by Anela Deen
When she finished, I drove the rest of the way home in stunned silence. She didn’t speak again until we’d entered my apartment.
“You think I deserve the fires now, don’t you?”
The defeat in her voice reached through the daze I’d fallen into. I set the bag on the counter and went to my couch, sinking slowly into it like my bones were a thousand years old. Honestly, the world was a safer place without her in it. As for fires, well, I was no divine judge. I hated what she’d done, that cruelty had made a stone of her heart, and she’d spent her short time on earth laying waste to the lives of others. Was it evil or just self-destruction?
“I shouldn’t have told you,” she said, still by the entryway. “There’s nothing in this for you but hassle. Dead people don’t have much to barter with. I get it.”
“Please, stop talking.” It was hard to think straight at this level of fatigue with her bleak view of humanity fogging the air.
I rubbed the heels of my hands into my eyes. I still wanted to help her, undeserved or not. She was a lost soul, but how could I get her to trust me if she didn’t believe kindness existed without self-interest? How to explain the concept of empathy, that sharing in the misery of another person was virtue, that shouldering their pain ennobled the soul even when it made you feel rotten? How could I get her to see that it was this lack which brought her to this point?
I shifted to lay back on the couch, realizing I hadn’t taken off my muddy shoes. I was too tired to care.
“I’m going to sleep for a while,” I announced, my eyes shutting almost before I spoke. “When I wake up, I’ll have an idea.”
That seemed optimistic. Hopefully, my subconscious was listening.
“Sam,” she said, a hint of desperation in her voice. “Please tell me why you’re doing this?”
“Because,” I slurred, sleep pulling me down hard as I struggled to give her something she’d believe. “Because this is as much a test for me as it is for you.”
Chapter 29
I awoke to a throbbing headache, the smell of soup, and an idea. I sat up, rubbing the back of my aching skull. At some point I’d learn not to fall asleep on this spine torqueing sofa. I squinted at the clock on my phone. Two in the afternoon. No wonder I felt like a train hit me.
The quiet clatter of someone moving about my kitchen drifted over to me.
“Maggie?” I sat up. “Is that you?”
“Yeah. I got bored so I’m making stew.”
“You’re cooking?” Surely, I’d heard that wrong. I stood slowly, my thoughts sticky with the dregs of sleep.
Maggie stirred a simmering pot on my stovetop, salt shaker in one hand. “Might as well. You bought all this stuff at the market and vegetable stew is something I know how to make.”
A ghost was making stew in my kitchen. My life had reached a new level of weird.
“It smells great.”
I’d been dreaming one of those strange, vivid dreams born from sleeping at odd hours, the kind that evaporate upon waking. A heavy feeling of dread remained. Just leftover fatigue, I told myself, and headed into the bathroom in search of an aspirin.
“Where’d you learn to cook?” I asked. After a cursory glance at my bedraggled reflection, I popped open the mirror to rummage through the medicine cabinet behind it. An expired bottle offered up its last two tablets. I held them in my hand, debating.
Eh, I’d chance it.
“There was an older girl at one of the group homes,” Maggie answered from the other room as I palmed water from the bathroom sink to swallow down the pills. “She used to teach the rest of us how to make a few things.”
“That was good of her.”
“Not really. She always stole our stuff and took most of whatever she cooked.” There was a shrug in her voice rather than anger. Nothing personal to her mind, it seemed. Dog eat dog, after all.
“Well, it was good of you to make it for me.” I went into the kitchen.
“You looked like crap earlier. I figure my chances of escaping the eternal fires are better if you’re fed.”
Empathy. We’d have to work on the empathy column. That was the answer to everything here and pretty much the entire foundation of the idea I’d awoken to.
“About that,” I said. “I think I know what we need to do.”
Wary hope brightened her face. “Really?”
“We’re going to show them—er, the powers-that-be—that you are capable of helping others when there’s nothing in it for you.”
