Acheron Highway: A Jonathan Shade Novel

by Gary Jonas

  “Do I look like Temperance Brennan to you?”

  “You read Kathy Reichs?” I asked, impressed.

  “Who?”

  “The author of the Temperance Brennan novels.”

  “Dude, I’m talking about a TV show and you want to bring up books? What’s wrong with you?”

  Where I said I was impressed? Cancel that.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Kelly, Brand, Miranda, and I entered the DGI building a little after 8:00.

  Phil broke out in a sweat when he saw Kelly, but he knew we were coming since I’d called ahead to line up an appointment.

  “Go on up,” Phil said. He remained behind his station. When Kelly gave him a friendly smile and wave, his face turned green and he cringed. He tried to cover it up by hiding behind a Steam Room Spa brochure that promised No Pain, Still Gain. Right.

  “Thanks,” I said. We hopped on the elevator, and when the doors opened on the thirteenth floor, Mike Ender stood waiting for us.

  “Mr. Shade,” he said, nodding to me then to each of us. “Ms. Hammond. Ms. Chan.” He stopped when he saw Brand. “Mr. Easton, I didn’t realize you were still alive.”

  Until that moment, I hadn’t realized Brand even had a last name.

  “Von will be ready for you in a few,” Mike said. “She’s not particularly pleased with you at the moment, Mr. Shade.”

  “She’ll get over it. Or not.”

  We started down the hall, but Mike blocked the path.

  “Please wait here.” He glanced at the bandage on my throat. “What happened to your neck?”

  “Hot date.”

  He raised an eyebrow then turned. “Here she comes.”

  “My date?”

  “I certainly hope not,” Mike said and headed back toward his office.

  Von passed Mike as she came down the hall. I was glad magic doesn’t work on me because the daggers she kept firing out of her eyes would have been pretty painful.

  “I didn’t realize this was going to be a convention,” she said.

  I gestured to Kelly and Brand. “They’re here to make sure you don’t try to recruit us into Amway.”

  “On the phone, you said this meeting was for Miranda.”

  “It is.”

  “Then I’d appreciate it if you’d shut up and let her speak.”

  I mimed using a key to lock my mouth then tossed the imaginary key behind me.

  Miranda stepped forward, holding the jar that contained her heart. “Please tell me you can help me.”

  “Is that your heart?”

  Miranda nodded. “It’s not beating. Am I dead?”

  “You said Zach took your heart. Where is he?”

  “Feeding the worms,” I said.

  “You just couldn’t keep your mouth closed, could you?”

  “I like to hear myself talk.”

  “I’ve noticed. Are you sure it’s Zach?”

  “Pretty sure. The wallet had his ID. We haven’t checked his dental records or anything if that’s what you mean, but I think it’s pretty safe to assume it’s him.”

  Von sighed and looked at Miranda and at the still heart in the jar of formaldehyde. “If Zach took your heart and kept it beating, which still seems like a stretch to me, and he’s now dead, then you, my dear, are also dead.”

  “But I’m still me. The other dead people seemed to be something else.”

  “I don’t have an explanation for you on that except that perhaps because you were already mobile and present, no spirits could take you over.”

  Miranda shook her head. “I’m sorry but I’m an accountant in the payroll department for DGI Engineering. I didn’t even know about you magical people. I mean, I knew a few of you, but I had no clue what you do. How does this even work?”

  Von hesitated. “I’m not sure I should say anything about that.”

  Miranda turned to me. “Can you tell me anything?”

  “About magic? Sure. It’s mostly genetic, but there’s an energy component too. Think of it like the Law of Attraction. Are you familiar with that?”

  “Like The Secret?”

  “Something like that,” I said, drawing a glare from Von, “but when a wizard pulls energy, they’re genetically wired to use that energy in various ways. There’s more to it, of course, but that’s a simple explanation. What Von is saying is that the energy Zach used to keep your heart beating is gone and without the magic to keep it beating, the heart stopped and you died. This happened as soon as he was murdered.”

