Modern Magic

by Karen E. Taylor, John G. Hartness, Julie Kenner, Eric R. Asher, Jeanne Adams, Rick Gualtieri, Jennifer St. Giles, Stuart Jaffe, Nicole Givens Kurtz, James Maxey, Gail Z. Martin, Christopher Golden

  The little girl at my side squealed as Happy came bounding through the bars of the birdcage, much to the chagrin of the scattering birds.

  Happy pulled up about six inches in front of us. I held up another ball of energy and the spirit quaffed it down before I started scratching his ears. “Hey buddy, still terrorizing the birds, huh?” He leaned into the ear scratching and grunted.

  “That is so wrong,” Foster said.

  I turned to the little girl. She clung tightly to the back of my leg. Happy pushed his head between my legs and I heard another squeal. So, there I was, with a fairy laughing at me, a ghost panda between my legs, and a little girl unwilling to relinquish her death grip on me while she tried to get away from Happy. I couldn’t help but laugh as I stumbled a few steps.

  “It’s okay, he’s friendly.” She calmed down almost as soon as the words left my mouth. I raised my eyebrows in surprise and then yelped as Happy threw his head back and sent me sailing into Foster. He cursed as we went down in a tangled heap on the rough edge of the sidewalk.

  The little girl was laughing hysterically and rubbing Happy’s ears. I swear the damn panda was laughing too.

  “You take care of her, okay?” I said to the suspiciously articulate panda bear.

  Happy licked the little ghost. She squealed and scrunched up her eyes.

  “Right, alright then. We’ll be back to visit.” Not that either one of them cared. The little girl took off at a run with the bear lumbering beside her. I smiled and turned around to Foster. “Good deed for the day. I think I need a chimichanga.”

  He stopped dusting himself off and stared at me. “You are a very strange man, Damian Vesik.”

  “Thanks,” I said with a quick bow.

  “Let’s get out of here,” said Foster as he slapped my shoulder.

  * * *

  I finally made it back to my apartment after dropping Foster off at the shop. I grabbed a snack and shuffled into the living room, half asleep when I heard a faint scratching sound on the rug. I set my chunk of Swiss gruyere cheese on the coffee table and raised my hand in preparation to blast my home invader into another dimension. A small, pointy head of fur popped out from beside the leg of my coffee table and eyed my cheese, cute little whiskers twitching in anticipation. Damn rodents.

  For some reason, my thoughts turned to more evil critters. Ferrets. God’s bane in a four-legged tube sock. Namely Frank’s ferret. I glanced down at my right hand to admire the string of puncture wounds that hellspawn had put in it, then back at the black rat with its white twitching snout, now stretching up on its hind legs.

  I blew out a breath, broke off a chunk of cheese and dropped it beside the front door. The rat scurried over to it, clamped his teeth on it, and shot out the little rubber flap. It’s times like this I think maybe I should nail the old doggie door shut.

  My eyes trailed across the fabulous Berber carpet, accented with scorch marks and a perpetually empty rat motel. I never put the poison in it. I just keep it there for show when my Mom comes around. My lips twitched as an idea flashed through my head. I picked up the phone and called Frank. He picked up on the second ring.

  “Huhllo?” Frank said, his voice heavy with sleep.

  “You still know that explosives guy?”

  “Damian?” He groaned and popping noises echoed through the phone.

  I stared at the receiver and wondered what part of Frank just broke.

  “Yeah, William Powers, the demo guy. I still see him at the ba … ah … rehab center every now and then.”

  I didn’t laugh. I may have snorted and muffled some laughter, but Frank couldn’t hear it. I don’t think. My stunning conversational tact avoided the bar topic.

  “Will Powers,” I said. “God, what did that man do to deserve a name like that?”

  “Don’t know, but he sure as hell doesn’t have any.”

  I think Frank was waiting for me to laugh. I didn’t.

  “Get it? Will Power.”

  “Like my will power to not vomit on my shoes right now?”

  Another pause, and then, “Yeah, anyway, what do you need?”

  “Just some TNT. Maybe a case.”

  Frank spluttered. “What the hell are you going to do with a case?”

  “Duh, blow stuff up.” I smiled and pictured Frank staring at his phone and slowly shaking his head. “Come on, partner, I know you can do it.”

