by Megan Derr
He could feel magic—a ward placed hastily, impatiently, so sloppy it was like trying to untangle a mess of cords that had been balled up and shoved into a pocket. That made the magic more dangerous than if the spell been cast properly. Drawing back, Jackie pulled out his chalk and began to draw quickly, but carefully on the door. The spell circle took him near to twenty minutes, and he half-wanted to punch the bastard inside for such sloppy, dangerous work. Magic should never be done carelessly, but fools never learned until it was too late.
When the circle was done and tripled checked, he placed his hand on it and spoke the activating mark, stealing the poorly cast wards and turning them into a cage. It had become one of his favorite tricks over the years, one of the more useful spells he had created while mastering and constantly refining his skills with binding magic. Might not be a glamorous specialty, but it was damned useful.
Only seconds after he cast the spell, the door was yanked open by an angry baby-face of a young man.
"You Steve?"
"What in the fucking hell, man?"
Jackie planted a hand on his chest and gently pushed him back into the apartment. "Come to have a word with you, son. There's a lady by the name of Roxie who would appreciate if you'd stop harassing her."
"I haven't done anything!" Steve said hotly. "Who cares anyway, that dumb—" he broke off, eyes following the way Jackie's right hand was resting lightly on the butt of a revolver. His expression turned curious, then calculating. "Hey, I know those guns."
"And you'll be getting up right close and personal with them if you don't stop bothering the lady," Jackie replied. "Where's the club of hearts, son?"
"Go fuck yourself."
Jackie sighed before he grabbed the fool by his hair and yanked hard, turned him around, wrapped an arm around his neck, and pressed the end of his revolver against Steven's temple. "Now I'll ask you again: where is the club of hearts?"
"On the table," Steven said bitterly. "The whore deserves it."
"No one deserves to be cursed like that. And there ain't nothing wrong with whores, so don't use'em as an insult." Jackie holstered his pistol and let Steve go, shoving him down onto the couch. Striding over to the table, he scooped up the envelope that was the only thing on it and pulled out the note and card that were inside it. Pulling out a piece of chalk, he drew a quick circle on the table and set everything in the middle of it, then intoned the activating words. He watched as it all caught fire, not moving until it was burned and gone.
He caught the sound of movement and ducked a split second before something heavy came crashing down on his head. Jackie threw himself out of the way, then turned, rose, drew and shot. Steve dropped where he stood. Jackie grimaced at the marble statue that had almost put an unsightly dent in his head. Holstering his weapon, he strode over and knelt by Steve, cupping his chin to turn his head from side to side and make sure the damn fool hadn't made himself dumber in the fall. His skin rippled where the spell from the rune bullet spread out, rendering Steve's magic effectively useless for at least twenty-four hours, up to as much as seventy-two if he wasn't very resistant to such things.
The spell on the door would keep him sealed up a couple of days. Jackie would send word to Brennus to keep an eye on him, but really that should be that. Steven would run off and lick his wounds and tell everyone who would listen how he kicked the ass of some sorcerer with guns he didn't know how to use.
Mouth quirking, Jackie found a clear space to draw a spell circle and quickly made his way home.
Not that the word 'home' really suited. He wasn't sure where to find home, anymore. It wasn't his old house and it wasn't the strip club. But, hell, it wasn't the worse place to hang his hat, not by half. Hopefully he'd be fairly well settled before morning and be able to get the unpacking done throughout the week. Assuming driving there didn't take too long, though only the weather would keep him from making good time.
Leaving his hat, duster, and the contents of his pockets in the bedroom, he started loading up everything he could in the pick-up. The rest of it he'd have to work on a spell to transfer, but he was too damned tired for that kind of work. It'd keep 'til morning.
By the time he was done packing and cleaning it was well into early evening and his stomach was growling something fierce. Digging out the chicken, potatoes, and green beans he hadn't eaten the night before, he threw it all in the oven to warm up and went to get a shower.
When he was clean again, he pulled on sweatpants and headed for the kitchen—but paused as a thought struck him and went back for Robin's little book. Carrying it with him to the kitchen, he got dinner piled on a plate and grabbed a beer from the fridge.
