by Chris Lowry
Copyright 2018
Grand Ozarks Media
All Rights Reserved
WITCHMAS DAY
"Is there where we're supposed to be?"
The Gnome shrugged.
"It's where I was told to drop you."
"I'm glad he didn't take it literally."
"Me too," I answered Elvis.
"You too what?" the gnome asked.
"I'm glad you didn't take it literally," I told him.
Gnomes were practiced at the art of deception and if I tried to hide something from him, even as innocuous as this, he'd worry on it like a puppy with a bone, and that curiosity would turn him into a stalker until he found out.
"I almost did," he said. "But I wasn't sure if you could fly."
There were no known instances of wizards who could fly. There were hundreds of cases where wizards attempted a flight spell. None of them were successful thus far.
They could use brooms. They could ensorcell cars, and rugs, and I had even seen a bicycle. But so far there were zero success stories of magic men or women who could soar with the eagles.
I suppose technically they could, if you counted falling as soaring.
"What if you teleported?" Elvis asked and put a finger on his chin.
"In air?"
He tapped his long ghostly fingers, shaking the fringe on the white karate jumpsuit and making the sequins sparkle in the sunlight. Ghosts were less visible in the daytime, but that didn't stop Elvis's ghostly remnant from defying the known laws of magic.
"If you could control your thoughts on the way down, push back the panic and concentrate, theoretically you could poof just before you hit and roll with it."
I had to think about that one.
First, falling is scary. It's our ancestral human nature from when we lived in tress and falling meant pain, or death. That startle reflex is hard to overcome.
Skydivers do it.
There are military men with thousands of recorded jumps, so I knew it could be done.
But they had a thin polyester cloth to stop them from plummeting to their death and smacking into the ground, turning their bones into razor sharp slivers that sliced through arteries and veins.
Blunt force trauma ain't pretty.
I've seen people smashed with a Troll hammer, and trust me, squished is gross.
Which is how most wizards ended up when they tried to fly.
"It's been tried," I told him.
I was unsure if that was true, and he rolled his eyes around searching what was left of his memory to see if I was right.
Then he shrugged.
So did the gnome.
The little man stuck out his tiny hand.
"I've got to get going Marshal. Guess you do too."
I looked around at the flat expanse of sand covered scrub where he had deposited us.
"Do you know something I don't?"
"Booby," he said in a Yiddish accent. "I know lots of things you don't."
He hopped into the back seat of the bi-plane and cranked the propeller. The rear end swung around, the engine screamed to a high pitched roar and he shot into the sky after just a few bounces down the runway.
It took a moment for the plane to balance and settle, but he righted it and puttered toward the horizon back the way we had flown.
"What a weird little man," Elvis said into my ear.
I could swear the gnome tossed up a middle finger we could see from here.
CHAPTER
"You know which way to go?" Elvis asked.
I glanced around.
We could have been in the middle of nowhere, except it had to be somewhere. Southwest, I was sure. Near Vegas because that's where I needed to be.
But the flat scrub and wash pan desert was empty as far as I could see.
"How high can you float?"
Elvis nodded like an idea just occurred to him.
"I could float up and take a look."
"Do that," I smirked.
I watched him lift up into the air roughly twelve feet. Add his six foot ghost frame too it, and Elvis was eighteen feet higher than me.
"What do you see?" I called up to him.
"Desert," he yelled down.
"Totally worth it."
He spun around and fell back to float next to me.
"Here she comes, driving down the street," he sang.
"That's me giving you the funniest look," I said. "There's no street."
But I saw the plume he was referring too.
Something was incoming and by the rooster tail of dust it threw up, whatever it was, it was blazing.
She arrived in a cloud of dust that refused to settle on her mode of transportation. A cherry red glossy '74 Caddy Droptop from a time when size was synonymous with luxury. The paint almost glowed under the blazing sun, chrome flashing like Morse code flare signals.
The beige interior was immaculate, oversized plus seats in a minimalist style.
The driver surprised me.
She was four foot eleven, jet black hair and Jackie Onassis shades that hid three quarters of her face. She gripped the thick wheel with tiny hands at ten and two and looked over at me as the dust cloud parted to blow past her and the Caddy before settling to the ground.
"Aren't you a little tall to be a gnome?" I asked.
"Aren't you a little short to be a stormtrooper?" she snapped back.
I liked her.
She lowered the glasses to give me a once over, almond shaped eyes squinting under the daytime glare.
"You're the Marshal?"
She said it like she didn't believe it.
I shifted my useless leather bomber aside to show her the badge.
"I like your hat," she smiled, brilliant white teeth against naturally darker skin. I noticed her canines were a little larger than the rest and pointed.
"Thanks," I adjusted the Stetson I'd adopted from my western counterpart.
He'd been wearing it when the demon monster I'd created killed him, his blood crusting some of the top of the hat. I hadn't decided if I was going to clean it yet, or wear it as is for penance.
