City of Dark Magic

by Magnus Flyte

  Max continued to perform CPR, not stopping to acknowledge her presence. Sarah leaned over the man’s face and looked into his open eyes. Her memory suddenly skipped back to childhood and how she and her father had found the neighbor’s dog lying still and quiet in their backyard. Her father had knelt over Annie, testing her corneal reflex to make sure she was really gone. Sarah took her index finger and pushed it gently into one of the policeman’s eyes. Her heart missed a beat.

  “Max,” she said, gently putting her hand on his arm to stop his frantic motion as he pumped the man’s chest. “You can stop. It’s too late. He’s dead.”

  Max sat back on his heels and ran his hands through his hair. “Sarah,” Max said. “I didn’t do it. I swear. I didn’t do it.”

  She looked at Max. His eyes were clear, and he seemed focused. But scared. It actually hadn’t occurred to Sarah that Max had killed the man, probably because he had been performing CPR. But now she thought of Max’s wild attack on her earlier.

  “What happened?” Sarah asked, trying to stay calm.

  “I don’t know,” Max shook his head. “I was trying to find that stupid Chihuahua. There’re things around here that could e si-12em"at that kind of dog. And instead I found . . . he was just lying here. I didn’t hear him call out, I don’t . . .”

  “Max,” Sarah said, levelly. “I have to ask . . . were you on some sort of . . .”

  “No!” Max said. But he didn’t sound belligerent or defensive this time. He grabbed Sarah’s hand. “Look, I know what you must be thinking. I was . . . earlier . . . look it’s not what you think, but I wasn’t myself. I mean, I was myself, but I wasn’t seeing what you were seeing. I can’t explain.”

  “You’re going to have to do better than that,” Sarah said.

  “I don’t blame you for thinking I’m crazy,” Max said, looking at the dead body bleakly. “But I swear to you I didn’t freak out and kill him in some sort of LSD blackout. It’s not like that. I’ve been totally . . . normal all afternoon.” His hand was trembling in Sarah’s. Something about his voice, his face . . . she realized she believed him. She looked at the body.

  “Maybe he had a heart attack?” she suggested. “He seems kind of young for that. I don’t see any kind of wound, or . . .” Sarah leaned forward slightly over the body, and her hand came down against something in the long grass. She pulled it up.

  It was an old-fashioned film camera with a telescopic lens. And it was flecked with blood.

  “Okay. Not good,” she said, dropping it back in the grass.

  “Oh Christ,” growled Max. He flipped the man over, and they could both now see a jagged hole in the back of the man’s jacket, in between the shoulder blades. Max plucked at the cloth and his hand, too, came away stained with blood. Max recoiled and the body flopped back in the grass with a wet thunk.

  “What is it? Was he shot?” Sarah rubbed the grass with her hands. Max reached into his jacket pocket and with absentminded politeness offered a large snowy white handkerchief. My God, Sarah thought. Who is this person?

  “I . . . think so,” Max said slowly. “And he’s cold. He was cold when I touched him. He’s been dead for a while maybe.”

  “Well, not for very long,” Sarah said, handing the handkerchief back. “Maybe for a couple of hours. I saw him this morning.”

  “You saw Andy this morning? Where?”

  “Wait, you know him?” Sarah spluttered.

  “I do.” Max rocked back on his heels. “So do you apparently.”

  “Well, I recognize him,” said Sarah. “He’s the policeman who stopped us earlier. When Eleanor smashed the truck.”

  “He’s not a policeman.” Max stood up and looked at Sarah strangely. “What are you talking about? What policeman? Eleanor smashed the truck?”

  “Who is Andy?” Sarah demanded. “What are you talking about?”

  “Andy Blackman . . . he works at Sternberg Palace,” Max said, pointing at the body.

  Sarah looked">S the po at the dead man’s face. Then at his uniform—a Nehru-style jacket with some sort of insignia over the right breast. Sternberg Palace, now an art museum, was located just outside Prague Castle’s gates. She hadn’t been inside yet, but she had seen uniforms like this around the castle grounds.

