by John Levitt
Lou backed away and disappeared behind the couch again. I glanced over toward Victor, who was standing amidst a virtual pile of black formless bodies scattered on the floor around him. He moved toward me with a series of quick sliding steps, his feet barely clearing the floor. He jerked his head, motioning for me to get out of the way, which I was happy to do. Instead of waiting for the two figures in front of me to close, he bounded toward them, sword flashing, and down they went.
I’d seen him fight before and had compared him to a ninja, somewhat mockingly. It was hard to mock him now. Maybe like a movie ninja was the best I could come up with. Then it was over. It was something of an anticlimax—one moment we were fighting for our lives; the next we were standing alone in an empty room. Lou poked his head from behind the couch and tentatively sidled out. He sniffed at the dark bodies for a moment before losing interest.
“Great job there, Lou,” I said. “But try and join in a little earlier next time, okay?”
Victor was still standing with sword at the ready, not quite trusting that it was over. Finally he relaxed a bit, but kept the sword in his hand.
“Quite a mess,” he said.
“What do we do now? We can’t just leave it like this. When the people finally come back it’ll bring some ... unwanted attention, won’t it?” He gave me a flinty smile.
“Very astute. Any suggestions?”
“We could burn the house down,” I offered, not too helpfully. Victor’s smile vanished.
“It might just come to that. But I’m hoping it won’t be a problem.”
“Nobody will notice?”
“Not exactly. But these things don’t belong here, and they’re not flesh-and-blood creatures, like some of the things that have come through. Remember the Gaki?”
Oh yes. I remembered it well.
“So we wait? How long—”
I didn’t need to finish the sentence, because as I spoke I could see a change taking place to the figures lying on the floor. Already the bodies were losing integrity, looking more now like masses of black crepe paper than people. The black shapes grew softer, edges running like tar on a hot day. As the process accelerated they became pools of inky liquid barely holding together. Two of the bodies lying closest merged and became one, like two touching but separate drops of water when surface tension finally breaks down. Black oily steam began rising from the pools, and little bubbles formed on the surface like tea water starting to boil.
Before long the entire floor surface was covered with a bubbling, viscous sludge. Lou hopped up on the couch to avoid it, and Victor and I quickly did the same. I watched the progression with fascination until there was nothing left.
But not quite nothing. The sooty steam had blackened the walls and ceiling, and the floor was covered with an oily residue. Lou refused to step in it and I had to carry him outside.
“That couple’s going to have a hard time figuring out what happened in there,” I said as we climbed back into the van. “A broken window and a house full of black, greasy gunk?”
“It doesn’t matter. They may even decide it’s ectoplasm or some other ghostly residue. But nobody will care.”
“What about the rift? Since it’s still open we’re eventually going to have the same problem, and if that couple comes back, it’s going to be ugly.”
“That’s why I’m going to lay an aversion spell over the house.”
“That’s not going to stop them. Neighbors, sure. Jehovah’s Witnesses, maybe. But people don’t avoid their own homes. It’ll make them uncomfortable, but it won’t stop them from going in.” Victor shook his head in disagreement.
“Of course it will. They’re already spooked. They left because they thought their house was haunted, remember? They’ll be nervous as cats about coming back anyway, and when the aversion spell kicks in they’ll turn around and decide to give it a few more days. And if we don’t have this mess cleared up by then, this house will be the least of our problems.”
He was probably right, and anyway I didn’t have a better idea. I waited in the van while he set up the spell. I couldn’t really help; our methods of working with talent are very different, and if we tried to work together on the same spell, we’d get in each other’s way and the spell would end up weaker than if either of us did it alone.
“Let’s go,” he said when he was done.
I drove back to the mansion with mixed emotions. We’d succeeded, but it was a small victory in a minor skirmish. The important stuff was still ahead of us.
TWENTY-ONE
VICTOR’S WAS BEGINNING TO SEEM LIKE A CLUB-house, and we the Hardy Boys, solving crimes and making things right. Those Hardy Boys seemed to have better luck with it than we did, though.
“So we took care of the Shadow Men,” I said from a deep chair in his office. “Great. But if we can’t find out where Jackie’s going to try her final experiment, we’re still screwed.”
Eli had returned and sat staring off into space, head tilted back, eyes closed. He was obviously thinking hard. Or maybe he was daydreaming, since there wasn’t much to think about. It was a simple equation—we needed to find Jackie in order to stop her, but we couldn’t find her. If we couldn’t find her, we couldn’t stop her. A circular mental path.
Sherwood came in a few minutes later, shaking her head before Victor could even ask her a question.
“Nothing,” she said. “The woman who thought she knew where Jackie was didn’t even know who she was.”
Eli finally stirred himself, got up from his chair, and started pacing.
“We’ve been concentrating on finding Jackie,” he said. “That’s the most logical avenue, naturally. But we’ve run into a dead end, so we need to find a different approach.”
“Such as?” I asked.
“Yes, that’s the question I’ve been asking myself. We need to find a way to prevent her from succeeding, even if we can’t locate her.”
