by Paul Smith
Harlem's Deck 3:Enter Stole.
By Paul Smith.
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Harlem's Deck 3:Enter Stole.
Paul Smith
Copyright 2014 Paul Smith
This is a work of fiction. Any similarity to people, places or events is purely coincidental, and bears no malicious intent.
ISBN: 9781311427298
Please visit my website for more information, including news about current and up coming projects:
https://paulsmithauthor.wordpress.com
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'For your inner Goth.'
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Author's note:
If you have come across this interlude and would like to find the rest of the book, please visit my galleries on those sites:
gladefaun.deviantart.com
Thank you.
3:Enter Stole.
Elliot sighed. “It's difficult to explain. You've seen how it works...”
Anna shivered, holding her glass closer. “I remember, though only in bits.”
He nodded. “That's fairly normal. Our minds reject contact with the otherside. It's the same with any trauma.” He screwed up his eyes, taking a swig from his tumbler. “My sensi would say I should be able to do this, that it's good for my anatta, my rejection of self.”
“Rejection of self...?!?”
He laughed with her. “Eastern crap. It's a long story.”
She nodded. “Go on.”
He exhaled through his teeth. “Okay... here goes:
You've heard the term moral compass, right? That everyone has a sense of right and wrong. You can say the same about situations and places. The aether – the atmosphere of some – feels right, feels just. Others not so much.”
“Like churches?”
“Yes, or mental asylums.”
“El!”
“I'm making a point Lise.”
He was awarded that coquettish scowl she used only when quite happy and drunk, all tousled hair and fluttering dark eyelashes.
Why does my brother trust me alone with her?
Because he knows there's nothing there.
It was, improbably, the truth as well. Annalise was a little sister in his eyes. Someone to be teased and cosseted, nothing more.
“My point...” speaking to her back, as she checked her make up in the hall mirror “...is that any given space has a sort of moral atmosphere, or aether, that almost everyone is clued in on.”
“Except murderers and rapists.”
He allowed himself a small smile, meeting her challenging look in the mirror. “Except murderers and rapists. And any other socio or psycho path for that matter. Hey, why am I explaining this bit to you? Didn't you study it at uni?”
Her turn to smile. I've been had. He laughed, Lise's eyes dancing back at him in her reflection then for real as she turned to lean against the sideboard. “You were doing so well.” She splayed her hands suddenly as he made to grab her, red lacquered nails glistening in the light from the hall lanterns. “Don't! The hair alone took an hour...”
He raised an eyebrow, but relented, backing off.
“So we've established most people are tuned in to this 'moral background'.”
“Let's call it a 'moral field', fits better with the metaphor.”
“Go on.”
“Well, whilst most people have a moral compass, what I carry around inside me is more like a moral magnet.”
She nodded, understanding blooming. “You can affect moral direction.”
“Yes. That's far more succinct that Karl puts it, I'll have to tell him.”
Her smile again, like a ray of sunshine. “Nice to know I'm good for something.”
Elliot rolled his eyes, but continued. “So I can affect the local morality. I hate using that word by the way, but it's the closest will suffice. I can push it one way or the other. You know, obviously – you were there, that visitors from the otherside need certain conditions in order to be able to push through. Hence ritual sacrifice, all that unpleasantness.”
She pulled a face at his causal tone, but waved him on.
“Once they're here though, it's incredibly difficult to get rid of them.” He tapped his sword pommel. “Though there are ways. And it is possible to disorientate them. By fucking with the local feng shui, as we like to say in the business.”
“I thought feng shui was to do with furniture?”
“It is. I was being...” he looked as his glass, waved his other hand dismissively. “It's a figure of speech.”
“Okay.” She tossed her head, clearly unhappy about letting the matter go. “So you disorientate demons by screwing around with the morality scale.”
“Again: in a nut shell. We really ought to speak to Karl about getting you on the dojo's teaching staff.”
“Doing what?”
They both looked up. Jaret was stood at the confluence of the twin sets of stairs, where they met for their final flight down to the entrance foyer floor. As always, the man looked immaculate, this time in an olive drab two piece that set off his cafe crème complexion. Thick salt and pepper hair swept back from a high forehead and hawkish nose that seemed to round out his patrician features without dominating. The man was the epitome of the father figure, without verging into caricature. Only his height spoilt the effect. Not that you could tell that from here.
“Elliot was just explaining the metaphysics of his work.” Lise's posture had shifted slightly as her husband descended, back arching to show off a waist most women her age would kill for, topped by breasts still pert and firm. Elliot knew she saw them as her one failing, but he personally suspected she'd be gratefully in later life, when their smaller size would protect them from gravity's unkind hand.
“Are we all set?” Jaret asked as he accepted her hand, eyeing his adopted brother.
“As always. The car's waiting outside.”
“Excellent.” Jaret smiled warmly at them both. “Let's get this show on the road. Wilson will have kittens if we're late.”
Nodding, Elliot gestured the two of them out the mansion door before him, nodding to the suited agent before following them down to the car. There were spots of rain, but the storm was holding off for now. He caught the telltale flash of a Zeppelins running lights amidst the clouds as he reached the drive, where a second agent stood waiting to usher them into the stocky limousine's elegant interior.
On the horizon, the city glimmered beyond the edge of the dark clouds.
You never truly understand the word excess until you'd been to a political function. Particular one where the media are present, requiring the 'putting on of a show'.
Neppon's civic district had been laid out with such occasions firmly in mind. The long sweep of its main boulevard provided the perfect VT shot as each limousine glided in. And the base of the broad steps leading up to city hall lined up just so to place the impressive heights of the commerce district across the background of any photo ops, like a line of brooding monoliths in the evening haze.
The tasteful gardens to each side of the steps, lit normally by discreet lampposts that hearkened back to a nineteenth century London (though not gas powered, obviously) were tonight augmented by strings of paper carnival lanterns in acknowledgement, no doubt, of the large Maha community that existed within the city. In their soft light the beds of lilies and sculpted acer took on an almost ethereal quality. Further up near the main entrance, wisteria wept from the eaves of the pergolas that covered the final ascent. Its razor leaved tendrils had spread across the low eaves of the building's porch, Elliot noticed, mixing in with the honey suckle and jasmine there, whose tiny white flowers were stained every shade of the rainbow by the surrounding lights.
Eager crowds lined the stairs to each side.
At their base the mob awaited, cameras and phones lofted for that front page shot.
“Before we go up I have something for you.”
In the cosseted confines of the limousine Annalise flashed Elliot a glance, before biting her lower lip, turning to her husband.
He's already married her, so it can't be that...
He watched, mystified as she apparently was as Jaret produced a bag from beneath his seat, handing it across to her. She extended one gloved hand (the red sequinned one) to accept it, eyelashes fluttering in anticipation like tiny trapped moths.
“Jaret, it's gorgeous...” fingering the fabric.
“Open it silly, the gift's inside.”
Smiling prettily she reached in, withdrawing a dark bundle from its folds. Holding it up, she shook it out, tutting at the confines of the limo's low roof. Mouth slowly resolving into a red lacquered 'O' (the colour of course matching her gloves and the diamanté flames climbing the mid-calf hem of her Alex Marco dress) as she took in the seamless length of the black fur stole she now held.
“Jaret, it's beautiful.” Her eyes widened. “It's not...”
“Shadow cat,” he confirmed, laughing as his wife launched herself across the intervening space.
Fur had lost a lot of its stigma these days, following the
