“What do you see?” she says, showing him her phone.
“A horse.”
“Yeah. A horse.”
She scrolls down.
“More horses,” he says. “Are you an equestrian?”
She shakes her head no.
He sees them.
That’s something.
Now she knows the texted photos are not themselves magical, though she’s picking up magic around them, and the sender’s number is blocked. She’s sure that if she saw it, it would be international, originating in Ukraine. It’s the middle of the night over there. She turns the phone back to herself, scrolls down the photos, all twenty-something of them showing different horses: bays, roans, and blacks; Arabs, quarter horses, and Belgians.
This is an attack.
This is how wizards fight; they begin by psyching out their opponent.
It’s not going to work on me.
Horses?
My hacker must be a man, and a very silly man.
“May I try your sake?” her date says.
She looks at him as if only just realizing he’s there.
She gets a tickle in her ear, telling her there’s a conversation she may wish to eavesdrop on. She swivels a sort of invisible cat’s ear toward the kitchen.
. . . way too hot for that creeper, I don’t know how he even gets them here.
Well he’s hot, hot’s not his problem. Kinda looks like a watered-down Johnny Depp. He’s just clueless. Wonder what he drew for this one.
Do you think they sleep with him?
Some, I’m sure, or he wouldn’t keep dropping Benjamins. Must be a trust fund kid. Told me once he’s an actor, his Visa has three first names like an actor, Michael Oliver Scott or something, but they don’t make that kind of money, not in Chicago. Unless it’s commercials.
She listens for another moment, making eye contact with Michael Anthony Scott.
She smiles at him.
He’s still waiting for an answer about the sake, wondering what game she’s playing.
As he’ll find out in less than a minute, she’s playing the “finish her sake and leave her date at the restaurant” game.
She’s also playing the “steal his wallet with a spell” game.
She’s also just about to play the “what’s in its pocketses?” game.
When he fishes for his wallet, he’ll find a piece of paper with a child’s crayon drawing of a crying man getting arrested outside FUGU SOOSHI. When he shows it to the manager as evidence that somebody must be playing a prank on him, the manager will not see the child’s drawing. What he will see will be a newspaper blurb about local actor Michael Scott’s dine-and-dash arrest at a Ravenswood pizza parlor, complete with mug shot.
Radha, sitting on the zebra-skin seat of her idling Mini Cooper, dictates the nature of the drawing, the photo and text of the article, and where she wants these articles placed into her phone, into an app she made for herself, clicks Preview, giggles, then presses Cast.
She drives off toward home.
As she turns onto Damen, she sees a homeless man sitting on cardboard, two dusty-looking heeler dogs napping near him.
She rolls down her window.
Throws the wallet.
It skids to a stop between his legs.
“Do as thou wilt,” she says.
He grins, gives her a thumbs-up.
Plays a peppy version of “Blue Skies” on his kazoo.
76
Later.
Radha sits before her computer.
She wears her Muppet Show onesie, a footed onesie with Animal on each foot.
Her roommate, a flamingly, fabulously gay dancer, a Michael who spells his name with a Y and has no idea she’s a witch, won’t be home from rehearsal until well past midnight; Equus opens in less than a week. She designed the poster graphic, three dancers in horse masks frozen in synchronicitous movement against a pear-green backdrop. The masks have a dystopian look, something H. R. Giger might have designed, and they appear off-balance, about to topple. She’s really proud of this graphic.
She is less proud about the persistent low-grade infection her computer seems to have. No amount of flushing, warding, or spell encryption seems able to do more than keep it busy. It has interfered with her ability to track the Ukrainian, it won’t let her corner it, and it finds and infects any other devices she tries to use the web from.
I’m the vector.
It hides in me somehow.
This is masterclass cybermagic.
How’s he doing this?
She’s working on a spell to create a sort of antibody for the system, and she’s pretty sure it will work, but writing the intruder-specific code takes time; and she has to get the blood of a watchdog. She has the dog picked out, a German shepherd that has barked at her from behind the white wrought-iron gates of a house two blocks from her complex, on the way to the chocolate shop. She can make the pooch take a nap with a spell, but she’s not good with animal magic and it will cost her juice she needs to find the computer bug.
She’ll go no-frills on the tranquilizer, get it from a vet.
But she really hates needles.
Maybe she’ll charm or pay a phlebotomist to come with her.
And once the infection is flushed, she’ll be able to take the offensive. She found a really ugly Brazilian spell that liquefies bones, and she’s already practiced on a lamb shank. The poor thing actually danced a spastic little dance and smoked from its holes before it balloonishly collapsed; she’s more than ready to try it on her Slavic friend.