"Are you going to get in or bake out there all day?"
I scooted around the back of the Caddy, drinking in the appearance and appreciating it.
I had an old pick up truck myself, on the verge of being considered a classic if it wasn't for the dents, dings and shoddy paint job holding it together.
This machine was a work of art. Nineteen feet from trunk to grill and seven feet wide. It didn't command respect on the road so much as it earned it through sheer size and attitude.
The passenger seat was as plush and comfy as it looked. I settled in and buckled up with a lap belt.
"Kiko," she introduced herself.
The glasses were back, hiding her eyes, and her arms and legs were covered with fabric. Only the skin on her hands and a crescent shaped portion of her face was visible to the sunlight.
Made me wonder a few things about my new companion.
"You know you're not supposed to take rides from strangers," she quipped and dropped the car in gear.
Watching her drive was an exercise in itself. She had to sit on the edge of the seat to reach the gas and brake and hanging onto the oversized steering wheel was like watching a kid swing on the monkey bars.
I couldn't relax if I had a spell to make it happen.
The only spell I could keep on deck was a poof one to move me out of the way if she decided to cross into oncoming traffic.
Lucky for us, there was none.
"I don't take candy from strangers," I said after a moment of watching her on the wheel. "Hitchhiking is acceptable."
"Knu sent me," she turned to face me.
I pointed at the road whe
n she kept looking a little too long for comfort.
Knu was a gnome I knew in New Orleans, a medium who spoke with ghosts, and also one of the most powerful magic users I'd met. She knew the Judge, and wasn't afraid to curse him, which told me something about her level of magic.
Nobody messed with the Judge.
Gnomes were creatures of Fae, left in this world when the ways were sundered. I had recently learned they were cousins of sorts with leprechauns, pixies and most of the other wee folk of myth and legend. Knu was my teacher in that regard.
She taught me by doing some sort of Vulcan mind meld that showed me her past.
She kept a lot from me though.
Like how she knew I was headed for Vegas.
And how she had a friend ready to offer a ride.
I rolled it around in my head.
The Judge had popped me up on a riverbank in NOLA after I returned with a dead witch’s body, the first I was tasked to track down. Instead of poofing me to the place where the next fight was, he returned me to the Big Easy, and a pilot buddy of Knu's showed up to fly us Northwest.
Now Kiko.
The not Gnome.
"Leprechaun?" I asked.
"Please, do I look Irish?"
"No," I snorted. "The Japanese do not look Irish."
"At least you can tell that much," she snorted back. "Most of you guys just guess."
I racked my brain for tales of little folk from the volcanic chain in the land of the rising sun but came up short.
"Pixie?"
"Do I look vacuous?"
"Nope. You look Japanese."
She barked out a laugh.
"You want to tell me where we're going since you won't say what you are?"
"I'm the driver, that's what I am."
When she grinned, I could see the sharp tips of her canines.
"Vampire?" I ventured.
I'd run into a nest of vampires in NOLA. It had not ended well for them, but their leader owed me. His name was Claude, he was older than dirt and cleaning house. He tricked me into doing his dirty work for him.
The laughter nipped the air as it whipped across the windshield.
"Me a bloodsucker? I take my steak rare, but that's about as close as I get."
I leaned back into the seat.
There weren’t many day walking vampires, but the Japanese were home to a few. Something about the diet of blood rich with fish made them long lived.
Whoever she was, she was good.
She hadn't answered any questions, except the unasked one. Enough info to get me in the car, and I could see the Vegas skyline shimmer on the horizon, heatwaves rising up off the two lane blacktop making it look like the mirage of an oasis.
"Round one Kiko."
"Around what?"
"You win round one," I told her.
She smirked, as if this was the only outcome she expected, and we rode the rest of the way in comfortable silence.
Until Elvis started singing like he was approaching Mecca.
“Lord a mighty, I feel my temperature rising.”
Which I guess to him, it was.
CHAPTER
Kiko wheeled the big ass caddy into the valet and slid to a stop in front of the automatic doors.
"Where would you like to start?" Kiko watched me through her owl eye sunglasses.
They made her face hard to read, like a mask.
I wondered what she had to hide.
"Drink."
"Drink?"
"I do my best thinking with a cold one drinking."
"Did you try to do that?" she smirked.
"The ryhme?" I bragged. "What did you think."
"Don't."
"Fair enough. But I still need to make a plan and get the lay of the land. And I'm thirsty. So two birds, you know."
"What about birds?"
"That expression, two birds, one stone."
She shook her head.
"I've been in America for decades, but your idioms still sometimes make no sense to me."
"You throw a rock and kill two birds," I demonstrated, but without the rock. "Saves you time."
"And how much time have you saved telling me all of this?"
She cracked open her door and grabbed the six foot caddy by the lapel of his stomach, dragging his face down to her level.
"Anything happens to my baby, I'm going to kill you," she lifted up her glasses so he could see her eyes. "You get me Juan?"
