“Anyway,” Jo went on. “I played a lot of Magic, and Leon...excuse me, Dr. Evil always wanted me to play on his team.”
“I wanted you to anchor my team,” Leon added. “I wanted to build the whole team around you. A different kind of Magic team. Not just a bunch of nerdy misfits, but a team with something dramatically different.”
“A girl,” Jo said.
“Women are dramatically underrepresented on professional teams and at competitive events, and you could have helped change that. But you quit.” Leon’s forehead wrinkled. “But I understand. You got married, had a kid, then...”
“Yeah, then,” Jo said, her tone making it clear she didn’t want to discuss “then.” “But now I’m here, about magic, and not the card game. There’s trouble, and I need your help.”
“The demon?” the big man asked.
“You know about the demon?” Randall’s eyes went wide. “Did you—”
“No,” Leon waved a hand sharply. “I don’t mess with the dark stuff. I don’t even let the dabblers run their LARPs out of here.”
Randall looked from Leon to Jo. “I don’t...”
“Live Action Role Play,” Jo supplied. “It’s the stuff that even nerds think is nerdy. Look, Leon, I need your help. This demon, he’s bad news. I don’t know what he’s up to, but he’s after somebody I know. He...killed a friend of mine tonight, and he took my mom and...” Her words trailed off. Jo took a deep breath and squared her shoulders. “He’s got my kid, Leon. He took Ginny, and I have to take my friend to him or he’ll hurt her.”
Leon looked at her for a long minute. “Ginny? I never even knew her name, Jo. Of course I’ll help. What do you need? What’s so special about your friend here?”
Jo looked confused for a second, then let out a sharp laugh. “Oh no, it’s not Randall. He’s just a cop. He’s helping. The friend I have to take...well, he’s an angel.”
Dr. Evil’s head snapped up. “What? What do you mean, an angel?”
“I mean an angel like wings, Heaven, harps, all that crap. You know, an angel. A big one.”
The big man’s eyes widened. “Is he here?”
“No, I have to go find him next. We were supposed to meet up tonight, but things have changed since we made our plans. So I’m going to him, then I have to convince him that he’s really an angel and has to help me rescue my little girl.”
“So he’s asleep?” Leon asked.
“He doesn’t know what he is, if that’s what you mean by asleep,” Jo agreed.
“Do angels sleep?” Randall asked. “I mean, the normal way.”
“I have no idea, and I don’t care right now. All I care about is getting Mitch to grab hold of that sword in my trunk and take the fight to this demon so I can get my mama and baby girl back home safe. Now, what do you have that can bring this angel to his senses, Leon?” Jo asked.
Leon leaned back in his chair, the metal protesting at the abuse. He clasped his hands on his expansive chest and looked up at the ceiling as though the answer was written in the fluorescent fixture. After almost a full minute, he looked at Joanna and Randall. “I don’t know, but I have a couple of ideas. Can you go get him and bring him back here? I need to make a few preparations, and I’ll have to clear out space in the back room. It’s been a while since I did any major rituals. I’ve got some overstock in the middle of my circle.”
Jo nodded. “Yeah, I can do that. We’ll go get Mitch and bring him back here. But Leon, we have to hurry. I’ve got to meet this demon at midnight or he’ll hurt Ginny.”
“It’s ten now, so don’t screw around. Where does your guy live?” Leon asked.
“I’m not sure, but I can find him,” Jo said. She stood up and turned to Randall. “Let’s go.”
“I need him,” Dr. Evil said, pulling himself to his feet. He was even bigger standing, almost six-and-a-half feet tall, with his neon green shirt glaring in the hideous fluorescent light. “There’s a lot of crap to move in the back.”
“Fine,” Jo said. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.” She opened the door and headed to the front of the store, pulling out her cell phone as she went. She swiped her finger across the screen and typed in her security code. “Dennis, I need you.”
“What’s up?” the unicorn head on her screen asked.
“I need you to trace Mitch’s cell phone for me.”
“Do you have the number?” the unicorn asked.
“Yeah, it’s in my contacts.”
