Modern Magic
Page 68
Cara took a deep breath and leaned into Frank’s face. “I’ll show you a stupid little bug, little man.”
“Mom, Cara, come on now,” I said.
“That’s not your Mom,” Frank said.
“Not my literal Mom,” I said. “She’s just …” I sighed and rubbed my hand over my face. “Another time.”
Frank nodded slightly as his eyes locked on Cara’s chest, heaving beneath the silver cuirass of her armor.
I’d never seen Cara lose her temper like she did then. She growled as she picked Frank up by his shirt and belt and hurled him at the front door like he weighed five pounds. His scream pitched into the high squeal range as he hit the door feet first and skidded onto the sidewalk on his ass. The top of his body was still lying inside the store and my jaw relaxed when I heard him groan. Good, the new help wasn’t dead.
Cara flashed back to normal the instant Frank left her hands.
“Wow, Mom, that was impressive.” I raised an eyebrow and sneezed through the residual fairy dust. “You got big.”
She blew a strand of white hair away from her face. “Sorry, boy, I’m a little out of sorts today. You’d better take some antihistamine. I know you’re allergic to all this dust.” I heard a calamity outside the front of the shop. A sound like concrete cracking, bricks falling, and the creak of stressed metal.
Cara’s thin face and delicate angled eyes smiled so sweetly I almost could have forgotten she’d just thrown a full grown man fifteen feet out my front door. I slid Lady Cottington’s Pressed Fairy Book onto the shelf of books behind the counter and jogged to the window before I stopped and stared with my jaw slack. Something had accelerated the growth of an oak tree sapling by about forty years or so. Frank’s old green rust-bucket of a car was teetering on some thick middle branches about twenty feet in the air. As branches aren’t made to hold cars, a huge crack was followed by a large crunch as Frank’s car took its final bow.
“Huh,” I said, “that’s something I haven’t seen before.” I sneezed again as pressure started building in my sinuses, and cursed when a half circle of tourists starting forming around the car. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but it was easy to see they were pointing at the tree and the car’s remains.
I watched with a mixture of awe and worry as a man in a precisely cut black suit and black parrot head umbrella floated out of the sky toward Frank’s deceased car. He pulled a small spiral pad out of his pocket before he settled on the ground and flipped the cover open with his index finger. The umbrella vanished as soon as he opened his hand. He scribbled something across the pad with his finger, glared at me, pointed at the tree, and started walking toward the shop.
“Edgar’s here,” I said as I wiped my nose.
Cara cursed and flew to the back.
“Don’t think you’re sticking me with the ticket!” I said as the fairy disappeared through the door. I grumbled and dug a small blister pack of green pills out of my pocket, popped two out, and chewed them up.
Frank was stirring, and the groaning had stopped. Edgar placed his spiral notepad back in his jacket, helped Frank stand up, and ushered him through the door before I even thought to help the poor guy up. Frank’s eyes were wide and shooting around the shop erratically. He looked pale next to the short black hair and desert sand of Edgar’s skin.
“What’s going on here?” Edgar said as he let go of Frank.
Cara landed on the shelf beside him and said, “Job interview.”
“Thanks for coming back,” I said. My voice had grown nasally and my head was throbbing.
“I wouldn’t strand you, boy, not with the likes of him.”
If Edgar was offended, or if he’d even heard her, he didn’t show it. He casually pulled out his notepad again and poised his finger over the page. “So, what happened … necromancer?” Edgar’s face turned sour and the word oozed out of his mouth. I half expected him to pull out a bottle of mouthwash. To my great annoyance, Edgar’s distaste was shared by a lot of people in our little community.
I ignored the slight as best I could and said, “Well, Frank here has the Sight, and he’s hired.”
“What?” Cara said.
Frank’s eyebrow caterpillars attacked each other as his expression warred between horror and elation. He finally settled on wide-eyed, deer in the headlights, and said, “I won’t regret this—I mean you, you won’t regret this.” He nodded repeatedly.
