Detonation Boulevard

by Craig Schaefer

  “We’re shopping for something sturdy and clean,” Marie said. “Doesn’t have to be pretty, but it needs to get us from point A to point B.”

  He looked over his shoulder at her and dropped a screw onto the trunk. “Where’s point B?”

  “We’re still figuring that out.”

  “You’re running,” he said. “Second I laid eyes on you two, I knew you were runners. You got that look about you. Like you’re not desperate, not yet, but you know what desperate tastes like. So, you running from, or running to?”

  “Little of both,” Marie said. “Does it matter?”

  “Just makin’ conversation.”

  She politely rebuffed his attempts until he led them around the side of the garage. A white whale rotted away under the sun’s cloud-smeared eye, flecked with rust like the liver spots on an old woman’s hands. The car was long and wide, with a bug-spattered grill and an aftermarket tint job that turned the windows into blocks of primeval amber.

  “This is what you need,” he said. “She’s a ’98 Cadillac Eldorado, only seventy-four thousand miles on her and clean paperwork. Well, clean if you don’t squint too hard, but beggars can’t be choosers.”

  Nessa folded her arms. “We aren’t beggars. And this car looks like it’s on its last legs. Or wheels.”

  “Looks like,” he said with a carnival barker’s grin. “But don’t let the outside fool you; you can’t kill an Eldorado. Baby’s got a Northstar V8 under the hood. What you got here is a battering ram made from pure Detroit steel. Get her up to seventy miles an hour, and nothing short of a tank is gonna slow her down. It’s a point-A-to-point-B ride.”

  Marie rested her fingertips on the hood, like she could commune with the engine beneath. The metal felt sturdy, solid, warm to the touch. Like a marathon runner past her prime, aching for one last race.

  “How much?” she asked.

  He jerked his head toward the wall of the garage. “You let me take that Hyundai off your hands, add another twelve hundred in cash, and we can call it a deal.”

  She and Nessa shared a glance.

  “Seven hundred,” Nessa said.

  “Nine,” he said, “and that’s my take-it-or-leave-it price.”

  Nessa opened her wallet.

  “We’ll take it.”

  They couldn’t fill out the sale paperwork under either of their real names—Nessa told him to sign it to “Dorothy Clutterbuck”—and taking it over to a DMV was out of the question, but the cardboard dealer plates would tide them over for now. As long as they didn’t get pulled over, they’d be fine. So Marie watched the speedometer instead of the rearview as they drove away in their new car, keeping it at a steady five miles over the speed limit. The Eldorado handled like a boat, stiff with a heavy sway in its tail, but the engine purred strong and steady.

  “So where now?” she asked.

  “That’s the million-dollar question.” Nessa shifted in the passenger seat and cast an irritated look out the window. “We know we need to find Wisdom’s Grave. My predecessor was very firm on that point. It could only be, oh, anywhere in the entire universe. Needle in a cosmic haystack. It’s clear she knew more about witchcraft than I do; I think she took for granted that I’d be at her level of skill when we received her message. Flattering, and of course I’d have high standards for myself, but still. If there was only some way we could see more.”

  Marie thought back to the long, terrible night she’d just survived. To the feeling of the cold steel bands strapping her down, the electrodes pasted to her chest and temples as Savannah Cross powered up her “nerve induction synthesizer.”

  In the space of an hour or two, Marie had been subjected to more physical trauma than any human being could possibly survive, piped directly into her brain stem. She felt her left eyelid twitch, an uncontrollable tic, as she relived it in her mind. The torture wasn’t what drew her back. It was the flashes of insight between the bouts of agony, and the Other—the vision of herself in sleek knightly armor—who came to comfort her through the worst of it.

  “I think maybe we can,” she said.

  “Tell me.”

  “Ink,” Marie said. “Savannah told me she created it. It’s not just a designer drug, there’s something magical about it. She dosed me with a syringe before she started interrogating me, and I saw…things. Memories, but not my memories.”

  “Your past lives,” Nessa said.

  “Some of them. I was thinking, what if we tried again, but more”—she paused, searching for a way to phrase it—“focused? Maybe we could use the mirror and call up the message again, while I’m under the influence, and see if it jars anything loose in my head.”

