The Initiate

by James L. Cambias

  Chapter 16

  A couple of weeks later Sam was at the Morgan Library, hand copying a Greek magical papyrus from the first century BC. He could buy print editions of it, or look up scans online…but Lucas had advised him that they differed from the original in important ways. Key lines were omitted from the scans, or replaced by “[Fragmentary]” in the transcriptions. He had to wear gloves, and could not bring any pens or bags into the study room. A lot of expensive machinery kept the facility at the proper temperature and humidity.

  He had filled three pages of his notebook with block print when a paper airplane poked him in the temple and fell to the tabletop. Sam looked around, but the room was empty. Beyond the glass partition the librarian in charge of rare manuscripts was engrossed in a game of Tomb Raider.

  The airplane was a folded sheet of pink construction paper, and bore a message written in gold marker.

  “Dear Mr. Ace. When you finish in the libary come to a tea party with me and my frends at Macys 6 floor. Your frend ISABELLA.”

  The fact that Isabella could somehow locate him and send a paper airplane unseen through who knows how many locked doors was more than a little disturbing. Sam finished copying the papyrus and then took a cab over to Herald Square.

  Sam got out of the elevator on the sixth floor with half a dozen other customers, and a couple of them headed for the cafe. But as they reached it, all of them slowed, stopped, and turned away. Sam could sense invisible guardians—fear spirits creating just enough anxiety to drive off everyone except Isabella’s guests.

  She sat at the head of a table set for six, but Sam could only see two other people at the party: a skinny boy who looked about ten, wearing ragged clothes too small for him; and a woman in her late teens dressed in sweatpants and a hoodie, who appeared to have Down syndrome.

  The only other customer in the place was a pale, overweight man at a nearby table who looked like he was asleep.

  Isabella waved cheerfully. “Hi, Mr. Ace! Come sit down! This is Elijah and this is Joy,” she said, indicating the two other guests. “And those are William and Alexandra,” she added, pointing to the empty spots.

  Sam took a place at the opposite end of the table, and immediately felt that the two vacant seats weren’t vacant at all. When he looked at them he saw nothing, but when he looked at Isabella he could see two more people with his peripheral vision—a boy with long hair and a wide-brimmed hat, and a girl in a bonnet whose face was indistinct.

  He helped himself to cupcakes and hot chocolate. “So, what’s the occasion?”

  “I’m having a birthday party for Alexandra,” said Isabella. “She’s turning a hundred and seventy-three today.”

  His eyes prickled. “As it happens, it’s someone else’s birthday, too. A boy I used to know, named Tommy. He’d be eight tomorrow.”

  “Is he dead? We can call him back,” said Isabella.

  “He died two years ago, but I don’t want to call him back. I think it’s better that way.” Just the thought of Tommy becoming one of Isabella’s “friends” made Sam feel a little queasy. Bargaining with demons was bad enough, but what really sickened him was the way the Apkallu so casually used people, living and dead. The fact that he did the same didn’t excuse any of it. It was like a war; you wound up doing awful things trying to stop other people from doing them.

  He forced himself to smile and raised his chocolate mug in a toast toward the empty chair to his right. “Many happy returns, Alexandra.”

  “Why do people say that?” asked Isabella. “Is it something about returning presents you don’t want?”

  “Many happy returns of the day,” said Sam. “In other words, wishing you lots of happy birthdays in the future.”

  “You should just say that, then. Lots of happy birthdays in the future, Alexandra!” Isabella drained her own mug. From the smear around her mouth she’d obviously had a lot of chocolate already.

  “Also,” she added, “you said you want to learn more stuff. I know just what you should do: You need to go to the market.”

  He must have looked baffled because she laughed and went on. “You know, the Goblin Market.”

  Despite the fact that he had spent more than a year immersed in the secret world of magic, the hairs on Sam’s neck prickled as he felt a jolt of sheer wonder at the words. “Where is it? What do they sell?”

  Isabella laughed at him again. “It isn’t anyplace, really. I can show you how to get there. But you can buy all kinds of neat stuff. Spirits, ghosts in bottles, amulets—even things like dreams.”

