Can’t Brain Today, Got The Dumb.
ednesday, I got up at the gawdawful early hour of 6:30 am to join VC and Missa in delivering the Squatch to MrJames for a week-long visit. We drove him down to Detroit to the airport and dropped him off to his plane. We skipped taking I-75 due to the odious levels of construction and traffic and instead had a nice three-hour drive, which abruptly turned nasty when we got to the airport. Any airport that is so big it has its own damn expressway is too fucking big.
We had a lovely time, although I was brain-dead from the tired for most of it. We had Indian food and stopped in at a Barnes & Nobel. I’d never had Indian food before, so I had the lamb vindaloo. I’d never had lamb before either, and I figured that since I was trying something new, I might as well go whole hog — or whole lamb in this case — and get all new stuff. It was yummy. Although, a word to the wise when it comes to Indian cuisine for the other n00bs out there: When they say a dish is hot, they aren’t fucking around. It’s chemical burn hot.
I arrived at home many, many hours later, near ten, I think, read for a bit, and then crashed out for, like, twelve hours. Thursday was largely a haze. I went up and visited my folks. I was supposed to see my . . . um . . . ex-step-son? whatever, but there was some crossed wiring on the communication, so I’ll see him next week, instead.
Sadly, I’m entirely too groggy and coming down with a cold for any sort of intelligent post, so instead, have a bit of the writing I’ve been working on. I think this is Chapter Three. In the area of Chapter Three, anyway.
Chapter 3 (-Ish.)
Home sweet home. I pulled around to the back, noting with some consternation that the lights were on in the store front. Surely Honey hadn’t come into work today, had she?
I live in a warehouse. It’s not a big warehouse, but there are quite a lot of them sitting empty down on the shady side of the dock areas, and they’re going cheap. A lot of the riverside area has been hit by the urban renewal projects, and there’s nothing cheap in those areas. My neighborhood hasn’t. It’s still run down, full of empty businesses and homes. The night is full of gunfire and the air reeks of desperation. I like it. It feels homey.
The front of the warehouse had been closed off into office space, complete with big windows. I turned that into a store front where I sell New Age crap. Pyramids, crystals, warm, fuzzy books about the joys of magic, rocks, other such foolishness. There isn’t a real item of power in the whole store, but the garbage sells like crazy. I went around back to the big parking lot, where the old loading bay is, got out to open the door, and drove my car into the warehouse. I closed the door and locked it.
The main warehouse is open space. I have my permanent circle down here, and my scrying pool, as well as plenty of industrial shelves full of store stock, and my inventory of the real thing, the ingredients I use for artificing and alchemy. There are several work benches and tools taking up space, as well as a small smelting furnace, a kiln, all sorts of equipment I use for my work.
An industrial metal staircase leads up to the loft where the warehouse offices used to be. It’s living space now, the offices turned into rooms. I have a bedroom which leads into the bathroom, which leads into the kitchen, which leads into my office/living room.
I’m still not quite sure why I put the kitchen in. I don’t cook. I guess it’s just a big place to keep my coffee pot.
I crossed the warehouse. It was dark and cold. There were big frosted windows, the glass block kind, running around the top of the warehouse walls, but they weren’t letting in much light this morning. It didn’t slow me down any. I see just fine in the dark. It’s all black and white, like a cat, but I’m used to it.
I unlocked the door which led into the store front and stepped in. Sure enough, Honey was sitting at the counter, working a crossword. A radio was playing soft pop music, and she had some incense lit. The place was warm, well-lit, and smelled like apple cinnamon. Stepping into the store was like stepping into a big, fluffy security blanket. It screamed safety.
Honey is a hearth witch. She specializes in things like that. She’s the one who keeps my hearth spirits intact. They wouldn’t stick around for me.
She looked up as I stepped in. “Mornin.”
“What are you doing here?” We’re usually closed on Sundays.
“A bunch of the regulars called me. I said I’d come in and open up for them. I figured I’d stick around for a few hours, see if anyone else wanted anything. You don’t mind, do you?” Her voice was like bells, gentle, light, musical. Honey was short and round and soft, twenty-six, and still in college for accounting. She was a pretty girl, chocolate brown with big beautiful eyes, long neat cornrows full of beads and charms, and prone to colorful broomstick skirts and peasant blouses. When she smiled, she lit the room up, and she was unfailingly cheerful and pleasant. She drove me nuts, but she had my store turning a profit and the customers loved her.