  “He was murdered?” Von asked. “How can you be sure?”

  “His body was buried in his backyard. If he’d died of natural causes, he wouldn’t have been hidden.”

  “What about Gina?”

  “According to my sources, Gina has been dead for a while. I believe her skeleton is in Zach’s basement. There are a couple more skeletons down there too.”

  “His parents,” Von said. “I knew they were dead. I saw Gina at a party last summer. I should have been able to tell she was dead. Perhaps Zach was better than I thought.”

  “Someone still killed him.”

  “Any idea how?”

  “No clue. Didn’t see any signs of blunt force trauma on the skull, and aside from the damage done by a shovel digging him up, I didn’t see anything else to suggest anything. That said, we didn’t look too close either. The skeleton is still there.”

  “Are we going to just stand here in the hall?” Brand asked. “I’d at least like something to drink.”

  “You don’t need anything to drink,” Von said. “You’re a Sekutar.”

  “We still eat and drink and fuck, and some of us even sing karaoke.”

  “Not here, I hope.”

  “I either want refreshments or I’m going across the street to Starbucks.”

  Von rolled her eyes. “So go to Starbucks. I don’t want any of you to be here anyway. You were not invited.”

  “We don’t need invitations,” Brand said.

  “Actually, you do.”

  Kelly stepped between Brand and Von. She met Von’s gaze. “I think we should take this to one of the meeting rooms down the hall. I also think it’s time for you to take a polite pill.”

  “Or?”

  “Or I’ll tear off your head and let Brand play basketball with it.” Kelly spoke with such a matter-of-fact tone that even I got a chill.

  Von blinked and her face reddened as her eyes flared with anger.

  I knew she was about to summon up some magic and that if she did, Kelly would make good on her promise. One thing Kelly can simply not abide is someone who thinks she’s above anyone else.

  I knew I’d best intervene or there would be bloodshed. I broke into my best Stephen Lynch and sang, “Damn that’s an ugly baby!”

  Von looked at me as if I’d belched, “How about a look at them titties?” to a nun in church.

  Kelly shook her head and laughed.

  “That was absurd,” Von said.

  “Saved your ass, though.”

  To her credit, Von didn’t object, and I suspect that on reflection, she knew I was right.

  “The meeting room is down here. Let’s get some water, sit down, and talk this out.”

  She led us to a large room. A huge meeting table occupied the center, and leather chairs circled it. A Deep Rock water cooler stood in one corner. Brand headed right for it as if he thought it were a mirage in Death Valley. While he poured himself a paper cup of water, the rest of us sat at the table.

  Once everyone was seated, Von placed her elbows on the table and steepled her fingers. “What do you want me to do for Miranda, Mr. Shade?”

  “Can you put her heart back?”

  “It’s not beating. What do we do once it’s back in her chest?”

  “I suppose I could hook up my iPod and crank out Motley Crue’s ‘Kickstart My Heart,’ but I was hoping you could work a bit of magic and get it going that way.”

  “One problem,” Von said.

  “W
hat’s that?”

  “If I can get her heart working and give her back her life, she can’t live with the wounds regardless.”

  “Don’t you have a healer on staff here?”

  “One who could handle something on this scale? Mr. Shade, in order to pull this off, we’d need a top-notch healer. I could keep Miranda’s body working for a short time, get the blood flowing through her veins again, but we’d still need a spark of life to get her heart working properly.”

  The mention of blood flow triggered something in my brain. I looked at Miranda, and she looked exactly as she had when she first came to my apartment a few days ago. I wondered why she didn’t look pale. I didn’t know when Zach had shuffled off his mortal coil, but as soon as he had, her blood should have settled.

  “Is something wrong, Jonathan?” Kelly asked.

