Fire Season

by Stephen Blackmoore

  The pyramid spins faster, cranking up the speed until it’s a blur at the end of the string. It starts to glow red and the string catches fire. I open the driver’s side door, almost slamming into a truck speeding by, and toss it out, where it goes up like a Roman candle.

  Okay. That didn’t work. She’s got warding guarding her that’s more powerful than the charm. Honestly not that tough. It’s a pretty weak charm.

  But that means I need some major mojo to punch through Q’s tampering enough that I can get some useful information. I think I know where I might find something like that.

  When my parents died, they left my sister and I property that neither one of us had ever heard of. I was gone just after the bodies were in the ground, and didn’t find out about any of it until I got back from Mictlan. With my sister dead, everything came to me. Some houses, a piece of property in the Mojave that I haven’t seen yet, storage units dotted across the Southland, and a ledger detailing everything in them. The ledger is a large leather-bound book filled with pages and pages of listings that read like a junkyard inventory in a Harry Potter fanfic.

  It lists spell ingredients from the mundane to the esoteric: dried herbs, manticore teeth, bottles of chupacabra venom. Magical devices and thaumaturgical instruments, most of which I couldn’t even tell you what they’re for. Spirit bottles, summoning coins that don’t list what they summon—always a bad idea—keys that open doors that only exist for seconds at a time. There are staves and wands. Wands. Nobody’s used wands since the 19th century. It goes on and on.

  I’ve skimmed the book. That’s all I could do. It’s the size of a folded Sunday newspaper from when newspapers mattered, three inches thick and a good five pounds.

  I pull over to the curb, pull the ledger from my messenger bag, and flip on the car’s overhead light. When I open it, it seems to have more pages than it should. It probably does. The handwriting on the pages is a spiderweb scrawl of tiny letters written by a dozen different hands. The fountain pen ink is faded to a grayish brown at the beginning. Then comes jet black ballpoint, typewritten notecards, and finally computer printouts pasted to the pages.

  Pity the only organization it has is by date starting in the 1890s. There’s no W for wands, A for amulets, or S for Shit That Will Kill You if You So Much as Look at It Funny. All of the items are scattered throughout the pages.

  On the plus side, it lists everything’s location. Storage unit addresses and numbers, safe deposit boxes and banks, GPS coordinates for things buried in the desert. Some have been updated two or three times as they were moved.

  I remember seeing some items for locating lost things: amulets, a compass, a kewpie doll that spins its head in the direction of the thing you’re looking for and screams. I turn pages until I get to the late 1940s, looking for the kewpie doll. Not the best for stealth, what with all the screaming, but that’s the only one I can remember a date for. There are no entries between 1939 and 1946 during the war, and then a flood of items from late ’47 to ’52.

  My eye snags on an entry. It’s not what I’m looking for, but it’s interesting nonetheless. The entry reads, “Browning 9mm Hi-Power—Nazi artifact—MELT DOWN ASAP—DO NOT LISTEN TO IT.” That’s slightly alarming. But there’s nothing here that says why, or what it would say. As far as I can tell, the Browning just makes much bigger holes than normal, feels disgusting to hold, and gives off an air of disappointment whenever I don’t kill someone with it. There are times I’ve wondered if it had a mind of its own, and now I’m pretty sure it does. But you can say that for any magical artifact. I get the same sense from my time-twisting pocket watch, though I’m never creeped out over picking it up like the Browning.

  I found the gun in the attic of my parents’ house when I was fifteen. If it’s listed here, then what was it doing there? Who took it out and why? A mystery for another day, I guess.

  I keep going until I find an entry for a compact makeup mirror that shows an image of what you’re looking for and tilts in its direction. There’s a note next to the entry. “V. POWERFUL.” That sounds like just what I need. And thank fuck it’s not the kewpie doll. I got enough of creepy dolls in Mexico to last a couple lifetimes.

