“I’ll go away,” he says, turning her hand over, letting go of it, taking up the other one. Now he looks at her, over his glasses. “But I won’t come back.”
She returns his gaze, unblinking.
“Look, Mr.—”
She blanks.
“Rudnick,” he says, unoffended.
His face a brown-red mask, deep lines around his mouth and eyes.
“Nobody asked me about this. I appreciate you coming all the way out here.”
He just looks at her.
The bird chirps.
He waves a hand at it, a subtle gesture, and it flies away forever.
“But I just lost my father, days ago, and I can’t focus right now. All I do is turn pieces, play Sudoku and. And nothing. Sudoku is pretty much it.”
He looks at her.
He doesn’t know or care what Sudoku is.
“I know you’re the best teacher I could have, if I’m really doing this. I read your book. I can do a few of those things. But if now is the only time you have for me, I have to say no.”
This is where he should say graceful words, shake her hand, and get back in his truck.
Or tell her to fuck off, turn on his heel, and get back in his truck.
But he doesn’t move.
Just looks at her, like he’s waiting for her to realize she’s fucking up, and that makes her a little mad. Even Karl Zautke knew better than to patronize her; he learned that when she was a little girl. One may disagree with an Anneke Zautke, but one must not treat her like she’s stupid.
Big mistake, rock-mover-old-man.
“Well, enjoy your day,” she says, and shuts the door.
Not a slam, but neither an apologetically slow close.
Shuts it like she would if nobody was there at all.
Yeah, a bit rude.
She breathes for a minute, still looking at the door, knowing he’s just standing there. She doesn’t think he’s a danger to her, but she does wonder if she’s making a mistake. What does she really have to do just now but turn mugs for the festival and play number games until she can sleep? And wish she could cry for her daddy, drink, and then cry for her daddy. She nearly opens the door, then remembers his wizened, sure-of-himself half smile and gets pissed again.
Turns decisively away from the door.
Says Haaa!
She has been walled in. By her own stock. Every mug, bowl, and plate she has, finished, unfinished, purchased, every one of them, stands stacked before her. From floor to high, A-frame ceiling. A frozen waterfall of clayware. All precariously balanced, some pieces on their corners, the whole thing ready to fall. If she removes one cup, it will pour down like a dynamited chimney. On her. A month’s hard work wrecked. Black eyes, lacerations, worse perhaps, and a herculean mess of shards and clay dust instead of half a summer’s income.
Kat, the multiply pierced woman who manages Anneke’s booth at the Renaissance festival, is coming tomorrow in her bumper-stickered van with the dried roses on the dashboard to get the finished pieces. With her father’s illness, Anneke has put Kat off several times, and now her booth has bare shelves. Will have nothing but bare shelves if this deadfall crashes.
Fuck that old guy.
She breathes hard.
She turns to open the door.
Can’t.
It has been mortared shut, concrete caulking the jamb, the hinges. A tongue of poured stone licks down from the wrecked lock. The only part of the door not slathered with freshly set concrete is the brass mail slot. Which now opens. She steps back a half step, which is all the room she’s got if she doesn’t want to bring down the wall of pottery.
A Snickers bar and a small box of raisins slide through, fall on her hickory floor.
“What the FUCK!” she says. “You let me out of here, you old COOT! DO YOU FUCKING HEAR ME?”
The pottery wall shudders, a saucer slipping headily close to falling out, nearly releases the threatened avalanche.
“Temper,” he says. “Ask me a question civilly and I’ll answer you.”
She makes an uncivil noise.
Stamps the Snickers bar flat, pushes it flat through the slot.
It comes back.
“Try not to step on your food. You’re going to get hungry. Probably very hungry. Depends on how good you are and how well you listen. I’m going to tell you how to unstack that wall, if you want to know. But you’re not to use your hands. You’ll have to start from the top.”
She seethes.
He waits.
“What if I can’t?”
“After a day or two I’ll let you out if I have to.”
“Do it now.”
“Sorry. You were ready to waste my time by sending me away; now I’m wasting yours. If you can pull that wall down, I’ll be happy to teach you more. If not, well, it was nice to meetcha.”
She seethes, cools down.
“I’ll get thirsty before I get hungry.”
Silence.
“Well?”
Silence.
The garden hose pokes its snout through the slot, hangs there.
Waits.
55
The tailpipes really draw the eye.
Two perfect holes on a tight little rear end.
The car Andrew will give to Radha.
First, a distraction.
His phone chimes.
He pulls it out.
Anneke Zautke
Your friend is really an asshole.
He texts.
Andrew B-ship
HOW?
Anneke Zautke
Just is
Slips the phone back in his pocket.
Andrew and Chancho stand under the Mini Cooper on its elevated lift. Chancho raises a stubby finger, crescent-mooned with oil on the cuticle, and points.