  I tried to remember if the corpse O’Malley had called me in on had looked pale. If so, it didn’t register. Maybe when Persephone had sent the spirits to the dead folks, she kept the bodies looking more normal through magic. It was possible. But Miranda wasn’t sharing her body with another spirit. Then again, perhaps because her spirit was still in her body magically, that prevented another spirit from stepping in.

  “Jonathan?”

  “Sorry?” I said, snapping back to the moment.

  “Spark of life?” Kelly said.

  “Does that mean someone or something has to die in order to bring Miranda back to life?”

  “That would be a transference of energy,” Von said, “the life force of one to another.”

  “Human?” I asked.

  Von nodded. “If she’d only been dead a short while, electricity would be sufficient and we could simply restart her heart. My concern right now is that a shock of that sort would sever her spirit from her body, and while I could keep the body alive, I don’t know of a way to reattach her mind and spirit after this long.”

  “But I’m OK right now,” she said. “Aside from the heart, I mean.”

  “And as long as whatever magic brought back the dead is working, you’ll keep going as you are. That could be five years or five seconds. There’s no way to tell.”

  “I can’t have someone die just so that I can live. That wouldn’t be right.”

  “It’s a moot point, my dear. While there are several healers who could perform the magic required, I don’t know of any who would do such a transference. It’s morally questionable at best even if you had a volunteer.”

  “Magic has kept Miranda going so far,” I said. “Her blood hasn’t even settled.” I wanted to mention that to see if Von had a reaction. She didn’t so I let it go, figuring the magic must account for it. “Who’s to say that if we try putting the heart back and giving it a jolt to get it going won’t work?”

  “That would be some serious magic.”

  “Whatever magic was used to animate the dead had to be incredibly strong.”

  Von nodded. “No argument, but that magic has to be fading.”

  Brand coughed to get everyone’s attention. “That depends.”

  We all turned toward him.

  “Gradual magic,” he said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

  Von considered that.

  I’d never heard of it. “Gradual magic?” I asked.

  Kelly shrugged. “No clue,” she said.

  “The wizards who engineered me used to talk about gradual magic. It starts slow, like a trickle, and then it gets amped up gradually and it builds up to levels a normal wizard can’t usually reach. Then it gradually recedes too. It’s like turning on a hot water faucet. The water starts cold but gradually heats up, and you can fill the tub with super hot water. The water stays hot for a time but gradually cools down, and pretty soon the heat is gone and you just have cold water. If you turn the tap on low, though, you can get a lot more hot water because the water heater keeps up.”

  “You were created that way,” Von said to Brand. “A team of wizards each gave a little magic while one manipulated you at a genetic level.”

  “I don’t remember that, but they sure talked about it a lot. Said they could reach further and hold it longer that way.”

  “At first, there were only a few dead people up and about,” Kelly said.

  “Then they increased,” Brand said.

  “And then some asshole arranged for them all to be put down,” Von said.

  “But the water gets cold,” I said. “How long does that take in this sort of thing?”

  “In the case of Brand and the other second-generation warriors, we estimate ten years.”

  “And first generation?” I asked, knowing Kelly was thinking it. After all, she was first generation.

  “There were no limits on the first generation. That’s why they were destroyed.” As Von spoke, she stared at Kelly.

  “When did they create you, Brand?”

  “Four years ago.” He looked at Von. “Are you saying I’ll die in six years?”

  She laughed. “In six years, the magic will wear off and you’ll gradually revert to a normal man.”

  “I think I’d rather die,” Brand said.

  “We haven’t seen any fresh dead people up yesterday or today,” I said.

  “The magic may have peaked.”

  Or the Underworld might have run out of spirits to send or Persephone was honoring her word, but I kept those thoughts to myself.

  “If it’s gradual magic, we might be able to save Miranda as long as it’s done before the magic fades.”

  “I suspect it will still require a life.”

  “I’m not willing to have someone die for me,” Miranda said. “However, I am willing to take a chance that maybe we don’t need a life to be given.”