“No, I don’t care. What do you mean, they called you?”
“At home.” She held up her cell phone. “People are scared. They wanted some things.”
I glanced around my store. There wasn’t a thing in here that would save anyone from anything, unless maybe they bought one of the bigger glass pyramids and dropped it on someone’s head. “Seriously?”
Honey shook her head. “Folks know something’s wrong.”
“Well, I guess. Don’t wear yourself out blessing the crystals.” Honey knew she was selling crap, but she wasn’t above charming a little safety into the kitsch for the commoners, the regulars made up of the Wiccans and other heathens. “Make sure you’re home before dark, too.”
“There is something nasty going on, isn’t there?”
I nodded. “It’s bad out there after dark. Ain’t going to get better any time soon, either.”
Most of the mage community is made up of people like Honey, small talents and powers. We call them hearth witches, hedge wizards, things like that. They are by no means inconsequential, but neither were they on, say, my scale. Honey was never going to pitch fireballs or throw lightening strikes, but she could charm her home clean and safe, throw small hexes, curses, little enchantments. It doesn’t sound like much, but I have to say, early on in my career I took one of my worse ass whippings ever from a little hearth witch like Honey. Even little bits of power, properly applied, can have big effects. You learn not to underestimate people real quick after a thing like that.
I left the store, locking the door behind me again. I don’t like Honey wandering around in my work shop unless I’m there. There are too many dangerous things on the shelves that she can’t handle. I headed up the metal stairs to the loft, making a big old racket. No one was ever going to sneak up here on me.
Next on the agenda was a shower, followed by a nap. I don’t sleep much, but the last couple of days was finally starting to tell on me. I felt worn right out. I went down the catwalk, turning into the living room. It was a mess, as usual, piled to the ceiling in books, books on the end tables and coffee tables, books on the TV stand in the corner, books on my computer desk, books on the Salvation Army sofa, next to the ratty armchair, on the floor. I like to read. I flipped the TV on, checked the news. We were still on CNN, some morning commentator going on about the gang war in Detroit. There was some hazy footage of the fires, people being hurried into hospitals, things like that, but nothing serious.
The kitchen was empty, sterile, dusty. I emptied out my coat, speed loaders, cellphone, keys, smokes and lighter, feathers and stones and other bits and pieces I used for spell casting on the fly. I tossed the coat over a chair, hanging my shoulder holster over it.
I made a note to clean the gun before I went for a nap, tossed my knife in its sheath on the table, and headed into the bathroom. I undressed, unwrapped my bandages, and had a good scrub in a hot shower. I started bleeding again right off the bat, but it wouldn’t hurt to bleed some of the deeper wounds clean, so I let it go. It burned, but that was lost to the deeper ache of weariness and recent long nights full of running and fighting.
I got out, wrapped my hair up in a towel, caught sight of myself in the mirror. I was a mess of bruises and cuts, tattoos washed out, and worn thin by all the magic lately. Mages are skinny by nature. Magic: burns more calories than a Bow Flex. You can almost judge how powerful a mage is by how much extra weight they’re carrying around. Me, I’m skinny as a rail, not much more than muscle and gristle over bone. Honey down stairs was a little on the chunky side. Of course, it also depends on how active the mage is. You could have a really powerful mage weighing in at three hundred pounds of blubber, if they didn’t throw a lot of magic around. You don’t see that much, though.
I shrugged into my robe, wandered out to look at the TV again. They were covering the primaries again. I shut it off, and made the mistake of checking my cell phone on the way through the kitchen. I had four messages. Shit. I checked them. Drake wanted to see me right away – he’d left me two messages. Damien and Pardell, two of the other praetorians, wanted to hear from me as well.
Dammit. I looked through to my bedroom, dark and inviting, the bed calling my name, and heaved a sigh. I made a pot of coffee instead, got out my gun kit, dialed Damien’s number as I cleaned my gun. I plugged a cigarette between my lips and lit up. Damien answered on the third ring. He had a voice like dark chocolate. I could listen to him talk all day.