  “This man,” Sarah said, trying to keep her voice calm. “This man stopped Eleanor and me earlier today. He was on a motorcyle. Eleanor backed into a tractor on our way over here, and this man came along. He was wearing a policeman’s uniform. He was speaking Czech. He took the truck away.” Max blinked at her.

  “This man,” Max said, “is installing the new security system over at the Sternberg. I’ve been consulting with him about ours. He is definitely not a policeman. He’s not even Czech. He barely speaks it. He’s from Philadelphia.” Max looked around at the trees and hedges surrounding them.

  “Sarah,” Max said. “Whoever did this to him. They might still be here. You should go. Go back to Nela. Call a cab. Take a train back to Prague.”

  “I’m not leaving you,” Sarah said firmly. “And I’m not wandering off by myself if there’s a killer loose on the grounds.” At this, they both scanned the hedge and the pond anxiously. It was all very quiet, absurdly pastoral and lovely.

  They turned back to the body—Andy—and then looked at each other.

  “I suppose we’d better call the police,” Max said. “My cell is at the house.” The sound of a branch snapping somewhere nearby startled them both. Max grabbed Sarah’s hand and pulled her facedown into the long grass, covering her body with his own longer one.

  “Max,” hissed Sarah.

  “Quiet,” Max hissed back, into her ear. They lay there for several minutes, listening.

  Sarah, her head crushed by Max’s elbow, turned her face, which brought her nose directly into contact with Max’s throat.

  The scent of him was overpowering. For a moment it seemed as if the ground was tilting underneath their bodies. She forgot that there might be some sort of deranged lunatic lurking in the hedges. She inhaled greedily. Adrenaline was coursing through her body; she felt like running, like rolling over and over in the grass, like playing the piano. Playing the piano really, really loudly.

  “Sarah?” Max said, his voice thick in her ear, as if he could read her thoughts. And then it seemed to come to both of them, at the same time, that they were about two feet away from a dead body and potentially in grave danger from becoming dead bodies themselves. They separated themselves.

  “Let’s get back to the house,” Max said, in a somewhat dazed voice. “We can call the cops from there.”

  Sarah nodded.

  “Should we take this?” She picked up the camera.

  “Leave it,” Max said, and then, “No. Wait. Give it to me.” They began walking quickly back to the castle.

  “Here’s the story,” Max said, his eyes sweeping the landscape. “I will say I found him—Andy—who is known to me in his professional capacity at Sternberg Palace. I found him here, on my grounds. I attempted to perform CPR. I did not PR.l say have a cell phone with me. When I realized that he was beyond medical help, I ran back to the house to call for an ambulance and to inform the police. You did not see me, or this. You were working in the library and saw nothing.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Sarah said. “I’ve touched him. My fingerprints are all over him. And the camera. We should tell the police we found him while we were out walking together.”

  “I’m trying to protect you,” Max said, frowning. “This isn’t . . . you’re not involved in this.”

  “What is this?” Sarah asked. “Do you know why somebody would want to kill him? Or why he would pretend to be a Czech policeman? Unless he really is a Czech policeman and was pretending to be an American security installation guy at the Sternberg Palace? I mean, which is it?”

  Max stopped walking and Sarah, who was slightly behind him, collided with his shoulder.

  “I don’t know,” Max said. “But I think someone is tryi
ng to frame me. I think someone dumped his body here and was going to make it look like I killed him. Or maybe someone thought he was me.”

  As if on cue, a heavy rain began to fall.

  • • •

  Sarah wasn’t sure why, but she insisted Max adopt her version of finding the body for when they talked to the police.

  “That way we both have an alibi,” she said. She wasn’t sure if she trusted him entirely, but she trusted that he wasn’t a murderer. She knew that her trust was a little illogical, and probably owed a lot to the way Max smelled, but there it was.

  Max called the police. When he was done, Sarah pointed to the camera still slung from his shoulder. “What are you going to do with that?” she asked.

  “I want to look at the film,” Max said. “God knows what’s on it. Maybe it will give me some sort of a clue as to what he was doing here.”