  The mirror’s in a storage unit in Sherman Oaks. I haven’t been inside this one yet, but I know where the keys and codes for it are, including instructions to get past the wards keeping it safe. When I got them, I put them all in a safe deposit box in Van Nuys. For once I won’t have to slog across all of L.A. to get where I’m going. When I get a chance I really need to see if there’s a teleportation charm somewhere in the ledger.

  It doesn’t take long to get to the bank in Van Nuys and then to the storage unit in Sherman Oaks, a nondescript two-story box covered in stucco with a gated-off parking lot. There’s an office, surveillance cameras, a loading dock. Everything you’d expect to see.

  I punch a code into a keypad next to the gate and it slides open, too silently to be normal. The office is closed. There are no hours posted. I peer in through the glass doors and see everything I would expect to see, only it looks too clean, too uniform. In fact, now that I’m looking, everything looks too clean. The parking lot asphalt is too black, the painted parking lines too white. There are no scratches on the doors, no dings in the paint, chips in the stucco.

  If I didn’t know better, and I’m not entirely sure that I do, I’d think this was a trap of some sort. But trap or not I need to get in there. I punch the code into the keypad next to the loading dock, and it rolls up on tracks. A light goes on automatically. In for a penny and all that.

  Inside is no worse than the outside. No smells of dust or age, no stains on the floor, just a big empty room with a door at the far end. There’s no keypad here, but the door won’t budge. I consider an unlocking spell, but stop. I may not be able to feel them, but there have to be wards against that sort of thing. The last thing I want to do is try to break in and end up a smoking smear on the floor.

  Instead I try the unit key. As the door opens, the loading dock door lowers. When it closes I feel a flood of magic that wasn’t there a moment ago. The lights past the doorway turn on. And I can’t believe what I’m seeing. There are no storage units here. There is only one, and it is the entire building.

  There are shelves, crates, safes, desks. Every horizontal surface holds labeled knick-knacks and tchotchkes that radiate magic the way uranium throws off neutrons. Spiral staircases at each corner lead to a second-story catwalk that hugs the walls and holds nothing but bookshelves.

  It’s one part warehouse, one part magical antique store. Raiders of the Lost Ark and Willy Wonka all rolled into one. The magic coming off all of these items is unimaginable. There must be some really heavy-duty wards on this place to hide it from the outside.

  I wander between narrow halls made from the gaps between crates, taking care not to touch any of the artifacts left out in the open. Who knows what they’ll do if I handle them wrong? The artifacts have paper tags with dates written on them, but no descriptions. I have no idea if they’re in the ledger or not. I think the items without tags—pens, letter openers, stray books left on desks—are normal.

  Each crate has a date stenciled on it, and they go backward the further into the room I go. The object I’m looking for is dated June 13th, 1947. I find the crate showing the date along with several others stenciled on the side, each item inside too small to warrant an entire crate on its own.

  It takes a few minutes, but eventually I find an unlabeled letter opener that looks reasonably safe and sturdy enough to pry the top of the crate open. It snaps halfway through, but by then I’ve got the top wedged open enough to get my hands under it and shove.

  The crate groans as the nails bend, and in a few minutes I’ve got the entire top up, exposing smaller boxes with their own dates. June 13th is near the top, underneath a box containing a cut-glass doorknob that the ledger tells me opens doors that aren’t there into p
laces you don’t want to go.

  The mirror is brass with mother-of-pearl covering the top and bottom. It opens with a click and the inside is just as innocuous as the outside. The makeup’s gone, but the mirror is nice and shiny.

  I concentrate on the remains of the Cadillac. I don’t expect it will work. This place is massively shielded. I can’t even feel the local pool of power.

  The second I finish that thought, though, the pieces of the Cadillac sitting in a police impound yard appear in the glass. The mirror tugs in my hand, pulling itself to the right. If it can punch through this place’s wards, it might work to punch through Quetzalcoatl’s.

  I try test runs on Gabriela, Letitia, and Chu; I get nothing. I think about Letitia’s house, and there it is, with Letitia and her wife arguing on the doorstep.