  “But what do you buy things with? I’m guessing they don’t take normal money.”

  “Well, you can trade things. I swapped a ghost for a fire elemental. His name was Alberto and he cried all the time. Or you can sell parts of your soul.”

  “That doesn’t sound like a good idea,” said Sam.

  Isabella just shrugged. “You can also trade boring real stuff like jewels or movie stars. Do you want to go next time? It’s only there when the Moon’s full.”

  Like just about all the Apkallu, Sam was constantly aware of the phase of the Moon and when each planet was in the sky. The next full Moon was in nine days, the day before Thanksgiving. “Absolutely. Where do you want to meet?”

  “You know the carousel in Battery Park? With the fish? Meet me there at sunset.”

  “We’re not going underwater, are we?”

  “You’ll see,” was all she said.

  They sang “Happy Birthday” to Alexandra (Sam whispered “…dear Tommy” instead), and when the party was done he took Elijah down to the boys’ section and got him a pair of pants that fit him and a warm jacket. He couldn’t get more than a few words out of the boy, and couldn’t tell if he was afraid, under some sort of mental control, or just shy.

  * * *

  Nine days later, Sam paced awkwardly in front of the carousel ticket booth at the southern tip of Manhattan, glancing from time to time at the Sun as it shone red beyond Hackensack. It was just turning from a dome to a sliver when he felt some curious presences around him, and then a moment later Isabella skated into view from the direction of the World War II sailors’ memorial.

  She made a circle around Sam on her rollerblades before coming to a stop in front of him. At that moment all the people nearby found reasons to move away from the two of them, but despite that Sam felt crowded. Isabella’s “friends” clustered thick about her, and Sam could sense their protectiveness—and their hunger.

  “All right, here I am,” he said. “Where’s the market?”

  “This way,” she said, and led him across the street to the Staten Island ferry terminal. Ten minutes later the two of them stood on the upper deck of the Senator John J. Marchi as it headed southwest across the harbor. Isabella put on a pair of sneakers bearing the face of Princess Elsa and abandoned her skates—which bothered Sam more than it should have.

  The Sun was completely gone and the white disk of the Moon glowed over Long Island as Sam let Isabella lead him aboard the Staten Island Railway. They rode almost the whole length of the island, and got off at the Annadale stop. Sam looked around at the endless blocks of duplexes and bungalows. It looked like the least magical place imaginable.

  “Okay,” he said, stopping just outside the station and letting the commuters flow past them like a stream around a rock. “I’m not going any farther until you tell me where you’re taking me. This all looks like a big practical joke to me.”

  “It’s over there,” she said, pointing north. “The Forest of Arden. But we should stop for pizza first.”

  He bought them slices at the pizza place across the street from the station, and they ate as they walked north. It was pretty good pizza. Sam was a little astonished to realize that this suburban, almost rural neighborhood was actually part of New York City.

  By the time they reached the entrance to the Arden Heights Woods ecological preserve the sky overhead had turned from purple to navy blue, though the stars were all drowned ou
t by the combination of city sky-glow and the brilliant full Moon in the east. He did notice a surprising number of cars parked along the road—expensive-looking cars, completely out of place in the neighborhood.

  The entrance to the preserve wasn’t much: a short paved drive leading from the road to a small parking area, and then a bare hiking trail marked by signs and some litter. Isabella took Sam’s hand and led him onward. The trail curved to the left, avoiding the marsh at the heart of the preserve.

  Twenty yards down the trail they were out of sight of the road, and everything changed. One moment Sam could only see dark woods and a muddy trail. He took a step, and the forest was full of lights and people.

  A throng of grotesque little men crowded around the two of them, waving big glossy-looking fruit and enormous pastries dripping with frosting. Isabella waved them away. “Don’t eat anything,” she told Sam.

  “Well, of course not,” he said, a little annoyed at the fact she even thought he needed to be told.

  This market wasn’t like a store, or even a street bazaar. None of the vendors had stalls; in fact Sam couldn’t see any way to tell vendors from customers. It was more like the trading floor at the stock exchange back before computers: The crowd churned in Brownian motion and people simply made deals face to face.