She’s never been in a duel with another user before, and, if she’s a little scared, she’s even more excited. Americans have the best computer magic, and she’s one of the best in America. It’s a game for young witches. Maybe only [email protected] is better, but he’s out in San Francisco.
All right.
A Greek yogurt with almonds and honey.
A glass of Gewürztraminer.
An hour of code.
Then another glass of Gewürztraminer while Mykel rubs his calves with tiger balm and bitches about the director’s choices.
When she comes back from the kitchen, something’s wrong.
The screen saver with the three horse-men has turned into a GIF; the figures now move in a loop, executing a plié and scoop over and over again.
Fuck! He’s through!
She spits the yogurt-covered spoon out of her mouth.
One of the horse heads now noses against the screen, bulbs it out like soft plastic, pokes through.
It happens slowly, then fast, as if someone sped a film up.
A real horse’s head, a real man’s body, and the monster births itself through her computer, knocking over her chair.
The other two simply appear behind it, piggybacking on its magical entry.
She’s about to use her Brazilian spell when it occurs to her she’s not sure what these things are made of, if they even have bones.
Now the first one lunges for her, grabs her shoulders, drives her back against the wall.
The violence shocks her—nobody manhandles her.
So strong, so fast.
I’m really in trouble.
No.
I AM trouble.
The first rule of magical combat is Be the most dangerous thing in the fight.
Believe it and it’s true.
She relaxes as best she can, feels the tingle of magic waking up in her, but before she can pronounce a spell, the horse-man’s hand is in and on her mouth. She bites, but it doesn’t seem to care. It begins to choke her. The second one ducks under its fellow’s arm and bites her.
Bit my fucking nipple off!!!
She can’t even scream.
Tears of pain well in her eyes, blurring the image of
the thing killing her, the third one behind it picking up the baseball bat she keeps by her bed.
They have bones
Mistake not to use the spell
Dying
She remembers another spell.
Imagines her left footie ripping, and it rips, exposing her bare foot. She probes for the outlet, but it’s too far.
So she stretches her leg out magically, the length of two legs, finds the outlet, lays the sole of her foot against it.
Imagines herself made of copper.
Becomes a conduit.
The second one has started biting her ear off.
Bad timing.
To touch her just then.
She dumps so much electricity into the horse-men that they scream horse-screams, hop on their flexed man-feet, convulsing.
She smells equine hair burning.
They drop.
Her windpipe is damaged, but not crushed.
She sucks air.
Coughs.
The third one is almost on her now, bat upraised, a second and a half away from staving in her skull.
It doesn’t get that long.
She cables out her forearm, slamming her palm into its muzzle, grabbing.
She hears a pop! And watches an almost comical plume of smoke ascend from its head as it, too, jerks stiff, then drops and twitches.
Now she’s angry.
She looks at the computer, sees an eye in the corner of the screen.
It blinks twice and vanishes, but too late.
Radha runs at the computer.
Sees her reflection in the black screen, dim, getting larger, blood from her insulted breast blotching the onesie.
She leaps.
• • •
Yuri has prepared this spell for a week.
He made the horse-head men in 3-D using the woman’s art as a model. He taught them to kill, taught them not to let her speak.
Now it is time.
He must succeed.
His veiling spell can’t hold much longer, burns too much fuel, and if she finds him, she will destroy him. He knows he’s not as strong as she is. Knows he’s only strong because Baba made him strong, dumped magic into him that she stole from others.
One chance only.
He watches the monsters come to life, sends them through the screen, thinks he has Chicagohoney85. Thinks she needs her computer, like him, that she will be weak without it, like him. Such creatures would have torn him apart with little difficulty.
But she is not weak.
The spell with the outlet is superlative.
Genius!
“Xhm,” he says, watching it all like a video game that has taken an unfortunate turn. He realizes, intellectually, that he will be in danger now, but he doesn’t feel it in his gut until he sees her notice him, see the eye, feels her lock on to him.
He clicks the camera off, but it is too late.
She pushes a hand through the screen.
He clicks the camera back on, leans away from the grasping hand.
He senses the electricity stored in her, knows she’ll fry him like a herring if she touches him.
He squeals, rolls his chair away.
Now her head is pushing through.
Slowly, as if through clear taffy.
She sees him!
Behind her, one of the horse-men, the one that bit her, is on its knees, puking, barely alive.
But alive enough.
“Plug!” Yuri says in Russian.
It shambles that way.
Radha’s head is halfway through.
He senses powerful magic, knows he’ll die if she speaks.
Now her mouth is through.
Behind her, the monster in her room disappears as it crawls under her computer desk, whinnying in pain.
She hears the whinny.
Hears it crawling, hitting its head on the desk.
Knows what’s about to happen.
No time to reverse direction.
She fucked up.