Forking up a pile of green beans, he opened the book with his free hand and started skimming passages. He read over the account of Robin rescuing the woman again, then flipped to the next, words leaping out at him: Black. Draugr. Phoenix.
Well, hell. Taking a bite of fried chicken, he wiped his fingers on a napkin and then picked the book up to be better able to read the faded handwriting.
Went back to Corrigan House tonight to see if I could save anyone else and end that bastard Corrigan once and for all. Upon my arrival, however, I found he was already dead. I later heard rumors that Black was responsible for it. Unfortunately, I also found that a great many of his previous victims had risen as draugr. I do wish Black had stayed around long enough to attend them, but I'm sure he had his reasons for leaving with such haste. There was an alarming number of them, so many, so much suffering, I was in tears for them. I was severely outmatched in strength, and feared those draugr would be the end of me. I was saved by a vampire, of all things, a necromancer by the name of Phoenix Fairchild. Beautiful, of course, even by vampire standards. Oddly humble for a vampire, especially for one who is such a fine necromancer. We took care of the draugr and burned the whole mess until the wind barely had any ash left to carry away.
I hope our paths cross again someday, and Godspeed to him. I'm taking the woman west to some folks there I think will be able to help her more than I can.
Phoenix Fairchild … Jackie knew that name, though it was a dusty one. Last he heard, no one had seen Fairchild for at least a century. He'd last been rumored to be in the continental United States, which seemed to be confirmed by the journal entry, but that was still a whole lot of ground to cover.
At least he had a starting point. If Phoenix had known Robin that long, he might know something useful. The murder could be the result of something recent, but Jackie doubted it. Where abnormals were concerned, it was always the old grudges that did the killing.
Closing the book, he set it aside to finish eating. He could finish packing, catch a few hours of sleep, and be well on the road before the sun cleared the horizon.
Part 03: A Good Run of Bad Luck
It took him near to two months to find any real clue as to where Phoenix Fairchild might be hiding. If his latest lead died out, Jackie was going to cut his losses and move along to hunting out a different lead.
At least hunting reclusive vampires had kept his mind off the holidays and the fact he'd had to spend them alone again.
Stifling a sigh, Jackie pushed into the pawn shop that was his latest lead. He didn't remove his hat as he headed for the counter and rang the bell to bring someone from the back.
Something about the place just didn't sit right. It was too quiet, and there was a residue of bad magic over everything, slick as oil and twice as black.
He frowned when no one came, that feeling of wrongness growing. "Hello?" he called. When he still got no answer, he muttered, "Damn it all," and leapt neatly over the counter, pushing through the ropes of beads that hung in the doorway.
Magic rolled over him, broken and sputtering, making his stomach churn. As he moved past it he was hit by the stench of blood—the stench of death. Of course. Sighing, Jackie forged on through one hell of a mess of a backroom until he came to the place where it was clear a fight had gone down hard.
Ri
ght in the middle of it was a big guy beat all to hell and back, and it was clear from the angle of his neck, never mind the smell of him, that he wouldn't be getting up for another round. Crouching down beside the body, Jackie fished out the guy's wallet. Earl Winshaw—well at least it wasn't the guy Jackie was hunting, though it looked like that fella might be a killer. Lord, he hoped not, that would put him right back at square one.
Sighing again, Jackie rose to his feet and pondered what to do next. His foot struck glass and he looked down to see an empty pint of whiskey. Strange, he hadn't smelled alcohol anywhere. If it was on the corpse at all, he wasn't getting any closer to investigate. Damn it all to hell, couldn't one thing go his way? He was damned tired of looking for answers and only finding bodies.
Turning around he headed back toward the front—and froze when he heard someone ring the bell on the counter. After a moment, a voice called, "Come on, Earl! You said come by at three. I swear to god, if you're drunk again I'm going to drop a heavy object on your stupid fucking head!"