She frowned. “We are?”
“Yes. A friend of mine is in trouble.” Briefly, I explained the situation with Nick, the artifact, and Foster’s threats. “The way I see it, I could use another pair of eyes on this, someone no one else can see—no pun intended.”
Only a guess, but the timing of everything seemed too coincidental to be an accident: Two days to extricate Nick from danger. Two days to redeem Maggie. An almost cosmic aligning there, as if they were meant to solve each other.
Her brow furrowed. “How does helping your friend help me?”
I took a deep breath. This would take some convincing. “It doesn’t. That’s the point, Maggie. It’s choosing to help someone else with the little time you have. Just because.”
“Why should I?”
“Because I’m asking you to. Because it’s the right thing to do.”
“That’s it? You sound like a forty-year-old school counselor.”
I was going to need more aspirin.
“This isn’t about risk and gain. Your whole life, that’s how you did things. Where did it get you? Take a chance on another way. Choose the different path. How will we make the argument that you deserve a second chance if you change nothing?”
She pursed her lips, brows drawn down in concentration. “So, I do this unselfish thing and in exchange they’ll spare me? It’ll be enough?”
I had to be honest. “It might be. It might not. This is not a carrot and stick situation.”
She remained silent at that, stirring the simmering pot of stew. The fear in her eyes pulled at me. I didn’t want her to be afraid but maybe that would help. Fear as a motivator never worked long-term, but it might nudge her in this unfamiliar direction. I had no idea how to do this otherwise. I’d pondered taking her by Father Chuck’s church. The House of God, right? Without a repentant heart, though, it was just a building. Just walls and a roof. Anyway, there were plenty of unapologetic sinners that attended mass every week.
All that aside, the House of God couldn’t explain the way it felt to come to another’s aid when they needed it, to know that your being there made the difference between sorrow and relief. What Maggie needed was a scenario that gave her the chance to choose good. I could only aim her toward that path. The rest would be up to her.
“What if it doesn’t work?” she said finally. “I only have these two days. What if you’re wrong?”
“Then I’ll speak up for you,” I told her firmly. “Over and over until they listen. But Maggie, the outcome of this depends a lot on how you go into it. Think of what you’re doing more as a chance to change than a way to get out of trouble.”
After another moment, she nodded. “I’ll give a try, I guess. What choice do I have, right?”
Not exactly overwhelming enthusiasm. I couldn’t blame her there. This required a lot of trust on her part for someone she met yesterday and with everything hanging in the balance. The dread from my forgotten dreams tugged at my skin like the hint of an encroaching undertow. Yesterday, the weekend agenda had been totally clear. Now, I had to save a lost soul from damnation, puzzle out a mysterious and possibly dangerous ancient artifact, and rescue my friend and his family, not to mention myself, from a bunch of murderous contractors.
Piece of cake.
Chapter 30
“Sam, did you swallow a tape worm or something? How can you still be hungry after three bowls of stew?” Maggie glanced first at the sign for Tommy’s Malt Shoppe, then at me like she thought I
was an insane person.
“First of all, your stew was amazing. Second, we’re not here for the ice-cream.”
Though with the closed sign on the door, we might not be here for anything at all. The blinds on the windows were drawn, the door locked. My ingenious plan didn’t consider the possibility that Moreau wouldn’t be around. Where else could I find him than through his little dummy corporation? I doubted he had an online profile touting multiple convenient locations.
“Guess no one’s here,” Maggie said. “What do we do now?”
I considered. The print out Foster had given me on the box crinkled in my jacket pocket. I refused to accept we’d hit a dead-end right at the beginning.
“Why don’t we go in and see if he’s just…doing paperwork or something?”
“You have a key?”
“Sort of,” I said, placing my hand on the doorknob. With a whispered request, the lock slid back, and I pushed the door open.
