License to Ensorcell

by Katharine Kerr

  The pallbearers had just turned the coffin over to the sexton when Grampian broke. He threw back his head and howled, a long drawn-out wolf cry, then slumped over the coffin and wept. Everyone stared openmouthed, but no one moved toward him, not even the useless priest. Grampian lifted his head and howled again and again, always the wolf cry, a raw animal grief, begging his slain mate to return as if he’d managed to forget for that moment that she could never return. Mary Rose’s mother began to sob. I kicked off the heels, ran up the hill, and grabbed Grampian’s elbow.

  “Stop it!” I said. “Remember where you are!”

  He fell silent and looked up at me with half-blind eyes.

  “Come on,” I said. “You don’t have to watch them bury her.”

  He staggered to his feet and let me lead him away. We walked some ten yards downhill and stood by the artificial stream with our backs to the service. I retrieved my shoes and put them on.

  “You’ve got to be Nola,” he said. “Pat’s sister.”

  “That’s me, yeah.” I fished in my little black bag and brought out a couple of tissues. “Here. Wipe your face.”

  He followed orders with shaking hands, then shoved the soggy tissues into the pocket of his suit jacket. “Thanks,” he said. “That was pretty damn stupid of me.”

  “I’m not blaming you. If anyone asks you what the noise was, tell them it’s keening. They won’t know the difference.”

  His mouth twitched in a minuscule smile. His eyes stayed hollow and distant.

  “I need to talk with you,” I went on, “but obviously now isn’t the time. Can you give me your phone number?”

  He nodded and pulled his wallet out of his trouser pocket. He took out a business card and handed it to me. I glanced at it and saw that he created professional Web sites on a freelance basis, then tucked it safely away in my bag.

  “Okay, good,” I said. “I’ll call you tomorrow. In the meantime, for God’s sake, be careful! Don’t go out at night alone. Don’t go walking in the wilderness. Come to think of it, don’t go out at all. You’re being hunted.”

  “I figured that.” His eyes flared wide with rage. “But he’s not the only one who knows how to shoot a rifle.”

  “Don’t do anything stupid! What are you planning, Grampian? A little revenge?”

  He glared at me. His eyes were a pale blue, glittering like ice.

  “You’ll be playing right into Satan’s hand if you do,” I said. “Is that what the Hounds are all about? Giving in to the urge to rip and tear?”

  He closed his eyes and half turned away, but not before I saw tears run. He wiped them off onto his jacket sleeve.

  “No,” he whispered. “It’s not.”

  “Good. Remember that and play it safe.” I turned and looked past him to the grave site. The priest was scattering a handful of dirt onto the coffin, which is, generally speaking, the worst moment of the graveside service for the mourners. “Did Pat ever introduce you to Father Keith?”

  “Yeah.” He opened his eyes again.

  “If you need to talk to a priest, call him. He understands everything. Get it? Everything. He’ll even shelter you at the full moon if you need him to.”

  “Okay. Thanks. Thanks a lot, I—” He let his voice trail away. “I’d better go back. Mrs. Romero’s in worse shape than I am.”

  “Yeah, you should. She needs all the support she can get.”

  I watched him walk uphill, slump shouldered, hands shoved deep in his pockets, to rejoin the gathering at the grave site. He caught Mrs. Romero’s hand, and they knelt together to pray as the priest continued reading the service.

  I decided to risk using Search Mode: Individual and let my mind range out to Johnson. I received a quick flash, a contact, a feeling of nearness, then broke the link fast before he could focus in on me. I heard a raspy little chortle up in the branches of the willow. A green lizard-thing, more possum than meerkat, crouched under the curtain of leaves. Gray drool dripped from the corners of its stubby, toothy mouth. I flung a ward straight at its head and caught it just as it tried to dematerialize. Half a shriveled body fell to the ground and crystallized before it broke up and disappeared. I have no idea where the other half landed.

  Up on the hilltop Nathan suddenly shouted, an oddly soft sound drifting down on the breeze. I looked up and saw him and Sanchez take off running, disappearing from the crest down the other side. One of the uniformed cops trotted up to me with a small black box in his hand.