“Alice?”
“Hey. What’s up?”
“Where were you all night?”
“Busy. Twenty rats down by GM. There’s a new dead zone down there, too.”
“Shit, another one?”
“Yeah. It’s little though. Couple of blocks. What’s going on?”
“Did you hear about Mitch?”
“Mitch? No. What happened?”
“Gutted. Dumbass went into a nest all by himself.” Damien sighed heavily. He sounded exhausted.
“Oh, shit. That wasn’t very bright. Why didn’t he call somebody?”
“I guess he tried to. I had a message from him. We were all busy.”
I paused. “He’s dead?”
“He will be. I guess he crawled out. Just around dawn. Some asshole got him to a hospital.”
I let a long silence hang. “He’s infected, isn’t he?”
Damien let another silence draw out. “Yeah. In the hospital.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah. Somebody needs to go down there and do for him.”
I rubbed my eyes, flicked ashes into a tray. “Need me to go take care of it?”
Damien’s voice sounded strained. “Yeah. Could you? It’s just . . . him and I came up together, you know? I don’t – I can’t –”
“No worries. I got it.” I finished the gun, started putting the kit away.
“Alice . . . um. Could you . . . could you not, you know. Could you just let him go? Put him down easy, and let him go?”
I flicked ashes again. “Jesus, Day. What do you take me for? Of course.”
“Okay, okay, I’m sorry. I just – you know. You know.”
“Right, whatever. You listen to too many rumors. Where’s he at?”
“St. Anne’s, 405, ICU.”
I frowned. ICU was going to be tricky. “Yeah, I’ll head up and get him now.”
“Okay, thanks. Thank-you. I just –”
“Yeah, I know. I got it.” I hung up on him before he could go on with his gratitude. I called Pardell and got his voice mail, left him a quick message: “Tag, you’re it. Call me back.” I put the phone down, docked my cigarette in the ashtray, and rubbed my face. I sat there, feeling tired for a moment, listening to the coffee pot hiss. Then I pushed myself up from the table and went to get dressed.
I was headed to the hospital, and I didn’t want to be noticed any more than I had to be, so I dressed in khaki slacks and a white blouse, with a navy blazer over my shoulder holster. I was sacrificing a lot of pocket room for some anonymity. I tied my hair back in a loose, professional-looking bun and threw on a little make-up. With a sign of resignation, I added in some beige dress shoes and a matching purse. At least I could fill the purse up with useful things.
St. Anne’s was a bout a half hour away, forty-five minutes with the lunatic morning traffic, and it was a huge, sprawling medical compound full of squat gray buildings, misleading signs, maze-like drives, and cookie-cutter landscaping covered in drifts of snow. It was also slam packed. I skipped the emergency room, headed in the back way, and finally found the main building that housed the ICU units up on the third floor.
I walked briskly through the halls with a pleasant, business-like smile pasted on my face. It’s been my experience that as long as you walk like you know where you’re going and look business-like, you can get in damn near anywhere. It also helps if you cast a little charm, some simple glamour that makes you look familiar, like I had. I wasn’t impersonating anyone, I was just making it so that anyone who glanced at me would think I was someone they had seen here before, someone who should be here. Maybe I looked like someone’s secretary or middle manager from two floors down or something, nothing useful that might get accidentally dragged into a surgery to help out, just someone the workers had seen around. It was a handy and easy charm, not very strong, wouldn’t survive a direct confrontation with anyone, but useful in circumstances like these.
I located 405 easily enough, and found the room empty. Two janitors were cleaning and redressing the room for the next poor schmuck who needed it.
Well, crap. This was going to make things difficult. I chewed my lip, turning on my heel and heading for the nurse’s station. Now I was going to have to talk to people. So much for my handy little charm. I stood at the counter, holding on to my pleasant little smile, trying hard to look like I wasn’t here to kill anyone.
The nurse was a big, solid woman with her hair pulled back. She turned in her seat to look up at me. “Can I help you?”
“Yes, I was looking for the man in 405. Mitch Yulner?”
The nurse looked at me, blinked, and looked at me again. There went the charm. “They took him away already, honey, I’m sorry. Were you related?”