  A man with oddly grayish skin and pointed ears pushed up to Sam, offering a handful of scarlet gems, very faintly luminous. “Souls? Picked ’em myself just yesterday.”

  Sam shook his head and the gray man turned away to offer the gems to a woman with a fox’s face.

  How much of this was real? Sam wondered. If his drone camera was watching them in night-vision mode, what would it see? Just the two of them blundering around the woods in the dark?

  Another…man?…with the flat expressionless head of a python flicked his tongue at Sam and held up a pair of books sealed in plastic bags. “Daemoniality, by Father Sinistrari—unexpurgated and illustrated,” he said with a hiss. “Or the lost edition of the Mutus Liber with Saint-Germain’s commentary?”

  “Not today, thanks,” Sam mumbled.

  Isabella let go of Sam’s hand and rushed over to embrace the most disturbing-looking clown Sam had ever seen. What made him so bizarre was that his dead-white skin was obviously not greasepaint, and the red smear around his mouth looked very much like fresh blood. His billowy Pagliacci suit was dirty and torn, exposing more dead-white skin underneath. The clown’s appearance was bad enough, but when Sam wasn’t looking directly at him, he sensed something huge, dark, and powerful crouching in the clown’s place.

  “Mr. Snicker!” she said with obvious delight. “I got you another one!” She dug into the pocket of her plaid skirt and pulled out a glass marble which glowed like the gray man’s jewels. “Her name’s Megan and she was mean.”

  The ridiculously scary clown said nothing, but grinned wider than any human mouth could manage and held up his empty left hand. He made a classic stage magician’s pass with his right, and Isabella clapped her hands at the sight of a bubble floating above his open hand.

  Sam looked closely at the bubble. It was empty, but the faint iridescent surface reflected the face of a snarling three-eyed Oni. Isabella handed the marble to the clown and pocketed the bubble.

  “This is my friend Mr. Ace,” Isabella told the clown. “He’s never been to the market before.”

  Without standing, the clown glanced up at Sam, and raised his green hairless eyebrows questioningly.

  “He wants to know what you’re looking for.”

  I’m looking for the way out of here, Sam thought but did not say. “I want to control a particular being—an anzu,” he said. “The last binding I tried didn’t work for some reason.”

  The clown cocked his head thoughtfully, then pointed a long white finger (he had no fingernails) to his left. He grinned again, and gave Isabella another hug before standing and wandering off.

  “He’s nice,” said Isabella.

  Sam looked in the direction the clown had pointed. He could see a full-grown white tiger trotting past, a cow-headed woman in a kimono selling tea, a superhumanly sexy demoness running a dice game, and a pale man carrying a cooler stenciled with the words “BLOOD PRODUCTS IN TRANSIT.” None of them looked like they could help him.

  But then past the tiger he spied an old-fashioned sedan chair held by a pair of blank-faced men—literally blank-faced, with nothing but tanned skin between chin and hairline. He decided to investigate.

  As he approached, Sam could sense something inside the sedan chair. It didn’t feel human, and he didn’t get any impression of malice or hunger, as he did from demons. This was simply…attentive. A phrase from H. G. Wells came to him, describing Martians as “intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic.” That was how the thing inside the sedan chair felt to Sam’s Inner Eye.

  He walked up to the curtained window in the side of the sedan chair and cleared his throat. “Good evening. I’m trying to find a way to bind an anzu. Permanently and unbreakably.”

  Silence. Then the curtain parted just enough for what looked like a spider crab’s pincer to reach out holding a square of paper. “TRIVIAL,” it read in elegant brushstrokes, and below that, “OFFERED?”

  Sam took the tin ring off his finger. “I bound this wind spirit.”

  The pincer handed him another note. “IMPRISONED, NOT BOUND. UNEQUALLY VALUED.”

  “How about this?” He put the ring back on and produced the origami figure he had found in Zadith’s condo. It began to wriggle as soon as he took it out of his pocket. Sam held it up to the window, and the pincer held the curtain open. In the darkness beyond, Sam could make out four or five eyes, of different sizes and colors, reflecting back the sky glow.