  “Too risky,” Nessa said. “We still don’t know what ink was created for. Certainly nothing good. I don’t like putting you in danger like that.”

  “Have you got a better idea?”

  Nessa drummed her fingers on the armrest.

  “No,” she said. “Let’s head into town. I’ll need some supplies.”

  Two

  Down in a small tangle of streets, along a narrow road far from the tourist traps and antique shops, Nessa found what she was looking for. The sign out front read Spirit Harbor Metaphysical Supplies, and the kitschy clutter beyond the shop door lived up to the name. Long tables sported loose stones in a scatter of colors and tiny cards talked up their metaphysical qualities. Amethyst for spiritual awareness, hematite for grounding and protection. Another display displayed incense burners painted with stars or the images of Egyptian and Hindu gods, and baggies of dried herbs dangled from long wall pegs. Marie eyed a rack of tarot cards, from classic and faded yellow packs to oversize decks with images of fairies and cat-headed witches.

  “So how much of this stuff is real?” Marie asked, keeping her voice low. “I mean, how much of it really works?”

  “Think of it like an art supply store,” Nessa said. “A box of oil paints is just a thing. It doesn’t do anything on its own. A novice might buy that paint and create a few haphazard smears or a stick figure. A mistress of the art could pick up her brush, place those exact same oils on her palette, and paint the Mona Lisa.”

  “Spoken like a woman who knows her craft,” said the clerk behind the counter. She was young, in her early twenties, with her hair in tight dark ringlets and her fingernails coated in a rainbow of glitter paint. “I’m Monique. Haven’t seen you around before.”

  Nessa turned her way. Two fingers pushed the round, owlish lenses of her glasses higher on her nose.

  “I’m not Rembrandt, but I can paint. And we’re visiting from out of town, just passing through. Marie, why don’t you go browse while I talk to the nice lady?”

  She stepped up to the glass case that served as a counter. Her fingertips hovered over the print-smeared glass, just shy of touching. A spread of mystic clutter—a brass tiara with a crescent moon decoration, a fake skull inlaid with gilt, a spray of dried wildflowers—filled the space between them.

  “I need a few things,” Nessa told her. “For starters, herbs. Fresh herbs. Wormwood, vervain, eyebright, and mugwort.”

  Monique lifted one eyebrow. “That’s a wash for a scrying mirror.”

  “You know your craft too. Good. Do you have it?”

  She gave Nessa a quick look up and down. Then she nodded. “In back. In fact, give me fifteen minutes, throw in an extra twenty bucks, and I can mix it up here and now. I’ve got a hot plate and a copper pan just for that kind of job.”

  “Deal.” Nessa made a mental shopping list. She hadn’t been able to go back home in the wake of their escape from the Vandemere Zoo. All of her tools, all of her supplies—save for her spell book and the black mirror—had to be left behind. “A pentacle stone would be nice, if you have it. Something small, compact, for altar work on the go.”

  “Got a few in polystone, but you don’t want ’em. That resin stuff doesn’t hold up to serious work. How do you feel about iron?”

  “Show me.”

  The disk,
about the width of two hands pressed side by side, clanked onto the counter. The heavy, dusky metal bore a five-pointed star inside a single perfect circle.

  “No frills, no gimmicks,” Monique said. “Got a feeling you like it that way.”

  “Correct.”

  Nessa’s gaze drifted to a display at the counter’s edge. Dull knives with pentagram-inscribed pommels and hilts wrapped in faux deerskin dangled from the arms of a small rack. An index card below read Handcrafted Authentic Wiccan Athames, $79 ea.

  “I also need a knife,” Nessa said. “But not one of those.”

  Monique followed her gaze and curled her lip. “Yeah, I got you covered.”

  She rummaged behind the counter, digging through a shoebox. She found what she was looking for and set it down next to the iron disk. It was a knife, about the length of a pencil, with a thin shaft of mahogany ending in a short blade that flared like a leaf cast in steel.

  “It’s an artavus,” Monique said. “A quill knife, done up special, like in the old books. You see how the steel is curved?”