  “Give us a clue,” Sarah said firmly. “Give me the camera. I’ll put it in my backpack.” It was a challenge, and after a moment Max accepted it and handed the camera over. Sarah made for the stairs.

  “Maybe you should hide it until the police leave,” Max said.

  “Hide it where?”

  “Are you kidding?” Max folded his arms. “Look around you. My family’s been hoarding crap for six hundred years. Where can’t you hide it?”

  • • •

  It had stopped raining by the time the police finally arrived. Max explained the situation in Czech, which he seemed to speak well, to a set of dourly efficient policemen. At least, Sarah hoped that he was explaining the situation. Then the two officers, plus Max and Sarah, all trooped down with flashlights to where Max and Sarah had left Andy’s body.

  Only it wasn’t there.font>

  Max swore. Sarah dashed back and forth in the muddy grass, ineffectually. Andy Blackman had disappeared.

  One of the officers made a call, and soon the castle grounds were being swept by half a dozen police officers while Sarah and Max were taken back inside the house. They sat on packing crates—the only furniture—and repeated their statements over and over again. Sarah heard her own voice say, “But I’m positive he was dead,” and thought that she sounded like she was lying. Soon she began to doubt herself. Had Andy been dead? There was blood. Didn’t the officers see the blood?

  But of course the rain had washed that away.

  The policeman interrogating Sarah received a call on his walkie-talkie and disappeared. Max and Sarah exchanged a glance but didn’t speak. After a few minutes, an impressively wide and lantern-jawed female officer appeared in the doorway.

  “Mr. Anderson,” she said. “You have been, how you say, punked?”

  “Punked?” Max repeated, faintly.

  “I have been speaking with director of National Gallery. Andy Blackman was at work all day today at Sternberg Palace. He is clearly not as dead as you thought.” She rolled her eyes and issued sharp orders to the officers present, one of whom began barking into a radio.

  Sarah’s mind raced. Was Max mistaken in identifying the man? Did Andy have a twin?

  “We do not appreciate time wasting,” said the policewoman. “But I think you are not being clever. I think you are perhaps a little stupid.” Sarah expected Max to begin shouting and protesting, but he was strangely silent. His face was impossible to read.

  One of the cops came back in carrying something. Sarah saw it was a violin. “This was in the stables,” he said gruffly. “I do not think it should be left out there.”

  “No,” said the policewoman, obviously angered by the mistreatment of the musical instrument. “I would expect that Mr. Anderson would not want these treasures, which have been conserved for so long by others and are now in his sole care, to be treated suchly.” Her voice dripped with loathing.

  Sarah took the violin carefully from the cop and nodded. As the cops were leaving, Max assumed his princely role. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “I am very ashamed to have wasted your time. We’re having a hunt here in the fall. I hope you’ll be my guest.”

  “Yes,” said the female officer. “My father often hunted here on the grounds of the castle when it belonged to the people.” Someone wasn’t so excited about the fall of communism, thought Sarah.

  Max and Sarah stared in silence until the last police car crunched over the gravel of the bridge.

  “Okay, what happened?” Sarah asked first.

  “I think Sherbatsky might have left that in the stables,” Max said, nodding at the violin.

  “Not this,” Sarah could have chucked the instrument at him. “You know what I mean.”

  “Let’s take a little walk,” Max said. Sarah followed him out and down the steps into the garden, realizing en,

  “There’s a bench over there,” he said, after a long moment. “Come and sit down with me?”

  The thought entered Sarah’s mind that Max had hidden the body while she was upstairs hiding the camera. He might have killed Andy, she thought, walking along beside him in the darkness, the moon just beginning to illuminate the ghostly shapes of several dead apple trees. He might be about to kill me, she added to herself. But instead of saying that, she said, “Someone is fucking with us, big time.”

  Max stopped. He sat down on a stone bench. He leaned over, elbows on his knees. After a moment of silence, he began talking to the ground.