Instead of saying the Brazilian word that would have made the small man die horribly, she says “No.”
Just says it.
Like a disappointed child.
The monster pulls the plug.
Most of her head and one hand, neatly shorn, fall onto Yuri’s keyboard, the head continuing on to the floor.
Yuri watches the head empty itself on his linoleum, a pool spreading, the girl’s pretty, terrified eyes looking up at the ceiling, seeing it, then not seeing it.
The cat comes to investigate, then skitters away, its one wet paw leaving prints on the floor.
Yuri passes out.
• • •
Back in her room, the body, missing one hand, cropped above a severe diagonal line starting at her chin and continuing up through her ears, falls onto the horse-headed man, releasing its stored charge. Both bodies burst into flames. The one that shouldn’t have existed disappears, as do the other two like it.
The police will say Radha Rostami died in a freak power surge.
Her roommate will tell his boyfriend it was spontaneous human combustion.
He will never sleep in that apartment again.
77
Andrew finds this on his Facebook events page.
THE THEIF ANDREW BLANKENSHIPS’ BAD DYING
* * *
Soon! until ???
online
Things look not so good for American who has tried too much too big for his breeches. This dying will be even more fun than CHICAGOHONEY85’s BAD HAIR-CUT!!!! (YOU should check event invites, is not polite to not respond) (BUT me and three friends were there, said hellos for U)
Result: No more help hiding money$$$ for taxes, no more histories from long ago, but, Hey! Still pornography is available! Until ????
This will also be for killing of good man, Mikhail Yevgenievitch D.
And killing of old babushka in Ukraine.
(You’ve been a busy boy!!!!)
To Bring: Just yourself! Books and relics stolen long ago will go back to there true home and if any are missing or destroyed—more people on friends list have similar event planning as yours! (I hope it is so)
* * *
Going: Andrew Blankenship
Maybe: Everybody on Andrew’s friends list.
Declined: Radha Rostami
Andrew can’t raise Radha by computer or by telephone.
He doesn’t know if this was a lie, meant to off-balance him, but he suspects it’s not.
This makes him blearily angry where he should be sad.
It puts him in a very bad mood.
He calls Chancho.
Chancho drills him hard, makes him knee the kicking pad in his yard until he feels like he can’t lift his leg again.
Makes him work on “the plum,” wrestling your opponent’s head forward in the A-shaped trap of your arms so you can knee the face and head.
Chancho leaves.
The coin that turns bullets arrives by UPS.
The driver honks cheerily as the brown truck lumbers off.
• • •
Morning.
Andrew stands before his brass mirror, surveying himself. His bruising has mostly gone greeny-yellow or faded out. He heals quickly with the youth magic running. He’s about to amp that up, ink in the runners of gray that he allowed in.
Then he remembers a sound.
The sound of glass breaking.
The glass that he charmed not to be broken.
This is what’s draining the magic.
My vanity.
He knows that youth spells burn a lot of fuel; he’s had to finesse his apparent age up a bit—looking twenty-five burns almost everything you’ve got when you’re o
ver fifty, but thirty-five is doable.
Was doable.
It gets exponentially harder every year.
I wonder if you’re too pretty to fight?
He lets a little more gray in.
Feels the house get stronger around him.
It had weakened by degrees, so slowly he hadn’t even noticed.
Only things he used stayed strong, like the gate in the tub.
Would the things in the attic still work?
The vacuum-cockatrice?
The doll’s house?
And now he is going to need offensive magic.
As much as he can muster.
Where else could he economize?
The hiding spells.
I spent months on those!
They’ll be so hard to raise again.
But you know good and goddamned well she’s the one you’re hiding from.
She already knows where the house is.
Fine.
Fine.
I’ll make the house visible.
I’ll shut down the youth spells.
What you see is what you get.
He lets himself get older.
Feels his body stoop just a little.
Feels his muscles thin, develops a pain in his knee.
He sees the fifty-two-year-old smoker with the long hair looking back at him, bruised and hollow in the jaws.
He wants to pin his gray, dry hair up with his cherrywood fork, samurai-style, but sees this as vanity, too. Hair is an antenna for magic; Indians knew this.
Wizards know it.
He leaves his hair down, fans it over his shoulders.
I’m older than my dad ever got.
I’m an old man.
But I’m strong now.
Stronger than ever.
I’m not a fucking user.
I’m a warlock.
• • •
He spends the next three hours unweaving the spell he cast to hide the house. The neighbors could already see it, but now passing motorists and kids on bikes would see it, too. Anyone can find it now without first being told or shown.
But if they have bad intentions toward Andrew Ranulf Blankenship, they might wish they hadn’t.
It’s high time to make war magic.
78
The Necromancer's House Page 25
