The Curse Merchant (The Dark Choir Book 1)

by J. P. Sloan

  That was when I spotted the photo of Carmen on the day cruise, and the events of last night spilled into my consciousness.

  Carmen.

  In the flurry of business that morning, I had managed to forget her again. I picked up the picture frame and stared at our faces. Bright, young, cheerful.

  Naïve.

  I was happier when I was working, so I snatched the Chinese menu and tackled my call list. The first number rolled to voice mail. The second lead was a young woman who didn’t seem able to discuss her situation at the moment, but would call back. That was common, particularly when the target of a hex was sitting in the car seat next to them.

  The third lead was a solid hit. A student at Loyola was struggling with his grades, and unless he found a way to arrest his downward spiral, he was going to end up working for his mother’s catering business. I had worked a single summer in Nassau at Aunt Viv’s restaurant. I was determined to save the young man from such a fate.

  After a brief phone interview, I discovered that he had become deeply entrenched in an online roleplaying game. This wasn’t the first time I’d dealt with addiction. The trick to addiction charms was to identify the need. I had to figure out what it was he was substituting the game for. A warm body? His own self-esteem? A sense of belonging?

  The great thing about dealing in charms and hexes is that you ultimately put your faith in the Cosmos to fill in the details. All I had to do was to come up with the major talking points, execute the mechanics of charm making, and I had a paycheck for the day.

  In this case, I elected to hex my own client.

  It may seem counter-intuitive, but the truth of the matter was this student was asking for someone to kick him in the ass. And I was happy to oblige for five hundred dollars. The charm would crash his computer any time he tried to play his game. This hex would only last until someone fell in love with him. Love is one of the fundamental currencies of magic, and when I need a trigger for charms and hexes, I find it to be a reliable resource.

  Reliable, that is, for someone wholly uninterested in Netherwork. Love has nothing to do with that.

  My currency was running thin, both financially and romantically. I knew the awning repair would cost money, and for whatever reason, I hadn’t been as aggressive or organized in my hex work as I had been in the past. I was determined to set that right! To start this hex off correctly, I would have to physically crash a computer with his game. Which meant buying that game, and a used laptop.

  I would also need my materials.

  I kept my reagents with my crafting space in a mini-storage unit in Catonsville. I often used flake gold and semi-precious stones in my crafting, and after a particularly destructive break-in six years ago, I learned to relocate my professional materials separate from my personal.

  After a short drive to Catonsville, I punched in the gate code, and found my way to the storage unit. The place was empty for a sunny Sunday morning, so I didn’t have to worry so much about discretion. I keyed open the padlock on the overhead door and slid it up with a rusty rattle. Stepping inside, I sucked in a lungful of dust, then pulled the door closed behind me. The air still held enough autumn crispness to keep the interior of the storage unit from turning into an oven. I wasn’t going to be there long at any rate.

  I found the wall switch and clicked on the single bulb in the center of the unit. The familiar stacks of cardboard boxes lining each side of the unit stood in a dusty repose. In the center of the unit, just beneath the light bulb, stood my work table. A black steamer trunk sat beneath it. I found the small key to the chest on my keychain and clicked it open, pulling out the top tray. The usual row of brass Mason jar lids greeted me, though, as I pulled them into view one after another, I realized how sparse my inventory had become. Most pertinently, I needed more lodestone. Any hex involving electronics benefited from a nice shot of natural magnetism, and I was empty.

  I rolled back into a squat, staring at the empty jar in my hand. My gaze lifted to the far end of the storage unit, and a black iron cage still cloaked in shadow. The meager light from the bulb never managed to penetrate the bars, and that suited me just fine. A single locked dark-lacquered cabinet sat within, its contents guarded from the light of day, and vice versa.

  The Library.

  It was a gift from my teacher, Emil Desiderio. Well, less a gift and more an inheritance. After his unfortunate demise, he had left me his compendium of Netherwork tomes, handed down to him from his mentor. They were a collection of western European hex craft, charm workings, Goetic manifests, Germanic runewords, and some Stregheria curses which, frankly, made my teeth shiver.

