“They’ve got some big guns on their side. I need you to slide a couple of aces out of the deck before they get dealt to the enemy.” New Mammon twisted up one corner of his mouth.
“I just brought someone on to do things like that. In fact…” Mammon pulled up his sleeve and glanced at the countless overlapping watches and watchbands. Half of them couldn’t even be read for the bands of the others obscuring their faces. “She’s on a mission right now.”
New Mammon nodded. “That’s a start. But she’s going to have to be…aggressive.”
Mammon narrowed his eyes at New Mammon. “That’s why I hired her. Sounds like it isn’t good enough.”
“Oh, she’s good at what she does.” New Mammon assured him there was no problem there with an approving nod. “But she’s going to need some help. And she’s going to need to do more than dissuade. She’s going to need to eliminate them.”
Mammon nodded at that. “Got it. I’ll start making some stuff happen.”
“I know you will.” New Mammon tapped his right temple with his index finger. “I remember, remember? I’m saying double down on anything you have in mind. I didn’t come back here to tell you to take off the gloves. I came back here to tell you to stop boxing and pull a knife.”
The kid with the sales pitch cleared his throat and squeaked again. “If you need me to leave, sir, I can just…”
“Shut up.” Both Mammons spoke to the kid in unison. “And go away.”
The kid blanched and reflexively grabbed the edge of the table, his eyes wide, the breath knocked out of him. He didn’t appear hurt by the comment. Instead, he wore the shocked expression of someone who’s been shivved. Another unexpected sound rushed into the confines of their booth: meat being torn, and bones cracking. The kid’s youthful skin—waxed and polished under the finest anti-aging ointments and illegal fad treatments available to anyone who can afford blood-based salves purchased on the Dark Web—wrinkled like the sagging surface of a day-old balloon. The valleys and ridges of his flesh deepened as his eyes grew even wider. Another squeak came out of him, but Mammon knew it was intended as a scream. The kid’s hands telescoped agonizingly backward into his wrists, his wrists into his forearms, his forearms into his shoulders, his torso caved in, and his head balled itself up and disappeared into his neck. As that happened, his skin tone went from pale to red to purple to the desiccated hazel of a brown paper sack. The crushing and crackling continued until the kid was just a dot, a speck of flesh, hovering in the air above his seat, and then, with an audible tink, he was gone.
“Finally.” Mammon sighed just a little. It would have been fun to wreck that kid’s ambitions. But Mammon already had the paperwork to buy him out, so no real loss.
“That’s exactly what I’m talking about.” New Mammon beamed, grinning at his past self. “That kid was a pain in my ass. Now he won’t be. That’s exactly the kind of urgency we need.”
Mammon grinned back at him. “Glad to know I’m the right guy for the job. Don’t let me keep you. I need to get over to the Tenderloin right away by the sound of things.”
New Mammon unraveled, the dandelion seeds scattering back into the wind, as he waved his goodbye. “Be seeing you.” His voice was hollow, lost in the tunnel of time.
Chinatown, San Francisco, 1912
Theodora scrambled past Donaldina in the hallway of the building’s lower floor. A door opened and slammed beneath them as they ran down the stairs after the girl they’d rescued once already, and Theodora was determined to be the first one out into the alley on the building’s back. Donaldina didn’t like it when her juniors went first like that. If there were a Tong squad outside, guns drawn, ready to open fire, she didn’t want anyone else to die for her. Donaldina was the one called to this life of service. The girls who helped her were as much her charges as anyone they helped to rescue, and she felt just as responsible.
“Wait—” Donaldina ordered Theodora to stop, but the burly girl put a shoulder into the door, and it flew open to let her pass. Donaldina wasn’t about to hesitate. Before the door could close, Donaldina’s reedy form slipped through the gap. Eva Marie darted through after her.
In the alley, Donaldina saw a most unexpected sight: a white man in an elaborate military costume offering a hand to the Tong hatchet man who had shot at her.