Edgar flipped to the back of his notepad and his fingers danced over the page. “Alright, he’ll be registered with the Watchers. As I said, what happened?”
I delegated to Cara, and as she recited the story, a flicker of silver energy shot between Edgar’s finger and the notepad. When she finished talking, Edgar tore the ticket off and set it on the shelf beside Cara.
“We’ll have a cleanup crew here in a minute. I’ll contain the situation in the meantime. There’re going to be a lot of unexplained scars in the morning.” Edgar snapped the spiral notepad closed and nodded to Frank as he left through the front door.
“What did he mean by scars?” Frank said. He was staring at me, not even glancing at Cara.
“When the Watchers alter memories it leaves behind scars or tattoos, depending on what they have to do,” I said. “And covering up the memory of something like, oh, a giant oak tree appearing in a split second, you can imagine that’s messy.”
“With a bill like this, you’d think it was the end of the bloody world,” Cara said as she stared at the ticket and shook her head. “Watchers, I know we need them, but sometimes I’d really just like to kill them.”
“What’s a Watcher?” Frank said. His eyes were locked on Cara as she fluttered to the back room with the ticket in tow.
I waved my hand dismissively. “Edgar’s a Watcher. I’ll tell you about them later. Let me give you a ride home.”
Frank took a shaky step toward the front door.
“I’m parked out back,” I said and sneezed again. “Oh God, shoot me.”
He turned toward the back room. I put my hand out to give him some support and walked him to the back.
“Sit down for a second. I think some sugar might help with the shock.”
He pulled out a chair at the small, round Formica table and collapsed into it. His head was constantly shaking back and forth. Frank reached out for the bag of Oreos I pulled from the closet. I followed it up with a cola and all he said was, “Thanks.” He almost curled up into a ball when Foster landed on the table beside him.
I grinned and said, “Frank, this is Foster. Foster, Frank.”
“Greetings, Frank!” Foster said.
Frank nodded weakly and I couldn’t help but laugh. “Come on Frank, you already knew vampires were real. Are fairies really that surprising?”
He stared at his hands and shook his head. I’m pretty sure it was a shake of disbelief more than an actual response.
“This is the new guy?” Foster said.
“Yep.”
“Mom doesn’t like him.”
“I gathered. You know he’s sitting right there?”
Foster shrugged. “You know Mom’s never going to let you keep him.”
“Well, if someone wants to keep the cu siths, someone should convince her Frank should work here.”
Foster stared at me for awhile before he said, “Damn. You’re good.”
* * *
I sighed as the antihistamines started to break up the explosion of crap in my sinuses.
“What’s wrong with you?” Frank said as I led him out the back door.
“Allergies. Fairy dust is a bitch. Regular dust? No problem. Fairy dust? Stand the hell back.”
“But you live with them.”
“Well, they don’t normally explode like a pollen bomb.” As we got closer to my car I stopped. “That’s a pisser.”
“What?” Frank said.
“Flat tire.” I kicked the front driver’s side tire.
“Um, Damian?” Frank said as he walked to the pass
enger side.
“Yeah?”
“You’ve got four flat tires.”
“Goddamn vamps!” I blew out a breath and shook my head. There were four uniform slashes on each tire’s sidewall from vampire claws, or possibly a very determined gerbil.
We went back inside and sat down at the small table again while I called a cab for Frank. He collapsed into a chair once more and began phase two of The Assault on Oreo Mountain. Cara retired to the clock while Frank eyed the room behind a small fortress of cookies, nervously watching for more rogue fairies.
“I’ll leave you to recover from your … incident,” Foster said.
Frank almost jumped out of his seat as the fairy walked out from behind a napkin holder. Foster gave me a nod and fluttered across the room to the grandfather clock. He shouted over his shoulder, “The Watchers are going to have their hands full with that mess out front.”
