by E. A. Copen
I stood, eyeing Osric, and gestured to the room beyond the beaded curtain. “Can I assume you already know where my office is? Let’s head back that way, and you can tell me what kind of job a necromancer might do for a faerie queen.”
The queen smiled and bobbed her head as if she were pleased before going back through the curtain. Osric didn’t follow her, though. He gestured for me to go first. I didn’t like the idea of showing my back to a guy with magic daggers he could summon at will, but there was no way around it. He wasn’t moving until I did.
“You’re not going to stab me in the back?” I asked, tilting my head to the side.
His smile reminded me of a snake smiling at a mouse. “Not today.”
The carefully chosen words gave me a bad feeling, but at least I could be reasonably sure I’d see any attacks coming. I went through the curtain with Osric on my heels.
The back room of my shop was more glamorous than the front, mostly because a necromancer was supposed to maintain a certain ambiance for his clientele. A rickety table sat at the center of the room covered by a black tablecloth. In the middle of it sat a plastic replica of a human skull and a really melted down beeswax candle on a silver platter. I’d drawn a basic circle on the floor around the table, but it wasn’t active. The computer, printer, and all my office equipment sat behind a screen.
I went to the screen and moved it aside before gesturing to the two chairs on the customer side of my desk. Nyx and Osric sat.
In the absence of anything else to say, I figured I’d open with my normal line minus the thank you. “Now, tell me what I can do for you.”
“An item was stolen from me,” Nyx said. “An item of great importance and power. I’d like to hire you to recover it for me.”
I leaned back in my seat. There was already one find-and-retrieve job on my plate. It was a weird one, sure, but at least finding the organs taken out of dead bodies was sort of related to my job description. “I’m not a retrieval specialist. While I can whip up a tracking spell, that only works if you’ve got a piece of the missing item with you. And I’m not the best at that kind of magic. You could easily find someone else more skilled with tracking spells if you looked hard enough. Heck, I bet there are at least a few witches in New Orleans alone who are better suited for this kind of thing.”
I expected her to get angry, but she just kept her gaze on me, even and unblinking. It was a little unsettling. “If payment is an issue, I am prepared to offer you a substantial reward.”
One more thing about faeries. Faerie money was worthless on Earth. They could hand over an entire room full of gold, but it’d just turn to dust by dawn. “I don’t accept faerie gold in payment either.”
Nyx raised her chin and pushed jet black curls away from her neck. A dusky diamond hugged her throat at the center. She removed the choker and placed it on the desk. Separated from her, the diamond gleamed a lustrous white. “This is a priceless diamond, worth a small fortune. I offer it in exchange for your services.”
I frowned at the diamond. “You haven’t even told me what was stolen yet.”
“A box, only slightly too large to fit in the palm of my hand,” she said. “It is crafted of the black glass you call obsidian with gold trim. It was taken from my treasury two days ago.”
“Finding a box doesn’t sound like a job for a necromancer.”
“I see.” Nyx lowered her head to her hands. Her shoulder jerked to one side, and when her hand came back up, she held between her fingers a ring with a black stone set in gold. “I offer you a seat at my table and any of the minor holdings in my court. Accept my offer, and I shall grant you the title of Lord. You will be viewed as an equal to all other lords and ladies of the Shadow Court.” She placed the ring on my desk next to the choker.
That was a hard deal to turn down. Lord Lazarus Kerrigan had a nice ring to it, but that wasn’t why I considered her offer. It was Odette. Holdings in Faerie would mean I’d have an excuse to go there, maybe even see her and…
I shook my head. What the hell was wrong with me? She’d lied to me. Tricked me. This deal Nyx was offering almost certainly had a downside. For one, I didn’t know if I’d ever be able to return from going to Faerie. Accepting it would also mean I’d be beholden to her court and forced to obey her commands.