  “You’re paying my bail if this goes south.”

  “Of course I am.” I laughed when the phone clicked and Frank hung up. Now all I needed was fuel for the fire.

  And speaking of fire, news of Pilot Knob flashed across the television. I turned up the volume and listened.

  “… still unable to find the cause of this devastating blaze. Once more, at least forty dead in a fiery explosion in Pilot Knob. Half the town has been incinerated, the explosion having rippled pavement and destroyed homes in a two-block radius. We’ll bring you more on this tragedy as …”

  I flipped off the television and stared at the shadowy reflections in the black glass. My teeth ground together. Someone had to pay.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  “The History Museum?” I said. My gaze traveled up the building with its grandiose pillars and its early American government style stone architecture. Some people would probably call that British. Above the pillars, but below the roof, sat two sculpted eagles. I could only think of them as gargoyles, but less scary. “Jefferson Memorial,” I said, reading the words hung between the old eagles.

  “Used to be,” Zola said. “Once it was the only Jefferson Memorial in the country. Ah remember when they demoted it to the Missouri History Museum.

  “The History Museum?” I said again. “You hid a demonic, world-ending artifact in the Missouri History Museum?”

  Zola shrugged. “Yes, it seemed like a good choice at the time.” She paused, “Of course, it may be hard getting into the foundation now.”

  I raised my eyebrows and adjusted the holstered pepperbox under my leather jacket.

  Sam glanced at my gun and grinned. “Brought your security blanket, I see.”

  I glared at Sam. Cara chuckled as she hovered between us.

  Zola snorted. “Don’t worry, boy, Ah know people. We’ll get inside alright. It’s in the lowest storage room. So long as no Fae have been hunting there, no one will have detected the seal.”

  “Is this what you guys have been doing for the past week? You know, besides hiding ghosts in the park?” Sam said.

  I glanced at Zola, her face a perfect mimic of Sam’s ear-to-ear grin. I shrugged. “Yeah, pretty much.”

  “That is so cool.” Sam clapped her hands together and skipped across the parking lot. Cara followed her, hovering just above her right shoulder.

  “She is very energetic tonight,” Zola said.

  I stared at Zola for a moment, then turned back to watch Sam climbing the short staircase. “That’s one way to put it.”

  “It was probably her date with Frank,” Zola said with a small smirk. “Ah heard it went very well.”

  “Oh,” I said. “You can stop there.”

  Zola smiled as we crested the stairs.

  Regardless of the demotion from Jefferson Memorial, beyond the pillars and glass doors we were greeted by a nine-foot tall marble sculpture of Thomas Jefferson himself. More pillars lined the gallery to either side of Jefferson, towering up to the arched terra cotta ceiling, which itself bore smaller arches and colorful geometric lines.

  “Isn’t this place closed?” I said as I glanced back at the doors we’d just walked through.

  “It’s all about who you know.” Zola brushed at the sleeve of her gray cloak and began looking around.

  I caught a flicker of movement out of the corner of my eye and heard Cara laugh. I turned to find her embracing another fairy.

  “Damian, I’d like you to meet Cassie,” she said.

  The little fairy smiled and bowed to each of us. She was dressed in a simple white gown wit
h what looked like a tiny silk belt tied around her waist. Her wings were a swirl of gray and white.

  “A pleasure, as always, Zola.” She turned to me and her lips quirked up just a little more. “I have looked forward to meeting you, Damian. Cara has said many interesting things about you.”

  “All bad, I’m sure.” I gave a little bow to Cassie and smiled.

  She laughed and shook her head. “Not all bad.”

  “I’m sorry to rush, Cassie, but we need to get to the old foundation,” Zola said.

  Cassie’s smile faded. “What’s happened?”

  “We returned to Pilot Knob.” She sighed and her head lowered ever so slightly. “Philip lied to us.”

  Cassie’s eyes widened and her disbelief was palpable.

  “What we found there were texts.” Zola swallowed hard. “Ah will not speak of them in this place. The town was destroyed by a gravemaker and a trap was laid over the texts …” Her voice caught.

  “No,” Cassie whispered.

  “It raised a horde,” Cara said.