“I don’t see how,” I said. Sherwood made a hopeless gesture with her hand
“Well, I certainly don’t have the answer,” she said. Eli cleared his throat, tentatively.
“There is one person that might be able to help—if he’s willing.” Victor looked up suspiciously.
“Who? No, don’t tell me.”
“Yes, you know who I’m talking about. Now, I understand how you feel about Geoffrey, but he does know more about the magical world and how it operates than anyone else around.”
“For what that’s worth,” I said. I was with Victor on this one. “We’d never get a straight answer out of him, even if he wanted to help us.”
Geoffrey was a “transcendent,” a practitioner who had gone far enough down the path of knowledge and enlightenment that he’d abandoned all use of talent, much like those Indian holy men who reach satori, renounce their studies, and live the simple life of a man with a begging bowl. The difference was that I could never quite decide if Geoffrey was an enlightened being or a total loon. Maybe both.
Victor saw him as a fraud, Eli thought he was the genuine article, and I switched back and forth between the two. I have to admit he had been some help in the past, almost despite himself. He did possess knowledge, to be sure.
“Have you talked to him?” Sherwood asked.
“I called, but his phone is no longer in service.”
That could mean he’d done away with yet another modern distraction, or just as easily that he’d forgotten to pay his phone bill.
“Maybe we ought to pay him a visit in person,” Sherwood said. Victor uttered a sound of disgust.
“A complete waste of time.”
“As opposed to what?” Eli said. “Sitting here and wondering what to do? Maybe if the four of us show up together, that will impress him enough to loosen his tongue.”
“Or his screws,” Victor said.
“Hey, at least it’ll get us out of the house,” I said. “Half Moon Bay is nice this time of year.”
“Yes, it’s quite lovely there,” Victor sa
id, sarcastically. Then he surprised me. “But I suppose it couldn’t hurt.” Considering how he felt about Geoffrey, that showed he was as desperate as the rest of us.
Victor’s BMW is too small for four adults and a dog, even a small one, and my van was acting up, so we ended up taking both. Eli rode with Victor and Sherwood came with me and Lou. Sherwood rolled down her window so he could stick his head out from his vantage point on her lap.
We didn’t speak for a while; the day was gray and overcast, with occasional hints of rain on the horizon. It didn’t help either of our moods, which weren’t too cheery to begin with.
I hadn’t seen Geoffrey in quite some time, although I knew Eli kept in touch with him. Geoffrey runs a small café in Half Moon Bay, forty minutes south of the city, and I hadn’t been down there since the problems with Christoph a few years ago. On the way down Sherwood asked if I thought he really could be of help.
“I’m inclined to think he could,” I said. “The question is, will he?”
“Why wouldn’t he? Didn’t he use to be a practitioner?”
“It’s hard to explain,” I said. “First, you know he doesn’t do magic anymore—nothing that has anything to do with talent. He just won’t.”
“Won’t or can’t?”
“That’s an open question.”
“Have you asked him?”
“Several times, in several ways. But he thinks in such a convoluted way that he’s incapable of giving a straight answer. I don’t think it’s on purpose; I think he’s just incapable of grasping simple concepts such as cause and effect. Or maybe I’m too simple to understand what he means. Either way, it’s frustrating, especially when you need to know about something.
“Second, you have to remember that what’s important to us isn’t necessarily important to him. If we tell him the world is about to end, he may well shrug and say that all things end eventually and that time is an illusion anyway, so what’s the problem?
“On the other hand, he could well divulge a key piece of information that he doesn’t even realize is important, or maybe he would help because it’s time for him to practice his piano and you won’t leave until he does.”
“He plays piano?”
“Oh yes. Jazz, but not very well. Apparently he could be a master musician if he wanted to, but there’s no point in it.”
“Do you believe that?”
“Depends. What day is it today?”
When I pulled up in front of Lucinda’s, Geoffrey’s café, Victor’s car was already there. Victor and Eli weren’t, so I guessed they were inside the café. Lou jumped out, excited, as soon as we pulled up—Geoffrey was a favorite of his, almost too much so. He fawns over Geoffrey like the man was made of bacon. It’s one of the things that makes me think there might really be something to Geoffrey, but at the same time it made me jealous in a petty way.
I’d never been inside the café—the last time I’d been here we’d talked at a table outside. Knowing Geoffrey, I expected the inside to be spare and minimal, like a Zen retreat. But it was nice—down to earth and homey, with large wooden tables and heavy straight-backed chairs. A few customers, locals, were seated in the front. Geoffrey was standing in the far corner next to an old upright piano, talking with Victor and Eli. Mostly with Eli; Victor was standing a little off to one side with a sour look on his face, body language disapproving and stiff.
Lou rushed across the room and threw himself against Geoffrey’s body, bouncing off him like a toy windup dog.
“Lou!” Geoffrey cried. “What a treat.” He ruffled Lou’s ears, then glanced over and saw me. “And Mason, too. Well, this is just lovely.”
“Geoffrey.”
Before I could say another word, he grabbed me by the hand and pulled me over to the piano.
“You have got to hear this. My first jazz composition—not in your league, of course, but it’s my first real one, if you know what I mean.”