The first time I’d been here the place had looked exactly like what one would expect from a malt shoppe. Booths, old time music playing, posters and friendly art on the walls. It had even smelled like ice-cream. It was only after Alice had muttered a few words that the façade had shifted to reveal the shelves lined with sealed clay jars, alligator heads, and other inventory I made sure not to inspect too closely.
I fully expected to walk into that malt shoppe illusion despite the closed sign on the door. It seemed a logical precaution. We didn’t have much crime but every town had a crop of idiots who might decide they wanted an ice-cream treat whether the place was open or not.
It came as a shock when I stepped right into the witchdoctor’s stall. I halted abruptly. Dark paneled walls surrounded beneath dim overhead lights, and the heavy scent of moss, wet earth, incense.
“Handy trick with the door,” Maggie said, slipping in behind me before it swung shut. “I didn’t know saints had superpow—woah.” She blinked at the décor. “What kind of ice-cream place is this?”
Movement by the long, scarred wooden counter to my left caught my attention before I could answer. Then the air locked up in my chest. An enormous albino python with a head the size of a Doberman descended in a languid slide and pooled on the floor. Its black eyes regarded me from atop coils as wide as my thigh. I knew as much about pythons as any other Midwesterner—pretty much nothing—but it watched me with unnerving intelligence. Was this the witchdoctor’s version of a guard dog?
“I’m here to see Moreau,” I told it. “Is he…around?”
It hissed, a long, grainy sound like sand pouring into a glass jar.
I held up my hands. “I know the shop is closed, but I really need to talk to him.”
It stared in reply.
“If he’s not here, is there some other way I can find him?”
Another hiss.
“It’s important.” I’d been reduced to conversing with a snake. Yup, this week was going super well.
“That thing is awesome,” Maggie said beside me in marveling tones. “Look at those shiny scales. It’s so pretty.”
“Uh-huh, beautifully constricting.”
She shot me a mocking glance. “You’re not afraid of it, are you? People have them as pets, you know.”
“Sure, it’s a real lap animal. Stay here, okay? I’m going to have a look in back.” Moreau had to have some way of calling him when he wasn’t here.
I took one step toward the table. The python struck. One second it lay in its glob of coils, the next it streaked at me like a cracked whip, fangs-first, mouth impossibly wide. I leapt back with a squawk. It stopped inches shy of my leg and hissed some more. A warning, clear as crystal. No translation needed.
“Or maybe I’ll stay here by the door,” I breathed as the snake’s body oozed back into a rounded bunch.
Maggie doubled over laughing. “Wow, can you squeal! I haven’t made a sound like that since I was thirteen.”
I managed to glower at her while moving another step toward the door. Away from the python. “That was a startled shout, thank you, not a squeal.”
“You practically shattered the windows.”
“Is there a proper sound to make when a heap of snake is flying at you?”
Another voice answered. “Perhaps you should simply not annoy her.”
There, beside the counter I’d intended to snoop behind, stood Moreau. It came as a surprise to see him out of his blond-haired and blue-eyed avatar. Dressed in the maroon robes he’d worn when I’d first met him, he wore a strangely intense expression on his lined face, his dark eyes focused on Maggie.
“Bonjour, Sam,” he said without looking at me. “What trouble do you bring to my shop?”
“No trouble,” I assured him. “Sorry for pushing my way in like this, but it’s urgent.”
“Is this urgent matter related to the shadow following you?”
“Shadow?” I glanced between them. “You can see Maggie?”
“Naturally.”
Somehow, I wasn’t surprised. The girl in question had left my side to crouch next to the python. She cooed at it, running her fingers over its smooth scales. Its tongue flicked the air. It tipped its head beneath her hand like a cat stroked along its whiskers. No hissing. That was reserved for me, apparently.
“She’s not why I’m here,” I said, unsure of how to explain her presence, or if I even had to.
“I have not seen one who stands in-between for some time.” Moreau’s penetrating gaze turned to me. “Why are you linked to a dark spirit, Sam?”