  “The inspectors have seen him,” he said. “I’m supposed to stay with you.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Thanks.”

  He nodded and muttered a few words into the black box.

  The mourners began to leave, trickling away a few at a time, while the gravediggers finished filling in the grave. It was an awful moment, a last farewell marred by police yelling back and forth, by the businesslike click of shovels and the dust rising from the falling earth. It took both Grampian and Mr. Romero to get Mrs. Romero to leave her daughter. They were carrying more than leading her as they made their slow way past. You will have justice, I thought in their direction. Fat lot of good it will do to ease your grief, but you’ll have it.

  Now and then my police protection spoke into his black box or listened to its cryptic announcements. Finally he turned to me. “They’ve lost him,” he said. “But we’ve put out an all points on the car.”

  “Good,” I said. “Thanks. Let’s hope.”

  “Yeah. This guy is a real nutcase.”

  “It sure looks that way, yeah.”

  Most devotees of Chaos do go insane eventually, but most in ways harmless to others. They sink into a profound depression or a state that mimics the symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder. Some, however, like Johnson, take it out on the rest of the world.

  In about fifteen minutes Nathan came jogging down the hill. He released the officer guarding me, then waited for him to get well away before he spoke.

  “Just as we thought,” he said. “Johnson was wandering around, pretending to look at gravestones. He ran the minute he saw me and Sanchez. There was a black Jaguar waiting for him on the road back there.” He jerked his thumb in the general direction of over the hill. “With a driver.”

  “DD?”

  “Possibly. Very possibly. The front door was open, and the car started moving the moment Johnson got in, before he could even shut the door. Still, we have the license number. Sanchez had a check run on the car. It was reported stolen last night.”

  “From where? Did he say?”

  “Yes, San Francisco. A neighborhood he called Pacific Heights. The owner had been visiting friends there and came out to find his car gone.”

  “It’s a neighborhood where you’d find an expensive car like a Jag, all right. A thief who wanted one would know where to look.” I glanced uphill to the grave, where the priest had finished his prayers. “Can we get out of here?”

  “Yes, certainly. Sanchez will be just as glad to be rid of me.” He sighed. “No doubt you feel the same way.”

  “No,” I said, because he’d caught me off guard. “Not necessarily.”

  He grinned at me. I turned away and headed for the car. He followed and caught up with me.

  “While we were standing around,” Nathan continued, “Sanchez told me that the narcotics division is starting a crackdown. They’re going to pull in everyone and anyone they suspect of dealing heroin and ask tough questions. In among the small fry in this operation is someone who’s going to tell them everything he knows. There always is. It’s probably an underling who’s been sent to prison twice before and doesn’t want to fall under that—what is it? The three strikes and you’re in for life program?”

  “Yeah, that’s basically it. Good. Let’s hope they turn up a solid lead before Johnson kills someone else.”

  The sun had finally decided to shine and burn back the fog. Under a blue sky we returned to my apartment, where I changed out of the funeral garb as fast as I could. Jeans and a b
right print blouse, this time, white with little red roses on it—I wanted something cheerful. I opened the drapes in the front room, too, to let in the light.

  “Johnson’s not going to come calling in broad daylight,” I said.

  Nathan went into the kitchen and dragged out the leftover deli food. To make him shut up about my not eating, I finished off some potato salad and a cold piroshki while I gave him my impressions of the funeral.

  “Creatures?” he said. “You saw creatures?”

  “Yeah. Every now and then I see a creature that’s just my image objectification, but these, damn it all, were the real deal.”

  Nathan absorbed this along with some pastrami.

  “What I’m wondering,” he said after he’d swallowed the mouthful, “is how Al Qaeda fits into this.”

  “It doesn’t. By now that should be clear. Unless your agency held back a lot of information, here in my territory at least it’s a domestic Chaos case, spiced up with a little drug-running. International terrorists need not apply.”

  “I can’t believe my superiors would hold back data I need to get the job done.”