  Cassie slumped onto the floor. “Philip, no. Philip was our friend.”

  Sam and I sat down beside Cassie, unable to comfort her tiny form.

  “We need to get to the foundation,” I said. “If he hid anything else, we need to find it before something else goes wrong.”

  Zola nodded. “And if the artifact we originally hid is still here, we’re going to need to move it. The vampires know more than they should. We need the nail.”

  The little fairy wiped her face on her shirt, nodded, and jumped onto Sam’s shoulder. Sam stopped moving and her eyes widened before a tiny smile cracked her face.

  “Okay,” Cassie said. “I’ll take you down.”

  We passed through a corridor marked ‘Employees Only’ and a series of doors with the same markings. I was surprised when the old locks clicked open as we approached each one. At the next door, at the base of a stairwell bathed in dim yellow light, I could hear Cassie whispering something before the lock clicked open.

  Down two more flights of ever-darkening stairs, we came to another door, the faint echoes of our footsteps following close behind. The scent of mud and moisture filled the dingy little space, though I could see no trace of either. It reminded me of the old limestone caves I used to explore with Sam. I glanced at my sister and could see her sniffing the air.

  Cassie jumped off Sam’s shoulder and hovered before the blank wall to the right of the wall with the door. She pulled a small silver teardrop pendant off her neck and held it out in the palm of her hand. A warm glow of bluish light pulsed out from the pendant as she closed her eyes and bowed her head over it. The wall evaporated in a fast-rising mist.

  I gasped and Zola chuckled.

  “Not something you see every day, is it?” She said.

  “No … no it’s not,” Sam said.

  I ducked the last of the mist and followed the small darting shapes of Cassie and Cara. The room was small, maybe ten feet by five feet, tops. On the right side was a fairly typical looking gray stone wall, the foundation of the museum I assume, but the remaining walls and the doorway we’d come through were huge granite boulders. I couldn’t see anything between them, no space, no mortar, nothing. Each boulder fit together perfectly with the next, impossible angles and curves joining to form an incomprehensible jigsaw puzzle. The room was filled with a dim bluish light, but I couldn’t find a source for it. As my eyes adjusted, I realized the light was coming from the rocks.

  “How in the hell did they build this?” I said.

  “Aeros built this,” Zola said.

  “Ah.” I tried to picture Aeros crammed down in this little room, sticking rocks together with his enormous hands and awkward smile, but the scene just made me laugh.

  “What?” My master said with a sigh.

  “I was just trying to picture Aeros crammed in here.” I yelped as she cracked me in the back of the head with her cane.

  “He built it from the outside, of course.”

  I rubbed my head and squinted. Sam giggled in the corner.

  “Thanks, sis.”

  She grinned and saluted with two fingers as I turned my attention back to the fairies.

  Cassie held her hands up to the stone wall near the centermost block. I heard her whisper, “Unbind your web…” and I missed the rest as a small blue flare of power burst into the form of an intricate Celtic knot. When it faded, I could see the seams in the foundation where the compartment was hidden. It was much smaller than the large stone it was set in.

  Zola reached out and wedged her fingertips into the cracks. With a little jostling, the stone began to shift and slide out.

  “Did you want some help?” Sam said.

  Zola shook her head and jostled the stone again.

  “No fancy ‘open sesame’ or the wall explodes?” I said.

  Zola let out a slow laugh. “No, not here. We used discretion to hide the nail. Ah already told you we didn’t mean to explode that man.”

  Sam quirked an eyebrow and glanced at Zola. My master glanced over her shoulder.

  “It was an accident, one of the first artifacts we hid. We placed a fairly violent magic on the coffin we buried it in.” She grunted and the stone slid forward a few more inches. “It vaporized a grave robber later that night.”

  “Instant karma,” Cassie said.

  Sam and I laughed. Cara just shook her head.

  “I take it it’s not really a nail that’s hidden behind that rock?” I said.

  “No, it’s not a nail,” Cara said. “It was given to Charles Lindbergh by a Sidhe lord on October twenty-second, 1927. It was the fairy blessing of Independence Hall in Philadelphia.” She smiled as my eyebrows rose and my mouth formed a little O. “Glenn removed the blessing from Independence Hall in the late 1800s, when the country was more stable.”