“Your Majesty,” I said, shifting in my seat, “with all due respect, I’m not trying to negotiate with you. Sweetening the pot won’t make this any more my business than it already is, which is to say it isn’t. I wouldn’t even know where to start looking for your box.”
She eyed me with a deep frown. “This is not just a box. It is a sheut. This box holds a piece of my soul. Without it, I cannot be whole.”
I blinked. Part of her soul? Now that was something I might be suited to retrieve, but I hadn’t ever heard of a fractured soul. It was possible, I supposed, but probably very dangerous for this exact reason. At the very least, I could verify her story using my Soul Vision.
With a modicum of will, I activated the vision and sucked in a small gasp. To date, I’d only looked at human souls and the soul of one corrupt goddess. Human souls gleamed a bright silver while gods’ souls were gold. As you’d expect, souls were centered in the chest, but usually had lots of tendrils curling out from them, reaching into other parts of the body.
The two souls sitting across from me were a vibrant viridian green laced with black. Osric’s soul had slightly more black in it, especially in the little tendrils that reached down into his arms. Nyx’s soul boasted a slight layer of gold over the viridian, but it was markedly smaller as if someone had taken part of it away and simply rolled what remained into a smaller ball of light.
I blinked the power away and found Osric staring at me, wide-eyed, his head tilted to one side. Nyx didn’t even seem fazed.
“As you can see,” the queen continued, “I am not specifically in need of a necromancer so much as a Horseman. As such, I will pay whatever price you deem appropriate for your services.” She closed her eyes as if in pain. “I offer you one boon of your choosing to be granted after the box is recovered either immediately or at a future date.”
Now that was a hell of a deal. Having a faerie queen owe me a favor of my choosing? That box must be the real deal if she’s that desperate to get it back. No wonder she had her man test me first. An open-ended favor like that was a dangerous thing to offer. I’d sure think twice about asking for something that would piss her off knowing that Osric could kick my ass any day of the week.
But the offer was dangerous for me too. Anyone who could break into a sealed vault inside Faerie and lift a box containing part of the Shadow Queen’s soul wasn’t someone who would go down easy, and not someone I wanted to make an enemy of. It was also a job I couldn’t afford not to take judging by the menacing glares I was getting from Osric.
I cleared my throat and turned to open the top drawer of my desk where I kept the client contracts and some white-out. I went over the section about payment and changed it to reflect her most recent offer before sliding the contract to her. “If you have any additional information about the box, like where I should start looking, that would help speed things up.”
Nyx handed the contract to Osric to read over. “An item of such power couldn’t hide easily. Osric was able to track it to this city, but sadly, the thief eluded justice.”
Osric lowered the contract after flipping to the second page. “I believe the thief means to sell it. There have been whispers of an auction that travels from place to place, an auction where various items of immense power can be bought and sold to those who can afford it.”
So, there was a black magic market in New Orleans. I’d been right after all. Now, if only I could figure out where it was going to be. I really hoped Darius came through for me. If so, not only could I nab the organ thief, but I could get Nyx’s box at the same time. Double payday.
“Any idea who the thief was?”
Nyx shook her head. “We believe it is not one th
ief, but many. My guards were gravely injured in the attack and only had time to relay a small amount of information before they…expired. We know they were all male, and that one has a tattoo of a jackal on the back of his hand.”
Well, that was something. It wasn’t much to go on, but I couldn’t imagine there being too many guys running around New Orleans with jackal tattoos on their hands. I jotted the description down, finishing just in time for Osric to hand the contract back to his queen.
“I do have some suggested revisions to your contract,” he said.
After a half hour of back and forth, haggling over the wording of some sections of my contract, Nyx affixed her signature and stood, smoothing her hands over her dress.
“How should I contact you when it’s done?” I asked, folding the contract.
“There’s no need,” Nyx said with a sweet smile and gestured to Osric. “Osric will remain in the city to aid you should the need arise from sunup to sundown each day. If you need to find him, you may do so by speaking his name three times.”