Ah, shit. He was already dead. I knew I wasn’t going to be able to fake any sort of sincere-looking sympathy. I’m no actress. “I’m a friend. I take it he’s . . . ah . . .”
“Yes ma’am. He passed on about an hour ago. I don’t suppose you can fill out any contact information, can you? We weren’t sure who to call. The police are looking for relatives –” She continued on, drawing out sheafs of forms as she talked.
I set my jaw, glanced around. No one was paying any attention. I checked the angle of the light, took a step to the side, and waved my hand past her face, letting my shadow glide over her. She blinked and shuddered, closing her eyes with a soft gasp. I turned and walked briskly away, leaving the nurse to sit there, blinking confusedly at the forms in her hands. I’d just stolen the last five minutes out of her head. You’re really not supposed to do that to commoners, but hey. I won’t tell if you don’t.
And now I needed to get to the morgue. If I had known he’d kick the bucket that quickly, I wouldn’t have bothered getting all dressed up. The shoes were killing my feet. Fortunately, he wouldn’t rise until after sundown, but I was still going to have to deal with taking his head, destroying it, and probably stealing the body as well. I was going to need some running time to get all that accomplished without getting caught. I tried to look on the bright side. At least I wasn’t going to have to try to kill a guy right in the ICU.
The body locker was in a different building, which meant a trip back outside, tromping down ice and snow slicked sidewalks in pumps, back to the car, through the mazes to the right building, more icy sidewalks, and finally back indoors. I was chilled by the time I found the basement morgue, feet aching, distracted with encroaching exhaustion, and not paying enough attention. I nearly stumbled right into trouble.
It was the voice that brought me up short. I recognized it immediately and ducked into a room. Can’t be, I thought, tucking my purse under my arm and carefully peeking around the door jamb. I heard an elderly woman’s voice saying, “Yes, Mitch is my grandson.” The voice was quavering, weepy, and I leaned a little further out to confirm my suspicions. Yes.
It was Mae Coriander.
What the hell. I ducked back into the room, dumbfounded. Mitch was definitely not Mae’s grandson. Guy wasn’t even from Detroit. He was from Alabama somewhere originally, whiter than me, and no friend of Mae’s at all. He tended to fall into the “just doing my job” category of Magi politics, stayed out of the infighting, did as he was told. It hadn’t made him any enemies on the council, but neither had it made him any friends.
I risked another peek. Mae was standing at the check-in counter, talking to a rather official-looking fellow, a chubby little bald guy in a suit jacket. He was going through some paper work, while Mae wept, dabbed her eyes, and signed things. This time I had leaned out a bit further, and I saw that there was a man with Mae. He was a bigger black guy, tall, wide-shouldered, stiff backed, wearing a black suit and slacks. He was turned a little to the side, so I could see the line of his jaw but not much of his face, and he was standing behind Mae, a hand on her shoulder, comforting.
After a few minutes of signing things and idle, comforting chatter, the little chubby guy led Mae and her companion further down the corridor. I took stock of the situation. This building was lit more dimly, more quietly, and the shadows lay a little thicker here than in the other hospital buildings. I rubbed my jaw thoughtfully and slipped around the corner of the door jamb, calling the shadows to me.
This was tricky. I stayed along the wall, pulling the shadows over and around me, letting myself settle into the darkness. I had to be very careful and delicate with this, because these shadows weren’t actually heavy enough to hide me. They drifted over me, gossamer thin, obscuring me from sight, but it was only going to take one wrong move to destroy the camouflage. I slipped my heels off and followed after Mae slowly, silently, carefully. I was a darker shadow moving with slow care, leaning back into doorways and staying behind corners as I followed them down the halls to the cold room.
There I was screwed. The cold storage was lit up like the Fourth of July, no place for me to hide, so I had to stay outside. There were windows in the doors, though, lucky me, so I stood to the side of the windows and watched as Mae and her companion waited. A minute or two passed with the two standing silently next to each other, and eventually a body cart was wheeled out.
What the hell were they doing? The little attendant, stayed with them, uncovering the body. Mae burst into a freshet of new tears, huddling into her friend’s shoulder. I could see just enough of the body’s face from my angle to see it was Mitch.