“Come now, sir.” The small man’s voice was enthusiastic, jovial, perhaps a little commanding. “You were fortunate indeed to land on a refuse heap of the softer variety. But stand and let’s check you for an injury—oh heavens, that is quite a handgun! Do you by chance speak English? Allow me to introduce myself, if you will, lest there be some misunderstanding between us. I am Norton I, Emperor of these United States, Protector of Mexico, and a friend and ally to the Chinese in every corner of our city and of the world.” The man continued to hold his hand out to the boo how doy. After a bit of a pause, he spoke again. “It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance regardless of your knowledge of English or lack thereof.”
“Get away from him,” Theodora bellowed. “That man may well be a killer!”
“Ignore them, sir.” Norton continued addressing the hatchet man, who now shook his head rapidly back and forth, trying to focus his vision. “I assure you I possess no such prejudices. Now, I say again, do you speak English? And if so, are you well?” Norton drew a deep breath and cleared his throat before saying, slowly and distinctly, “Nǐ huì shuō yīngyǔ ma?”
The tong fighter blinked more rapidly at that. Trash heap or no, the fall had traumatized the man and it showed. He’d been down here two minutes and wasn’t yet up and around. Donaldina knew she would have little time to act. “You there.” She spoke with the air of one accustomed to command: none of her questions ever sounded like one. “Have you seen a Chinese girl run through here. She would appear about eleven or twelve years in age but is perhaps a little older than that. Dressed in gray garments, no shoes, long hair. I must know immediately.”
Norton turned his head this way and that. “A girl? No, madam, I’ve seen no such thing. Did you come to help at the sound of this poor soul crashing to terra firma?”
“Not exactly.” Theodora’s voice was a growl. “And he’s no poor soul—get down!”
The hatchet man shook his head again and, flailing his arms to stand, waved the gun around. “Jesus Woman,” he slurred in English, his voice thick with his own concussion. Donaldina stepped forward and with a sweep of her black boot kicked the gun from the man’s hand, then kicked him in the ribs with her other as she swung in a circle from momentum. She stepped back from the would-be killer as he clutched at his side, then spoke to Norton without looking away from the boo how doy. “Your spirit of charity is a virtue, sir, but badly misplaced. This man is an assassin sent to kill me. He fights for one of the Chinese gangs. I liberated a girl from a brothel they control, and he wishes to shoot me for it.”
Norton’s head snapped around, taking Donaldina in for a second time. “You say she appears to be as young as eleven?” Norton produced a harrumph, and his wild beard twitched as his face worked. “Madam, I have not seen the girl of whom you speak. My apologies. I would tell you all I knew were there anything to share. Now which would be more helpful to you: that I come with you to search for this girl? Or that I stand watch over this man until the authorities arrive?”
The Tenderloin, San Francisco, Tonight
Madge hesitated a moment. She could have turned and run, but she had a feeling that wouldn’t be a good idea: just a hunch, a certain something in her guts forcing her to comply with the strange woman’s order to remain—and to stay silent. Witchcraft teaches one to trust their instincts, and those instincts get stronger the more they’re trusted. The instinct that moved Madge into the room was so strong she wasn’t even conscious of it until after it had happened.
The door clicked shut behind her.
“Good girl.” The woman spoke to her from the darkness, silhouetted against the window looking out onto the neon and the unshie
lded street lamps of the Tenderloin. That tone, those words, grated across Madge’s mind like nails on a chalkboard, but she didn’t give in to the urge to say anything too smart or too revealing. “Now, I understand there are two of you. Is that so?”
Madge said nothing, did nothing. She stood stock-still.
“Don’t be stubborn, missy. Answer my question.” The woman sat very still. Madge could just see the outline of her face shift as the woman spoke. Her posture was exceptional, Madge thought. “I need to know if there’s going to be company any time soon.” There was an audible click-clack. “Or I have to assume company’s imminent and test out the plan for my worst-case scenario. Your call. I don’t think you’re going to like that latter situation very much, though.”
“My name is Madge.” She said it knowing it would piss off whoever this person was. But she also knew it would humanize her, and that tended to make it harder for one person to hurt another. “What’s your name?”
“If that’s the way you want to play it.” The woman lifted something from her lap.
Madge threw both hands into the air. “Wait. Yes. Someone else is coming. But not for a little while.”