Osric didn’t look any more pleased about assisting me than I felt about accepting his assistance, but neither of us voiced our displeasure. I showed them to the door and watched as a limo pulled up and they got inside.
I had maybe fifteen minutes before Beth showed up, just enough time to tidy up after my scuffle with Osric. I was in the middle of picking up the display of brochures when my phone rang. Darius’s number danced across the screen to the tune of Coolio’s Gangsta’s Paradise. I pressed the button to answer. “Please give me some good news.”
“Fella you want to talk to is named Seth Emits. You know where Odd Fellows Rest is?”
Boy, did I. It was the place I’d been trying to avoid going to ever since ghouls crossed my mind. Odd Fellows Rest was ground zero for ghouls. I sighed. “Yeah. Of course I do.”
“Well, he runs the herb shop around the corner. Go in there and ask for Seth Emits, but don’t you go tellin’ nobody that I sent you there, Magic Man.”
“Thank you, Darius. You’re the best.”
I hung up and looked at my watch. Depending on how long this thing with Beth took, I might still be able to make it out to the herb shop before dusk, but I’d be cutting it close. The last thing I wanted to do was get caught out in ghoul territory after dark. This day had already been complicated enough.
Chapter Six
Beth pulled up in a green hybrid and parked right in front of the shop. She’d driven by twice before, ducking her head and squinting, looking for some sign of my shop. It was my fault. I hadn’t given her an exact address, and the sign for the shop wasn’t exactly easy to see from the road. I’d have to work on that.
When I saw her stop, I quit watching through the blinds and pulled open the door, stepping aside so she could enter.
She paused, unsure at the sight of me. Then the same professional smile she’d had at the morgue crossed her face, and she shifted the white purse on her shoulder. “Well, at least I found the right place.”
“Did you have trouble? Sorry, guess I sometimes forget not everyone is a local.” Not that locals frequented my shop enough that everyone knew where it was.
She stepped past me, easing into the shop and pausing just inside. Her shoulders hunched and her head lifted. “There’s a lot of energy here,” she said in a voice just above a whisper.
Beth had always been a sensitive, able to manipulate some basic magic. After a couple of years of study, she’d mastered some basic healing spells, but that was the extent of her abilities.
“I’ve got some active wards around the shop,” I explained stepping in behind her and shutting the door. “Probably what you’re feeling.”
“No,” she said, shaking her head violently. “This is something else. Decay. Darkness. A chill. Like stepping into a grave. I felt it at the morgue, too.”
She turned around and a breath caught in my throat. There was barely enough space between us for air. It’d been a long time since Beth and I’d had anything serious, but it had been serious, serious enough that I’d been saving for a ring when Lydia died. Standing this close to her, I could smell the faint hint of shea butter from the lotion she favored, and underneath that the dusky rose scent of her. The smell brought back memories of long nights, laughter, and promises left unsaid. I felt the weight of them hang between us, tugging at either side as it sagged in the middle.
Beth put a hand on my face. I resisted the urge to lean into it. “What happened to you?”
My shoulders rose and fell with no input from me, forming a shrug. “It’s complicated.” Not knowing what else to do, I cleared my throat and stepped around her. “So, should we address the elephant in the room before we get business on the table? You want to tell me why you ran?”
I expected her to go on the defensive, to snap back at me, to deny that she’d run at all. After all, she had every right to leave. It was self-preservation. I’d had years to think about it, and that’s what I’d decided. While I’d blamed her at first for leaving me when I needed her most, I couldn’t hate her. I wasn’t in a good place then. Hell, I probably wasn’t sane after everything that’d happened. Grief makes a guy do stupid things.
Instead, she shrugged, mimicking my motions. “It’s complicated.”
Guess we weren’t going to make any progress on that front. At least, not yet.
She glanced around, shifting her purse again. “You know what? You’re right. I do owe you an explanation.”
“You don’t owe me anything, Beth.”