I grimaced and glanced at Frank. There’s a lot more to Watchers than what I’d told him. They’re everywhere, or at least it always seemed like it. They are the secret keepers of our world hidden within the world. No one knows too much about them, except the fact their ranks are filled with supernatural beings. They conceal the actions of the supernatural through misdirection workings and, when all else fails, by means of memory charms. The charms show up as scars and sometimes tattoos or brands on a commoner if the alterations are drastic enough. I was always torn about the need for so much secrecy. Would it really be so bad if the world knew about us? Most of the community feared there would be an outright attempt at genocide, or forced recruitment into the military. I like to give the commoners and their government a little more credit than that.
When I walked out front to the cab with Frank a few minutes later, he glanced at the shop, then the cab, then me. “Thanks for the cab, Damian. I’ll see you later.” He slapped himself on the forehead and said, “And the job, thanks for the job.”
I handed him some cash and waved once as he climbed in and the cabbie pulled into traffic. I walked back through the shop, into the back room, and out the back door. My attention turned once more to my poor Vicky. I really needed to start parking in front of the shop. I didn’t have many extravagant things, but my souped up ’32 Ford Vicky was certainly not an economical one. At least the bastards didn’t screw with the paint. Adorning the front end with realistic flames on the metallic black finish wasn’t exactly a cost-effective endeavor. One of Frank’s friends airbrushed it for me in exchange for getting rid of a ghost that was stalking his cat. Turned out the ghost was a mastiff.
I patted Vicky’s hood. They could have at least put the old girl up on cinder blocks. I sighed, shook my head, and headed back into the shop.
* * *
I thought, if there was one person who would want to hear about Frank’s ordeal, and be willing to take me to the rental shop, it would be Sam. I nuked a chimichanga in the back room, picked up the phone, and dialed her number. It was dark out, so I figured she’d be awake.
“Hello?”
“Hey, Sam.” I slathered some sour cream on top of my changa and snapped the lid back on the tub. I opened the fridge to put it away.
“So, did you call just so I could hear you eating another chimichanga?”
I laughed. “No, no, I just sent Frank home in a taxi. His car met with a slight case of tree.”
“What?”
“I think he may have pissed off Cara to some slight degree … so she made a tree grow up under his car and hoist it a good twenty feet in the air. Oh, that was after she grew to my height and threw Frank through the front door. Of course the tree branches snapped and now Frank’s car looks like it hit a semi head on.”
Nothing but laughter.
“I take it you were aware of the fairy growth thing?” I waited a beat for Sam to respond. “You going to pass out?”
“No … gasp …fine … gasp …” and more howls of laughter.
I raised my voice and said, “Yeah, unfortunately said tree was in front of my shop. It tore up the street and the sidewalk. Rained cobblestones for awhile, you know, the usual. Frank’s car got towed away for the junkyard. Edgar showed up.” Sam groaned while I kept talking. “He wrote Cara a nasty ticket and glared at me a few times.”
“He’s such a charming jackass. Can’t Cara just enchant the mess so people don’t notice it, or don’t question it, until the Cleaners show up? Or at least get her ticket reduced?”
Cleaners. I shuddered at the thought. The Cleaners were the go-to guys, gals, and, well, creatures, for the Watchers. They did the dirty work and the heavy magic lifting. All in all, they were powerful enough to be scary beyond reason.
I scratched my forehead and said, “I don’t know. It’s probably easier just to pay the fine and forget about it.”
“Sure, and how close is Cara to being arrested for all her tickets? That’s not exactly the first one.”
“I really don’t know. She never seems worried about it.”
“I’m sure she has connections,” Sam said. “Oh, and yeah, I knew about the fairy growth thing.” She laughed again. “Haven’t you ever seen them fight?”
I thought for a moment. “No, I guess not. I’ve only seen them threaten my eyeball with swords the size of toothpicks.”