Maggie scowled at that. “Who’s he calling a dark spirit?
“She’s someone I’m helping.”
“Are you indeed?” he said, looking faintly amused. “But one fact does not negate the other. I have some experience with dark spirits, as you might imagine. I presume you’re trying to save her from her gown of flames?”
The imagery on this guy. “It’s none of your business, Moreau.”
“Alice is aware of the foolishness you’ve undertaken?” When I didn’t answer he clucked his tongue reprovingly as if I had. “Surprising. Most mentors are not so indulgent of their charges.”
“How do you know she’s my mentor?”
“Precious little escapes my notice.” He gestured at Maggie. “Be cautious with this one, mon petit. It is noble what you attempt, though doubtful much will come of your effort.”
“Like Sam said, it’s none of your business, you old weirdo,” Maggie sniped. “He’s showing me how to be better. How to earn my second chance.”
“Oui, those are his intentions. What, I wonder, are yours?”
“Enough already.” I cut the air with my hand, wondering how I always wound up refereeing arguments in his shop. “I’m here because I need a—a favor.”
Moreau’s attention snapped to me. “A favor.” Mercurial interest filled his eyes. “What is the nature of it?”
“Information. I need to know more about this object.” I handed him the print out, summarizing briefly Nick’s explanation of its origins and the mystery behind it.
Moreau touched the image of the box almost fondly. “You surprise me. I thought this item lost to the ages, like so many things.”
“You know what it’s used for?”
“Certainly. I made it.”
“You made it?”
“It was commissioned. When I met the one your history remembers as Genghis Khan, he was just a Mongolian warrior with dreams of avenging his assassinated father. If I had known he would build the caliber of empire he did, I would have asked a higher payment for my services. Alas, for hindsight.”
“And the writing?” I tapped the scrawl of silver along the side on the photograph. “My friend told me the translation. Voice that cannot be unheard—”
“Speech that cannot go unheeded, yes, I was feeling rather melodramatic at the time,” Moreau said, giving a flourish with his long fingers. “The moment seemed to call for it.”
Save us from witchdoctors with creative flair. �
�What does this thing actually do?”
“The inscription means that the bearer of this box holds the power to sway the minds of men. Whatsoever is commanded and decreed by the one whom possesses it cannot be denied.”
“Are you telling me,” I pressed my palms to the back of my neck, lightheaded with the notion, “Are you telling me this is some kind of magical object that compels obedience?”
“That is what I told him.” Moreau held my gaze steadily while my mouth dropped open. Then he threw his head back and laughed. More of a cackle really, as rough as the scrape of gravel and very much directed at me. “Ah, cher enfant, the expression on your face. I’m afraid I could not resist.”
“That was a joke?”
“But of course.”
I exhaled noisily and spread my arms. “The favor is for information and I’m pressed for time, Moreau. Can you spare me the comedy routine?”
“Calme-toi,” he patted the air soothingly, half a smirk still on his face. “While it is true that I led Khan to believe the object held the ability to coerce others, it does not.”
“What does it do then? What’s in it?”
He handed the paper back to me. “It does nothing. It’s empty.”
I stared. “What do you mean, it’s empty? If it’s empty then why can’t anyone open it without that special stone?”
“I could hardly convince Khan that it is a powerful object if anyone could open it at whim. Within the words inscribed along the exterior I placed a locking incantation.” Moreau shook his head. “The young man born as Temujin had the innate traits that would make him a tremendous leader of people, but early traumas troubled his confidence. This removed it.”
“A placebo box?” I blurted. “Are you serious?”
“Do you think I would hand anyone that kind of power? Regardless, there exists in this world no power that can co-opt the free will of a soul. I needed the favor however so I, shall we say, embellished the truth.”
“You lied.”
“He requested that I remove his doubts.” He extended a hand toward the box as if this were evidence of his good faith.