  “I was sitting in my apartment near Venice Beach one day. Happy,” he said. “Really happy, for the first time in a long time. I just wanted a year or two off, you know? Do my own thing. I had gone to Yale to please my father, but I should have known that nothing would please him. I thought I deserved a break. I grew up in California and I didn’t even know how to surf. I was always studying. So for the first time I had no responsibilities and I was good with that. Very good. So that day I was just getting stoned, about to go hang with the drum circle down at the beach, when the phone rang. It was my dad. It had been months since we’d talked. I was a disappointment to him. He had actually said that flat out, the last time we had talked: ‘You’re a disappointment to me.’ Except this time he was all happy. He said he’d just gotten a call from my mom’s family lawyer in Prague. The Czech government had declared our family to be the rightful heirs to the Lobkowicz holdings. They had been talking about it for years, but somehow I never thought it would actually happen, or that it would have anything to do with my life. But it meant a lot to my dad. See, my mom died when I was three and he never got over it. And so I guess this was like getting a piece of my mom back, you know? Something big he could do for her memory. He had booked us tickets to go to Prague. Me and him. You’d think I would have jumped at the chance, right? Reconcile with my father. Reclaim my heritage. But there were so many times when he had made me feel like shit. My whole life, really. So that’s what I did. I made him feel like shit. I looked out the window at the Pacific Ocean and told him I didn’t care about the fucking castles and he could go fuck himself. Except I didn’t think that would be the last thing I ever said to him. The next morning the police called. He had dropped dead of a heart attack on his way to LAX.”

  Max started to cry. Whatever his recent past might be, he cried like an aristocrat. Silently, with no hiccoughing or snuffling. Sarah stood over him and thought about whether she should put her hand on his back or an arm around him, but she knew that nothing in the world could make Max feel less alone in this moment.

  So she picked up the violin and played.

  As she gently pulled the bow across the strings, Sarah was shocked by the sound coming from the instrument—this was no villager’s fiddle.

  Her brain finally calmed as she lost herself in the opening of Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique. It began lyrically, sadly almost, the story of a young artist who in an opium dream falls in love with a woman he cannot have. She haunts him in a beautiful melody that becomes an idée fixe, an obsession, and then begin the elements of foreboding, of dangodiove with aer and the occult. Sarah had always found the piece to be a little over the top, but
after tonight, she felt that Berlioz was right on the money. She played on, finding solace, courage, fortitude, and a kindred spirit in a piece of music written in 1830, a series of notes scrawled on the page that sprang from the imagination of one man, who was reaching out across time, through this violin, to tell her that he knew exactly how she was feeling, how strange and frightening and intoxicating life could be.

  Eyes closed, she was building to the finish of the first movement, letting all the fear and adrenalin

  e of the day pour out of her when suddenly she felt Max’s hands gently take the violin and bow. She opened her eyes to see him gazing back at her. He slowly placed his hand on her throat, and she could feel her heartbeat against his thumb. As they kissed, Berlioz’s music continued in her head, driving on toward the fourth movement, “March to the Scaffold,” and the last, “Witches’ Sabbath.”

  Max, Sarah decided, may be many things, possibly even criminal things.

  He was also the best kisser she had ever laid lips to.

  SIXTEEN

  Sarah enjoyed the early-morning high-speed ride back to Prague in Max’s red Alfa Romeo convertible a lot more than the trip out to Nela in the Skoda with Eleanor. The car was incredible. Max told her it was a 1930 6C 1750 Gran Sport that his grandfather had raced as a young man. It looked like new, which gave riding in it a weird time-warp feeling. She might have enjoyed it even more if she wasn’t holding a priceless violin in a blanket. In the early-morning light she had examined the instrument and found its mark: Grancino, anno 1699. Worth more than her mother’s house. And yet another item that belonged to the man in the driver’s seat.

  The night before, despite the electricity generated by the kiss, Max had shown her to a cot in what he called “the Blue Room,” and had discreetly disappeared to some other part of the castle. This morning in the car, he was all business, and so was she. Max said he would develop the film from the camera, and Sarah offered to pay a visit to Sternberg Palace where Andy worked, to see if she could find out anything. Max handled the interminable traffic jam that was Prague center with reckless style and Sarah clutched the Grancino to her chest.