  Okay, things only, not people. I concentrate on Quetzalcoatl’s lighter. The mirror tugs toward the southeast. In the glass I see Sastre in a dark, industrial-looking space, the lighter on a worktable in front of her. She’s wearing a tank top, hair pulled back, sweat on her brow. She’s tightly wrapping bunches of sticks into bundles the size and shape of ice cream cones and placing each one carefully onto an enormous stack of them on the table. The floor is piled high with twigs, a heap of thin leather straps next to them.

  She’s in a factory to the southeast tying piles of sticks together. Not what I was expecting, but it gives me a place to start. I check my phone to call Gabriela, but of course there’s no signal. This place is locked up tight. I flip through more of the ledger looking for descriptions of other items in the room.

  December 3rd, 1893—Monocle (1): Gives wearer ability to discern provenance of any wine.

  January 11th, 1921—Walking Stick (1-15): Creates multiple versions of itself in various colors and styles until the user picks one, locking in that style until placed in a corner for half an hour, after which it resets to its original appearance.

  6/12/62—Moonstone Amulet (1): Protection against charging minotaur. NOTE: Does not appear to protect from any other attack by a minotaur.

  So much of this is useless junk. Sure, it’s magic, but it’s still trash. What’s the use of an amulet that only protects against a charging minotaur, but not against, say, being punched by one? How many people died before they figured that out?

  9/14/92 Insect Killing Jar (1): traps and devours the souls of anyone within at least fifteen feet, possibly more, including the user, when opened. DO NOT OPEN. Attempts to destroy have so far been unsuccessful. SERIOUSLY DO NOT OPEN THIS THING.

  Great, it’s not just useless junk, it’s fucking dangerous useless junk. I close up the crate, find a massive book left out on the desk titled Esoteric Mysteries of the Spheres: Newtonian Physics and the N Dimensionality of Subjective Reality. Any book with a title like that’s only good for using as a hammer, so that’s what I do with it.

  I leave Subjective Reality on the top of the crate and shove the ledger back into my messenger bag. I go out the way I came. As soon as I’m past the door and into the loading room the magic cuts off. The loading door slides smoothly open, as if there wasn’t enough magical energy in the room I just left to level a city. It closes on its own once I’m outside, an airlock for magic.

  I look into the hand mirror, feel it tug toward the southeast. She’s still at it, bundling twigs. Now I just need to figure out where it is, and what to do when I find it.

  Chapter 12

  “I have a proposition for you,” I say once Gabriela answers her phone.

  “You’re not my type,” she says.

  “Thank fuck for that. I found a way to track down the Burning Girl. She’s in some factory or something. Up for some recon?”

  “Why, Mister Carter, are you flirting with me?” she says.

  “I take the babes to all the best places. I’ll be there in ten.”

  When I pull up, Gabriela’s waiting for me in the warehouse parking lot. She’s got a Benelli shotgun with a pistol grip slung over one shoulder, a bandolier of shells over the other, and her machete on her back.

  Behind her, half a dozen of her people, men, women, and if I’m reading things right, a vampire or two, stand with AKs in their hands. Most of them don’t like me. Can’t really blame them. They had a sweet setup at Gabriela’s hotel, and the minute I show up it all goes to shit.

  They may not like me but we have an agreement. They don’t fuck with me, I don’t drag them off to the other side and confront them with the horrors of the grave. Doesn’t work as good on the vampires, though. Go figure.

  “Nicely nondescript,” Gabriela says, raising an eyebrow as I roll down the window. The Honda I stole with Letitia was running on fumes so I stopped to steal a BMW hardtop Z4.

  “This is L.A. Nondescript comes with a price tag. Besides, I got tired of being chased and not outrunning anybody.”

  “Losing that Cadillac was the smartest thing you’ve done since I met you,” she says. “Too bad you don’t have any taste in replacement vehicles. I’d have stolen a Porsche.”

  “I didn’t exactly lose the Cadillac,” I say. “And what part of recon did you not understand? You’re loaded for bear. If I’d known you were bringing heavy ordnance, I’d have stolen something bigger. I’m not sure it’ll fit.”