  “It has an unusual tilt to it.”

  “That’s so it cuts only as deep as you aim, and no deeper. This is a knife with one and one purpose only.” Monique looked Nessa in the eye. “Bloodletting.”

  “You don’t offer this to all your first-time customers,” Nessa said.

  “I do not.”

  They shared a moment of quiet rapport. Nessa weighed her next move, then spoke.

  “One more thing. You might not be able to help with this one, but I thought I’d ask. Like I said, we’re from out of town. Our scrying experiment is going to need…a little bit extra.”

  “A chemical incentive,” Monique said.

  “Something to put a bit of spice in the gas tank.”

  “Lot of people are playing with that ‘ink’ stuff these days,” Monique said. “Some folks swear by it, say they can see into other worlds when they’re tripping. Feels like playing with fire to me. I don’t like to mess with my own head, the occasional bit of herb notwithstanding.”

  “Probably the best policy,” Nessa replied. “I just figured I’d ask.”

  Monique shot a glance at the front door of the shop. Her left hand inched across the glass counter, toward Nessa.

  “Said I don’t use it. Didn’t say I don’t have any.”

  She cupped her fingers to one side, flashing a thin plastic baggie. Inside, a couple of black grains, like spiky pearls, glistened. Nessa reached over. Their fingers brushed, a jolt of static electricity jumping from skin to skin, as she palmed the baggie and made it disappear.

  “You be careful,” Monique told her.

  * * *

  After the new customers left with their purchases, all wrapped in newspaper and bagged up for safekeeping, Monique watched their car pull away from the curb. Then she flipped the Closed sign and locked the door.

  She stepped into the cluttered back room. An old phone hung on the wall, a beige plastic shell straight from the eighties. The old plastic cord kinked and twisted as Monique unhooked the receiver and dialed a number she knew by heart.

  It rang three times, then clicked. An expectant silence hovered on the other end of the line. Monique tugged on the silver chain around her throat, fishing out a pendant concealed beneath the neck of her T-shirt. Her thumb ran over the hard curves of a small antique key.

  “They were just here,” she said. “You were right. They bought supplies for a scrying spell and a few odds and ends. They didn’t ask for a mirror, though.”

  “They still have the Oberlin Glass, then,” said the Lady in Red. “Good. You’ve done well, my daughter.”

  Her voice drifted over the receiver, close, skin-close, like she was standing at Monique’s shoulder and whispering straight into her ear. Monique felt a puff of hot breath on her earlobe. Her eyelids fluttered shut.

  “Thank you, my queen.”

  “Guard yourself,” the Lady said. “It was a need for close refuge, and Marie’s familiarity with the town, that drew them to Asbury Park. Simple deduction, not magic, told me they might cross your doorstep. Others will be hunting them, and they may easily draw the same connections I did.”

  “I’ll be ready for them. I won’t fail you.”

  “I know,” the Lady replied.

  The line clicked and went silent. Monique hung up the phone. She walked back to the front of the shop, flipped the sign, and unlocked the door. Then she stood behind the glass counter and waited for the hunters to arrive.

  Three

  Scottie Pierce woke to birdsong and the earthy smell of peat. Light filtered through the skeletal arms of dead and rotting pine trees. He squinted, trying to focus, head swimming. He was lying down, on a…log? A fallen log, bark rough and scratchy against his back.

  A thick coil of rope lashed around his forearms and his stomach, binding him to the log. Another coil snared his ankles. The lean, lantern-jawed man squirmed against the ropes.

  “Aw, hey,” he groaned, trying to remember how he got here. “C’mon, no—”

  A shadow loomed over him. The woman, swaddled from head to toe in strips of gray and black rags like a mummy coated in crematory ash, made bone-clicking sounds as her head lolled to one side. Under the hood of her cloak, a strip of rag fell away and bared a single jet-black eye.

  “Don’t say no to me, Scottie. Never say no to me.”

  “Dr. Cross? The hell are you doing? What is this?”

  Savannah Cross swayed, serpentine, under her rags and cloak. Her spine rattled like a handful of dice shaken in a twitchy hand.