Juan for his part gulped and let out a very high pitched sound that resembled yes ma’am.
I'm surprised he didn't piddle himself.
There was a tingle of magic in her voice when she did it, and mind magic was very strong.
Also very wrong.
Doing it in front of the Marshal was a good way to take a lightning bolt to the face.
I shifted the coat aside again and cleared my throat, tapped my finger on the badge.
Kiko dropped her glasses to hide her eyes, grinned and shrugged.
Like she wasn't scared of me in the slightest.
Juan got into the Caddy very slow. He dropped it in gear and checked both front and back before pulling out to reach the valet parking lot.
Kiko skipped over to join me, hooked her arm through mine and dragged me toward the hotel entrance.
"Welcome to Vegas Marshal."
She hopped out without looking back and walked inside of a casino.
“Guess we’re going in,” I said to the ghost floating three feet behind me, not quite touching the leather seats.
“Marshal,” Elvis whispered. “Look.”
He pointed a ghostly digit to a group of men spilling out of a luxury bus like clowns out of a VW. They were all dressed like him, or variations of him. Silver sequined jumpsuits. Jumpsuits with flames. Jumpsuits that sparkled. And one with lights.
I couldn’t make out much on the Elvis’ face.
Ghosts were hard to read as it was, and the combination of sunlight and neon washed out his almost transparent features.
But what I could see looked awestruck.
And sad.
“The Flying Elvi,” I said.
“I wanted to join,” he sighed. “Before, I think.”
“Wouldn’t work so well after,” I told him.
He turned to me and kipped up one eyebrow to match the curl in his lip.
“Ghosts don’t fly?”
I shrugged and wondered if the movement was lost on him.
“You tell me.”
He glanced down at his translucent arm as if surprised he was a ghost.
“Hey! You coming?” Kiko yelled from the dark interior of the casino and stamped one foot on the carpeted floor.
“Come on,” I told Elvis.
I didn’t need to.
Since he was tethered to me because I got him killed, whichever way I went, he got dragged along.
Even backwards, bobbing in the air and staring at the dozen Elvis impersonators lining up to follow in our wake.
CHAPTER
The inside of the casino was a different world.
Not literally, though that would have been cool. The noise level was akin to being back on the battlefield, with thousands of voices yelling over the chorus of machines, and bells, and whistles and clangs.
There was music and laughter, tears and smoke. People lined the slot machines, swiped electronic cards against magnet readers and pulled levers to set off the noise.
They swirled around tables playing blackjack and roulette and craps.
People were everywhere, losing, winning and all of them making noise.
It fell away in waves as Kiko walked through, leading us to a bar set in the center of the casino.
She perched on one barstool and crossed her athletic legs.
"What can I get you?"
Ever met one of those people who make your skin itch? The sound of their voice makes you want to do violence to their person, usually in the form of a fist smashing into a perfect nose, or hands wrappe
d around their well muscled necks.
The bartender was that guy.
Perfectly muscled, perfectly coiffed hair, manicured eyebrows and gray eyes. Did I mention the dimples?
Oh yeah, I bet the ladies fell all over their panties for the dimples.
Plus, he was a vampire, so it wasn't like they had much choice.
"Beer," I ordered. "Local."
He sniffed.
Glanced over a well rounded shoulder covered by a dry cleaned and pressed shirt that cost more than my truck.
I followed his eyes to the row of taps set into the underside of the bar. There were dozens of them stacked on top of each other.
I sighed. He was gonna ask me which one and then to prove himself an ass, he was going to launch into a litany about different craft beers.
He turned back to me and smirked and I wiggled the tip of one finger, ready to send him to bartender heaven.
Kiko saved him.
Or saved me too, because the explaining to the local constabulary why I blasted a bartender into a million sparkling pieces in a casino would have been a pain.
"Ultra," she said. "Bottle."
The smirk got smirkier, if that was even possible and he turned away to show her his posterior as he bent over to retrieve it.
She caught my eye and gave a small shake of her head. I didn't know what she was trying to say with the motion.
"He seems-" Elvis said as the guy turned back and curled up one corner of his lip to show off the tip of a long fang. "Pointy," Elvis finished.
"Nice hat," the bartender sniffed at the Stetson.
It had belonged to the now former Marshal of the West, who met his demise recently. He bequeathed me his cowboy hat, a fetish and nod to our profession marshalling the men and women who used magic.
His blood was still on it, a crusty Rorschach blot or Pollack painting across the brim and one side. The vamp could smell it.
The smirker set the bottle in front of me and twisted the top off with just his thumb as he held the neck in his palm. It was a cool trick, and I hated that it looked cool. Hated that he did it. Hated even more that I was going to have to practice to try it, because damn if it wasn't a sight.
He went to work on a fruity frozen concoction in front of Kiko, trying to lock eyes and mesmerize her in front of me.
