by Gary Jonas
The old woman at the table looked right at me.
I gave her a smile and a wink.
She smiled. She was missing her front teeth.
I did a slow blink to try and focus. Why was I looking at her again?
Michael looked around and saw me staring at the old woman.
“No you don’t.”
“Well, I’m not gonna hook up with you.”
“You’re not going to hook up with anyone, Brett. You have an appointment, and your father and cousin are counting on you.”
I started laughing. “They’re fucked.”
“Be serious.”
“I am being serious. They are so fucked. We’re all gonna die.”
“Way to stay positive,” Michael said.
“You said it yourself. Sinclair kills other wizards.”
“That’s the word on the street.”
“Screw it. Let’s get this over with,” I said. I stood up and raised my hand, pointing to the ceiling. The room spun, and I wobbled, but I didn’t fall down. Another slow blink. “I think I’m gonna throw up.”
“Bathroom is down the hall on the right,” Michael said.
“Maybe I’ll piss,” I said. “Throw up and piss. In that order. Then we can go get ourselves killed.”
Michael shrugged. “Well, at least we have a plan.”
I staggered down the hall, and laughed. “At least I won’t die sober.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Michael drove us to the beach. He got a great parking spot. Not that there were any cars fighting for a spot at that hour.
“This is permit parking only,” I said.
“It’s almost one in the morning, Brett.”
“Yeah, but it’s permit only.”
“Maybe I should have cut off the whiskey a little sooner.”
I pointed at him and watched my finger wave in the air a moment, almost fascinated by it. Then I remembered my point. “Do you have a permit?”
He sighed. “Yes, Brett. I have a permit. Let’s go.”
“Good,” I said. “Because if you got a ticket, you’d have to pay it.”
“Of course.”
“You know why you’d have to pay it?”
“Why?”
“Because you can’t go to court to fight it. They’re only open in the daytime, so you’d burn up all bright and fancy like a bonfire in the middle of the street.”
“It’s not like that, Brett.”
“You’d burst into flame and turn to dust?”
“Sunlight is uncomfortable, and I’d get a sunburn in minutes. It hurts like crazy, but it’s not like they show in the movies. Get out of the car, Brett.”
I fumbled for the door handle. The door opened and I fell out of the car.
“Michael?” I asked.
He walked around the car and shook his head as he stared at me. “What?”
“I think I’m just gonna go to sleep now.”
“Get up.”
“I can’t even walk.”
“Get up,” he said again.
“But my feet won’t move right.”
“They’re hung up between the door and—”
“Just leave me here. You should go before you get a ticket.”
“Get up, Brett.”
“I don’t want to be responsible for you getting a sunburn.”
“I’m not going to get a ticket or a sunburn.”
“You have sunscreen?”
“Definitely should have cut you off sooner.”
He bent and grabbed me under my arms. He dragged me away from the car and up onto the sidewalk. Then he kicked the door closed. The car chirped as he set the alarm. Finally, he pulled me up to my feet. I leaned against him.
“You need to stand on your own now, Brett,” he said and propped me up.
I wavered, but stepped to the side to keep from falling.
“This way,” he said and took me by the arm. He pulled me toward the stairs leading down the seawall to the beach.
“I’m coming,” I said.
I staggered down the stairs, nearly falling, but I caught my balance. We descended the stairs. Waves rolled in and the salty air invigorated me, bringing back some of my senses. I was off to face my death, and I smiled because it just seemed so ridiculous.
“What are you smiling about?” Michael asked.
“I feel like Yellowbeard.”
“What?”
“The pirate in the movie. You know,” I said and went into a demonstration. “Stagger, stagger.” I fell to the ground and crawled. “Crawl.” I did a shoulder roll in the packed sand. “Roll.” And then I pushed myself to my feet. “Stagger, stagger.”
“I think you mean Jack Sparrow.”
“No! Yellowbeard. Graham Chapman.”
“I wish you could be more like Jean Lifitte right now.”
I gave him an exaggerated shrug. “Wish away, young vampire, wish away.” I did a little spin, and damn near ran into the back of the big yellow excavator. Putting out my hands, I caught myself on the track.
A flashlight illuminated at the end of the jetty. “So glad you could join us!” Sinclair disguised as Delgado said. Two Mako Clansmen stood on the beach at the edge of the jetty. They wore suits, but no shoes.
Michael came up beside me. “I’ll follow your lead,” he whispered.
“My lead? Dude, if I wasn’t so drunk, I’d be running away right now.”
He patted me on the back. “Hence the drinks before the war.”
We walked over some sand covered railroad ties to get to the jetty. The jetty itself was made of big flat rocks.
“Good to see you again, Hank,” I said to one of the Clansmen.
He shook his head. “I’m Raymond,” he said then pointed to the Mako guy across from him. “He’s Jensen.”
I looked at Jensen. “Pesci Schwarzenegger,” I said. “Got it. Where’s Hank?”
“He’s the driver,” Jensen said.
“Yeah, but where is he?”
“Ready to drive.”
“You’re not very helpful.”