  “Neither can I. No one has ever accused your government of being careless when it comes to outside enemies.”

  “Or internal ones, either.”

  “True enough. The driver of that getaway car, did he look anything like the guy Jerry described?”

  “It was hard to see him, but he could have been young and he could have had dark hair.” Nathan frowned down at the floor. “Not a very precise description, I’ll admit.”

  “I want to try an LDRS on this DD guy, but I don’t have a lot to work on. Tomorrow I’m going to try calling Grampian. If he’s put the pieces of his mind back together—”

  I stopped talking and let my mind focus on a sudden threat. Johnson—I knew the greasy touch of his mind, now—a tendril of feeling, a Search Mode force field hunting for me—I hoisted a barrage of imagery, walls, stones, a knight’s flaming sword. The tendril caught fire and disappeared. It took me a few seconds to focus back on the real world. Nathan was holding a handful of olives halfway to his mouth and staring at me.

  “Johnson’s figured out who I am,” I said. “He must have gotten a good look at me during the funeral.”

  “He was down on the other side of that hill. Or do you mean during the service in the chapel?”

  “Not that kind of look. He didn’t have to use his physical eyes. One of his creatures probably relayed an image before I destroyed it.”

  Nathan muttered a few Hebrew words under his breath and funneled the olives back into their container.

  “What are we going to do about this?” he said. “I could get Sanchez to give you twenty-four-hour police protection.”

  “And advertise where I am?”

  “Any other ideas?”

  “Catch him before he catches me? That’s the ideal solution, but so far we’re not doing a real good job of it.”

  Nathan sighed and picked up the olives again. He ate them meditatively, one at a time, spitting each pit back into the cardboard box. I decided I didn’t want to watch and began to clear away the remains of the meal.

  “What about this afternoon?” Nathan said.

  “I’d been thinking of going back to Aunt Eileen’s, but now I don’t know. If there’s going to be trouble, I want it happening away from the family.”

  “That would be best, yes. I don’t suppose you can do that LSD thing for Johnson safely now that he recognizes you.”

  “LDRS, not LSD. This has nothing to do with drugs.”

  “I was trying to make a joke. You know, lighten the mood.”

  “That’s probably impossible, but thanks anyway.”

  I dumped all the containers into the garbage pail I kept in the kitchen. The plastic liner bag had gotten full to overflowing, thanks to Nathan’s habit of actually eating at mealtimes. I pulled it out, knotted it, and started for the back door. Nathan trotted over and stopped me.

  “Where are you going with that?” he said.

  “The garbage chute. It’s just outside.”

  “I’ll take it.” He held out his hand. “There’s an alley out there leading up to the back steps. Anyone could get through that flimsy gate. He could wait there for you to come out.”

  I handed him the bag. My SAWM was going off like a fire alarm. Although I wondered—well, all right, I desperately wanted to know if Johnson lurked nearby, I decided against doing an LDRS. He’d already shown he could swat me away, at least when he wasn’t drowning in his fear of developing lycanthropy. I doubted if I could be lucky enough to find him in the middle of a fit for a second time. Threatening him again meant giving him another link right back to me. DD, however, presented a different target. Nathan came back in and began washing his hands at the sink.

  “I’m going to try scanning for the driver of that car,” I said. “If nothing else, I’ll find out how dangerous he is.”

  “Do you have enough information to work from?”

  “Probably not. I was thinking we could drive down to the windmill in the park where Jerry detected a Chaos force. His scent might be stronger there—if it’s the same guy, of course.”

  “Worth a try, certainly. Let me get out of this suit.”

  While he changed into jeans, I called Aunt Eileen. She’d had no word from the police about Michael.

  “Your mother,” Aunt Eileen told me, “is hysterical, but for a change no one can blame her.”

  “I can’t, either,” I said. “Any dreams?”

  “I saw Michael standing on Mission Street near Thirtieth, where the big Safeway is, except it wasn’t a Safeway at all. It was some kind of farmer’s market, and some of the people selling vegetables looked like goblins. Well, like some kind of deformed creature, anyway.”