All right, this was just all too weird for me. Mae wasn’t a crying woman, I’d never seen the guy before that I could tell, and there was just no way they were passing Mitch off as Mae’s grandson. I lowered my guard and had a good Look.
Mitch’s body was rife with the revenancy curse, eating away at him like acid. It was a ugly black and toxic green sort of glow that writhed around the skin, pulsing inside him like fire. Mae radiated her own magic, calm and peaceful greens and blues, healing magic. There was a dull pulse of gray around her chest, though, where she’d been wearing a cameo.
Ah. An illusion charm. Okay, now I got it. I had no idea what the attendant might be seeing, but apparently it was someone who would pass for Mitch’s grandmother. That made more sense.
The man burned gold. I felt my brows wrinkle together as I stared at him. Gold wasn’t a color I was used to seeing in magic. Gold was the religious magic. You saw it most often in priests of the Order.
I shut my mouth, gaze riveted on the scene. No way, I thought. We didn’t have any mages in the city who practiced the religious kinds of magic, oddly enough. We had a lot of Arabs and Muslims, and you saw it among them a lot more often than with white people, and it would show up in the Eastern peoples, Hindus, Buddhists, occasionally, but we didn’t have any of their practitioners. That I knew of, the only people in Detroit practicing religious magics were the priests of the Order.
But what in the hell would Mae being doing here with one of them? Irish was going to have a fit when I told him about this. He’d never believe me.
The man put on a purple stole, got some stuff out of a little bag he was carrying, and proceeded to do what I assumed was Last Rites on the corpse. There was magic all over his every action, bright, blazing gold magic, and I stood there and watched with my jaw hanging open as he dispelled all that toxic green and black in Mitch’s corpse. It was a fight for him, he had to drive the curse out, battling it every inch of the way. It didn’t look like much from the outside, just some old priest doing Last Rites on a corpse, if that’s what they call it when they aren’t doing it to a live person, but to look at the magic, I could see it was a hell of an effort. That curse didn’t want to let go.
He got it though. I was amazed. I didn’t even know you could do such a thing. I was so impressed, in fact, that Mae and the priest damn near caught me watching as they turned around. I dove back out of sight in the nick of time, grabbing shadows up to myself as they came towards the door. They walked right past me without a glance, and I saw that the man was, in fact, wearing a white collar. He looked tired, worn out with the effort, an older black man with a sternly lined face, strong jaw, deep, dark eyes, and Mae, walking out beside him. They passed two feet from me as I stood stock still and held my breath, shadows laying over me in the corner.
They walked down the hall, Mae on the priest’s arm, carrying on with their little charade. They turned the corner and were out of sight, and after a moment, I let out a long sigh, leaning back against the wall. Well, of all the things I expected to have to deal with this morning, that certainly hadn’t even made the list. I waited a bit, dying for a cigarette, then put my heels back on and stepped out of the shadows, slapping my little familiarity spell back in place and hustling out of the morgue.
I made it back to my car and sat there, smoking as the car warmed up, mind racing. I was screwed. Damien would mention to someone, perhaps even the Magi themselves, that he’d sent me down to the hospital to dispatch Mitch. If I called him and told him to keep his mouth shut, he’d want to know why, and I wasn’t sure if I should tell him. I cussed the car an irritated blue streak and pulled out of the parking lot. I had other stops to make today. With a little luck, Drake would be home. He was on the Magi. Maybe he’d be able to help.
Ian Drake lived in Royal Oak, which wasn’t all that far from St. Anne’s, maybe twenty or thirty minutes under normal conditions. The roads were still sloppy wet and slushy, though, and traffic was a bear. I’ve lived my whole life in Michigan, and you know, it snows every year, and for quite a bit of the year at that, and still, without fail, people forget how to drive after bad weather. Put a little slush on the pavement, and folks lose their minds.
I arrived at Drake’s house safely enough, although there were a few near misses at the stop lights. Drake lived in a gorgeously-tended two story Victorian thing with hunter green siding and white trim, and a real turret out front. He’d had it added several years ago. It was a sitting room on the first floor, and a really nice library on the second. As with most mages, his work room was in the basement. Basements are good for work rooms. You want to put that sort of thing underground if you can, in case there’s an explosion. Also, being surrounded by Earth makes for good grounding, no pun intended, and that makes it easier to avoid said explosions.
