by Kit Hallows
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t lie to me. Not when I just saved your sorry ass. You know exactly where you got this shit from, Miles, so just tell me.”
He shrugged. “Here or there. Who the fuck are you anyway?” He nodded to Dauple. “And who the fuck is he?”
“We’re your new best friends but we can turn into enemies real fast,” I said.
“Yes, yes!” Dauple agreed. “We can do horrible things, believe me.” He snarled, bearing his mess of brittle teeth.
The defiance in Miles’s face faded. He blinked rapidly as he stared at Dauple, perhaps hoping he was nothing more than a nightmarish hallucination. And then he sighed, “I got the spice from a friend. She deals from time to time. Nothing major, we usually just trade. I did a custom piece for her, a portrait of her daughter. We help each other out when we can. It's not her fault, she’s not a bad person, she’s-”
“I’m sure she isn’t,” I said. “But either way I need to know where to find her.”
Miles folded his arms. “Listen, I don’t know who the-”
I pulled him to his feet and glared into his eyes. “No, you listen jackass. I just had the misfortune of venturing into your warped mind in a not so altruistic attempt to free you from all kinds of horrible shit. Most of which was of your own making. Fear, doubt, self-pity, all the usual self-indulgent navel-gazing crap. But I’m trying to give you the benefit of the doubt because I know it isn’t entirely your fault; someone rigged your consciousness. Do you remember the woman who told you to paint the black door?”
“I thought she was-”
“She wasn’t a dream. She was real. And so was the door she made you paint.”
“But why? I don’t understand. Where did it go to?” He shivered.
“That’s what I’m trying to find out.” It was clear he didn’t know anything else, that he was just a pawn. His imagination was powerful for a blinkered, no doubt it was what had attracted the witches in the first place. To what end, that remained to be seen, but it wasn’t anything good.
“Will… will she come back?” Miles asked. “The woman who messed with my mind?”
“Not if I find her first. But right now the only lead I have is the spice.”
Miles’s eyes grew wild as they skittered back to Dauple. “I don’t want this. I don’t want to know about any of-”
“Your dealer, Miles. Give me her name or I’ll jump back into your head and take it from you.”
“Charlotte. Her name’s…Charlotte. She lives on the east side. Two seven eight Lake View.”
“You made a wise decision, friend,” Dauple chipped in. “Mr. Rook can be a hellbastard when he chooses.”
I pulled a pouch of Mesmersand from my bag, a simple powder that tampered with blinkered short term memory. I blew it into Miles eyes. He blinked rapidly and slowly, his brow furrowed. “What…”
“Scrap this painting,” I said as I picked it up and broke it over my knee. “Paint something else.”
“Like a greasy meat and jelly sandwich,” Dauple said, “Or a toad called Roger Licklespit. Or a bunion on the side of a lonely star…”
“Don’t paint any more black doors,” I added, as I steered Dauple from the studio. “And sort your life out.”
It was dark outside, and it was getting late. I was exhausted and still felt a bit unhinged. Like my astral self might float out of me at any moment and be snatched by the slightest breeze. I needed sleep.
“Can I give you a ride somewhere?” Dauple asked, as we stepped out onto the street near his battered old hearse.
“Please.” I asked him to take me to Acacia Avenue, which was a couple of blocks away from where I lived. We drove in relative silence then his tape deck kicked in, blasting us with some kind of metal power ballad that sounded like it was being sung by a furious giant. Finally he pulled over, and I climbed out. I saw him glancing around, noting the landmarks. “This isn’t where I live, Dauple.”
“Then why'd you want to get out here?”
“Because I’ve still got a few things I need to keep to myself,” I said. He looked hurt, but I ignored it. He’d been a great ally these last few weeks, but that didn’t exactly make up for his past as a nut-job stalker. “Thanks, Dauple. Have a good night, and get some rest.” I patted the roof of his car and strode away, glancing into the reflections of shop windows to make sure he wasn’t watching me.