He sat down, took a deep breath, and started to play, a little syncopated riff with his right hand, then threw in some sparse Monk-like chords with the left. In half a minute he was merrily pounding away, and it wasn’t half-bad. Clearly he’d been working on his chops these last couple of years. When he finished, he looked up for approval, beaming with pride like a child whose first performance has gone well.
If I hadn’t been familiar with his quirkiness, it would have been bizarre. We’d come here for help, time was running out, the world we knew might be about to end—at least for practitioners—and here I was critiquing his musical efforts.
But I did understand him, at least a little bit. Trying to push him onto the important topic would be worse than useless, but a little musical talk might put him in the right frame of mind. If there was such a thing.
“Not bad,” I said. “Great feel, and some interesting voicings. One little thing—right before the bridge, where you play that flat-nine chord? Instead of that, how about . . .”
I launched into a quick lesson on tritone theory and how certain substitution chords can not only add color but how the extensions should function to connect with the melody. Geoffrey sat rapt, ginger hair wisping around his head and his little mustache twitching like a rabbit’s nose. I actually got interested, but the reason we were here was always on my mind. Geoffrey asked a number of questions, quite sensible ones.
Victor was understandably impatient, but Eli listened to us quietly with apparent great interest. When a momentary pause in our discussion occurred, he judged the right moment had arrived and slipped in smoothly.
“You know, Geoffrey, I’m sure you realize we didn’t come all the way down here just to visit, no matter how delightful your company.” Geoffrey’s face fell.
“Yes, of course. I’m aware of that.” He sighed. “But it’s rare that I can get Mason’s input on my music.” He turned to me. “I do value your opinion, you know.” I tag teamed and hit him from the other side.
“Well, I appreciate that. But you know we have other concerns, things that are really important that you could help us with.”
“All things are important. In their own way.”
I hoped Eli wouldn’t let himself be drawn into a philosophical argument, but I needn’t have worried. He just smiled.
“Yes, I know,” he said, and waited patiently.
Geoffrey got the message, but he wasn’t giving up so easily.
“Well, if it’s important enough to discuss, we need tea.” He clutched Eli’s arm and steered him toward a table by the window, the rest of us trailing behind, rather hopelessly. “Sit, sit,” he said. “I have some fresh Keemun, a new batch, and it’s just wonderful.”
He skipped off behind the front counter and busied himself, fussing with water and cups and strainers. The four of us sat there morosely, staring at one another. Victor broke the silence.
“You hear that?” he asked, holding up a hand.
“Hear what?” I said, playing the unwitting straight man.
“That faint ticking—the sound of the last moments that we have to actually do something slipping away while we wait for tea. You do realize Jackie’s most likely going to try executing the final spell today—she could be preparing it this very moment.”
Geoffrey finally returned to the table carrying a large tray with cups and saucers and spoons, and in the middle a beautiful teapot with a Chinese dragon on the side. He insisted on serving us all, deliberately and carefully. Then he flitted around the table, straightening napkins and spoons. I didn’t see how Victor was going to be able to drink the tea with his teeth clenched so tightly. Eli just sipped his tea and regarded Geoffrey with a genial air. Eventually Geoffrey gave up and sat down with a sigh.
“All right,” he said in defeat. “Tell me why you’re here.” Eli cleared his throat.
“Well, first of all, have you had any headaches lately? Dizziness, or even passing out?” Geoffrey seemed to be considering it carefully.
“No,” he said. “Have you?”
“We all have,�
�� Eli said. “Have you noticed anything unusual at all, though?”
“Ahh, I think I know what you mean. Yes, I felt something and wondered what it was. Is this why you’re here?”
Eli looked over at me. “Mason, why don’t you do the honors,” he said. “You’ve been closest to it.”
The last time I’d related a story to Geoffrey, he’d spent the entire time playing games with Lou, seemingly not listening at all. He had been, but it was disconcerting, and I expected more of the same this time.
But for once he paid close attention. Maybe I’d improved as a teller of tales, or maybe, for whatever reason, this particular subject interested him more. In any case, he listened and even interrupted a couple of times for clarification, just like any normal person would.
“Ah yes, Richter’s book. I spent a lot of time looking for it back when I was interested in such things. I think it’s a good thing I never found it. If I had, I might be a very different person today.”
This was a topic I knew Eli would have loved to pursue, but I recognized Geoffrey’s deflection strategy—to get us talking about other things instead of the subject at hand. Which was troubling in itself—he really is fundamentally kindhearted, and hates to disappoint people. Which probably meant that whatever he was going to tell us was going to be something we didn’t want to hear. Still, Eli forged onward.
“So you see our problem,” he said. “We can’t find this woman, so we can’t stop her from opening another rift—and the results of that will be catastrophic. At the very least, we may well all lose our powers.”
“Would that be such a bad thing?” Geoffrey said.
“Yes,” Victor and I said in unison, on exactly the same page for once.
“Practitioner society has been built up over the centuries,” Eli said. “If it’s destroyed, it diminishes the world. Remember, you wouldn’t be the person you are today if not for your talent and the society you grew up in.”