Something about the voice was familiar. Frowning thoughtfully, Jackie resumed heading for the front, moving as silently as he knew how. Through the beads, standing back well enough not to be seen himself, he couldn't really see much of anything.
"Damn it, Earl!" the voice bellowed, and then the guy vaulted over the counter and burst through—
Wyatt froze when he saw Jackie, and hell if Jackie couldn't do much but stare back for a moment. Kid had a knack for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. "Tarnation, boy. Why do I keep tripping over you?"
"Um. I don't know. Why are you here? Have you seen Earl?"
"Ayah, but you ain't gonna like the state of him. He lost a fight but good and got his neck snapped. Don't suppose you know who would want him dead?"
Wyatt's mouth twisted with a bitterness that stretched way too far past his years. "The easy answer to that question is 'everyone'. He's a bastard, but he's also a damned good resource for certain kinds of odds and ends, good enough it keeps him alive—until now, anyway. It was pretty inevitable he'd eventually piss someone off to the point they preferred him dead. Were you hoping to talk to him?"
"Nope, I'm looking for someone else. If I were you, I'd get gone."
"I came to pick something up and I'm going to get it," Wyatt said and shoved past him.
Jackie reached out and grabbed his arm. "He's dead, been that way long enough he ain't a pretty sight."
Wyatt rolled his eyes. "I can handle a dead body, and I'm not leaving until I get what I came for. Let me go." He tried to glare, but it was hard to take such a baby-face seriously. Kids. Flushing, Wyatt dropped his gaze and stopped trying to struggle free.
Sighing, Jackie let him go. "What's so all fire important, kid?"
"I'm not a kid," Wyatt said hotly.
Jackie snorted at that. "What are you here to fetch?"
"None of your business," Wyatt snapped and stormed off toward the back.
For a second, Jackie was half-tempted to leave. He had better things to do and had already lost enough time as it was—but a man was dead and Wyatt was young, stupid, and hell-bent on finding trouble. Damn it all. He just knew he was going to be walking into a world of trouble he wanted nothing to do with, but he turned on his heel and followed after the fool anyway.
Whatever he'd expected, it wasn't to see Wyatt crouched in front of an old-fashioned safe expertly chalking marks on it. Jackie hung back and watched, fascinated. The boy wrote runes like an expert, but Jackie would lay everything he possessed Wyatt wasn't a witch or a sorcerer.
But that left alchemist, which might be worse. No one got into trouble better than an alchemist. It was the nature of their talents to bend rules, push limits, find or create ways around magic. Unfortunately, that made them prone to doing the same damn thing in every other aspect of their lives. Jackie hadn't ever met an alchemist who wasn't close on the heels of trouble.
After he finished chalking the symbols, Wyatt reached into the leather satchel he had slung over one shoulder and, to Jackie's surprise, drew out a tiny spray bottle, the kind that came in travel packs. His mama had kept one full of healing potion in her bag for as long as he could remember.
He watched as Wyatt sprayed the locking mechanism of the safe then muttered softly to himself. The runes shimmered, flashed, and vanished—and took the entire damn mechanism with'em. Jackie whistled, impressed despite himself. Wyatt whipped around and tried to stand at the same time—and wound up tripping on his own feet, tipping backwards to crash into a stack of books near the safe and causing a bunch of junk on the shelves above to come tumbling down on top of him.
"Aw, hell," Jackie said, wincing. He strode across the small space and helped dig Wyatt out, throwing aside all manner of junk, hauling him to his feet and brushing at the dust and muck all over his clothes. "I'm sorry, kid. Didn't mean to startle you like that."
Wyatt shrugged. "It's fine. Trust me, I would have just done it all by myself anyway." Pushing away from Jackie, face so red Jackie was almost concerned, Wyatt opened the safe and began rifling through everything inside it. He pulled out item after item—jewelry, books, papers, boxes, and cast all of it aside, swearing softly as he kept failing to find whatever it was he was after. Eventually he reached in and came out with a black velvet box. He opened it and crowed at whatever was inside. "Finally."
Jackie didn't know what he'd expected, but it sure wasn't the pocket watch that Wyatt displayed with so much pleasure and pride he was all but vibrating in place. "Isn't it beautiful?"
