by M. R. Forbes
In any case, the Houses had been a single House once. A conclave of the most powerful wizards to evolve from the shift, who joined together during the original crisis to help keep the world running smoothly. Of course, given time they began to argue about what they should be doing with their power, and so the conclave went rock band and split up. A pretty even balance of power emerged among the many now fragmented Houses, and with none of them wanting to challenge one another openly, they looked to anonymous agents, ghosts, in their constant see-saw battle for control.
Sometimes it was about money, other times it was power, and most times it was to stop one House or another from getting too much of a foothold. Whatever their individual reasons, in the end it wound up being the best thing for the world at large, because it prevented any massive, open wars from developing. When you considered that conventional warfare was bad enough on its own, the idea of adding magic to the mix only made it all the more terrifying.
The other benefit was that it helped keep a good portion of users under control. As long as they had strong enough mojo, any that didn't already belong to the Houses were recruited into the fold whenever possible.
Except for necros. They didn't recruit necros. They had no use for the dying, or the dead, and there was a standing agreement between them not to promote death magic, because they feared it as much as I did. That was why it was better to keep it a secret. Better to stay anonymous, to let Danelle be the contact, and just do the jobs.
Which is why I was standing in a cold, musty basement, surrounded by corpses.
CHAPTER FIVE
Looks easy enough.
Taking in magical energy was two parts genetics, one part skill. The genetics part had to do with being able to absorb the energy and store it, like metaphysical fat cells. If you couldn't store the energy, you couldn't use it, because you had to build up enough to make it do something. That was sensitives in a nutshell. Once you stored the energy, you needed to know how to release it. That was the skill part. I didn't know what controlled the frequencies different wizards were able to access. I only knew it was related to DNA, and that it theoretically could be bred into or out of people. That was Danelle's story at its root.
She was a failed experiment.
I was a pharmaceutical anomaly.
Life was spectacularly unfair that way.
I pulled the energy in and held it, like taking a deep breath and never letting go. Then I walked over to one of the corpses leaning against the wall. His name was Rayon, and he was a hulk of a man that put Rodge and his bro to shame. During his life, he'd been a body builder, with a strong addiction to both human growth hormone and cocaine. It had been the cocaine that killed him. Not from an overdose, but from an angry dealer who wanted to get paid. He had a bullet hole in his forehead, and a deep cut along his neck. He also walked with a horrible limp, since they'd played with him a bit first and cut his achilles. He was too big to be stealthy, so I used him more for mundane lifting than anything else.
I put my hand to the dead forehead, releasing the held breath of energy with my voice. "Come on, Rayon. Time to wake up." Except for the name, I didn't think the words were that important. The vocalization was.
My hand warmed from the energy flowing through it. A few seconds later, Rayon blinked.
"Awww, why me?"
The animation left a connection, a gossamer thread of energy that reached from his soul to me. It was the tether I used to control them, to make them do what I wanted, and to hold them in this world. The further they got from me, the more free will they had, their nascent personality taking over and sending them wherever. Until they got too far. Then the connection was lost altogether, they got dropped from their bodies, and any passer-by could just come across a wayward corpse. It had almost happened once in the beginning, before I had known better. I was more careful now.
"I need you to help me get some of the others out of here. We're ditching this place."
He stretched out his limbs and groaned. The dead didn't need to stretch, but their souls still thought they did. "You look like shit, man. How long's it been?"
"Since I woke you last? I don't know, a month?"
"Feels like forever." He stood up, towering over me. His decaying flesh probably stunk, but I had developed an ambivalence to it. "How many are you taking?"
I hadn't thought about that. I turned in a circle, looking around the room. I had about a dozen bodies out of the freezers, and three more in them. I also had a small collection of cats, dogs, birds, and mice. You'd be surprised how useful birds and mice could be.
The idea of leaving any of them bothered me. As sad as it was, they were like family. Still, I only had so much room in the van.
"Take Evan and Kerry from the freezer and put them in the coolers. I have to think about the rest."
"Okay." He lumbered off to one of the Frigidaires, his awkward steps shaking the floor.
Evan was a former member of the Chicago S.W.A.T, which made him indispensable as firepower, despite the fact that his body was a mess. Kerry had been a ghost, before she'd first lost her left hand, and then lost her life. They were my two go-to zombies, when I didn't need to worry about them being seen. True, the wounds could be disguised, but the rotting flesh and visible muscle and bone couldn't, at least not without it being beyond suspicious.
I looked over the others. Mr. Timms would come for Danelle's sentimentality, but otherwise the animals were easy enough to replace. The rest of the people? I wanted to bring them, but I couldn't. Not without a place to bring them to.
That included Rayon.
He was more gentle than his mass would indicate as he lifted Kerry's stiff form into his arms and headed for the stairs. I stopped him before he reached them.
"What's up, boss?" he asked.
"Rayon, I... uh... You need to stay here, when we're done packing."
I never knew what to expect from them. I never knew if they would be happy, like Caroline had seemed to be, or if I was punching their ticket for a permanent ride back to Hell. Rayon just stared at me as though I'd lost the tether, and then he nodded.