“At least let me buy you a coffee. This will be easier over coffee instead of standing in your office.” She chewed on her bottom lip knowing full well I could never say no to her when she did that.
I should’ve turned her down flat. Kept it professional. The problem was, it was Beth. There was a time when the girl I’d had a crush on for most of my senior year of high school and into college could’ve asked me to go to the moon with her, and I’d have stolen the rocket. Old habits die hard, I guess.
“Coffee, sure. But only if you promise to tell me how you wound up working with mummies of all things. I thought you were a history major?”
The genuine smile that touched her lips made my heart skip a beat. “Deal. And I was. I’ll tell you all about that on the ride. I saw a shop on the way over, if you don’t mind letting me drive?”
On the way to the little coffee shop two blocks over, Beth told me all about how she’d switched her major from history to anthropology because she thought the latter would have better career prospects, and because one of her professors had thought she’d do well.
“Finding my first job was a nightmare,” she said, pushing some hair behind her ear and flipping on the turn signal. “I was basically an unpaid intern for about a year, making coffee for a bunch of stuck-up intellectual assholes, delivering memos, that sort of thing. All the while, I hit the books every night and worked on my graduate degree. Wound up taking an elective in Egyptology, and the professor liked me. We hit it off right away, and it turned out he was looking for a new assistant.”
“So you’re telling me you get to work with mummies because of random chance?” I sighed. “Some people have all the luck.”
Beth turned into the parking lot of the chain coffee shop. “I didn’t know you even cared about mummies.”
“Are you kidding? Do you know how cool it would be to raise one of their shades? I’d slap that shit right on an ad in the Yellow Pages.” I gestured wide with my hands. “Lazarus Kerrigan. Necromancer. Mummy Whisperer.”
“No one uses the Yellow Pages anymore.” Her smile reflected in her voice. “But I bet it would be pretty awesome to get to question one directly. Unfortunately, Doctor Feneque wouldn’t allow it, not in a million years. He’s very skeptical. You should’ve seen his face the last time someone freaked out over one of those mummies’ curses.”
We got out of the car. I moved just a hair faster than her and turned, leaning on the hood to peer over it at her. “T
hose aren’t real, are they?”
She blinked and tilted her head to the side. “How should I know?”
“I figure if anyone could detect it, it’d be an Egyptologist with sensitivity to magic.”
Beth chewed on her lip again, but this time averted her eyes. “I haven’t really been using my abilities that much, Laz.”
I didn’t know how to respond to that. For someone like me, someone adept with a particular type of magic, I could go years between rituals and my magic wouldn’t get rusty. Sure, my technique would suffer, and I’d be more likely to screw up, but the actual talent for magic wouldn’t wane. Not so for someone like Beth who’d had to work hard to refine her sensitivity into being able to work magic. If she didn’t use her powers on a regular basis, they’d fade.
And that didn’t sound like the Beth I’d known at all. Beth had been so determined to learn magic she nearly flunked organic chemistry skipping class to go to lessons with me. Even when she couldn’t get away from class to learn, I helped her work a little magic every day. Our entire relationship had formed around her desire to learn magic, and my desire to be close to her.
She shouldered her purse and pressed a button on the key fob, locking the car. “Hey, forget about it. It’s no big deal.”
“It is a big deal. You lived for the thrill of getting to use your powers.”
She started for the front door, and I followed close. “A lot has changed since then, Laz. I’m not that person anymore. I don’t need magic to solve my problems. I have science.”
That stung enough I fell back a step. Magic wasn’t a problem solver. Oh, it could fix a problem temporarily, but for every one thing it improved, magic made two more things worse. It bugged me that she’d dismiss it as an easy out. There were days I wished magic gone from the world, especially after the last two weeks I’d had.
She was choosing to turn her back on everything she’d learned. Why? I didn’t dare ask. The conversation was already going to be awkward enough without drawing that into it.
