What Man Defies

by Clara Coulson

  Kennedy groaned and wiped a hand down the side of his face. It came back wet with blood. “What did you say?” he said, voice slurred.

  “Never mind. I’ll do it myself.” I performed an awkward squat and snatched the key ring off Kennedy’s belt, then undid the locks on both my cuffs in quick succession. When the cuffs released, the suppression spell deactivated, and my vexed magic roared past the surface of my skin, the temperature in the room dropping ten degrees in half a second. After briefly checking on Saoirse—she was near the exit to the lockup, blocking the doorway so no one else could get involved in the fray—I turned to face the ghost.

  Orson had sensed my growing magic aura, and he started working more diligently to rip the other doors free. One of them warped in the middle, bowing outward with a screech.

  “I don’t suppose you can talk,” I said. “Too much psychological damage, right?”

  Orson shrieked at me. Or at least I thought he did. He opened his mouth, but all I heard was a faint, high-pitched noise.

  “Yeah, thought so.” The way the banshee’s abduction victims died left a psychic scar on their souls, and while it would eventually heal when they got to the right afterlife, it rendered them useless as conventional witnesses here on Earth. There was an unconventional way for me to possibly get information out of them, but the only spell I knew required substantial prep work and several physical objects to bind a shade in one place and create a link to their mind. I couldn’t do it here in the precinct right now. And I couldn’t use a circle to hold Orson’s spirit in one place while I prepared the spell.

  There was a reason ghosts only manifested intermittently. If they tried to stay on this plane of Earth for too long, they’d degrade the same way free-standing magic did.

  Damn, I thought as Orson pulled a second door from its frame, I’m going to have to banish him and try the spell with a different ghost. Which means I have to wait for someone else to die.

  Stepping off Kennedy’s chest—he cursed at me, slurring even worse, the sign of a building concussion—I lifted my arms and shot off the same cylindrical prison spell I’d used on Amy Newsome’s ghost. My magic passed right through the gaps between the bars and wrapped around Orson. He panicked, attempting to flee through the wall, but it was too late. The boundary of the cage solidified around him, and he could go no farther. The floating cell doors, cut off from his power, clanged to the floor. Orson screamed as he realized he was trapped, and no more vengeance could be had.

  Two minutes later, he was gone from the Earth, for good this time, and nothing remained but a frosty circle on the floor that led to the void between worlds.

  I stood there silently for some time, gaze lingering on the melting circle as I chastised myself for procrastinating on building a better banishment spell, and for lacking the foresight to prepare a way to coax information out of these ghosts. I would rectify that as soon as I got home. Scrounge up the necessary supplies from my stores. Work the hard magic. And catch up to the leaders in what was shaping up to be a race against time. A race whose prize was the lives of all the remaining missing, including Christie.

  Turning around, I told the moaning Kennedy, whose eyes were now glassy, “You want to lead a division that handles paranormal crimes, you need to have, at the bare minimum, a way to banish the Sluagh.” I kicked my discarded handcuffs onto his heaving chest. “Because if you can’t even bump a ghost into the Otherworld, pal, your precious PCD will end up nothing but a meat grinder that takes in cops and spits out corpses dressed in blue.” I leaned over his face, pushing an ounce of my magic into his brain, giving him a tiny jumpstart of lucidity. “Understand?”

  For the smallest fraction of a second, anger flickered in Kennedy’s eyes. But then he made the mistake of looking at the bent and broken cell doors behind me, the fruits of his utter uselessness, and his budding rage collapsed into shame, with another heaping helping of wounded pride. “I got it,” he muttered under his breath.

  I left him bleeding on the floor and walked over to the lockup exit, where Saoirse was still waiting. “I don’t give a shit what Officer Asshole says,” I called out over her shoulder, to the growing crowd of spooked cops loitering behind her, guns drawn, fingers far too close to the triggers. “I’m not under arrest, and I’m walking out of this precinct. Right now. Anybody who tries to stop me gets to take a trip to the dumpster in the alley out back.”

  The dumpster I’d been savagely beaten beside seven years ago.