"I'm too big. I get it."
"I'm leaving all of you here."
"Not Evan and Kerry. I bet you're bringing Mr. Timms, too."
"Danelle would kill me if I didn't." There was a long, silent, uncomfortable pause. "What's it like, when you aren't here?"
"I don't know."
I had asked the question more times than I could count. That was the only answer I'd ever gotten. I hadn't expected anything else, but I kept trying anyway.
"Do you want to go back?"
"I'd like to be alive, but I can't have that. This is closer, so I like it well enough. Otherwise, I don't care."
I stepped out of his way, having resolved none of the guilt I was feeling. He went up the stairs and into the kitchen. I heard him greet Danelle on his way out to the van.
She was still at the kitchen table. The glasses were resting on top of her head. "I don't know, Conor."
I pulled one of the chairs over and sat next to her. "You don't know what?"
She leaned forward and turned the laptop so I could see the screen. "The job is to get into Mrs. Red's house. Her house, Conor!"
"I can get into a house. We've both done it before."
"This isn't just a house. This is a House house. No, not just a House house. This is fucking Red's house. My father is a cheap-ass, only paying two million for this job. It's suicide."
Each of the Houses went by a color, and usually the color fit their personality. It was easy enough to guess from that why Danelle was concerned.
"He thought the two ogres could do it."
She tapped a few buttons on the laptop. A 3D image of the home popped up. It was your typical east coast mansion, with a huge lawn, big driveway, lots of fountains, columns, and rooms. I'd stolen a flash drive from a place like it once. For a thief, the size was an advantage. It made it that much easier to hide.
"I'm not so
sure he did." She tapped a few more buttons, and the view panned in. A bunch of red dots appeared. "Each of those dots is a guard."
"Users?"
She shrugged. "No way to know. Probably not. Take a close look though, Conor. Every line of sight from every room is covered." She zoomed through the walls, turning the point of view so I could see what she was talking about. "Mrs. Grey wanted those two dead. How do we know Black didn't too?"
"He was going to pay two million for it? When Grey was only offering a hundred thousand?"
"Now you're pretending that the Houses are logical."
"Now you're deluding yourself that they aren't." I leaned forward and pushed her hand aside so I could take control. I moved the camera up and out so I could get a bird's eye view of the property. "Did they include kinetics?"
"Shift plus K."
I hit the keys and watched the red dots move back and forth in a loop. Just getting this kind of data would have cost Black a million or more.
"There are two possibilities. One, this job is legit, and the pay is high because the risk is high. Ogres may not be subtle, but they can take a beating. Two, Black wanted those two dead, and he wanted Red to kill them. He's already gotten number two for free, and you said I'm stuck, so I might as well bank on number one and claim the prize."
"I have a third possibility. He wanted those two dead in that house for a reason, and since you fucked it up you're going to take their place."
I bit my tongue, and watched the loop a few more times.
"Right there." I pointed at the screen. "I can make a break in the whole thing. Twelve seconds."
Danelle laughed. "You can't get from the wall to the house in twelve seconds."
I looked up as Rayon came back in and shuffled past, his heavy feet ratcheting up the volume on the basement steps.
"I'm iffy, but Kerry definitely can."
"Conor, no." She sounded angry again. "You can't trust her on a job like this."
"Why not? She's fast, she's quiet."
"How is she going to vault the wall without a hand?"
"Good point." I went back to examining the kinetics, ignored Rayon when he passed by with Evan over his shoulder. "I only need to take out one of them." I pointed to the red dot near the back door. "Clean break to the target. What is it, anyway?"
Dannie took command of the keyboard again. "There's a picture." She pulled it up on the screen.
It was mottled grey, vaguely oval, and about eight by six inches in size.
"A rock?" I asked.
"I don't know. It looks like it. Maybe it's enchanted, like your dice?"
It seemed like the best explanation. The Houses spent a lot of time and money vying for artifacts from the Laschamp. If they'd known about the dice they would have gone crazy trying to get a hold of them, despite the fact that they could only be used by a necromancer.
"Forty-eight hours. Well, forty-six now. We need to high tail it out of here, and then I need to get to..."
"Connecticut."
I should have guessed from the render. I shifted so I could look her in the eye. "I know you aren't thrilled with this, Dannie, but we've been scraping by for how long? I finish this one job, and we're set for a year at least. A whole year where we don't have to worry about how we're going to eat, or if we're going to get taken by something on the street, or if I'll even be able to afford the meds and stay alive another month. I know you don't want to do anything for your dad, but you know we need this."
She pursed her lips. "You shouldn't have taken the card. I've got enough of a reputation to keep getting easy jobs for a long time. Easy, safe jobs."
"Like the hit on Carlos Jimenez?"
She couldn't help but flinch at the name of the pyromancer who had taken her legs. They hadn't clued us in to the fact that he was a user, and so we'd been reckless in confronting him. He'd lit the match and tossed it at her, and all it had taken from there was a release of energy, and the small flame had spread into a fireball. She'd crumpled to the ground, screaming out in the kind of agony I could never have imagined, while I had to figure out a new approach to killing him. Shooting pyros was a tricky proposition, because they could take the muzzle flash and throw it back in your face, even as the bullet killed them.