I found him in his work room. I’d let myself in. I still had a key from back when I’d lived here. I knew the house well. I’d grown up here. Drake had been my first and probably best teacher, but he’d also served as a foster father to me, or as much of one as I’d needed. I hadn’t needed much by way of parents. I’d been a weird kid.
Still, all said and done, Drake had brought me up well enough. I’d certainly never lacked for anything – Drake was filthy rich, family money, old money, and it showed in every feature of his tasteful home, even down here in the work room.
The floor was tiled, and his circle was built right into the tiles, rich gray marble meeting up with the iron ring, dappled in opal and topaz all around in complex patterns. The inside of the circle was rough tan terra cotta, all the better for sketching in whatever runes and siguls Drake might want for a given spell. It was all very earthy and solid feeling. Drake favored Earth magics, and it had been him, back in the day, who had summoned the Earth elementals that guarded Owen’s archives.
The circle took up most of the west half of the basement. The east half was a work shop very similar, but much better appointed, to mine. Drake was a better alchemist than artificer, but he dabbled in small artifacts and talismans occasionally, as a hobby. He favored bits of protective jewelry. He was very good at broaches and pins, cuff links, that kind of thing. I’d picked up the jewelry from him, but I tended toward bigger pieces that packed an offensive-style punch. I’d learned ammunition and other tricks on my own. I think Drake had hoped that I would turn out to be a magesmith, because we really needed one, but I grew up too skinny to be a good smith. I just didn’t have the upper body strength for it. Not too surprising, really. All the best smiths were men. Smithing was a male kind of magic, mostly.
“My dear.” Drake left his work bench, approaching to take my hands and kiss my cheek. I returned the familial peck. “I’m glad to see you safe.”
Drake was taller than me, slender, a trim, wiry old man in his eighties with a full head of thick, iron gray hair, a narrow, sharp face, dark, deep set eyes, and a tidy little iron gray mustache. There was nothing frail-looking about him at all, although there was a certain essence of the archtypical mad doctor, especially since he was wearing his lab coat. It was a plain white coat, hanging open over his gray suit slacks and white shirt. It was noon, and he was home by himself, and still had dressed to the point of a burgundy tie with a tasteful silver tie tack. I was a little pleased to see the tack. It was one of the first pieces I’d ever done. The magics I’d put into it years ago had long since worn out, replaced by his own charms, but it was still nice to see him using the old thing.
“Safe and reasonably sound.” I answered, stepping back and looking around. Drake had been working at his bench on some little gold piece, but his circle was powered, pulsing in time with his heart. In the middle of the circle was a plain wooden box, golden oak, with a glossy finish and gold hinges. It was closed, and radiated malevolence. “What is that?” I gestured at it.
He turned to look at it with an irritated frown. “It seems to be a bomb. That’s why I called. I was rather hoping you could disarm it for me.” He was also a native Michigander, but there was a British flavor to his reedy voice. It wasn’t an accent, but the careful precision in the way he spoke gave him an educated, English sound.
I blinked, lifting my brows. “A bomb?”
“Indeed. Magecraft, of course. I’m not certain what it’s meant to do.”
I looked at him. For Drake to be uncertain meant it was some damn good work, and I had no idea what he thought I could do about it.
Oh, wait. Yes I did. I sighed. “Who sent it?”
He lifted his shoulders in an elegant shrug. “It was on my steps this morning. I’m assuming it’s a gift from Mr. deBourbon’s mages, but that’s a guess.”
“Did it come with anything? A card or a letter or something?”
“No. Just the box, I’m afraid.”
I looked from the box, to him, back to the box. “Did they think you’d be dumb enough to just open it?”
He tsked. “Apparently so.”
“Sloppy.”
“Yes. Very. It was rather well cloaked, though, I’ll give them that. I didn’t notice it was magical in nature until I had taken it inside my wards. They stripped the cloaking from it. It was a bit alarming.” He studied the box with his narrow, steely gaze. “I’ve called the other Magi to warn them.”
“Anyone else gotten any presents?”
“Thus far, no.”