“I’ve got him. But Jo?” The unicorn head was gone, replaced by Dennis’s human face.
“Yeah, what’s wrong?”
“He’s moving.”
“Okay, I guess he’s headed over to the gym early. I can meet him there before he gets in and finds—”
“He’s not going to the gym. He’s driving east, toward the airport. I just checked the flights. He’s booked on a redeye to New York leaving in ninety minutes.”
“Son of a gun,” Jo muttered. She jerked open her car door and slid behind the wheel. She stuck the phone in a cradle and activated the Bluetooth, then jammed the car in reverse and squealed out of the parking lot. “Get me on him, Dennis. We’ve got to catch that angel before he gets the heck out of Dodge.”
Mitch was standing in the clear Plexiglas shelter marked with a blue “Z” when Jo pulled her red Kia Soul to a stop in front of him. The undercover angel’s head snapped up and his eyes went wide as she walked around the front of the car, opened the passenger door, and gestured to him.
“Get in,” she said. A thin blonde girl in sweatpants with pink headphones pressed to her ears looked up and pulled her headphones down around her neck. “Put the ‘phones back on, Princess. This is grown-up business.”
The girl opened her mouth to speak, but Jo held up one finger at her. “Didn’t anybody ever tell you not to mess with a pissed-off black woman when she’s fussin’ at her man? Now sit your lily-white behind down and stay out of my business.” The girl’s eyes widened, but she put her headphones on and sat down. She pulled a cell phone out of her pocket and started typing furiously on the screen.
Jo looked back at Mitch. “Now get your butt in the car before Princess Barbie’s tweet goes viral and I end up starring in the remake of Diary of a Mad Black Woman.”
Mitch took the green duffel bag off his shoulder and let it drop to the ground by his feet. “I’m not going with you, Jo. I don’t know how you did that trick with the sword, and I don’t know what you want out of me, but I’m no angel, and I’m not going to go fight no monster.”
“You are, and you are,” Jo said. “I don’t have time to play games with you, Mitch. You are the Archangel Michael, you are going with me to deal with this demon, and you are getting in my car right now.”
“Is there a problem, sir?” Jo turned to see the airport shuttle idling behind her car with the door open. The blonde girl stepped up into the bus and leaned down to the driver’s ear. He nodded, then said, “You folks take care of your personal business at home. I’ve got runs to make. You getting on or not?”
Mitch picked up his bag and stepped forward, but Jo put a hand on his chest. “He’s got my daughter, Mitch. He came into my house, murdered Marla, and kidnapped my mother and my baby girl. I need you to help me get them back. I can’t do it without you.” Her voice was low, her words urgent. She looked up into the big man’s blue eyes, saw his resistance start to waver.
“Please, Mitch. You’re the only one that can help me.” Her voice cracked, and she hated herself a little bit for it, but she couldn’t hold everything inside. Not this time.
Mitch stepped back, then waved to the bus driver. “Go ahead. I’ll catch the next one.”
“Your funeral, dude. You gotta look out for the crazy ones.” The driver closed the door and pulled around Jo’s car, belching black diesel smoke all over the two of them.
Mitch looked down at Jo. “You fucking with me?”
“I don’t do that,” Jo said. “And watch your mouth.”
“Did somebody really take your mother and kid?”
“Yeah. Slaughtered Marla in my living room. She must have put up some kind of a fight. Tore down a couple bookshelves and wrecked my TV. But apparently that wasn’t a clear enough message. Got Jake, too. Left him lying in the middle of the gym in a pool of his own blood.”
“Shit,” Mitch said. He glanced at Jo, who frowned at him. “Sorry, slipped out. What are we going to do?”
“I’ve got a guy working on that right now. We need to go meet up with him, then get to the school by midnight or they’ll hurt Mama and Ginny.”
“Do you know how many there are?” Mitch asked.
“I don’t know anything,” Jo said. “I know where to be and when to be there. I don’t know what we’re going up against, or how many. I don’t care. They’ve got my baby, and I’m going to get her back.” She stood there, fists clenched and jaw set, looking up at Mitch.