  “For her wounds, we’ll need at least two healers,” Von said. “We only have two on staff, and one is on vacation in London.”

  “I know a freelance healer,” I said. “Let me make a call.”

  “There’s still another point to discuss,” Von said.

  “What’s that?”

  “Price.”

  “Miranda works for DGI. This should be covered by her medical plan.”

  “Not after she dies.”

  “Oh, come on. Doesn’t this qualify as a special circumstance or something?”

  Miranda shook her head. “It’s all right. How much are we talking here?”

  Von looked up and ticked off things on her fingers, mumbling as she went. She finally shrugged and looked at Miranda. “Forty thousand dollars, give or take, depending on how much Jonathan’s healer friend charges.”

  “Fine,” Miranda said. “I can cash in my 401(k). It won’t do me any good if I’m dead.”

  I looked at Von and wanted to throttle her. Instead I simply said, “You get nothing unless she gets her life back.”

  #

  Lina rarely left her house in Five Points, but she agreed to make an exception for me. It took her an hour to get to DGI, so we went out to breakfast while we waited. Miranda didn’t eat, probably thinking about how much the afternoon was going to cost her, but Kelly, Brand, and I made up for her lack of appetite.

  When we got back to DGI, Lina was there waiting. We stepped off the elevator, and Lina saw me.

  “Jonathan!” She rushed forward and wrapped her arms around me. Lina stands about five four, weighs in at more than two hundred pounds, has skin the color of a Hershey bar, and has a smile that always reaches her eyes. She hugged me tight and kissed my cheek. “Wish I could fix your neck for you.”

  I shrugged. “It will heal on its own.”

  “Have you talked to Frank?”

  “I suspect you’ve spoken to him since I have. You’re looking vibrant this morning.”

  She smiled. “It’s a new skin cream I bought. I saw their infomercial about how it will make you look ten years younger, so I couldn’t resist. Now if they could come up with a way to lose eighty pounds without cutting back on meals…”

  “Come up with something like that
, you’ll be a billionaire.”

  “I’d give it all away to charity. Well, not quite all, but most.”

  I gestured toward Miranda. “Lina, this is Miranda. She’s going to be your patient.”

  Lina nodded and took Miranda’s hands in hers. “Let me look at you, dear.”

  Miranda looked uncomfortable, but Lina gave her a smile and Miranda relaxed. “I appreciate you coming out here to help me.”

  “It’s not every day I get the chance to help bring someone back to life,” Lina said.

  “I really don’t feel dead.”

  “So I’ve been told. Let’s see if we can get you back.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  They set up in a special room I’d never seen. It was two floors up and prepped like an operating room at a hospital. OK, I say that, but really aside from having a table for the patient, it wasn’t much like a regular hospital. No monitors for vitals or anything like that. No tables for surgical instruments. Instead, there were energy lines glowing along the ceiling. It was as if the wizards at DGI had gathered up a bunch of ley lines and just strung them across the ceiling like a giant spiderweb.

  I suspect that a regular person would not have seen the energy lines, but it didn’t occur to me to ask Miranda.

  Kelly and I watched from a monitoring station through one-way glass. We had to stand since the room we occupied was really more of a small corridor or a long closet. Brand waited downstairs.

  Lina, Von, and a middle-aged woman named Grace stood around the table. Miranda lay on top of it. They removed her shirt but not her bra. The incision in her chest looked the same as it had when I’d first seen it. No further deterioration or infection.

  “I hope this works,” Kelly said.

  I hoped so too. My heart pounded in my chest as I considered the possibility that Miranda would die. Excuse me, the possibility that she would remain dead. While there was still hope that her life could return to normal, I wanted to hold on to that. I wondered if I’d just broken into Zach’s house that first day and found her heart if it would have made a difference. What if they could have saved her then but now it was too late? I didn’t want to break into his place on Tuesday because I didn’t know the heart was there, and I try to operate within the law as much as I can, but now I regretted it.