In the end, I'd rushed him. He had tried to lay his hands on me, to burn me with his touch. We'd grappled for a minute, and he put a hole right through my hoodie before I got in a lucky punch, causing him to fall and hit his head on a coffee table. It broke his fall, but not before it broke his neck.
There were no hospitals for ghosts, and so the first night was agony. The next three weeks weren't much better. Dalton had come by to do what he could at a nice profit, which included amputating her legs to just above the knee, and I only slept about sixteen hours over the whole span of time.
"Fuck you for mentioning it. You know what I mean."
"I'm sorry, Dannie. It's just... I'm tired of living this way, and I'm even more tired of dying this way. I'm doing this job with or without you."
She reached out and put her hand on my face. "With me, Conor. I'm not about to abandon my best friend, even if you are being a jackass."
"You say that like it's something new."
CHAPTER SIX
It's not easy being green.
We left the house two hours later, after clearing out our meager possessions and pouring kerosene on anything that would burn. The back of the van was surprisingly empty: two corpses in the coolers, an old steamer trunk filled with tools of the trade, and a couple of dumpy old fabric suitcases containing ninety percent clothes, and ten percent memories.
Outside of what I carried, my most prized possession was a picture of Karen, Molly, and myself that I'd found on Facebook, printed from an inkjet on thin copy paper and framed in clear plastic. It was my reminder of better days, and the perfect life that had gone sour because of a breakdown in my molecular construction. I don't know why, but when I looked at it I almost felt normal again. I almost believed I was still a human being. I'd laid it on top of my pile of dark hoodies, black tees, jeans, pants, underwear, and socks, so meager that I couldn't even fill my suitcase completely.
Danelle's stuff wasn't much more impressive. She had a greater range of blouses, camis, sweaters, tights, and jeans, but her own memories were limited to a photo of her with her brother before she'd been disavowed, and another of her with her ex-husband, before he'd been caught on a job and killed.
It was a sad life, but it was a life.
"Thanks, Rayon," Danelle said, after the big zombie lowered her gently into the passenger seat. "I'm going to miss you."
"Really?" He seemed surprised.
"Really."
He gave her a half-smile, turned, and shambled back towards the house. I was standing at the front door, holding a lighter.
"It's okay, boss." He could tell I was feeling guilty. I don't know how, but he could. "I don't know what I'm going back to, but something tells me its better than what you've got." He looked back towards the van. "With one exception, maybe."
I couldn't believe he was trying to cheer me up, when I was about to turn him to ash. Then I remembered what I had packed into the van.
"Maybe you're right, with one exception." Danelle and I made lousy bedmates, but we'd clicked everywhere else. I patted the zombie on the shoulder, and handed him the lighter. "You know what to do. Maybe I'll see you on the other side someday. Just not too soon."
His answer was unexpected. His face turned eerily dark, his eyes narrowing and his lip curling in an almost-snarl. "Stay away as long as you can. If you think it isn't safe for you here, you have no idea what's waiting."
A lump rose into my throat. "What the hell are you talking about?"
Rayon's face regained its peaceful neutrality. "What?"
"What...the...hell?" My heart was pounding, and I could feel my muscles tensing up. I'd always been afraid of death. Having it threaten me was new.
"I don't know."
"You don't k
now?"
"Sorry, boss."
I stared into his blank brown eyes, searching for some shred of whatever had caused the outburst, and finding nothing. "Whatever, Rayon. Go do what you need to do."
I headed back towards the van, trying to calm the pounding in my heart. The door to the house creaked open and smacked closed behind me. By the time I slid into the driver's seat and turned to look, the flames were licking at the windows. I could see Rayon through them, his hand raised in a wave, smoke swirling around him.
I found the thread connecting us and cut it. A second later, his body fell from view.
"It never gets easier, does it?" Danelle asked.
I turned the key and brought the van to life. My hands were quaking against the wheel. "That depends on the corpse. Evan's useful, but he's an asshole. Ray was a good one, though."
I put the car in reverse and backed it out of the driveway. The smoke from the house was getting more noticeable, and I wanted to be gone before the neighbors called the fire department. I could only imagine what they'd think when they went into the basement. There was a reason we'd paid our rent in cash.
"Where to?"
I sucked in my breath and held it, hoping it would calm the tremors Rayon's words had caused.
Danelle dug the card out of a small backpack at her feet. "We need to cash this in so we can lose the trail."
"Why didn't you just do it at the house?"
"Too direct. We need to route it through a few other holdings first, so it will be harder to trace back to me."
She was still worried I was going to blow it, and her father would find out she was involved in his business. Even if he thought she was working for him. It was nuts, but that was the depth of his disappointment.
"They're going to take twenty percent."
"Money well spent. Even if you finish the job they're going to try to trace the funds, just so they know who they're dealing with. Black doesn't like anonymity."
"I thought that was the whole point of being a ghost? I take it you have a contact in mind?"
She smiled. "Of course. Head down to the Loop."