  About half the cops in the room got the reference, and you could smell the resulting fear.

  To Saoirse, I said, “I need backup on this one. I think our buddy Abarta might be involved, and there’s no way I can fight him alone. Especially if he’s got more mooks like that banshee on his payroll. You can come as a cop or not, I don’t care. You in?”

  A wry smile snaked across her face. “Of course I’m in. And I’m absolutely tagging along as a cop. You know why? Because, as Lieutenant Kennedy so helpfully pointed out, there is no concrete evidence, yet, that these victims were kidnapped and killed by anything but a regular human criminal. Which puts them firmly in my domain as a lieutenant of the ‘Mundane Crime Division.’” She raised her voice to make sure everyone, including Kennedy, heard her closing remarks. “If I find out otherwise, Lieutenant Kennedy, I’ll be sure to hand the case over to you and your highly experienced team of paranormal crime investigators. In what I deem to be a timely manner.”

  She pushed the lockup door all the way open and peered over her shoulder, cataloguing each and every frightened face. “Also, since this is such a challenging and complex case, judging by the fact that we’ve made no leeway in finding any of the missing people or their bodies since they started vanishing six weeks ago, I will be officially bringing on Mr. Whelan as a consultant. He is welcome in this precinct, any day of the week, any time of the day, until I state otherwise. Is that clear?”

  No one said a word. A few people nodded. The rest simply trembled or refused to meet her eye.

  “Good,” Saoirse finished. She waved me forward. “Go get yourself checked out at the ER, Vince. Once the doctors give you the green light, call me and arrange a preliminary meeting for our new task force.”

  “Will do, Lieutenant Daly,” I replied.

  I stepped out of the lockup, and the navy-blue sea parted before me.

  I didn’t even have to throw anyone into the dumpster.

  Chapter Six

  After two hours in the hospital having the blood cleaned out of my ears and the doctors gawk at how fast my eardrums were healing, I finally made it home. My stuff store was only open whenever I wasn’t on a stretch job, the bins and shelves piled high with all manner of items one might need to replace in these trying times. As the door jangled shut behind me, and I reactivated my wards, I scanned the store real quick and located my rack of coats. Some of them were cheap department store fare, but several were high end, stuff I’d wrestled from the hands of decaying designer shops in the towns a hop and a skip away from Kinsale.

  When my belongings had been returned to me on my way out of the precinct, I’d discovered my coat, an old favorite, had been stained with blood and torn in several places during the banshee fight. Now, I swapped it out for a new number of a similar cut and color from the designer end of the rack. New coat in hand, I jumped the checkout counter, tossed my old coat in the trashcan under the counter, and exited the store through the door in the back. Which opened up onto the stairs that led to my home sweet home.

  The next hour burned away while I gathered supplies for the complicated spells I was planning to cast tonight: lots of chalk, bottles of icky dead things, bags of dried plants that would get me arrested at border crossings, etc. After doing some prep work to streamline the spellcasting, I stuffed it all into a backpack and sent Saoirse a follow-up text to the conversation we’d had when I was walking home from the hospital. She responded a few minutes later with the name of a bar. The rowdiest bar in town. Where there were at least six
fistfights a week.

  See, while the Sluagh appeared in times of general crisis, they were further drawn toward active conflict. Orson Barnum had been lured into the precinct lockup by Saoirse and Kennedy’s argument. The ghost at the market had no doubt been drawn toward some poor haggling attempt between a buyer and a seller at that jewelry booth. And as for Amy Newsome showing up at the McAdams family’s laundry supply store? Well, the music box I acquired for them may have been a little less banged up when I first grabbed it from their old home’s master bedroom.

  Stretch scavenging was a strenuous job, okay? Lots of running involved. Sometimes, things got jostled around in my bag on the way back home. Better that than getting my hand chewed off by a feral werewolf.

