Stained Glass: An Alexi Sokolsky Supernatural Thriller (Alexi Sokolsky: Hound of Eden Book 2)

by James Osiris Baldwin

  "There are better diners around here." McDonald’s didn't count as 'food' by any definition of the word. "Kapinsky's, on the corner of 8th and 53rd."

  "Sounds good." Her face suffused with color: cheeks flushing, eyes flashing before they hardened. "I'll be blunt, though. Are you for real? Like, are you any good at this?"

  I glanced up at her. "I used to be better."

  "Sounds like there's a story in that." She frowned slightly, and I realized I’d just undersold myself. Oh well.

  I heaved my bag up with a tired sigh I didn’t have to fake. "There is. A long, difficult tale of a man facing insurmountable odds against a faceless organization. Shall we go?" I was eager to get away, before the cops arrived. Manhattan was a pig-sty.

  The girl smiled again. If I’d been of a mind, I would have described her as ‘cute’. Not beautiful – she was cute in the short-limbed, fluffy way that long-haired kittens and small dogs were cute. "Okay. Lead the way."

  That was an unusual thing for a young lady to say to a bum, but perhaps I looked more noble than I really was. Some kind of Dickensian charisma? We headed off together, me with my bag over one shoulder, her with her enormous clutch bumping into everyone on her right hand side as she passed them.

  This girl could have been one of Nic’s spies. The accent in her Russian marked her as being from the far West of the country: Vladivostok, or maybe even the Aleutian Islands. She was at least part Indigenous and too old to be a student, though her bag was clearly full of books. The silver-wrought eagle feather badge and the silver pen with a piece of turquoise sticking out of her pocket were bohemian enough to help place her. The natural hair, flat Mary Janes, and brown suit look was common to only a few workplace cultures in this part of town. Businesswomen tended to wear darker colors, bigger shoulders, and higher heels. This girl expected to spend a lot of time on her feet. Her shoes were old, but not worn, the soles scuffed, corners rounded. She did stand a lot – indoors – and she smelled like paper and ink, which narrowed her places of work to libraries, archives, schools… that sort of thing.

  "So, what's your name?" She asked me when we were nearly at the deli.

  That was a good question. It still wasn't prudent to give my real name to anyone, especially mysterious Russian-speaking young women with enigmatic problems, so I decided to stick with the nickname I’d been using in the Bronx. "Rex."

  "Rex? That's not a Russian name."

  “I’m Ukrainian. And it’s a good name for a dog.” I looked aside at her, tiredly taking in details. "You work at a museum? A library or something?"

  "There's... how did you know that?" Her eyes widened. Whatever she was, she wasn't ever going to be winning at poker. If she was a honey pot sent by the Organizatsiya to find me, she was terrible… or especially good. It was sometimes hard to tell the worst from the best. The month before, a certain petite blond lawyer had successfully penetrated my cynicism, only to reveal herself as a serial-killing warlock on the hunt for a Gift Horse. MY Gift Horse.

  "A month ago, that wouldn't have been phrased as a question. Like I said, I am not as good as I was, but I still seem to possess some small gift."

  "I'll say." She made a face, popping her lips. "Well, I'm Talya. Talya Karzan. So, where do you think I work?"

  "I'd hesitate to say the Museum of the American Indian," I replied. "But I could be wrong."

  Judging by her expression, I was clearly correct. She giggled nervously. "Okay... You're really good. Oh my goodness, I'm all nervous now. How is it... well, I don't mean to be rude, but how come you're out here? You could be a detective or something, instead of…” she struggled briefly to find a polite way of saying it. “Without a home."

  Perish the thought. "I prefer to think of myself as 'between homes', rather than 'homeless'."

  "Are you a Veteran?"

  I shook my head. Though now that I thought about it, it would be a good cover story, if I had to make one up in the future. When we reached the door of Kapinsky's, I held it for her, and she smiled prettily as we went inside.