  Emil was trained from his teenage years in Netherwork. He had doggedly refused to teach me anything that dealt with the infernal forces that power Netherwork. Emil referred to these forces as The Dark Choir. As he put it, the rocks and trees would cry out in praise of God, but there was a Dark Choir that would sing darker songs in their depths, and praised no God.

  I had never opened the cabinet. I knew better. The knowledge of Netherwork was alluring in its power and ease of execution. Simply reading one of the tomes was risky. It’s impossible to un-learn something one has learned, and the knowledge held within that cabinet was, simply put, infernal. I’d locked it up and kept the key in a box in the top of my closet. Even before Emil’s death, I knew I wanted nothing to do with Netherwork. The outcome, invariably, was death.

  Or worse.

  I took a quick inventory of my materials and jotted down a list of necessary items in my pocket planner. I would look for a used computer later. At that moment, I had to make a trip to Frederick.

  It was time to give Edgar a visit.

  dgar Swain operated an antiques shop in the middle of the old colonial town of Frederick. Quaint red-brick row houses passed the windows of my car as the spires of seven old cathedrals loomed over the skyline. Sunday street shoppers lined the sidewalks, most of them walking dogs or pushing strollers. Frederick was only sixty miles away from Baltimore, but there was a world of difference between them.

  I pulled my car down Carroll Street, staying to the side to allow a car to pass me in the narrow lane. An elegant, but decaying store front came into view, its large, black sign declaring in white cursive letters, SWAIN’S ANTIQUES AND ODDITIES.

  After I parked my car along a gravel-paved alley, I stepped up to the old cracked mahogany double-doors and pushed my way into the musty, dimly lit interior of Edgar’s shop. The same sun-faded olive green sofa still sat in the display window, gathering dust. Long glass cases with flickering fluorescent bulbs stretched down the center of the shop, housing the myriad baubles and bric-a-brac Edgar sold to day-shopping octogenarians. A rack of regrettable prints in worn frames and more antiques separated the front of the shop from the rear.

  Which was where my business would be.

  The dark-stained wood cubbies along the back of Edgar’s shop contained arguably the most comprehensive selection of hermetic materials and reagents outside of New York City. This wasn’t dime-store Wiccan herbalism, either. Instantly, I spotted some crystallized West Egyptian Yarrow, genuine Carpathian Meriwether blossoms, dried scorpions, and my lodestone.

  Footfalls boomed overhead. Edgar’s kids were in a tear about something. As I skimmed the cubbies for his new inventory, I heard the children bustling down the wrought iron spiral staircase near the front of the shop. I turned to watch Elle and Eddie stampede through the front door. They were much taller than I remembered.

  The short, curvy figure of Edgar’s wife, Wren, stumbled down the stairs, balancing a cardboard box that was as big as her torso. She almost made it to the front door before she spotted me.

  She gave me a nod before lifting her head and bellowing, “Honey! Customer!”

  I bustled across the shop to hold the door open for Wren as she tried to catch up with her kids. It wasn’t until she was literally standing in the middle of the doorway that she finally recognized me.

  “Dorian?”


  “Hey, Wren.”

  She blinked furiously for a minute, then smiled. She gave me a half-hug, the corner of her unbalanced box digging into my ribs.

  “Holy shit, Dorian, why didn’t you say something?”

  “You look like you’re in a hurry.”

  She rolled her eyes and bobbed her head at the kids shoving each other in the back of Edgar’s Jeep.

  “They’re in a hurry.” She twisted around in the doorway and thundered, “Edgar! It’s Dorian!” My ears rang for a second. How God managed to fit such a loud voice inside such a small frame, I’d never know.

  I reached for her box. “Here, need a hand?”

  She lifted a brow and twisted the box away.

  “I’m a big girl, but thanks. I thought you went back to New York,” she added, moving out onto the street.

  “No. I’ve been around.”