I pursed my lips, setting my hands on my hips as I glared at the box. Drake turned to look at me. “Did you care for coffee? Tea? Have you had any lunch?” He gestured at the box. “It’s quite well contained at the moment, it can wait.”
“I’m good, thanks.”
“Where have you been? You seem . . .” he paused with distinct tact, looking me up and down “. . . rather formal today.”
What can I say? I’m a jeans and t-shirt kind of gal, despite Drake’s best efforts. “I was at the hospital. Mitch Yulner was killed last night. Tried to tackle a nest of rats on his own, got infected. Passerby took him to the hospital.”
“Oh, my. You . . . took care of him?” He paled some, a tired sorrow settling into his eyes.
“Uh, no, actually. Part of why I came right over. Mae was there.” I glanced around, setting my jaw. There weren’t many places in Detroit that were safer from spying than Drake’s work room, and with me here, it would be practically impossible to listen in using magical means. The nature of my magic makes it incredibly difficult to scry on me. Still, I was a little uneasy to discuss it out in the open. “Incredibly difficult” is not “impossible”, and “safe” is not the same as “impervious”. “She was there with a Catholic priest.”
Silence settled over the work room, and the sorrow in Drake’s eyes was replaced with some worry. “Alice — ?”
I nodded. “I Saw what he did. Some magical thing, drove the curse out of the body. Looked like Last Rights, but you know.” I shrugged. What I know about religion could be fit on a very small piece of paper. In large writing.
Drake paused for a long moment, worry ticking over to intense thought. “Was he – you aren’t trying to say the priest was Order, are you?”
“Well, you tell me. How many other Catholic priests do we have in the city practicing clerical magics?”
He set his mouth in a thin, hard line. “That’s quite impossible, my dear.”
I snorted. “There’s no such thing as impossible.” I gave him an arch look. “I’m quoting, there, Ian.”
Drake cleared his throat, stern. “It’s certainly nearly so, for a priest of the Order to be working with any sort of mage.”
As impossible as one of their best knights working with me? I kept this to myself, though. I trusted Drake a little farther than I trusted most other people, but not enough to tip my whole hand to him. I didn’t trust anyone that much. Instead, I only shrugged. “I saw what I saw, Ian.”
“Perhaps he was only impersonating a priest.”
“Clerical magic. Gold. I saw it for myself. If he’s not a priest of the Order, then we’ve got an unknown mage in Detroit. Either way, I’m not happy about it.” I crossed my arms. Detroit laws were pretty clear and well known. You come into our city, you damn well better introduce yourself. Some places weren’t that picky, but those places weren’t in as much trouble as Detroit was. “Mae let him in, and didn’t tell anyone else, apparently.”
“There may be a perfectly reasonable explanation for it, Alice. Perhaps she knows him, and asked his aid. If she didn’t know you were coming to deal with the body, she may have taken matters into her own hands. This is Mae we’re talking about.”
I arced an eyebrow at him. “You know she ordered me to kill the Irishman?”
He froze. “She most certainly did not.”
“She sure did. Four days ago, and I was at her place this morning, getting my ass chewed for not having it done yet.”
Now he stared at me, amazed. “Why on Earth would Mae do that? Now, of all times? What have the knights to do with anything we face at the moment?”
“You tell me. I know they’re denying the existence of pack revenants, and not sending their knights out after them. And, they aren’t doing anything about Salazar, either.”
“How do you know all that?” His eyes darkened consideringly.
“It’s my job to know.”
He studied me. “What are you up to, Alice?”
I rolled my eyes. “Same thing I’m always up to, Ian. Keeping my eye on my city.”
“Alice . . .” He shook his head, turning away. He waved a hand dismissively. “Deal with the bomb, please.”
See? Now he was mad at me. I rolled my eyes, stepping up to the circle. “Want to let me in to this thing?”
He turned back, stared at the circle a moment, and it let me in just like that. That’s some very fine work, there. I’d have had to power it down and redo the whole thing. I stepped in, and it snapped shut behind me. I walked up to the box. It sat there, doing exactly nothing. It did nothing very malevolently.
I looked up, around. “Can I get some of these lights out?” Drake kept his work shop very well lit. Good for him, I supposed, but it didn’t do much for me.
