The Spirit Box (The Freelancers Book 1)

by Lee Isserow

  “We'll start over here,” Rafe said, gesturing to the left hand door.

  Mana walked alongside him as he turned the handle and pushed the massive dark wood door inwards. A waft of thick cigar smoke drifted past them, chatter coming from beyond it. A number of fat old men were puffing on cigars in a room that seemed to have been designed to exist purely on the red side of the colour spectrum. The carpets were a deep dark maroon, walls lined with floor to ceiling bookcases encasing scarlet leather-bound tomes that filled every shelf. Dark wood chairs were dotted around, each with matching lamps and side tables. The surface of each table held an ashtray for the cigars, and crystal tumblers of whatever the fat old men were drinking. The light from the lamps only stretched as far as those sitting at the chairs required it to illuminate, the ceiling left dark, as if no rays were allowed to traverse that high, at the risk of spoiling the ambiance.

  The older men paid little to no attention to Rafe and his companion as they walked through. Ana thought that one or two appeared to recognise him, but did not attempt to initiate conversation. He was, she assumed, persona non grata, assuming what he told her about his “depletion” was true. It still didn't make sense to her―if magick was in the blood, then surely it could be replenished, like bone marrow and blood cells. However, she reminded herself, there was no reason to assume it was anything like that.

  Rafe continued walking through to the next room along, ducking out of the way as a decanter gently levitated through the air to a man behind them, his glass raised, awaiting a refill.

  “Are they really that lazy that they use magick, rather than just walk to a bar?” she asked, in a hushed tone.

  “Don't even get me started...” he said, pointing to a man in the next room, who was putting a new cigar to his lips. With a click of his fingers, the end of the cigar burst into flames and he supped away at the noxious fumes.

  The two of them wound their way through the rooms on the ground floor of the mansion, passing yet more older white men drinking and smoking and guffawing at their own jokes. None of them looked as though they matched the frame of the instant replay smoke man, and they were running out of rooms to investigate.

  “Do you recognise everyone?” she asked.

  “Yeah. . . And they're all, well, not upstanding citizens, but I can't picture any of these pretentious dicks caring that much about knocking off a bloodline that isn't in their elite-bastard bracket.”

  “So, what now?”

  Rafe took a moment, turned on the spot, and beckoned for Mana to follow him back the way they came.

  “Where are you going?”

  “There's a meeting room around back.” he said, taking her all the way back to the entrance, to a door that lay beyond the massive staircase.

  “Where d'ya think you're going?” shouted a gruff monotone, heavy footsteps thundering towards them.

  Rafe glanced over his shoulder to see the two massive men from the door looming over them.

  “Got a meeting,” he said with a smile, indicating to the door.

  “Private business going on already,” said the one to the left, as he laid a gargantuan hand on Rafe's shoulder, each oversized finger feeling as though it were as thick as his wrist.

  “Yeah, we're part of that business.”

  “You are not,” said the one to the right.

  “Not currently, because you're making us late!” he said, indignantly.

  Another hand grabbed him under his arm, lifting him clean off his feet and taking him to the door.

  “What are you doing? I'm a proud, paying member of this institution, and I demand―” the rest of the words were lost, spoken into a mouthful of gravel on the path.

  Mana walked over and helped Rafe pick himself up. “Very nicely done,” she said. “Couldn't you have used a Jedi mind trick or something?”

  “You have to have a mind to fall for a mind trick. . . homunculi have purposes, not minds”

  “Do I want to know what the hell a homunculi is?”

  “Magickally made men, brewed in an egg, it's a really long story. . .”

  “It's a preposterous story, is what it sounds like. . . What do we do, now you got us kicked out of the one place we might find answers?”

  “Isn't it obvious? We find ourselves another way in―one without a pair of giant soulless bastards guarding the door we need to get through. . .”

  Chapter 38

  No two objects ever really touch

  Rafe was certain that the answers they were looking for would lie in the meeting room at the back of the building, but the homunculi had unblinking eyes on them as they left the grounds of the Raven's Lodge. He and Ana took a circuitous route along the street, following the wrought iron fencing that surrounded the compound.

  Around the back, there was a thin treeline close to the fence that would do for cover when they broke in, but beyond it was a long stretch of lawn that was completely in the open, over an acre they'd have to dash across to get a good look into the windows at the rear of the mansion.

  “Do they have cameras?” Ana asked.

  “Magickians don't need cameras. . .”

  “I think I see cameras,” she said, squinting through the bars.

  “Just for show.”

  “What about floodlights? Y'know, motion activated burglar deterrents or whatever?”

  “Oh, they'll have deterrents alright.”

  “That's ominous. . .”

  “Follow my lead and it'll be fine.”

  “Watching you work so far, I'm not massively convinced. . .”

  “I'm unendingly grateful for your support and faith,” he said with a facetious grin, grabbing her hand and tugging her towards the wrought iron bars. “Woosh,” he whispered, as their atoms dispersed through the fence, coming back together on the other side.

  Ana spun around, looking at the fence, her hands, Rafe, then back to the bars. “How. . .”