  Anyway, I figured if there was one place a restless ghost attracted to conflict would be guaranteed to appear, it would be the most violent bar in the city during peak hours. So Saoirse and I—along with some backup she’d managed to pilfer from the precinct after smoothing things over with the captain in the aftermath of the lockup incident—were going to hunker down at a table in that bar. Then I’d set up shop with my spells and wait for the next ghost to show up. As soon as they did, I’d snare them and get the information I needed the only way I knew how: a trace spell.

  It was like the one I’d performed on the evidence package Bismarck used to burn Mo. Except this time, I was going to use it to retrace the steps of a person’s soul.

  What could possibly go wrong?

  At the appointed time, I headed to the bar, finding myself in one of the seediest neighborhoods in the city. Before the collapse, Kinsale had never been the center of anything—that was the reason it hadn’t been nuked—but it was a big enough city to boast its own poor areas lined with tenement buildings and crumbling commercial lots, that contrasted sharply with the recently gentrified streets and the pearly white gated communities only minutes and blocks away.

  This bar, Anderson and Company, was situated in such a poor neighborhood. A neighborhood that, in the old days, had boasted one of the highest murder rates in the city. Two competing gangs had operated here, running drive-by shootings and late-night hits at least once a month. But that was before the war shook them to their foundations and a new breed of organized crime burrowed into the cracks. Or rather, an old breed. The classic mafia model. Now this neighborhood, Bethlehem Heights, called “Bedlam Heights” by the residents, belonged to small-time mobster Joe Shark.

  Two bruisers were hanging out on either side of the bar’s entrance, steely eyes examining everyone who dared to walk inside. They were on the lookout for cops, no doubt, because the bar washed money for Shark’s illegal enterprises and the man didn’t want one of his most successful businesses getting busted by an undercover. Once upon a time, I knew, I’d had that standard cop look, but I’d shaken it out of my bones over the past few years. So when I ambled nonchalantly toward the doorway, the two bruisers only gave my backpack a quick once-over before their sticky gazes peeled off me and went hunting for better prey.

  The interior of the bar was smoky and dim. Almost every table and booth was filled, and numerous patrons milled about the floor, huddled around poker games in shadowy corners or intentionally cordoning off hush-hush business deals going down between people in sharp suits. At the very back of the room, next to the men’s bathroom door, was a cramped booth wedged into a tight corner. Saoirse and two detectives from the precinct were jammed up against the wall on one side of the booth, nursing beers and pretending to have a casual chat. They were all dressed to match the neighborhood’s typical residents.

  My wardrobe wasn’t varied enough to accommodate that, so I walked in with my nice designer coat, a rumpled gray button-up shirt, a striped tie, and a pair of dark-washed jeans. The look pegged me as an invader, especially with the backpack that bumped into more than one arm as I crossed the room. But I only stirred a modicum of attention. These people weren’t threatened by what appeared to be a schmuck from the good side of town. They probably assumed I was here on a dare—or planning to score some drugs.

  I squeezed into the free side of the booth, waving a curl of smoke out of my face as I sat the backpack beside me. The guys at the next table over were puffing like chimneys. No one could afford to enforce indoor smoking bans anymore, so these sorts of joints made like it was 1955. An ashtray on every table. Matches available at the bar.

  I scrunched my nose at the acrid stench, annoyed. After a moment of thought, I mouthed a short string of words, pushing a minuscule amount of energy in a straight line across the end of the booth. The smoke drifting toward the booth was suddenly deflected, and moved off in another direction to rile someone else’s allergies.

  Saoirse smiled. “Nice trick.”

  “That shit irritates my nose, especially with my first glamour down.”

  “Ah, the joys of superhuman senses.” She took a sip of her beer and gestured at the backpack. “You got everything you need?”

  “Sure do.” I glanced to either side of her, at the two uneasy cops. “They got names?”

  “Detective First Class Camilla Mallory.” Saoirse pointed to the black woman on her right. “And Detective First Class Felix Granger.” The finger swung around to the blond man on her left. “They’re both recent transplants. Mallory’s from Virginia, and Granger’s from Florida.”