“They don’t pay me to be helpful. They pay me to kill people.”
“You planning to kill me?” I asked.
“If the boss lets me.”
“Until then,” Michael said ushering me forward.
The rocks on the jetty were a bit uneven, but had I been sober it would have been easy enough to walk. I damn near twisted my ankle as we headed toward Sinclair. Sabrina knelt at Sinclair’s feet. She didn’t appear to be bound or gagged, but she wasn’t moving.
My father was nowhere in sight.
“Come on out here,” Sinclair said, and motioned.
We walked past a metal and glass box hanging on a post. Inside the box was a foam ring buoy. I dodged around it, moving too close to the edge of the jetty where the rocks sloped down into the water. Riptides there could be deadly. I windmilled my arms until I steadied myself.
“Please don’t fall in and drown before you give me the cards,” Sinclair said.
I moved back to the middle of the jetty and staggered right up to Sinclair. I considered just shoving him. He might fall into the water. But he was a powerful wizard and getting him wet would only serve to piss him off. It seemed counterproductive. That said, he might kill me faster.
I patted him on the chest. “How’s it going, Joe?”
“Delgado,” he said and caught my wrists. He pushed me back a few steps.
“Joseph Carlisle Sinclair III,” I said. “You need to hire a better makeup artist.”
Sabrina remained motionless, but her eyes followed me.
“I see you made my cousin into a statue,” I said. I crouched before her. “Looks like I can talk shit to you and you can’t talk back.”
Her eyes focused on me, but she wasn’t angry. She was scared and confused.
“You’re a pain in my ass, String Cheese, but I’m here to save your life anyway. You won’t get to thank me because I think this Lon Chaney wizard dude
is gonna kill me. Enjoy the house. Take care of the guitar. Feed Mangani when you get a chance.”
She looked especially confused.
“She can’t hear you,” Sinclair said.
“Huh?”
“Her hearing is turned off while she’s frozen in place. I allowed her to see and to breathe, but everything else is currently out of commission.”
“Can you lose the disguise?” I asked. “You look silly.”
He made a hand gesture and his countenance changed. He grew several inches and stood straighter. It was too dark to tell whether his skin tone and hair color changed, but I’ll go out on a limb and say they did.
“How did you know? Was it the eyes?”
“Eyes?”
“Spanish people don’t have blue eyes.”
“Then why didn’t you change the color?”
“Because I like my eyes.”
“Or maybe it affects your magic.”
“And you say you never paid attention in class.”
“It was a guess.” I held up two fingers. “I have two questions for you. No, three questions. First, did you transfer the money?”
“Did you bring the cards?”
“Dude, it’s my turn to ask questions. Hang on.” I turned and leaned toward Michael. In a stage whisper I said, “This is the part where you carry Sabrina to safety.”
“I can hear you,” Sinclair said.
I turned back to him. “I’m not talking to you yet.”
Sinclair shook his head. “You’re inebriated.”
“Damn right, and I could use another drink right about now.” I turned to Michael who still hadn’t moved. “Dude, get her out of here.” Back to Sinclair. “I’ll get to you in a sec.”
“Your vampire friend can’t move right now, Mr. Masters.”
“Why not?”
“Because I froze him in place.”
“How’d you know he was a vampire?”
“Just give me the cards, kid.”
“Why didn’t you freeze me and take them?”
“Honor.”
I laughed. “Honor? From you? Oh, shit. It’s the cards, isn’t it?”
“You agreed to hand them over.”
I shook my finger in his face. “You said—”
He slapped my hand away.
“Hey!” I said.
He held out his hand. “Cards.”
“Don’t get your panties all twisted up. They’re in my pocket.”
His face twitched. He took a deep breath. “Kindly remove the deck from your pocket and place it in my hand.” He held out a hand, palm up. There was a reason he didn’t just grab them, and I knew what it was. He didn’t know I knew, and I was too drunk to put it all together exactly, so maybe I just sensed it. I had to willingly hand them over. Will and magic entwined. No, that wasn’t quite right.
“You didn’t answer my questions.”
Sigh. “What questions?”
My eyes scanned the sea. Even in my drunken state, I knew there was an army of Mako Clansmen hidden in the area, and the only place they could truly remain out of sight was in the water.
I unzipped my pocket and dug inside to pull out the deck of Tarot cards.
Sinclair’s eyes lit up and he smiled. He relaxed now that he had them in sight. He knew it was just a matter of time. All I had to do was set them in his palm and they would be his.
“Where’s my dad?”
He pointed toward the beach. I turned to look where he was pointing. A man climbed into the excavator.
“That’s not my dad.”
“The man in the seat is Hank. You remember him.”
“Driver.”
“Very good. Do you see the bucket?” He pointed to the excavator, up the boom to the bucket hanging high in the air.
“Yeah.”
“Your father is there just as incapacitated as your friend and cousin. Do you have any idea how much magic it takes to hold still a powerful wizard, a medium wizard, and a vampire all at the same time?”