  “Dispersion.”

  “Dispersion?!”

  “Pulls you apart at the molecular level for a second or two, then glues you back into one piece.”

  “Like the guy we're after?”

  “Like, but not the same. Easier because your atoms don't get pulled too far apart”

  “How do you put all the pieces back together?”

  “One part skill, one part luck, fifty seven parts hope.”

  Ana looked back to the fence, then to Rafe―who was in his own clothes again, and to her hands―which were her hands again, rather than the man-hands she had moments earlier..

  “Dispersion breaks a glamour,” he explained.

  “I'm going to need to start writing all this down.”

  Rafe rolled his eyes and indicated towards the house. There were more important things at hand, and it was starting to bug him just how much his companion was treating this like a field trip.

  He looked out over the lawn between their position in the treeline and the mansion. It was dark and quiet, moonlight painting the grass with a dull yellow hue, the lights from the house spilling out a thin orange glow. There were two silhouettes in the window of the meeting room, but they'd have to get right up to the damn glass to see what was going on inside―let alone hear the occupants.

  He surveyed the grass. There were no obvious signs of enchantments or wards, but Rafe knew full well that that was no indication that they weren't well hidden. He got down on his knees and took a look at the grass. It was recently mowed, a uniform inch tall as far as the eye could see. If they could stay just over an inch off the ground, they might be able to avoid any wardings that had been placed on it.

  Grabbing Ana's right hand, he lay it flat on the ground and manoeuvred behind her, looping his other arm around her. She shot an elbow into his gut.

  “Don't get fresh,” she muttered.

  “I'm not teaching you how to bowl or golf, I don't have the juice to do this by myself. . .”

  She mulled for barely a second, and nodded, letting him continue. Reaching around behind h
er, he put his left hand over hers, and traced out a sigil over the back of their right hands, then lifted their palms an inch and a half into the air.

  It felt to Ana as though they were moving with their hands―and in some ways, they were. Their feet lifted up off the ground in time with their palm leaving the earth. Rafe took his hands from Ana's, and stepped back. They were both standing an inch and a half off the ground, clearing the top of the the mown grass with space to spare.

  “Okay, this you've got to explain. . .”

  “Do we really have time for this?” he said, leading the way across the lawn.

  “Nothing but time 'til we get up to that window.”

  “Playschool version: No two objects ever really touch, electrons in atoms repel each other, and so on. We just extended that field for the soles of our shoes from nanometres to an inch and a half. Does that make sense?”

  “Yeah,” Ana said, with a disappointed huff. “It's kinda like a magic show though. . . Better not to know how the tricks are done.”

  Rafe signalled to stop when they got two thirds of the way across the grass. The orange light from the house was on their skin, he was certain that if they moved any closer, they would almost definitely be seen by those inside.

  “We're not close enough!” Ana whispered.

  Rafe gestured for her to copy a sigil as he cast. She watched as his fingers seemed to mime grabbing hold of his eyes and pulling them from the sockets. Once again, the gestures kind-of made sense to her, as if they were literally narrowing their field of vision, zooming in. As she copied him, it was as if she had just held up a pair of binoculars to her eyes. It was disorienting at first, seeing ten times closer to the house than her normal vision would have allowed. When she finally found the window in question, she heard Rafe gasp. There was a thin, old man talking to a shorter, larger man with his back to them.

  “It can't be. . .” Rafe said, under his breath.

  “What? Who is it? Is that the guy? Do you know him?”

  “That's Beryn Comstock.”

  “Who?”

  “He's a big deal.”

  “What, is he like the minister of magick or something?”

  “Pretty much. He used to be my boss―he's also the man who put me on this damn case to track the box down. . . What the hell is he doing involved in this?”

  “You got some spell or something to eavesdrop?”

  “Casting, they're not spells.”

  “Pedantry is a very unattractive quality.”

  “Most of my qualities are unattractive. . .” he muttered as he cast.

  A bright white light burst to life around them, floodlighting them from above, the grass under their feet screaming an unholy wail to alert all around that the Raven's Lodge had been infiltrated.

  “Dammit!” Rafe said, trying to pull his feet from where they were hovering―they were stuck fast.

  Ana looked around, giant grey faces bearing down on her. She freaked out, waving her hands around, trying to bat them away.

  “Zoom out!” Rafe grunted, tugging on his legs, trying to free himself from the hold cast on them.

  Ana put her vision back to its original focal length, and looked around. There were still many giant grey faces of homunculi bearing down on them, but they were slow and lumbering, all barely coming out from the house.

  “What do we do? Why can't we move?”

  “They've bound us in place. . . but it's weak, only sticking our feet down.”

  “So? Break us free!”

  “It's not that simple.”

  “Here!” she said, throwing her hands to him, holding them limply in the air for him to trace out whatever he needed to. “Use me.”

  He stared at her hands, taking them in his own. “You're really not going to like what I have in mind. . .”

  “I haven't liked a single bloody thing that's happened since I met you!”

  He held her hands tightly as he began to cast, all too aware that the massive, angry homunculi were almost upon them, combining his frail magick with all the power she had flowing though her veins.