  “Nice to meet you,” I said, but I didn’t extend my hand for a shake. Given how nervous they both looked, I was worried I’d spook them if I made any sudden moves. They were young, mid-twenties, maybe two or three years apart. So neither of them could’ve been working a homicide table before the collapse.

  They weren’t only recent transplants. They’d been recently promoted from beat cop to detective. So they were as green as the grass that no longer grew in Kinsale. But that didn’t mean they were stupid or useless. Captain Drew didn’t put up fools for promotion. Kennedy notwithstanding.

  “Are we expecting anyone else?” I asked.

  Saoirse shrugged. “I sent a message to someone, but I haven’t heard back from her yet.”

  “Well, we only have so much time to kill. So if she doesn’t make up her mind—”

  The front door creaked open, and a strangely familiar woman entered the bar.

  It was the Chinese witch from the market.

  “Oh,” Saoirse said. “Guess that’s the answer.”

  As the witch surveyed the room, looking for us, I leaned closer to Saoirse and said, “Uh, did you mention I was going to be here?”

  “No, I was trying to keep everything on the down low.” Saoirse quirked an eyebrow. “Why?”

  I glanced at the witch again, only to find her gawking at me.

  Saoirse followed my line of sight. “Something I should know?”

  “Your witch friend is afraid to be seen with me in public. Because of reasons.”

  Saoirse almost smacked herself. She shot an exasperated look at the witch, who was already creeping back toward the exit. I didn’t know what Saoirse had hanging over the witch’s head—maybe she’d dropped an investigation, or cut the witch some other slack—but that one look, combined with a “come here” hand gesture, had the witch trudging over to our booth with her head hung low. The witch paused at the end of the table, head swiveling side to side as she realized the only place to sit was next to me. With a pinched frown, she slid in beside me and then pointedly stared at a random spot on the wall above Saoirse’s head.

  Saoirse snorted. “Odette, really. He doesn’t bite.”

  “He is not the problem. I just don’t want to tangle with his friends.”

  I chuckled. “Lady, I have three friends within a five-mile radius of this bar. One of them serves beer, one of them sells tea, and one of them is sitting across from me.”

  The witch appeared skeptical. “That still doesn’t mean I won’t get my head chopped off if I accidentally step on your foot. And I’d like my head to stay on my shoulders, thank you very much. Getting tangled up with the—”

  T
here was a thud, and the witch gasped in pain. “Ow! What was that for?”

  Saoirse, who had stomped on her foot under the table, said, “We’re in ‘polite’ company. So cut it out with the loose lips before you get them cut off.”

  The witch eyed the two detectives, finally grasping that not everyone at the table knew the truth about me. She sighed. “Sorry. Zipping the lips now. But seriously, Daly, I’m not comfortable with this arrangement.”

  “And I’m not comfortable with dozens of innocent people being kidnapped and murdered,” Saoirse retorted. “You owe me a much bigger boon than a simple healing job, after what I sacrificed for you, so stop bitching and get in line.”

  The witch pouted but complained no more.

  Saoirse switched her attention to me. “Vince, this is Odette Chao. She’s got some skills that should come in handy during this investigation, particularly in the ‘combat’ department.”

  Odette winced.

  I’m going to have to wheedle that story out of Saoirse someday.

  “Noted,” I said. “We could always use more people with those particular talents.”

  Odette cleared her throat. “So, anyone want to tell me what we’re doing in Bedlam Heights? I missed the memo.”

  I patted my backpack. “We’re going to trap and trace a ghost.”

  She squinted in confusion. “I get that ‘trap’ equals binding, but what do you mean by ‘trace’? Ghosts don’t have any physical objects we can pluck off them to do a trace.”

  I shook my head. “We’re not going to use a physical object. We’re going to use the soul itself.”

  “Are you nuts?” Odette snapped. “Tracing back along a spirit’s residual energy trail, across dimensional lines, could result in a psychic backfire.”

  “Not if you do it right.”

  “You’re willing to risk doing it wrong?”

  “Over thirty people have been abducted. And at least three of them died today.”

  She frowned. “Jeez. I didn’t realize it was that bad. What the hell’s going on?”