  Zola pried the stone out and it hit the granite floor with a resounding thump. She reached into the dark hole and pulled her arm back with a small, stained manila packet in her hand. She took a deep breath, opened it, and dumped into her hand a discolored, hand-crafted nail that wasn’t a nail at all. “Thank you,” she whispered.

  “Can I see it?” Sam said.

  “Yes,” Zola said as she passed the small chunk of metal to Sam.

  My sister turned the nail over a few times in her hand. “What is it, exactly?”

  Cara flashed into human size and took the nail from Sam. She closed her fist around it, smiled, then handed it back to my sister. “It is a blessing. It was the first foothold the Seelie courts gained in the New World. Dozens of lords, even the queens, are said to have given a small portion of their power to that blessing. The power of the Seelie court pulses through it, waiting to be unleashed in a noble endeavor. This country owes much to the blessing of the Seelie court.”

  But it was Fae. Even worse, it was an old Fae artifact, from a time when the courts were filled with eager tricksters. They just wanted a foothold in the new world, consequences be damned. I crossed my arms and stared at the rough nail.

  “It doesn’t know a noble endeavor from an atrocity, does it?” I said.

  Cara’s smile fell. “No, no it doesn’t.”

  “That is why we have protected it so thoroughly, my friends,” Cassie said.

  “Fuck.” I said as I shivered. “Beware the gifts and all that.”

  “Indeed,” Cassie said. “In the wrong hands, or even near the wrong hands, the blessing could inspire an apocalypse.”

  “Or a revolution,” Sam said.

  “You are wise for such a young vampire,” Cassie said.

  Sam beamed and said thank you.

  I ran my fingers through my hair. “Rusty nail leads to end of world … sure, why not?” I shook my head and eyed the unassuming metal warily. “We’re taking that with us?”

  Zola nodded. “Yes, it must be moved. There’s already been activity in the park. We can’t risk the blessing being discovered.”

  “No shit,” Sam said as
she rearranged her ponytail with a snap of its band.

  “Alright, let’s get out of here,” I said.

  We left the room and Cassie sealed it behind us with another flash of power.

  “That’s a hell of a trick,” I said.

  Cassie flew up the stairs before us. We followed her back up and out through the halls to the entryway. I glanced up at the Jefferson statue again, then turned to the exit.

  “Thanks for your help, Cassie,” I said.

  She landed on the front desk and smiled. “It is a pleasure to help, friend.” She gave a small bow. I reciprocated the gesture gracelessly, which caused her to giggle.

  “Ah’ll let you know when it’s been hidden and sealed,” Zola said.

  “Thank you.”

  Sam said goodbye and Cara hugged Cassie before we left.

  We didn’t even make it down the steps from the main entrance before a vampire appeared in the middle of the walkway. I cursed. It was Devon.

  She looked us over and said, “Too easy. You all get to die at once.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  “Get it out of here, now!” I roared as I turned to Zola.

  She nodded and took a step backwards. Cara landed on her shoulder an instant before they both blinked out of existence. I’d have to ask Cara how she did that.

  “Devon?” Sam said as she stared at the short brunette vampire, poured into a skintight black leather jumpsuit.

  Devon bared her fangs. I barely followed the motion as she grabbed Sam and slammed her face into one of the monolithic pillars of the entryway. Sam was out like a ragdoll as she spiraled down the short staircase.

  Ignoring the worry ravaging my gut over Sam, I focused my Sight to see what else was lurking about. If I hadn’t, I never would have drawn my pepperbox in time to litter the stairs with vampire brains. I pulled the second trigger and unleashed six barrels of hell. The vampire’s head burst as lead rounds tempered in holy water tore him apart. The sizzle of blasted meat gurgled out of the twitching remains.

  The third vampire ripped the pistol out of my hand before I even had time to think about reloading. She dropped it when the blessed silver laid into the grips burned all the skin from her right hand. As she leapt back, I could see she was decked out head to toe in biker leathers. Her short leap backwards turned into a quick roundhouse that clipped my chin. Something cracked and the ground rose up to greet me. I could tell by the harsh impact I’d landed on concrete. All I could taste was blood.