Sam paused and her words came out a little slow. “Wait, you said Frank was at the shop? Why was Frank at the shop on a Saturday?”
I’d been waiting for her to ask that. She knew his schedule like clockwork just so she could avoid the man. My lips quirked into a grin as I said, “I hired him.”
A sound like a squirrel gargling burst onto the line.
“I thought you’d like that.” I laughed. “He’s running the shop for me four days a week. He’s got some decent contacts in town too.”
“For what? Automatic weapons?”
“Well … yeah, those too. He knows a lot of people.”
“I admit the balding klutz act is kind of charming, but you know what happened to his father. You really think it’s safe to have him around, Demon?”
Frank wasn’t my favorite person in the world, but my hand tightened on the phone regardless. The man was making a serious effort to change.
“He’s out of that life, Sam.”
“He was a gunrunner, just like his father. How do you know he’s out? How do you know the people that killed his father won’t come after him? Won’t come into our lives?”
“No one’s coming after him now.”
Sam sighed.
“Come on, he’s not that bad. Cara gave him the Sight.”
Dead silence. I waited her out, rapping my fingernails on the phone, until she finally said, “You know, Cara just gave him the Sight so she could fuck with him face to face.”
“Oh, my delicate sensibilities! I’m telling Dad.”
Sam chuckled and took a deep breath.
“You would have loved it, Sam. Cara called him a little man right before she threw him out the door.” Her chuckle broke into a laugh. “You know Frank practically worships the ground you walk on. I think you’re the only vampire he doesn’t run screaming from. Of course, you’re probably one he really should run screaming from. Ha, ha, ha.”
Sam sighed again and it didn’t take much to envision her patented eye roll. “Yeah, hilarious.”
“So, can you come by and give me a ride to the rental shop? Someone slashed all my tires.”
“Your tires? You don’t say? I can’t imagine anyone getting annoyed enough to slash your tires.”
I didn’t dignify that with a response.
Sam laughed and said, “I’ll be there in fifteen.”
“Cool, tell Dale I said hi.”
She snorted and hung up the phone.
* * *
I walked out front to meet Sam and was only mildly surprised to find the enormous oak tree already gone and the cobblestones repaired. I wondered how many people were walking around with new scars or tattoos they didn’t remember getting.
A while lat
er we picked up a snazzy red Chevy Blazer from the rental shop. The whole process was slow and rather uneventful. I tried really hard not to laugh while the clerk stared at my sister the entire time.
Vampire glamour must come in handy, the whole predator, prey fascination thing. Of course, the clerk had no way of knowing Sam was a vampire. Most of the people alive today have no idea vampires exist, or ever existed. Regardless, most people still get an impressively vacuous expression when a vampire’s aura spreads out and caresses their own. Sam’s aura was oozing all over the clerk. I know she didn’t do it on purpose, but vampire auras seem to act on some subconscious level, always hunting. It was just ten times creepier because I could see the damn things. The auras never attempt to approach necromancers, so while it was creepy, it was kind of funny too. Granted, if Sam had bitten the guy, the humor level would have dropped a bit.
I parked the rental, climbed the stairs to my apartment, and turned on the television. After nodding off on the couch a few times I dragged my ass to bed.
A few hours later, my phone rang. My vision was blurry as my brain forced my eyes open so the source of the incessant ringing could be located and executed. I eventually made out the fiery red numbers on my alarm clock.
“Five fifteen?” I mumbled. I grabbed the phone and tucked it between my ear and my pillow. “Who the hell is–”
“We must meet, boy. There is much to discuss.” The woman’s voice was strong, elderly, with an anachronistic New Orleans accent.
It snapped my eyes wide and my heart pounded. “Z…Zola?”
“The cabin. Tomorrow at dusk.” There was a dark chuckle and the line went dead.
I sat up and stared at the phone. I hadn’t spoken to my master in almost two years, but I was sure whatever she wanted wasn’t going to be pleasant.