  “Oh, I dunno,” she says. “It’ll be tight, but I think I can shove my big gun into your tiny car.”

  “Are we still talking about the shotgun?”

  “Shut up and open the door.”

  I lean over and push the passenger door open. I feel a flare of magic as she slides into the seat and the Benelli, machete and bandolier are gone.

  “I don’t even want to know where you put those,” I say.

  I fill her in on what happened with Werther, Letitia, Chu, and Chu’s pet lawyer, Peter. I hand Gabriela the compact. “The mirror’ll only show things, not people,” I say. “Concentrate on Quetzalcoatl’s lighter, it should give you a good view of where it is. Last I looked she was right next to it. And hang onto it. It’ll jump in the direction of whatever you’re looking for.”

  I don’t want to say it, because she knows her shit, but I have to. I’m a little nervous about this whole venture. “You get that this is more of a stake-out than a frontal assault, right? I’d really like to come back from this one in one piece.”

  “I don’t think I like this new cautious you,” she says.

  “Yeah, well, I don’t usually have to worry so much about some rando on the street shooting me, poisoning me, or blowing up my car while I’m still in it. When people try to kill me they tend to space it out over a few days, not shove it all into one afternoon.”

  “I can take care of myself, Eric,” she says.

  “Yeah, I know. I’ve seen it. And that’s not what I’m talking about.” I nod toward her crew watching us. None of them look happy. “What about them? Look, I got nothing to come back to. If I die, big fuckin’ whoop. But you?”

  “I’m not risking their lives,” she says, an edge in her voice that makes me start to wonder if this is really about going after Sastre for her. “If you didn’t want my help, why did you call?”

  “I do want your help,” I say. “And I know you’ve got a vested interest in this. But I also want to get you back here in one piece.”

  “Jesus, Eric. I know my way around killing cartel sicarios.” She’s right. She can take care of herself better than almost anyone I’ve ever met.

  “Sorry for bringing it up.”

  “Just shut up and drive,” she says, pointedly not looking at me.

  I pull the car out of the parking lot. There are all sorts of things that can go wrong with what we’re doing, and I’m not sure Gabriela and I have the same idea about the point of this trip.

  I don’t want to go after a professional assassin who’s got a god on her side when she’s gone to ground. There could be all sorts of shit in th
ere that I don’t know about, wards, booby traps. Hitting a tripwire and getting a face full of buckshot is not my idea of a good time.

  But if I know where she is, then I can follow her when she leaves, and maybe catch her before she sets anyone else on fire.

  I try to tell Gabriela this as diplomatically as I can, but I don’t think she’s listening. She just grunts and stares at the mirror.

  “She’s bundling sticks,” she says. “Why is she bundling sticks?”

  “I haven’t been able to figure that out. She’s been at it a while.”

  “Maybe we’ll get a chance to ask her,” she says.

  “If we get a chance to ask her then this whole thing’s gone to shit.”

  “You’re making that sound bad,” she says.

  The mirror tugs in her hand toward the south. “Head east,” she says. “If we can triangulate it we might narrow it down by a couple miles.”

  Gabriela used to have a crew of techheads. They did this with a different tracker that went brighter or darker depending on where and how far away the target was. But they had software on their side and GPS and nailed a location in half an hour. We’re going to have to do this the old-fashioned way.

  We take the 10 and cut through Boyle Heights into East L.A. before the tugging on the mirror shifts direction. I take the car south on the 710, over the 5 and past the train tracks. When we hit the outskirts of Vernon, a tiny industrial town that’s all factories, train tracks, and smog, the mirror yanks in Gabriela’s hand, leaning due west.

  “Looks like she’s in Vernon,” she says.

  “About fucking time.” We’ve been driving for almost two hours, the sun setting on the slow-moving snake of white and red lights. Traffic slowed us to a crawl despite a spell designed to make people want to get out of our way. It only works if there’s somewhere else for them to go.

  “Okay, she’s not bundling sticks anymore,” Gabriela says. “She’s dipping the ends in some kind of liquid and putting them on a rack.”