His hearse sputtered to life and the power steering squealed as he pulled away. I waited until the red taillights shrank into the gloom before making my way down a labyrinth of alleyways that eventually emerged onto my street.
My apartment was cold and quiet. There was no sign of Astrid or Samuel beyond the fresh pile of crumpled beers cans and two empty bags of chocolates. It seemed like someone, and my guess was Samuel, had eaten a tin of tuna. Beside it was a little tower of replacements, which might have been paid for but were just as likely pilfered. They had that air of stolen things about them.
I staggered off and fell into bed. Then something jogged my memory and I dragged myself out again, stumbled to the closet, pulled out a bed sheet and draped it over the mirror. It didn’t take long to fall asleep and for a while it was deep and dreamless.
But then a dark vision invaded my peace. A dream of the witch that had fled from that dilapidated house and vanished into a cloud of smoke. Of how she’d crept past me rather than slipping a knife in my…
I jerked awake as a sharp pain ripped through my side. Bolt upright, I glanced around in the gloom, certain I could hear a hushed peal of thin, mocking laughter.
But there was no one there.
27
I woke to the sound of rain and watched bleary eyed as it streamed down my window. It took a while for me to force myself out of bed. I stumbled past the shrouded mirror and ran the shower until all the bathroom mirrors were nice and thoroughly steamed over, and then I washed and dressed.
Once I’d choked down a slice of charred toast, fed the cats and gulped down a much needed cup of black coffee, it was time to head out and find Miles’s dealer. I grabbed my gun and sword stashing them under my coat, and made my way down the stairs. Mercifully my journey out of the building was free of awkward social complications and it didn’t take long to flag down a cab.
I sat back and watched as heavy fat drops of rain obscured the city beyond the window. The driver wasn’t a morning person either so there wasn’t much conversation going around.
Lake View was pretty much just as I’d imagined it would be; a semi-circle of lofty white townhouses that surrounded a small, placid lake. Clearly, Charlotte the dealer had money and lots of it, which was at odds with Miles’s claim that she only dealt now and then. I climbed out of the cab and paid the driver, transferring a minor spell via the twenty to give him a hazy memory of this particular fare and exactly who he had brought out this way.
“Perfect.” The street was still and quiet and as I hurried along the sidewalk, the rain turned to a fine mist and my hair and coat were soon soaked through.
I stopped outside number two seven eight. A dented, filthy car was parked in the short driveway and the plants in the pots beside it were weedy and overgrown. Lights were on in a downstairs window. I grabbed a crystal and made myself invisible before making my way toward the back.
A tall iron gate cut off the path that ran along the side of the house. I scaled it, landed in the stony yard beyond and stepped slowly, doing my best to ignore the yapping dog behind the battered wooden fence a few feet away. A narrow garden stretched out from the back of the house and the long leaning grass swayed amid shrubs and hedges that were wild and unkept.
The patio door that led to the kitchen was unlocked. I slid it open and stepped inside. The place was a mess, marble countertops riddled with empty shopping bags, cartons, bottles and a small army of dirty wine glasses stained with red and amber sediment. The room beyond was like a dusty museum filled with faded luxury and riches gone to seed.
I made my way along
the cluttered hallway. Light was coming from an art déco lamp situated in the corner of a large living room with antique walnut furniture and bookshelves that mostly seemed to be there to prop up used glasses and empty booze bottles.
A coffee table rested in the middle of the room, piled up with dogeared magazines and takeout boxes, and sitting near it was a woman. She was blonde and grey, somewhere in her early forties perhaps. The previous day’s mascara framed her large, red-rimmed eyes as she stared through the window past the rain and the grey lake, to somewhere else entirely. She took a sip from her glass. Gin by the smell of it.
This wasn’t what I’d been expecting. I was about to return to the hall and reverse the invisibility spell when she leaned forward in her chair and cocked her head my way. As if she was looking right at me. “Rosie?” she asked.