  Kapinsky's was an old Jewish corner deli, painfully reminiscent of Mariya’s tea shop in appearance, but far less friendly. There was still a certain comfort to be found in Kosher food. My mother's cooking was the only reliably good memory I had of her. The counter sheltered a cornucopia of preserved meats and fish. After weeks of skulking on the burnt out fringes of the Bronx, it smelled intense, a real savory salt burn that made my mouth water.

  "What do you want?" Talya looked at me enquiringly.

  'Everything in the case' was not an appropriate response. Neither was 'anything'. I thought, glancing over the menu in agitation. "Two toasted everything bagels with lox and cheese. Salad and coffee, black. As strong as they can make it."

  We took a table, and I set my deck of cards down by my hand while we waited. Conversation was too much to deal with after having been spat on, but Talya seemed comfortable with silence. I tried to be serene for her sake, but I wasn’t used to suppressing my rage this way. A guy had spat on me, and I hadn’t been able to stab him. In times past, I had an outlet for anger in the course of my job. Without the option to kill, rage boiled and curled, pushed against my mouth and hands, and when it found no exit, it simply roiled and grew deep within the pit of my belly. It bothered me. Maybe I’d go out and find Reptile Guy’s car and wait until he got in. I could pour gasoline in the cabin, set it alight. He wanted his God that bad… I’d send him off as a burnt offering.

  “Hey, Rex? Are you okay?”

  I broke out of the spiral of brooding to glance at her. Talya’s eyes were wide, her head cocked to one side.

  “Just tired,” I said. “The crazy guy took the wind out of my sails.”

  “He was a Voicer, I think. They hold their services in the Hammerstein Room. That guy was probably on his way to their big service.”

  “He was quoting a party line?” I frowned, disconcerted. “What is this, some kind of cult?”

  Talya smiled. “Do you consider Evangelical megachurches to be a cult?”

  “All religion is essentially legalized schizophrenia.”

  She laughed. “Then I guess, yeah. I know a bit about them… we had some members in my… my friends. The Voicers are pretty huge in Chicago and the Midwest now. You’ve never heard of it?”

  “No.”

  “The Pastor has a show on TV. You’ve never heard of Zachariah Goswin? ‘Father Zach’?”

  “That explains why I never heard of him” I said. “I never owned a TV.”

  “But you know Jimmy Swaggart?”

  “My friend liked to watch shows,” I replied, with a small pang. “When we lived on campus together. He used to do Swaggart impressions and pretend to hit people with his ‘magic coat’.”

  When the bagels came out, they were warm and crisp on the outside, buttery on the inside, and blessedly fresh. Talya watched on indulgently, a look I hadn't seen on a woman's face since leaving Mariya's home for boarding school.

  "You must have been starving." She spoke like the way you would to a hungry kitten crouched over a can of tuna.

  There was no way to respond with dignity, except to let it pass as one patronizing piece of bullshit in a sea of social errors. I wiped crumbs from my gloves, and cupped my hands around the coffee. Real china, the first I'd used since escaping the warehouse. "So. You want a reading. What’s the question?"

  "Okay. But before I tell you… I want you to do it cold," she said. "No hints."

  I looked up at her past the end of my cap. "You've done this before."

  She nodded. "Many times. But not this question."

  I gave the cup a habitual little twist, relishing the old ritual, then took the first sip. It was bittersweet, strong, a little frothy. Wistfully, I set it aside, took out the cards and mixed them. To my surprise, Talya glanced around the shop, and then quickly and discreetly drew a pentacle figure from breast to brow, brow to breast, then shoulder to shoulder, the way one might do a rosary.

  "Here
." I held the deck to her, face down. "Ask your question aloud as you shuffle."

  Talya licked her bottom lip, the pink tip of her tongue flicking out. She paused after taking the deck in hand, and when she spoke, it was in Russian. "Two of the four fires have been extinguished. Can we find those who were in their keeping?"

  The wording seemed unnecessarily arcane, and fluent as I was, I mulled over the question to try to find a better translation while she shuffled, intent on her hands.

  "I know it probably doesn't make much sense..."