Her attacker lowered the weapon. Madge still couldn’t make out details, but her eyes were adjusting and she could see just the movement of something dropping again to disappear back into the shadowy outline on the other end of the tiny room. “Then we have time for some questions.” The woman’s shoulders relaxed. “I’m still holding the gun, though, and you will answer every question fully and without hesitation if you want it to stay out of your obituary. You understand me?”
“Sure.” Madge drew a very thin breath with great effort. She’d seen some shit that freaked her out, sure, but nobody had ever held a gun on her and threatened her life. It had a way of making a demon infestation seem very small and distant in comparison. “Sure. We’re cool.”
“I doubt that.” The woman sounded like she smiled a little. “Now tell me about the keys to the city. What are they?”
Madge blinked. The woman had long dark hair and was probably white. She was wearing a blazer with shoulder pads. She was thin. In the dark of the night, the room was slowly turning from black shadow to dark gray as Madge’s pupils continued to compensate.
“Remember, girl: no hesitation. That’s your one and only reminder.”
Madge nodded. “Got it. Okay. I don’t know.”
Etta was silent for one second. “I don’t appreciate lies.”
“I’m not lying.” Madge spoke quickly, the words pushing themselves ahead of one another as they ran frantically to get out into the world. “I don’t know what all four of them are. Iria is the one designing the rituals. I know what the first one was and the second one, but I don’t know the third and fourth.”
This time Etta was silent for two seconds. “Tell me the first.”
“That flag.” Madge gestured with the fingers of one hand, not lowering it. “The first California Bear Republic flag.”
Etta snorted. “The one from Founder’s Day parades?”
“Yes.”
“It got destroyed in the fire.”
“You know your history.” Madge didn’t care that it sounded like flattery.
“I was there for it.” Etta produced a sound like a chuckle tipped over to let all the humor drain out. “And the second key?”
“A hatchet from a boo how doy.”
Etta grunted with interest, a quiet little hmph from the darkness. The room was less shadowed than ever. Madge couldn’t quite make out Etta’s face, but this was probably as good as her vision was getting in a room this dark. “Interesting.”
“Thanks. I guess.” Madge, likewise, did not try to conceal the sarcasm in her voice. “Do you think those items sound like something worth killing someone over?”
“No, they don’t.” Etta spoke very plainly, very matter of fact. She could have been reading the weather forecast for a dull week in a town she knew she would not visit. “But my boss seems to think they are.”
“Mammon.” Madge said the name. Their room in the SRO, the place where Madge and Iria did almost all their ritual work, where they lived their lives, where they made a home no matter how humble, was one of the few places Madge felt comfortable doing so. To name a thing is to give it power, as they say. But this room was as heavily warded against the supernatural as either of them could manage. They never worried about demons getting in. It didn’t occur to them to protect against more mundane threats with the same fervor. They had locks on the door, but locks could be picked. Windows could be pried open. The fact Mammon had sent what appeared to be a normal mortal agent told Madge one thing for certain: they had him sufficiently frightened that he hired an outside contractor to fight Iria and herself on their own terms. Mammon must have realized he couldn’t just snap his fingers and wax them like he could someone unaccustomed to the concerns of witchcraft.
And if he’d hired a normal human, maybe witchcraft would work against his human agent the way it did against anyone else.
“Ah, so you know the…gentleman?” Etta sounded almost polite now. She was getting answers to her questions, and Madge supposed that helped her relax a little.
“I’ve never met him myself.” Madge shrugged. “Can I put my hands down? I don’t have a gun and my arms are getting really tired.”
“Suit yourself. But slow. So you really don’t know the other two keys?”
“The person designing the rituals is my student. I’m advising them, but I don’t know until they announce each one. Sorry.”
“And what’s her name?”
“Their name.”
Etta didn’t seem to understand the distinction. “Yeah. Exactly.”
“Iria.”
“That’s a pretty name.” Etta drew a breath and sighed it out. “So when are these keys?”
“I don’t know that, either.” Madge leaned against the door, bracing her back.