  “Makeshift operating table. We’re in the barrens of New Jersey. Options were limited.”

  “Why am I tied up?” he asked, already dreading the answer.

  “In case you woke up before I was finished,” she said. She nodded toward his right hand.

  She had peeled his bandages off. Seeing the stumps of his fingers, caked in scabs and dried blood, brought the pain surging back. He’d had her. The cop, Reinhart. The bitch who’d gunned down his best friend. He’d had her dead to rights, but then he’d gotten overconfident. Just for a heartbeat. A heartbeat was all it took.

  Savannah showed him what she’d been working on while he was out cold. She’d gathered slender bundles of small twigs and bound them with twine. The stout white thread twisted in intricate patterns, creating elaborate joints. On each of the three bundles, the twigs on one end had been sharpened to points like tiny spears.

  “You’re useless to me if you can’t fight,” she told him. “So I made new fingers for you.”

  He squirmed harder now. A bead of cold sweat dripped down his temple, tickling its way into his hair.

  “I—I don’t think that’s gonna work. Look, it’s fine. I can use my left, it’s—” His voice rose as she took hold of his hand. “No, c’mon, no no no—”

  She took the spear end of the first bundle, pressed it against the stump of his severed index finger, and pushed. Scottie’s words shattered into a shriek of pain as the twigs punctured the wound and slid into the stump. Blood guttered free, trickling down the side of the log. Savannah gave the twigs a hard twist and turned his raw flesh to mangled pulp.

  “Jesus,” he screamed, “you crazy fucking bitch. Stop it!”

  Her single, mad eye glared at him.

  “You’re doing this all wrong,” she said.

  “Doing what? What am I supposed to be doing? Why are you—”

  He howled as the second bundle of twigs impaled his hand. Slower this time. She rocked it back and forth in the stump of his middle finger while she studied his face. Scottie slammed the back of his head against the log and gritted his teeth until his jaw shook.

  “You’re supposed to like it when I hurt you,” she told him.

  “Why,” he panted, once he could find his breath again, “why in fuck would you think that? What are you even talking about?”

  She held up the third and final bundle, her “finger” of twigs and twine, and poked
him in the chest with it.

  “I explained my methodology. To catch the witch and her knight, we must become the witch and her knight. And”—she poked him again to emphasize each word—“you. Are. Doing. It. Wrong. You’re supposed to be devoted to me. You’re supposed to be in love with me. You’re supposed to want to make me happy.”

  He closed his eyes. The pain in his hand had faded from a roaring inferno to a throbbing, crackling fire.

  “Look,” he breathed, “I agreed to this partnership so I could get some payback for Richard. I said I’d back you up. I said I’d fight for you. I didn’t ask you to tie me to a damn tree and torture me.”

  Her eye narrowed to an icy slit. A hand, gloved in black lace, slithered from under her cloak. The blade of a scalpel caught the sunlight and gleamed.

  The sorcerer-scientist had been a raving lunatic before she went ten rounds with Nessa Roth. Whatever her boss had done to her in the aftermath, hauling her back from death’s doorstep, her mind had healed just like her body: broken, twisted, but stronger and more ferocious than before.

  “So ask me now,” she told him. “In fact…beg me for it.”

  “What?”

  “Either you’re a suitable knight or you aren’t. If you aren’t, this experiment has run its course. And in that case, I don’t need you for anything but spare parts.”

  She leaned close as the edge of the scalpel caressed Scottie’s cheek. Her hot breath gusted over his face, carrying the mingled scents of fresh wildflowers and rotten meat.

  “If that’s what Vanessa Roth desired, Marie Reinhart would do it without hesitation. So say it. Ask me to torture you.”

  He flinched, turning his head to one side. The scalpel followed. It traced the curve of his cheekbone, edging closer to his left eye, as his heart pounded against his ribs.

  “Okay, fine—”

  “Please,” Savannah said. “Be polite, now.”

  “Please,” he said through gritted teeth, “please torture me.”

  He squeezed his eyes shut, one cheek scraping the dead bark. He felt the scalpel follow the contour of his eyelid. A little more pressure behind the blade now, a hair away from slicing in.