  As she spoke, I held up a finger. Regardless of what I knew, the deck would respond with the correct answer. I might not be able to access my Neshamah, but she could talk to hers through the cards, and it was that which mattered. "Focus."

  Lips pressed together, she nodded. I silently drew the Kabbalic cross over my chest. From Mercy to Severity, the Kingdom to the Crown. The energy didn't build up the way it used to; there was no intoxicating rush, no flare of energy, but there was still something. My will, my discipline, my intuition. The outside reality of magic was real.

  Talya shivered and abruptly stopped shuffling. Without being asked, she cut the deck nearly three quarters towards the bottom, switched it over, and handed it back with squared shoulders. "Here."

  Unconventional questions called for unconventional spreads. There are a few tried and trues – the Celtic Cross spread being the most famous – but this was a ten-card question. I lay three cards out at the top, four below, and three to the side. The background of the question, the circumstances, and the result.

  The first three gave an unmistakable background. The King of Swords, the Tower, the Empress reversed. "This is about a large group of people. The King and Queen of that group are gone. A large, stoic, intelligent but possibly violent man, dark in coloring, and an emotional, motherly type of woman who may have been somewhat emotionally unstable. She was the dearer of the pair to you, personally. Are they… deceased?"

  Talya nodded, her lip in her teeth. The momentary confidence in her chin and shoulders disappeared as both slumped, folding in towards her chest. “I don’t know if ‘unstable’ really applies, but… yes.”

  "There is an ongoing crisis..." My eyes flicked from card to card. The King of Pentacles reversed was present in the line showing the circumstances, the only court card in the second row. "... caused by a tyrannical, narcissistic man. Dark-complexioned, rooted in materialism, corruption. He has the outward bearing of wisdom, but the inside is rotten. He’s trying to topple an established order of some kind. A man with a cause."

  "There's no more death, though?" She sounded hopeful, the kind of hope which stemmed more from need than rational estimation. “I don’t see Death there.”

  So she had some experience receiving readings, but not any actual study of the cards. I tapped my nail on The Tower, looming out of the center of the reading like a tombstone. "The Death card rarely indicates literal death. The Tower, on the other hand, often does. The Empress – the card of generation, life, motherhood – is reversed. In a question about mortality, that is not a good card to have."

  "Oh no." Her voice had dropped low and breathy.

  Unmoved, I looked down once more. To either side of the King of Pentacles, we had three difficult cards: The Six of Pentacles, The Sun reversed and The Moon. I looked to the result, and frowned slightly. The Lovers reversed, card of choices, and the Fool. In tarot, the minor arcana cards are mundane, the infantry, so to speak. They represent human actors and the actions they make. Major Arcana were the battlefield: immutable, often commanding the threads of fate from on high. There was a fork in the road at the end of this question.

  "This man, this adversary... he is subtle and clever. He is driven by longing for something he doesn’t really have." I tapped the cards. "The King of Pentacles likes certainty. He is fond of absolute control. They tend to be religious people, or embedded in some other ideology. As for what he wants… he wants power. Material power, specifically. The appearance of generosity."

  Talya chewed her lip, her body language beginning to express signs of real panic. “Okay. We… there were some children that went missing in this situation. Can you see what happened to them?”

  "The Sun reversed can mean a loss of innocence,” I replied. “The Moon represents things that are hidden, things that take place in the shadows. This is not a reading that presages a good outcome for children, especially with the dark mother card in the form of The Empress."

  "Does it say how it ends?" She was looking at the spread with sorrowful recognition.

  I let my eyes flick from point to point, finding patterns. Much divination relies on patterns. Time and circumstance is hardly unique, operating on archetypal cycles even as each moment rises fresh along the spiral of time.

  "There are two possible outcomes, depending on the choices of the people in question. They make the difficult decision to change their tactics, resist the deceptions and lures which their adversary is apt to employ, and come out mostly whole. Alternatively, they stubbornly adhere to their old ways, and they fail like the others before them. They are tempted to stay their current path, and The Lovers is a strange card. Reversed, it often signifies a kind of fall." I looked up at her. "Is that-"

  The question faded as I spoke it. Talya was crying. Tears tracked though her foundation, streaking it like powder.