“And I’m going to help you,” Mitch said. He put a hand on her shoulder. “But we need to get as much information as we can. We can’t just go in there half-cocked. We need to do some surveillance, get the lay of the land before we go charging in there guns blazing.”
“Sword,” Jo corrected.
“Huh?”
“We’re going in there sword blazing, not guns blazing. Now where did you learn all that military talk? I thought you were just a dumb jock.”
“I’ve been some places,” Mitch said. “Seen some things.”
“Yeah,” Jo agreed. “More than you even remember. Now get in the car. We’ve got to go save my baby girl.”
11
The parking lot was empty when they pulled back into Dr. Evil’s game shop twenty minutes later. Jo opened the door, and Mitch turned to her. “This is the place? Your guy works here?”
“Something like that. Now come on. We’ve got to be at the school in an hour, and I don’t know how long whatever Leon is planning will take.”
Jo got a long duffel bag out of her trunk, and they walked into the deserted game shop. Half the overhead lights were off, and the green-haired boy was sitting at a long table playing something on a handheld game. He looked up when Mitch closed the door behind them.
“Go ahead and lock the deadbolt,” the kid said. “I’ll take you back to the Doc.”
“You really call him that?” Jo asked.
The kid shot her a crooked grin. “Depends on whether I want to yank his chain or not. But yeah, sometimes I call him Doc. He says there used to be a chick that called him that, and we’re the only two people who could ever get away with it. That you?”
Jo smiled, memories of a simpler life playing across her mind as they followed the kid through the darkened store. “Guilty as charged. I’m Jo.”
“Spencer,” the kid replied.
“You involved in the other business?” Jo asked.
“I’m learning. Leon thinks I’ve got some talent, so he’s been teaching me a few things.”
“Be careful. There’s some bad things in the world.”
“That’s why I want to learn magic. I want to stop the bad things from hurting people. That’s what you do, right? That’s why you’re here?” The kid stopped in front of a door with two deadbolts.
“Yeah, that’s why I’m here. And sometimes it’s what I do,” Jo said. She reached out for the knob, then looked at the kid. “But you think hard before you go down this road, kid. There are doors that can’t be closed again and things that can’t be unseen. Once you start messing with the ugly stuff in the world, it has a bad habit of messing with you right back. That’s why we’re here. Something nasty has my mother and my daughter, and we’ve got to fight it to get them back and keep this thing from hurting anybody else.”
Spencer looked up at her, his round face pale in the dim light. “I’ve already seen plenty of ugly. This isn’t the best neighborhood, you know. And I live two blocks from here.”
Jo knew the area. There were flop houses, whorehouses, and at least one meth lab within a quarter mile. Leon set up his shop there not just because the rent was cheap, but in hopes that he could give the kids in that part of town a safe place to go. It never hurt to have a wizard hanging out in a tough neighborhood, either.
She nodded to the kid. “Okay, just be careful.”
He looked at her, then opened the door for her. “You too.”
Jo and Mitch stepped through the door into the shop’s storeroom, and Spencer closed and locked the door behind them. Mitch spun around, but Jo put a hand on his arm.
“It’s okay. The deadbolts will open from either side, but if something mean and stupid gets loose, it gives the kid at least a chance of getting away.” She pointed to the door, and there were indeed latches to throw the deadbolts on both sides. Mitch relaxed, then turned back to the room. His eyes grew wide as he took in the room.
What was probably a normal warehouse room less than an hour before now looked like something out of a bad horror movie. A large circle was drawn in the floor with a five-pointed star touching the circle with all the points. Strange symbols Jo recognized and wards in various ancient languages ringed the perimeter, Celtic runes alternating with Enochian script and hand-scrawled Latin. White pillar candles burned at each point of the star. Incense burned in several holders around the room, filling the air with the mixed scents of sandalwood, vanilla, lavender, and clove. A smudge stick lay smoldering in the upper segment of the circle, its smoke wafting up behind of Leon, who was seated in the center with his legs crossed and his hands extended, palm out.