“The cat-back exhaust, that’s performance, like a double-barrel shotgun, BANG! BANG! ’Cept a quiet shotgun, she’s got a sweet purr, kitty-cat purr. This is a nice car, man. 2003, but cherry.”
“Dude came from Arizona.”
“Yeah, eff that road salt. What you get her for?”
“Six one.”
“I give you seventy-five hunnert right now.”
Andrew shakes his head.
“Eight.”
“Not selling. I have to fix her up.”
“You mean brujo the chicharrones out of her, right?”
Andrew smiles.
“Yep. Woman did me a favor, I do one back. Did you find why she was pulling?”
“Yeah. Strut towers are shroomin’. ’Specially the right one. Must be potholes in Arizona. Got Rick runnin’ back from Syracuse with parts, picked a coupla plates up from the import place. All polished and all. Bling.”
“This girl won’t care about bling. She probably won’t even pop the hood.”
“Yeah, but whoever does, BLINGITTY BLING!”
Gonzo looks over from the reception desk, where a big-eyed woman is mooning at him, about to hand over her keys.
Andrew’s smile widens.
“But she passes? The Cooper?”
“More than passes. You screwed that guy.”
• • •
—It was generous of you to advertise such a nice car for six thousand. Is everyone in Arizona this good-natured? And do you play tennis professionally?
—Professionally? No.
—You look like a tennis pro.
—I think you read it wrong. No Mini in this shape is going for six. It’s ten thousand. Have anyone you like check it out. Did you see the exhaust? The alloy wheels? The stereo alone is worth a grand.
—You’re right. It is a sweet machine. Sorry to hear you’ve been ill.
—Excuse me?
—All this damp New York air,
a guy from Arizona’s bound to have a bad reaction. Even an athlete. Of course you’re under the weather.
—What are you talking about?
—Am I mistaken?
—Actually, yes. I never felt better.
Andrew blinks, looks confused.
—What did I say?
—That I was sick.
—What?
—You said I was sick.
—Six will be fine.
Now the young man looks confused, comes almost back to himself.
—I can’t . . .
—You’re what, five eleven?
—No.
—What then, six feet even?
—Six one.
The young man puffs up proudly.
—Sorry?
—Six one.
—Five ten?
—Six one, goddammit, six one!
Andrew smiles disarmingly.
—Sold!
He offers his hand.
The young man shakes.
• • •
“Just charmed him a little.”
“Effing brujo.”
Chancho smiles despite himself.
Claps Andrew on the back.
Leaves a smudge.
56
Andrew drives the Cooper down the farm roads from the North Star Garage, admiring the handling, the clockwork feel. A little rough on the bumps, but damned fine on curves. It doesn’t gobble road like the Mustang; it ticks off distance (the damned thing clearly thinks in kilometers, whatever the odometer says) like seconds on a runner’s watch. Radha is bound to be pleased. Six hours’ worth of incantations and directed thought, a pinch of hummingbird feathers in the gas tank, a good massage of the body with prepared wax.
Wax ingredients: beeswax, badger hair, ground snail shells, filings from a Slinky, ash from thirty burned parking citations. Getting the badger hair was going to suck until Andrew remembered that old-timey shaving brushes use it and rush-ordered a Vulfix #403 Best Badger from the mildly luminous but untrained young owner of Classicshaving.com.
Now the Cooper runs on water and will fit into any parking space so long as the owner believes it will.
Perfect for Chicagohoney85.
She believes any story that involves her success.
It’s why she’s so fucking powerful.
• • •
Andrew pulls up to his house, sees a man waiting on his porch.
An older man.
Michael Rudnick.
They exchange brief waves.
He pulls the plum-colored Mini in beside his Mustang, keeps going until he’s just in front of his separate garage.
Cuts that sweet watchmaker’s motor.
Michael is already walking over to him.
“You look the same,” the older magus says as Andrew gets out, stands.
It’s not a compliment.
Michael knows Andrew is burning magic to make himself look young.
Probably a lot of magic.
Michael doesn’t look the same. His hair was still mostly dark the last time Andrew saw him. His skin looks blotchier, too, the browns and reds more separated, less the healthy rancher’s tan Andrew remembers.
This man looks like a candidate for skin cancer.
“It’s good to see you, Michael.”
Andrew’s a bit of a hugger, but Michael isn’t, so Michael offers him a preemptive shake in the driveway, moves up to the porch.
“What do you think of Anneke?”
“Luminous as hell.”
“I thought just a little.”
“Just a little to you. Mechanics and the dead on film are your specialties. When it comes to stone, you’re just a little luminous. How big a rock can you move?”
“Maybe a brick.”
“She’ll be moving bricks by the end of the week, if she tries. Maybe more. I see what she can do with minerals, and it’s kind of scary. You were right to call me.”
“Where is she? Is she coming?”
“Not tonight. I gave her some homework.”
• • •
The two men don’t go inside just yet.