“Do you know where Iria is right this second?” Etta stood now, leaving the chair Madge and Iria took turns sitting in when they read. The gun in her hand rose again. Madge watched her set her stance.
“Right this second? No.”
“Good grief. Is there anything useful you do know?”
“Sure.” Madge unfolded her hands and spread her fingers. A dim glow emanated from all around her, dialing back the shadows smothering their tiny room and revealing Etta’s eyes as they widened just a bit. Madge spoke quietly but confidently. “I know magic. And it’s time for you to leave.”
Chinatown, Tonight
Iria opened the door to the herbalist shop. It was tucked away in the middle of one of the many alleys slicing through the blocks of buildings in Chinatown. Some of these were garment factories, others office buildings, one an industrial-scale fortune cookie bakery. Dotted along the alleys between them, like mouse holes in a cartoon baseboard, were miniscule retail establishments: florists, barbers, a shop that sold model kits for giant robots from various dong hua, the Chinese equivalent of anime.
Roughly the size of a nice walk-in closet, the shop was perhaps eight feet long, maybe half as many across, with a low ceiling of at most seven feet. Paper lanterns and netted bags filled with dried and still-drying herbs hung from hooks along the ceiling’s length, and Iria had to duck and dodge to avoid them as they entered. There was a waist-high display case along one side of the shop, with a cash register by the door and a narrow gap at the far end for the shopkeeper to come around and lock up at night. Faded wildlife prints of all varieties and squares of scuffed red tile adorned walls otherwise painted a scorching, near-neon yellow. The display case looked like a jeweler’s, all top-down views of small boxes, their lids yawning open, revealing clusters of dried blossoms and fuzzy roots. An enormous array of wooden drawers stood behind the counter and cash register, floor to ceiling, wall to wall, each wider than they were tall, a few inches across and maybe three inches high. Every drawer had a small brass pull and no label. The owner apparently did
n’t need labels: she remembered where she put the things she sold. This place wasn’t as big as the Great China Herb Shop, but it didn’t need to be. The seller’s stock was extremely specialized.
“Néih hóu.” A small and very elderly woman stepped into the shop through a curtained doorway opposite the shop entrance. “Ah.” She paused and shifted mental gears. Her accent was thick, and Iria suddenly felt very much like an intruder. “Hello. It’s late.” The woman’s matter-of-fact tone didn’t seem to indicate an unwillingness to do business, but Iria could tell she wanted them to hurry.
“I brought a list.” Iria pulled a long, lined paper from a notepad with a cartoon dog in one corner. They held it out and offered it to the shopkeeper. “I need, say, half an ounce of each.”
The woman took the list, scanned it, then eyed Iria up and down. “Biànxìng rén.” Her voice didn’t carry any particular emotion, just an observation: transgender. It was the sort of casual pigeonholing Iria experienced all the time: people deciding to check one or another box for identity and then saying it aloud as though passing judgment. After all this time, Iria was most surprised to realize it still surprised them.
The shopkeeper turned and started opening drawers, filling small plastic bags, and zipping them closed. A few moments later she set a small paper sack with Iria’s herbs on the counter and rang up the sale. They were more expensive from this shop than they would be from one of the big herbalists in a street-facing storefront, but worth it.
Iria tried not to sound cross while paying. “Technically,” they said, bag firmly in hand, “Xìngbié kù er.” Genderqueer. The woman’s expression didn’t change. Iria tried another take on the same idea. “Fēi nán fēi nǚ.” Neither man nor woman.
The shopkeeper said nothing. Iria met her gaze, wondering if this woman cared at all. Maybe she clung to the harsh rigidity of Confucianism. Maybe she was more liberal than that. Maybe she was queer herself. Iria had just enough Cantonese to identify themself to others if needed. It paid to know what words another culture might call you when you’re among them, after all. Iria tried a small smile. The woman’s expression didn’t shift. Iria stifled a sigh. Instead, they gave a small bow and walked two steps to the door. The shopkeeper followed behind them to lock up for the night once they were gone. Iria tried not to hear the locks turning at her back as a mechanical voice muttering and stay out.
All the Pomp of Earthly Majesty Page 4