  “You going to be here a while?”

  “Just getting materials.”

  She backed toward the Jeep, frowning.

  “Why don’t you stick around? I’m just running a delivery and taking the kids to swimming.”

  I held up a hand and tried to mollify the woman. I had no intention of spending the entire evening in Frederick, but I knew better than to say “no” to Wren Swain.

  “I’ll shop slow,” I said as she palmed the box into Elle’s lap.

  I turned back into the shop, and found Edgar leaning against the glass display, shaking his head. He had long, stringy salt-and-pepper hair with matching stubble spangling a Hapsburg chin. Thin-framed spectacles sat on his nose, covering his permanently squinting eyes. He stood in his Hawaiian print shirt watching me, that constant grin hiding on the corner of his mouth.

  “Hey, Dorian.”

  “How are you, Edgar?”

  “Been a while, man.”

  “Yeah, been in a slump lately. Turning it around. I’m getting low on lodestone and some…”

  Edgar turned on his heel and started moving back to the rear counter. I had known Edgar for several years, and after countless late evening conversations on esoteric topics, I had come to consider Edgar my best friend. At least, as close to a friend as a man in my lifestyle could afford. And though Edgar was typically a fistful of Zen stuffed into a loud print shirt, I could tell when he was pissed.

  I followed him back to the rear of the shop slowly.

  “So, those kids are getting tall,” I ventured.

  “That’s because we keep feeding them,” he replied with a tight-lipped grin.

  I nodded toward the paneled door behind Edgar’s shoulder. “How’s the collecting game been treating you?”

  He shrugged as he smirked. “Quiet. Most of the East Coast players are shopping South America right now. Kind of a counter-reformation artifact wave going on.”

  I checked the doorknob to his special storeroom. That same gray piece of yarn still hung from the knob.

  “Must have something hot in there.”

  “Hot, I got. Problem is selling it.” He leaned forward with something of that old mischief lingering in his eyes. “You ever going to unload that Library of yours? I bet I could find buyers for that in a couple days.”

  “The answer is still ‘no’, Edgar.”

  He nodded and shrugged again. Ever since I first met Edgar, he had been trying to buy Emil’s Library from me. Edgar was what practitioners in my circle referred to as a Collector. He had shown me most of the hermetically charged artifacts, tools, and objects he had gathered in his travels, which could be described in various manners as being cursed. A man with his eye for metaphysically questionable collectables would do well in the Old World where free markets of such items trade with only a figurative oversight. But in America, Edgar had to trade and sell with intense discretion. The Presidium managed to ignore insignificant rogue elements within its borders, and Edgar wasn’t eager to provoke their notice.

  Neither was I, for that matter.

  Edgar sighed, and scratched his chin.

  “So, you’re doing pretty good this weekend.”

  “You think so? I couldn’t agree less.”

  “You look okay.”

  “Wait, what?”

  “Looking pretty good. I’m not hitting on you or anything, you just look like you’re having a good day.”

  I shook my head. He was never this baffling to me before, and I didn’t care for it much.

  “What do you mean, I look good this weekend?”

  “Just, looks like you’re keeping it together. Why, what happened?”

  “Well, I kind of had a close call last night. Had a crazy woman try to shoot me in the face.”

  “No shit? What did you do?”

  “Talked her out of it. She got a wild hair about her dog dying. Her live-in boyfriend told her I did it. Insane.”

  He snickered, and for a second, I saw the old Edgar.

  “A dog? Harsh, man.”

  “That’s not the worst part, either.”

  “What’s worse than getting shot in the face?”

  “Carmen, for one.”

  “Carmen? What the hell did you do?”

  “Well my nerves were shot, you know? So I went to the club.”

  He winced. “You didn’t.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “Dorian, man.” He paused for a long moment, then added, “Was she pissed?”

  “You could say that. I didn’t have my head screwed on straight. Wasn’t thinking.”

  “How was she?”

  I thought about Carmen’s face, the smell of the perfume she was wearing, the way that gown clung to her hips.