"Surely," Jackie drawled. "Prefer a wrist watch myself, but whatever your druther."
Wyatt gave him the kind of withering look that was the sole provenance of a young'in regarding his elders whilst wondering how they were still alive. "It's not just a watch."
Jackie snorted. "You don't say."
"Ugh," Wyatt said. "Stop being a smart ass."
"No, I don't think I will. What's makes your not-a-watch so special, then?"
Wyatt opened it and Jackie immediately saw what the fuss was all about. It wasn't a watch at all: it was a spell circle, but with each level of it a different piece, so there were five circles to spin about in total. Each of those circles was comprised of little blocks on which runes were carved, and all of those could be spun individually, a different rune on every side of each block. It allowed for hundreds—maybe thousands—of different combinations.
It didn't take but a glance to see the damned thing was a transport spell, all the movable pieces making it possible to transport anywhere in the world. His head hurt trying to calculate so many variations, but some crazy fool had reduced it all to a watch. Alchemists. He'd argue they were the most dangerous ones about, the notions that got into their heads that they actually drug out and made real. Half the problems faced by abnormals could be traced back to some fool alchemist that got bored one day. "I'll be damned."
"Isn't it beautiful?" Wyatt asked again, and hell if he didn't look like a kid who'd woken to find Santa had brought him everything he'd ever wanted and then some. "I've been trying to find it for years—"
Jackie couldn't help but laugh at that. "Years, kid? You ain't even that old. How can you be looking for anything for years?"
"Six years is still years," Wyatt replied hotly. "And I'm twenty-one. I'm not a kid so stop calling me one."
"Uh-huh."
Wyatt made a face at him and tucked the watch away. "So why are you here? Who are you looking for?"
Jackie considered telling him to mind his own business, but hell if the boy didn't seem like a regular fixture about the place. If Jackie could spare himself a few hours of hoofing it about the city by asking a couple of questions, well he'd be a fool not. "His partner, Trent Holloway."
To his surprise, Wyatt laughed—derisively. "Trent isn't his partner, not really. Trent's mother owns the store, but she's one of those extreme old-fashioned types who doesn't think a lady should dirty her hands with business. She married Earl about ten years ago
and wanted her new husband and her son to learn to get along."
"I'm guessing her plan didn't work so well?"
"Earl was like eighty years old."
Jackie shot him a warning look. "Ain't nothing wrong with being eighty."
Casting him a look that said 'no, shit,' Wyatt replied, "Trent is a hundred and thirteen. His mom is nearly two hundred."
"Ah," Jackie said. "I can see where that might could cause a bit of tension. Just how bad was it?"
Wyatt looked at the body and it sent chills down Jackie's spine how calmly he looked at it—no one that young should be that at ease around death. "About that bad, actually. But not for the reasons you might think. I mean, yeah, Trent hates that his stepfather is younger than him, but come on, age is easier to deal with than that when it comes to abnormals. Trent once dated an imp that was three times his age. Whatever. No, he hates Earl because the bastard was an abusive, cheating fuckhead who deserved a lot worse than a snapped neck."
Jackie's brows rose. "Simmer down now, hoss. The man's dead. He ain't gonna be hurting no one anymore."
"You never saw the way she looked, and I told you—she's old-fashioned. Not the kind to run away, especially when she can't manage living on her own and won't let her son take care of her because she wants him to do other things. How can people be so old but so dumb?"
"There ain't enough hours in creation to answer that question," Jackie said. "Why don't you tell me why you're so het up over a problem that ain't yours?"
"Trent's always been nice to me and his mother is really sweet and always kind of sad, you know? I hope with Earl dead she finds someone who will actually make her happy."
Jackie nodded. "Know where I can find Trent?"
"If he did this, he's long gone. Judging by the bottle and the state of this place, he probably wants everyone to think—or at least be willing to say—that Earl got drunk and did something stupid. It would only be the thousandth time. Why do you need Trent, anyway? Need something translated? I'm not quite as good, but—"