  “Breathe out.” he ordered.

  She did as instructed, unsure what was about to happen. Rafe could tell how unsure she was―he was equally unsure that what he was about to try would work. But they had no other option.

  As giant monochrome hands grabbed for them, he sealed the sigil, and in an instant, Ana Brooks and Rafe Clarke exploded right into the gargantuan homunculi's faces.

  Chapter 39

  Interspersed

  Ana had never felt anything like it in her life. Her body felt so light―literally weightless―and yet she also felt impossibly wide, as if she were a blue whale. She no longer had limbs, extremities, no longer had a breath in her chest―she didn't have a chest.

  It was as if the oxygen her “body” required was instantly being absorbed into the mass of molecules that made up her being. Her sight was also different. It wasn't “sight” as such, expanded beyond what the word meant to her. She didn't have the singular vision and focus that two eyes gave, she could see everything all around her, all at once in every direction, and could feel every molecule in the air as they passed through their combined dispersed forms.

  They were no longer in the grounds of the Raven's Lodge. Rafe and whisked them through the air, just as the homunculi were upon them. Together, they flew at great speeds through the night, just as the shadowy cloud man had done to leave her mother's house and travel to the Lodge.

  She hated to admit it, but there was something rocketing through her system, a level of connection with another human being that she had never experienced before. She knew it must have been her imagination, probably due to being pulled apart at the molecular level and travelling at speeds with her atoms interspersed with his. But it was undeniable, as if they were the same being.

  She could feel his attraction for her, the attraction that he was trying to suppress, masking it with bickering and wry retorts. She could feel the part of him that felt certain that any connection he had with a woman would end in disaster for them both.

  “What the hell was Comstock doing there. . .” The words weren't spoken out loud. She could hear Rafe's thoughts as if they were her own “What the hell was he doing with the damn man who had the box. . . none of this makes any sense!”

  She could see images in her mind's eye, memories that Rafe was conjuring forth. His meeting with Comstock in a small bar, as the old man, with his sharp features and shock of white hair, laid out the job for him.

  “This will all be rather straightforward, I'm hoping,” the old man said, his tone gravelly and sharp.

  “Glad to hear it. Hate the messy gigs.”

  “I didn't say it wasn't going to be messy. . . The box has already claimed a life.”

  “Thought this thing was under lock and key?”

  “As did I. But, as you know, we've had an issue with artefacts being. . . repatriated in the past.”

  “Yeah. You think this is him?”

  “Perhaps, but it seems unlikely. Whoever has the box is likely using it for some selfish endeavour.”

  “Any leads to go on, other than the obvious corpse.”

  “None at all, I'm afraid.”

  “No worries, I'll make it work. Do I have the greenlight to destroy the thing if I have to?”

  “I'd rather you wouldn't, as much as it contains a violent, sexually depraved creature, it is still a mystical artefact that might be of. . . some use, along the line.”

  “Really don't see how that's likely.”

  “Yes, well, it's not your place to see anything. Take the job, find the box, and take your pay like a good near-mundy.”

  “You're very rude. Ruder than when I actually worked for you.”

  “Yes, well I am rather pressed for time, and you are asking rather inane questions.”

  “One man's inane question is another man's. . . ane question.”

  “Tali! Door!” Comstock grunted, standing to his feet an
d walking to the door his employee had sent for him.

  “Very, very rude. . .”

  The memory came to a close. Ana realised that she wasn't sure if it was something he had intentionally shared with her, or if it were something that was on the surface of his mind that just happened to slide over into hers.

  If it were the latter, if it were intruding on his thoughts―just as picking up that he was attracted to her―then she should have probably felt bad about it. Ana put a stop to that line of thought, to any line of thought, realising that as much as his mind was bleeding into hers, whatever she was thinking might well be transferred back through to him.

  They glided through the air, descending down the streets. There was a familiar house in sight at the far end of the block. Not familiar to her, even though at the moment it was presently familiar to her. The house was familiar to him, and as they swum through the atoms of the front door, she found herself squashed and squeezed, pulled back together on the other side. Their individual molecules were wrenched apart from the cloud of them both, bodies stitching themselves back together. His fingers tight around hers, holding her, just as he had been when they were standing above the lawn of the Raven's Lodge.

  Their eyes met.

  In that moment, she knew he had felt her attraction to him too. The fingers he had clasped around her hands burst open, letting go of her instantly, and he moved as far across the room as possible. She tried not to take it personally, recalling the fear that he harboured, that any woman he dared get close to would suffer some awful fate.

  “What now?”

  “We regroup. . .” he said, still refusing to meet her eyeline. “Got to think this through. . .”

  “You mean work out what this Comstock guy is doing with the guy he sent you to track down?”

  Rafe glanced over to her, saying nothing.

  “I. . . remember your memory. . .”

  “Right. Of course,” Rafe said, throwing his fingers through the air to dial Comstock. He didn't get a response, and dialled again. Still no reply.

  He dialled again, this time thinking of Tali as he did so. “Tali, put me through to Comstock.”