The big man wore loose black pants that looked like they were homespun cotton, with a formless grey shirt on top. It looked like nothing more than a pair of cheap sweat pants, or maybe long-sleeved hospital scrubs, with blobs of colored wax and other odd stains dotting the shirt and pants. He was barefoot, and bareheaded, sweat beading on his expansive forehead, but there was a tranquility about him that made Jo smile. If she had to guess, she would say that he was happier than he’d been in quite some time.
She knew, from long conversations years ago, that he wanted nothing more than to do good in the world, but had stepped away from actively practicing magic when his son was born. He didn’t want to attract the wrong kind of attention to his family, a concern that Jo felt all too acutely just then.
Leon looked up at her and smiled. “You’re back. Good. Everything is in place, we can begin.”
“It better all be in place,” panted Randall from a folding chair in the corner of the room. “I can’t even count how many boxes of crap I had to move. You’d think stock in a toy store would be easy, but no, that crap is heavy!”
Jo laughed. “Let me guess, Leon had to work on his very important preparations, so you did all the heavy lifting?”
“Girl, you ain’t wrong,” Randall said, wiping a bead of sweat from his chin. “I can’t even pronounce most of the crap I moved, but I know I don’t ever want to lay hands on it again!” He waved a hand at boxes of anime action figures, collectible card games, and stacks and stacks of Gundam models.
“What are we doing here, Jo? I thought we were going to get your daughter,” Mitch said.
“Mitch, this is Leon. I hope he can wake you up.” Jo gestured to the man seated in the circle, who nodded.
“Hello, Mitch. I would get up, but let’s face it, I’m a big old man, and it’s not easy to get up from the floor at my age. Now come sit down across from me in the circle, and we’ll see what we can see. Jo, did you bring the sword?”
“Right here,” she said, pulling the duffel from her shoulder. She set the bag on the floor, unzipped it, and drew out the sword. It was a plain weapon, nothing outwardly special about it. But she’d watched it burst into flames when Mitch touched it, and she’d seen demons tear through ruins to get it. She knew the unadorned weapon was actually one of the most holy objects on Earth, in the right hands.
She held it out to Mitch, who stepped back, his hands up. “No thank you,” he said. “I remember the headache that thing g
ave me last night.”
“You’re going to have to touch it, Mitch. This whole thing hinges on you taking up the sword,” Jo said. She stepped forward, hilt extended to the fighter, but Mitch just kept backing up.
“You guys do your hocus-pocus, then we’ll talk about me putting my hands back on that thing,” Mitch said.
Jo took a deep breath and turned to Leon. “It’s okay,” he said. “Give me the sword.”
She handed him the sword, and Leon looked up at Mitch. “Sit.” All hints of the jovial game shop owner were gone. His voice had steel behind it, and Mitch stepped into the circle and sat down in the center, his knees almost touching Leon’s.
Leon laid the blade across his lap and stretched out his hands, palms up. “Put your hands on mine.”
Mitch did as instructed.
Leon closed his eyes and began to mutter under his breath. Jo took a step back, making sure that her toes were nowhere near the edge of the circle, and closed her eyes as a bright flash of blue filled the room. When she opened her eyes and blinked away the dazzle-spots, a dome of blue-white energy crackled over the circle, completely enclosing Leon and Mitch. She could see the big man’s mouth moving, but no sound penetrated the protective barrier of the circle.
Randall stepped to her side. “What the ever-loving shit is going on here?”
“You didn’t buy any of it until right now, did you?” Jo asked.
“Not really,” the stunned cop admitted. “I mean, I hoped you weren’t crazy because I like you. I really hoped you weren’t stupid and crazy because after what I saw at your house and your friend’s gym, that was probably going to get me killed. But never in a million years did I think you were just telling me the truth. Like, the real truth. I figured you weren’t lying because I’ve been a cop long enough to know when somebody’s just lying to my face, but I thought you were probably...”
“Crazy or stupid?” Jo finished for him.
“Or both,” he agreed.
“Yeah, a lot of times I think I probably am both, for ever getting mixed up in this mess.”
Calling All Angels (The Shadow Council Case Files Book 1) Page 7
