured, jotting notes on a pad. It looked like an intern.

  A doctor blotted the area with a handful of gauze. “No, it’s a stab wound. Several, from the looks of it.”

  Calista waded through the doctors to get a closer look. It wasn’t a gunshot or a stab wound—it was a sigil. A symbol that someone had carved into Frank’s back, carefully, artfully, probably after they’d knocked him unconscious.

  “Sir, please step back,” Calista heard a doctor shout behind her.

  She spun to see Agent Malek flashing a gold badge and shoving his way to the gurney.

  A diminutive nurse with braided hair tried to push Malek aside, but he refused to budge. “Sir,” she shouted, “you’re going to have to step back and let us do our jobs.”

  “There’s nothing you can do but sedate him,” Malek explained. He took Calista by the elbow and ushered her behind the ambulance, out of earshot.

  “What’s going on?” she said breathlessly.

  “Your uncle has been hexed. Whoever is responsible must be working from a powerful spell book, because hexes like this are difficult to come by. Few even know they exist.”

  She pressed her hand into the hood of the ambulance, legs barely able to support her weight. “We need to save him.”

  “If we don’t have the original hex we can’t,” Malek said plainly. “Even then, we still might require some healing enchantments on top of it. The Agency’s knowledge in this area is staggeringly limited. I’m not sure I can be of any assistance.”

  A black Audi squealed to a stop behind the ambulance and Kaz leaped out, lights on, engine running. “I got here as fast as I could. I lost you at an intersection.”

  “It’s all right,” Calista said. “Frank was hexed.” Saying it aloud made her light-headed.

  “Is he …?”

  “No,” Malek replied. “He’s hanging on. But unless we figure out who did this, he might not have long. Could be an hour, a day. There’s no way to tell. What we do know is that they didn’t go for the kill.”

  “They went for the pain,” Calista added. “They didn’t want Frank dead. If they did, they’d have finished the job. This was a message.”

  As it turned out, the hex was a message. The first of two.

  The second arrived right after Frank had been rushed to the ER. He was being treated by “The best people we have,” according to a flustered attendant, though Calista suspected they said that to every panicked relative. Of course they didn’t know what was wrong with him; they’d drained gallons of viscous fluid from his lungs, perplexed at how a human being—even one the size of Frank—could be producing it.

  Calista’s phone vibrated in her coat pocket. It was an incoming text.

 

  At the same moment, Malek and Kaz received similar messages. Malek’s had an attac
hment—a photo of a girl, her milky skin mottled with bruises, a curtain of greasy locks draping her swollen eyes. It was Aphra, bound and gagged. Kaz’s message was more subtle, but equally poignant. It was his home address, followed by the names Hiro and Asuka.

  Kaz stiffened. It was like he didn’t have an appropriate enough reaction for the horror he felt, so numbness overtook him. Malek’s response was icier, coated in a cool, hard veneer.

  Calista quickly assured Kaz that they’d be okay—his parents, Aphra, Frank—everyone. Rescuing Aphra wasn’t high on her priority list, but getting her stolen grimoire back sure as hell was, and so was taking down the bastard who stole it.

  She turned to Malek and was about to explain it all: that her grimoire had been the catalyst for this disaster, and that she’d been hiding it the entire time.

  He glared at her. “In my car.” His cool veneer was peeling away, stripped off with a sharpened blade. “We’re going to have a chat, you and I.”

  Calista slid into the passenger seat.

  Malek clenched the steering wheel with iron fists, eyes locked on the windshield. “When were you going to tell me?” His jaw was wired shut, nostrils flaring. “When were you going to let me know that Jackson had left you a grimoire?”

  Truthfully, she thought—never. Calista never planned on telling Malek, or Beckett, or Uncle Frank, or anyone else about the grimoire. It was a lightning rod for horror and chaos. Or maybe the lightning rod was actually her … or maybe there wasn’t much of a difference anymore.

  “I’m sorry,” she said meekly, as if an apology would make any difference.

  “You have no bloody idea what you’ve done,” Malek said, losing grip on his patience, but not the wheel. “Tell me everything about the grimoire this instant. I need to know what we’re up against.”

  She went into vivid detail, explaining that Jackson had managed to curate what might be, for all she knew, the most complete volume of spells in the world. With her eyes down, hands folded, and her shoulders rolled forward, it was a slightly embarrassing exchange. Malek never shouted or raised his voice. Instead, he carried the conversation with an air of, ‘I’m not upset, just disappointed’.