  “She’s doing good. Better than I am.”

  We shared a moment of awkward silence before the front door scraped open. I pulled my pocket planner and started checking my list as Edgar shoved his hands into the pockets of his jean shorts and cooed at the new customer. I picked out six thumbnail sized hunks of lodestone and bagged them into one of the self-serve brown paper sandwich bags he kept hanging beside the cubbies, when his new customer sauntered up to the rear counter.

  He was a dapper man in his late fifties with olive skin and a neatly trimmed beard with stripes of white dropping from the corners of his mouth. His eyes were dark and wrinkled, brilliantly intense and set deep within his skull. He laid his palm flat against the top of the rear display, the gold rings on his fingers tapping sharply against the glass.

  His eyes moved neatly along the rows of materials, resting ultimately on the side of my face. He watched me with unnerving focus. Almost rude, really.

  I turned to face him with a sigh and lifted my brow.

  “Uh, hi?” I challenged, attempting to clearly express my disinterest in conversation without actually telling him to fuck off.

  “Good afternoon,” he purred, his voice dripping with the serifs and diacritics of a highly polished Arabic accent. “Please, I do not mean to disturb.”

  He swept his hand in a gentle circle, and the grace of his motion along with the velvet intonation of his voice proved almost hypnotic.

  “No problem. Just wrapping up.”

  Edgar checked my shoulder as he swept around to the back of the display. He gave me a cautious look from the side of his spectacles as he settled himself in front of the door to his private collection.

  “Hassam, this is Dorian Lake,” he muttered as he untwisted the limp gray yarn wrapped around the door knob.

  I squared my shoulders and cleared my throat. It wasn’t like Edgar to force me into business with one of his other clients, particularly a client interested in anything behind that piece of gray yarn.

  I extended my hand to the man.

  “Pleasure.”

  He smiled, brown stained teeth slanting into view between his balmed lips.

  “Hassam al-Syriani. Your servant, Mister Lake.”

  Edgar lingered as he pushed open his collection door, and mumbled just loud enough for me to hear, “Behave.”

  After he stepped into the storage room, I fou
nd myself stranded with al-Syriani, with nothing to talk about. I would have to thank Edgar for that later.

  Trying to ease the situation, and hopefully make Edgar’s life easier in the process, I attempted conversation.

  “So, you’re a practitioner?”

  The Syrian lifted his chin in a gesture so thoroughly indecipherable I had no idea if he even knew what I was asking.

  “I am a representative of interested parties,” he finally stated. “I am rarely directly involved, but I do share a particular interest in what you call a ‘practice.’“

  “So that’s a no, then.”

  “And what is your practice, Mister Lake?”

  Here it was, that moment when I had to decide whether to dumb down my answer or make it as brutally honest as I could in order to scare the man away. Brazen honesty hadn’t discouraged Julian Bright, and I had doubts anything was going to shake this man’s interest.

  “I sell hexes and charms.”

  “In Frederick?”

  “No. Baltimore. But I’ll drive out to Frederick if I have a client. Kind of a conservative town, though.”

  “And what about the District?”

  The tiniest of warning alarms sounded off in the under-evolved parts of my brain stem. Anytime anyone discussed Washington D.C. in a metaphysical context, I got nervous.

  “I don’t do business in D.C.”

  His eyes narrowed slightly, and his grin lengthened.

  “Why is that, if I might ask?”

  “Because I’m not a complete idiot.”

  He chuckled. “Caution. A priceless business instinct.” He turned away from me as he added, “One which has been greatly neglected in your circles as of late.”

  A chill flooded through my arms, and I folded the brown paper bag quickly, scribbling, lodestone six pcs on the bag in red Sharpie with an embarrassingly unsteady hand.

  Edgar emerged from the storage room with a conspicuously innocuous package wrapped in brown paper and tied with sisal twine. He set it on the countertop and nodded to al-Syriani.

  “Here it is.”

  “Documentation?”