She might have been blinkered but, despite years of heavy intoxication, she had a gift for perception and sight.
I glanced to the row of photos and portraits on the mantelpiece behind her. Every single one was of a girl, aged ten or so. She had the same wiry blonde hair as Charlotte and there were several pieces I recognized as Miles’s work. One of his paintings depicted the girl a bit older, standing with Charlotte in what could only have been a well-tended version of the yard out back. These were might have been events, I could see that. The photographs were the truth but the paintings were a lie, a fantastical rendering of a life that never was. Her child had died young.
“Is that you, Rosie?” Charlotte asked again. She set her glass on the armrest of her chair and picked up a small, clean blade from the table. “Show yourself, darling. I’ve been waiting for a sign. I’ll come with you my love. Please.” She raised the blade to her wrist.
“Shit.” The word escaped my lips before I could stop it. I uncloaked and threw out a placating hand as Charlotte screamed. I used her moment of bewilderment to cross the room and gently prize the razor from her fingers.
“Who the fuck are you?” Charlotte’s bleary eyes cleared some as she shrank away from me.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” I said. “I promise.”
Charlotte grabbed the bottle of gin from beside her chair and filled her glass with a shaking hand. Her face was ashen but two angry red blotches bloomed upon her cheeks. “I don’t care what you do,” she said.
I cleared a space on the coffee table and sat down. “My name’s Morgan Rook. I helped a friend of yours recently. Miles.”
“Helped him?”
“He’d taken some of the spice you gave him. Soon after that someone messed with his mind. Big time. I had to talk him down. He’s okay now.”
Charlotte grabbed a semi-clean glass from the mantelpiece, filled it to the brim with gin and held it out to me. I took it, but only so I could brush her hand. The brief contact was enough to get a reading of her.
She’d been successful once. Very successful. A high-powered attorney in a prestigious law firm, a husband and a daughter, Rosie. She’d had it all, until the accident when a drunk driver had run Rosie down two days before her eleventh birthday. What followed was a steady descent into heavy drinking, soft drugs, harder drugs, despair, divorce until finally she’d lost her job. She’d turned to dealing to scrape some money together, all the while trying to summon the resolve to end her fractured life.
“I’m sorry,” I said, and feigned a sip of gin.
“What do you want?”
“I need to know where you got the spice.”
“You a cop?”
“Kind of. But I won’t cause you problems. You have my word.”
Charlotte sighed. “You don’t want to know about the man I got the spice from. He’s a fucking psycho. If I tell you-”
“He won’t find out. You'll be safe, I promise.” I met her gaze and held it until she nodded. Maybe she believed me, or maybe she no longer cared.
“I got the spice from a goon who works for Raphael Nagle. But they’re not selling it now, more’s the pity. People are really into that shit, you know? Hell, I was.”
“How much were you shifting?” Charlotte was right at the bottom of the pyramid and I needed to get to the top.
“They sold me a couple of kilos, gave me a very good price. It went like hot cakes. I made really good money off it.” Her smile faded as she met my gaze. “I don’t enjoy what I do, Mr. Rook.”
I could see that. It was written all over her face. “I know.”
“I hate it. Hate what I’ve been reduced to. But I don’t know what else I can do?”
I could think of plenty of things, if she just got her act together, but I didn’t have time to get wrapped up in it. “Tell me more about Nagle.”
“You need me to tell you about Nagle? What kind of cop are you?”
“I’m from out of town.”
“Right. Well, he controls most the trade on the east side. Coke, heroin, protection, hookers, the usual. He rode in on the coattails of his daddy, who’s currently serving life. Got to hand it to him though, he's made a real name for himself. Neither one of them are the kind of guys you want to mess with, cop or not.”
“You ever met him?”
“No, I get my stuff from one of his thugs, Jon Small, a pompous little prick.”
“I need to see Nagle. Do you know where I can find him?”
“I heard he’s got a big place north of here, just outside the city.”