“You lost me at incapassi-whatsit,” I said. “You want to talk magic, do it in six words or less.”
“I’m powerful, you’re not, cards please.”
The excavator started up.
I turned to look at it. Hank put it in gear, lowered the bucket a bit. My father leaned against the forks like a spoon in a glass. Hank aimed the excavator at the jetty.
“What’s he doing?”
“I’m tired of waiting, Mr. Masters.” He started to reach for the cards, but pulled back.
“What’s wrong?”
“Place the deck in my hand.”
I was right. He couldn’t just take them. But he could have done so earlier. No. Now I wished I’d paid attention in class.
The excavator bumped up onto the jetty.
“No really, what’s he doing?”
“Driving. Cards, please, Mr. Masters. I won’t ask you again.”
“Good, because it’s getting annoying. Before I give them to you… Is he planning to drive that thing right off the edge into the water?”
The excavator crashed into the post holding the life ring buoy. The post fell over and the excavator crawled closer. Top speed on those bad boys is like three miles per hour, so it wasn’t like I needed to be worried about it. I could walk around the damn thing if necessary. The jetty was wide enough that I could get by.
“Yes.”
“You want to drown my dad?”
“Yes.”
“Why not just toss him in the water like a regular criminal?”
“Because I have a flair for the dramatic.”
And then it finally dawned on me. The cards were tuned to me. If he tried to take them against my will, they would still be tuned to me and would be useless to him even if he killed me. The magic would die with me. If I’d died without being near the cards, the tuning would be ended and the next wizard to touch the cards could use them. So basically, right now, he couldn’t do jack shit to me because the cards were mine and if I didn’t give them to him willingly, they’d be forever denied him.
“Why was I afraid of you again?”
“Because I can kill you.”
“Five words. Not bad. I have six for you.”
“I can hardly wait.”
“I can kill you first.”
“That’s five words.”
I ran the words over in my head. Then I counted them off on my hand as I spoke them. “I can kill you first, asshole.”
He smiled. “And how do you propose to do that?”
“It’s time for your big reveal, right?”
“Big reveal?”
“Army of shark guys in the water.” I gestured around the jetty.
As if on cue, the Mako Clansmen rose up out of the water. Hundreds of them all around the jetty. They smiled, baring their sharp teeth.
Sinclair shook his head.
“Sorry to ruin your surprise,” I said. “Will they still be on your side now that you’re not in disguise?”
“What do you mean?”
“The Tanaka or Tangerine Incident. Whatever the shark guys called it?”
He laughed. “Oh, the Tangawa Incident.”
“That’s the one.”
He grinned. “We just made that up to throw you off.”
“You had them lie to me? I’m kinda disappointed in you, man.”
“That’s quite all right. I just have six words for you now, Mr. Masters.”
“Here we go,” I said, and motioned for him to speak.
“Give me the fucking cards, asshole!”
CHAPTER THIRTY
So there I stood, army of shark men in the water around the jetty, bad wizard dude standing in front of me with his hand out, cousin and friend frozen, excavator rumbling slowly toward me.
“Send your shark men away, let Sabrina and Michael go, stop that construction machine bulldozer thing.”
“It’s an excavator.”
“I knew that, I just couldn’t come up with
the word.”
“Of course. But I’m not going to do any of those things.”
“You want the cards? You can’t have them,” I said and I threw the deck out toward the ocean. The wind caught some of them as they spread apart.
His eyes went wide and he looked ready to jump into the water after them. I used that moment of distraction to bring my knee up as hard as I could.
Knee, meet wizard balls.
Sinclair stood still for a moment, then crumpled.
I elbowed him in the face then kicked him over the side. He fell backward, bounced off the rocks into the waves and disappeared.
Most of the shark dudes went after Sinclair.
Michael and Sabrina were still frozen.
Damn.
Some of the shark men swam toward the jetty.
Double damn.
The excavator rumbled ever closer.
Machinery first. I walked toward the excavator. Standing in front of it like that guy in front of the tanks at Tiananmen Square wasn’t going to work. I gazed into the cab.
It was empty.
What the hell? Where had Hank gone?
I rushed over to the excavator, climbed up into the cab and saw the track controls shoved all the way forward. Hank must have used magic to keep them there. I tried to pull them back, but they wouldn’t budge.
Have I mentioned how much I hate magic?
Mako Clansmen climbed out of the water onto the jetty. They moved toward the excavator.
“Wanna play?” I asked as I took a seat.
There were two joysticks—one on either side of the driver’s seat. I figured one controlled the boom and the other controlled the swing. I pushed forward on one joystick and the boom lowered. I moved it to the side and the bucket tilted. I stopped that because I didn’t want my father to fall out.
Moving the other lever moved the stick, but if I went side to side, it operated the swing and the machine turned. Fortunately, the tracks remained forward. I moved the left joystick to swing the machine, but it didn’t move. There was an emergency bar. I set that to free the machine then swung to the left and knocked a few shark men off the jetty. A couple of them tried to hold onto the boom, but lost their grip. Then I swung the machine to the right to repeat the process.