Michael walks to the installation of junk cars and boulders, lays hands and cheeks to the rocks.
Twines his fingers in the vines and touches the saplings and the shoots on the tree.
He climbs up and touches the horns on the skull of the longhorn steer. Wiggles one flat, yellow, herbivorous tooth in its socket as the skull grins, tied to its post, an out-of-place western exile in this damp, northern province.
Back to the biggest rocks, three of them: one the size of a large old-style television; one the size of a love seat; one the size of a Volkswagen Beetle, a proper boulder.
A scattering of smaller rocks, still too heavy to lift.
Cheek and hands on all of them, like a doctor.
Like he should have a stethoscope.
No hurry, maybe ten minutes of this.
“How is it?”
Michael smiles.
Whistles in appreciation.
The way older men do to say damn.
“Still there. Still all there.”
He looks as proud of himself as he ever lets himself look.
It had been ten years since they built this.
Since they put a spell in it.
Salvador had still been a dog.
Andrew had still been drinking.
Sarah.
Let’s not start thinking about Sarah, now.
This spell.
This big-ass spell.
Evidently he didn’t mess everything up in those days.
“Really?” he asks the other magus.
But he knows.
He puts his hand to the hood of the wrecked Mustang, feels the thrum of buried ferrous magic.
This is really mighty stuff.
“Probably still be there in another ten years. We did good.”
57
Anneke joins them at breakfast the next day, her hair frosted with clay dust, her eyes baggy from poor rest. She smells like sweat and anger. Andrew cracks eggs and tips their treasure into holes in sizzling French bread while she glares at Michael Rudnick. Salvador brings the coffee press, pours coffee in her cup. She reaches for it, but Michael wags a finger at her.
“What?”
This is the first thing she’s said since she entered.
“Use your hand to touch that mug and I’ll pop it in your face.”
She blinks twice to keep herself from flinging it at him.
She really wants to fling something at him.
Speaks instead.
“You’re using your hands. You’re lifting that mug to your face just like everybody else.”
He takes a sip of coffee just to rub it in.
Looks at her, eyes twinkling like flaws in quartz.
He doesn’t need to say it; she gets it. He has nothing to prove. He has his own regimen, has cracked the foundation of his house and fixed it six times this year, juggles forty bricks as high as a Ferris wheel every Sunday, turns rabbit, squirrel, or doe to stone in midrun then animates it again. He’s a mighty motherfucker with eyes like Medusa and a geologist’s heart, and he’ll use his hands if he wants to.
She’s the one on coffee cup detail.
She swivels her angry glare from Michael’s eyes to the steaming earthenware mug in front of her. Terra-cotta colored, artsy, from an art fair in Ithaca. She feels the clay in it as if it’s an exiled part of her, believes it’s part of her, feels the heat of the coffee in the cup that is now her own brittle flesh somehow, but the feeling is muted, fades in and out.
The cup is like an extremity that has gone to sleep. It is a struggle for her to move it; her arm tingles in sympathy.
The first one, though. It hurt her between the eyes, like an ice cream headache in the wrong place. Took her two hours to wiggle it, and then it slipped immediately from her phantom grasp and broke. Almost brought down the whole wall. Michael peeked through the slot, helped her a little by nudging the wall back and into a more solid configuration. The second item, a wine goblet, had been hard, too, had also broken. The third thing, a beer mug, made it, also slipping from her grasp, but in a controlled descent that she could not stop, but managed to slow enough, just enough, so it survived its landing. It had been like watching a skydiver fall a little harder than he meant to.
That had been her first significant act of magic.
She had been doing exercises with a penny, then a pot shard, had moved sand around as gently as a kitten pawing at it, had managed to put a crack in a thin wineglass.
Taking that mug down from on high was a different thing.
She would save that mug.
Drink Mountain Dew out of it one day when she got back into recovery.
This, though.
A full coffee cup. And she didn’t make this cup, hasn’t already got an intuitive connection to it. The weight of the liquid confounds her, has multiplied itself like weight at the wrong end of a lever. It’s heavier, yes, but she’s stronger than she was a day ago; this is a fair fight. She clenches her teeth, feels something coiling inside her, getting ready to expand.
She sees the coffee cup lifting, manages to jog it, sloshes a plap of coffee onto Andrew’s table.
Grunts.
Tries again.
It wobbles, coffee spilling over its sides, dribbling onto the table.
She brings it to her lips, starts to incline toward it, sees Michael gesturing for her to sit back.
Make the cup do the work, she thinks, then remembers his words as he stood outside the door instructing her.
Let the cup move, don’t make it move. Like archery, or golf, or bowling, it’s a relaxing, not a stiffening.
Something in her relaxes.
The cup drifts closer, drunkenly, uncertain it wants to stay aloft. Now it trembles at her lips, quivering so fast the surface of the coffee ripples in intricate patterns.
The Necromancer's House Page 17