Haskins would have the address and maybe extra info I could use. I set the gin down carefully. “Thanks for your time, Charlotte.” I gazed out the window. The rain was still streaming down the glass, but I’d be more than happy to be back out in it if it meant getting away from this haunted, melancholy place.
“Wait!” She stood, gazing at me like she was trying to see through to my soul. “I saw you appear from thin air. That happened, didn’t it?”
There was a glimmer of doubt and desperation in her eyes and I knew exactly where this was going. “Yes, from your perspective it did.”
“So…”
“There’s more to this universe than you and I could ever fathom.”
“Do you think I’ll ever be with my Rosie again?” Her tone was so earnest it was heartbreaking.
“Anything’s possible, believe me. But you need to live for today, not for the past. It’s been and gone.” I nodded to the pictures Miles had drawn of Rosie. “Change all this. Do her proud, Charlotte.”
Her eyes misted over. “I will.” She set her drink down. “I swear it.”
I believed she wanted to, and that she could, but it was going to be a long hard climb. “Take care,” I said. I walked back through the cluttered hall, grabbed a crystal and placed a low level enchantment over the kitchen door.
The next time she passed through it she’d forget me, but not the meaning in our exchange. That, she would take to her heart and I hoped it would give her light and resolve in the hard times ahead.
28
I dialed on my phone as I stood by the lake, watching the rain dapple the placid surface. Haskins took way longer than usual to pick up.
“What do you want, Rook?”
“And a very good morning to you too, Detective Haskins. How the devil are you?”
“Busy.”
“We need to talk,” I said, as I watched a particularly ugly duckling waddle past me and chase after a duck that clearly wanted nothing to do with it. The duckling wasn’t a million miles from Haskins with its bright beady eyes and that crown of disheveled, spiky down, as well as its aura of general slovenliness.
“It’s my day off,” Haskins said. “And like I said, I’m busy.”
“I just took that drug-addled painter off your hands, Haskins, and I’ve given you far more than you deserve. Now I need your help. It won’t take long. Where are you?”
Haskins sighed. “The zoo.”
“You serious?”
“Dead serious.”
“I can be there in half an hour.”
“Right. I guess I’ll meet you in the food court then.” H
askins muttered something and hung up.
It wasn’t quite noon but the zoo was already packed. Big yellow buses filled with middle school kids pulled up next to vans crammed with elderly people from nursing homes, and spotless coaches made wide arcing turns as they pulled up near the entrance and unloaded wide-eyed tourists from better, far off places.
I cast a quick spell over myself so if any overly observant blinkered glanced my way they’d immediately turn away to find something else nearby that was far more interesting. My gun and sword were well concealed and shouldn't have caught any attention, but still, I didn’t want to take any chances.
Next, I glanced at the illustrated map on a large green kiosk and scoured it for the ‘You are here’ arrow, so I could orient myself. The food court was opposite the arcade and just beyond the cluster of shops the visitors had to pass through in order to see the animals. Typical blinkered motivations.
The food court was swarming with kids, stressed looking adults, and toddlers that wobbled around spilling condiments over themselves and the floor. I stood at the window and scanned for Haskins. He was sitting as far from the crowd as possible, drinking coffee as he gazed out toward the flashing marquee over the arcade. He almost looked like a civilized human being rather than the dour-minded parasite he was.
I navigated through the hubbub, dodging tray-wielding parents and trails of screeching, squealing progeny. An elderly lady stepped out in front me, blocking my path before I could reach Haskins’s table. “Have you seen my son?” she asked. She was well dressed, possibly in her late seventies, and even though her eyes were clouded and confused, I could see a worn beauty and lively spark in their reflection.
“Mother,” Haskins called. “Come sit down. I got you a nice hot cup of tea.” He pointed to the cup and saucer resting on the table. His usual gruffness was gone, his voice soft, patient even. It was uncanny. Like a body snatcher had stolen the real Haskins and replaced him with a civil fake.