Drake went to the wall switches, clicked them, and the room was plunged into darkness. I watched his gray and white form move across to the work benches, where he flicked on a few lamps. Back light. Perfect.
I turned back to the box, my shadow streaming out in front of me. I put my hands on my hips, and my shadow wrapped her hands around the box, gentle, questing at the hinges and the seam between the top and bottom. She bent around the box, peeling up from the floor to prod at it. I frowned. She slipped her fingers over the box, stroking it, leaning to lick at it, and the box rocked as she smacked it.
She looked up at me, hands on the box, long spidery fingers curled around it. She was only a flat, two dimensional thing, no features, only my shadow, but I sensed her irritation. I squinted at the box and lowered my guard, Looking at it. “Um. Got a problem.”
“Yes?”
“It’s warded against me.”
There was a silence behind me. Then, finally, in a tense voice, “Come out of there, my dear.”
I turned as my shadow flopped back down on the ground and lay flat, and Drake let me out of the circle. Power rushed behind me, closing it again quickly.
He stood staring at me for a moment. “I apologize. I’ve just done something quite stupid.”
“That box was meant for me, not you.” If I had actually laid my own hands on the thing, tried to open it myself . . . I shook my head. Good thing I’m the cautious, suspicious sort. That, and the fact that whoever sent the box apparently didn’t know how abyssal mages worked.
“So it seems.” He paused, and I watched the thoughts turning over in his dark eyes. “When did you eat last?”
The abrupt change in topic caught me by surprise. I blanked. “Um, yesterday? Day before?”
“Been quite busy the last few days, haven’t you?”
“Well, yeah, rats and all . . .”
“You’re entirely too thin, my dear. Come upstairs and eat.” He caught me by the elbow, gently, and guided me up the stairs. “Gene’s made lunch by now, I’m sure.”
I felt my face twist into a pucker of distaste. “I can get my own lunch, Ian. Really.”
“You’re too squeamish. Gene’s a fine cook.”
I paused in the kitchen. There was a spread laid out on the table, now, and Gene was behind the counter. “He’s a dead body, Ian. It can’t be sanitary.” Gene stood there, quite gray skinned, eyes milky white and dusty, a wispy fringe of hair circling head, comb-over still neatly in place as it had been in life. He still wore his little glasses, perched on the end of his nose as they always had been, and was dressed in a very lawyerly-looking black suit. Over the suit, he had an apron with purple and green psychedelic flowers all over it. My foster-father’s sense of humor at work. Gene’s mouth was stitched shut. He grunted at us.
“Nonsense. He’s quite clean. I dusted him myself this morning.”
“Missed his eyes.”
“He blinked.”
I sighed. I wasn’t going to win this debate. I never had. Gene waved at me, grimaced a smile around his stitches. He remained fond of me, despite that I’d killed him twelve or so years ago. Well, I was annoyed. We’d had a deal. He wanted a cute young wife, I wanted my college paid for. He was eighteen years older than me, and not a bad man, but he’d had a wandering eye, and wanted to divorce me for some other gal. I didn’t have a problem with him seeing the other gal on the side, and said so, but the pre-nup specifically said that divorce meant he wouldn’t be paying for my college anymore. I’d lived up to my end of the bargain, and was pretty irritated with the fact that he didn’t want to live up to his. So, he died up to his. The life insurance put me through college and bought my warehouse.
I didn’t make him a zombie. Drake did that. He’d been annoyed that Gene was cheating on me. I’ve explained over and over that I didn’t care, but if there’s one thing Drake does well, it’s grudges.
Yeah, yeah, I know what you’re thinking, but zombies aren’t necromancy. Any mage with sufficient power can get a body to stand back up, if they want to put in the time and effort, and piddle around with the necessary herbs and potions and so forth. Bodies are just meat, and there’s nothing special about meat. Zombies aren’t overly useful, either, so no one really makes a lot of them. You can train them to do some things, but they’re slow, stupid, and not very strong, and it takes more time and more effort to keep them fresh and ambulatory. And, of course, some asshole will inevitably come along and ruin them by spilling salt on them. Then they just fall right apart.
Of course, Drake’s an old man. He has to watch his salt anyway. And damn, does the man hold a grudge. You see why I keep on his good side.
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