  “That’s really strange.”

  “So strange that I doubt if it was really Michael I was seeing. Just my anxieties, I’d say, except it was so vivid.”

  Ambiguity, again. “Well, if you have any more dreams,” I said, “call me and let me know.”

  “This is all so awful.” Eileen paused for a deep breath to calm herself down. “I had to call Michael’s school today and tell them why he was absent. There’s only a week or two left before spring vacation, thank heavens, so he won’t have a ton of make-up work if we get him back soon enough.”

  If we get him back at all, I thought. Aloud I murmured something reassuring and ended the call. That Michael’s schoolwork might present a problem had never occurred to me. On such small details of everyday life, though, does the balance between Order and Chaos depend. My aunt and women like her serve Harmony in their own way.

  Nathan, dressed in jeans and a shirt, came out of the bathroom. He was carrying his suit, which he then proceeded to drape haphazardly over my computer chair.

  “Were you talking with your aunt?” he said. “I suppose she’s quite upset still.”

  “I’m afraid so, yeah. Uncle Jim will help her calm down in a while, though.”

  “Really? I should have thought he’d make things worse.”

  “No. The Houlihans have their good qualities.”

  “Don’t tell me they have talents like—”

  “Some of them do, yeah. The older generation had more than Uncle Jim does or his son. Clarice is pretty sharp, though. I don’t know about Brian yet. He thinks he doesn’t have any talents, but neither did I until I was sixteen. Then they hit in force.”

  “Interesting.” Nathan paused as if waiting for me to say more.

  I merely smiled. That period of my life still had the power to depress me if I thought about it in any detail.

  “Ready to go?” Nathan said eventually. “Do you have anything you can do to protect yourself from these, um, mental attacks, I suppose you could call them?”

  “They’re just that, and I do, yeah.”

  “Very well, but I need to make a few phone calls before we go to look at this windmill.”

  I started to agr
ee, then caught myself. “No,” I said. “Sorry. We need to go now, and we need to get there fast.”

  Which, though true, was a stupid thing to say to Nathan. During the resulting wild ride down to the west end of the park I managed to raise a Shield Persona by sheer force of will. Even when I’m not in a car driven by a maniac, I hate doing it, because it cuts off the flow of information from all of my extra sensing mechanisms, learned and natural. On the other hand, it would also cut Johnson off from me. If I needed to, I could drop it in a couple of seconds.

  Golden Gate Park contains a lot of odd things tucked away in glades and dells and little gardens. The Dutch windmill has to be one of the most spectacular of these oddments, a fully restored wooden windmill like a souvenir of the eighteenth century, set to one side of a sunken garden. A thick hedge surrounds a roughly circular area of lawn, and in the middle of the green lie geometrical flower beds which define a segmented circle.

  We came screaming down Kennedy Drive and pulled to a stop near the windmill. By then my feeling of urgency had swelled to a near-physical ache. I staggered out of the car and stood hyperventilating for a moment while I waited for Nathan, then led the way down the shallow stone steps through the trees. In the flower beds tulips bloomed, a gorgeous display in various reds, purples, and golds, nodding in the breeze. The sight of the garden allowed me to relax. We’d gotten there in time—whatever that meant.

  I sat down on the damp grass on the far side of the garden and took out my pad of paper and crayons. If anyone saw me, they’d assume I was drawing the windmill, which certainly would have inspired a real artist. Covered in dark wood shingles, it stood at least four stories high, crowned by the huge wooden vanes, tip-tilted into the wind. In the cool sea breeze the blades creaked like a ship under full sail. Nathan stood staring at it while I got settled.

  Before I started the LDRS procedure, I dropped the Shield Persona and did a Search Mode: Chaos scan of the area as far as I could reach. The windmill itself gave me an uneasy feeling, nothing urgent, more like a drifting scent of Chaos on the wind. I picked up a stronger sensation nearby, but I couldn’t refine it into an image or a presence. I hoped the LDRS would give me more information.