  The curtain closed for a moment, then the pincer held out a note. “INSTRUCTIVE AND ACCEPTABLE.” It followed that with a bronze tube about a foot long. Its surface was green with corrosion, almost obscuring the sculpted relief of planets and constellations. Sam gave the origami figure to the sedan-chair’s occupant, then opened the tube. Inside was a parchment scroll with Hebrew writing.

  “Thanks, I hope,” he said, and then moved away from the sedan chair, looking for Isabella.

  “Hey, Ace!” a man’s voice called out. Sam looked over and saw Charles White—still naked, still covered with grime—sitting comfortably in a folding camp chair. A cardboard box on the ground next to him had “DEMONS” scrawled on it in marker, and behind him a row of half a dozen people stood with closed eyes, as if sleeping on their feet.

  White waved Sam over, and after a moment’s hesitation Sam approached. White didn’t get up. “Moreno know you’re here?”

  “Probably,” said Sam.

  “Tell him I said hi. Looking for anything in particular?”

  “Oh, just browsing, mostly.” He glanced at the people standing behind White. “Are they for sale?”

  White shrugged. “If you’re dumb enough to buy one, sure. They’re for demons, not us. Seven years in a human body in exchange for a year bound to serve me.” He gestured at the cardboard box. “Or whoever buys ’em.”

  “Seven years seems like a long lead time,” said Sam, trying not to show his horror at the idea.

  White laughed at that. “Hell, most of ’em don’t last seven weeks before overdosing, or walking in front of a bus, or getting shot. I still get my year of service.”

  “So you’re exploiting…everyone,” said Sam, almost admiring the sheer ruthless audacity of the arrangement.

  “If you don’t know who’s getting fucked in a deal it’s probably you,” said White.

  Sam and Isabella got back to Manhattan near dawn—time in the market passed oddly—disembarking among a small crowd of people carrying suitcases. It was Thanksgiving morning and lower Manhattan was eerily silent.

  “How will you get home? Or wherever you’re going,” Sam asked Isabella.

  “Todd will give me a ride. I told him to meet me here.”

  “Who is Todd?”

  �
�There he is!” Isabella waved, and a rust-spotted old Dodge van which had been standing illegally in front of the Coast Guard station started up and lurched toward them. It squealed to a stop and a man got out. He was younger than Sam, and looked oddly soft and unformed all over. In a moment Sam remembered him: the sleeping customer at the next table from Isabella’s tea party. His green anorak was smudged at the wrists and hem.

  Sam put a hand lightly on Isabella’s shoulder. “Are you sure you should be going with this guy? I can get us a cab.”

  She laughed. “Are you scared he’s going to try some sex stuff with me?”

  Todd came to a stop in front of them. He gave Sam one panicky look, but otherwise his attention was focused on Isabella. He breathed heavily.

  Isabella laughed again. “He wants to. After I met him in the park he tried to do something nasty, but my friends stopped him. They were going to cut him up into little pieces but I made them wait, and instead I made Todd tell me his whole name. It’s a dumb name.” She grinned at Todd as she said it. “Now Todd has to do whatever I want.”

  Sam looked at Todd, not bothering to hide his contempt. “You picked the wrong little girl, didn’t you? You piece of shit.”

  Todd looked at Sam, then back at Isabella. His doughy face had a desperate expression, but he didn’t say anything.

  “I told Todd he couldn’t tell anybody. That’s what he tried to tell me back in the park, so fair’s fair. Todd, tell Mr. Ace all the things you have to do.”

  Still keeping his eyes fixed on Isabella, Todd began to rattle off a list, holding up fingers to number them as he did so. “I can never harm Miss Isabella. I can’t tell anybody that Miss Isabella controls me. I must do everything Miss Isabella tells me, with no talking back. I have to give Miss Isabella anything she asks for. I must stay near Miss Isabella unless she tells me to leave. I can’t tell anybody about Miss Isabella. I can’t talk about magic with anybody. I love Miss Isabella more than anything.” By the time he got to the last item he was breathing more heavily than ever.