  "Tell me more about the reversed King," she whispered.

  Dutifully, I lay out the next three cards. Every single one was upside down: The Magician and The Devil framed the Hanged Man. Three major arcana cards, a total of eight in a spread of thirteen, and most of them were upside down. My stomach fluttered. Whatever force had influenced this reading, they were telling us that there was more at stake than Talya's feelings. This many cards of power meant the issue was serious, perhaps even beyond the scope of the woman asking the question.

  "He may be a mage." Looking up, I fixed my gaze and stared at her. "A Phitometrist."

  The last word caught her off-guard. Her head snapped up, throwing back her hair from her face. For a moment, I saw something wild in her eyes.

  "We... we don't know," she said. "It's possible."

  "They are. Malicious, thieving, cunning, deluded and powerful. The opposite of what these cards normally represent. Someone who is manipulative, silver-tongued. Spiritually corrupt and incapable of self-reflection. Blind."

  I gathered the cards in, and decided to sate my own curiosity while Talya digested the news. Decisions in tarot were rarely stand-alone, and she seemed to understand that, resting quietly and facing the window as she thought. I shuffled while I asked another question. Who else was involved?

  The King of Swords came up again, flanked by the Nine of Swords and Five of Staves. The second triangle consisted of the Page of Cups, the Three of Cups, and Seven of Swords.

  "What are you doing?" She glanced across, then down.

  "Just making my own query. Is one of the people involved in the military?"

  Talya nodded, reaching up to dab at her cheeks with a tissue. “The woman. Former military.”

  "She has nightmares and lingering pain. Troubles from war or conflict. The other is less mature than she is, maybe someone religious. A priest, perhaps?"

  "He's..." Suddenly, her face closed off and shut down. "No. I can't say any more. I'm sorry."

  “I understand the importance of secrets.” I sighed, and sat back. "That was quite a question, Talya Karzan. In summary, I think these people you are alluding to are in serious danger from a power-hungry madman. I hope that was a sufficient answer?"

  "It's... you're very good." Talya was visibly nervous, fumbling her napkin, her bag, her wallet. "Look, um, I don't know how to ask it any other way, but... you're more than just a tarot reader, aren't you?"

  "You could say that." The words were ashen, flat, as they were every time the world reminded me of what I had lost. I couldn't get the Phitonic push to break past the wards laid into my flesh. “It has been a while since I
had any work like this.”

  When I refocused on Talya's face, it was imbued with a strange purpose. Her fluffy gray hair hung around her face. "You… look. I know someone who might be able to help. But I… have to talk to him first." She took out a laminated card, scribbled something on the back, and slid it across. It had a brightly painted, stylized cat with a flaming guitar on the front, like a Chinese tattoo design. "This place is called Strange Kitty, it’s in Williamsburg… go there later tonight. Two a.m. or so, like, really late. Show it to the guy at the bar. He knows my handwriting. Tell him you need to speak with Zane, that I sent you to join the meeting. If they forget I called this in, just tell him to call me, okay?"

  The Lovers reversed loomed large in my mind's eye, but I reached out, and took it from the table. My life had been spent fixing messy problems; there was good money in it, if the game was good. “Alright.”

  With shaking fingers, Talya took a fifty from her purse and slapped it on the table as she stood, bumping the edge of the table hard enough to send her empty cup skittering to the floor. She paused for a moment at the bang of breaking crockery, as if surprised by her own clumsiness. "Oh god, sorry. Here, and... thanks, Rex."

  "Do you need anything else?" I watched her, perplexed. “Any help?”

  "Yes," she said. She stepped away, eyes wide, and glanced around the deli. If the other occupants had noticed her fumble, none of them cared. It was New York. "Yes. If you’re right, I think we need all the help we can get."

  Chapter 8

  Strange Kitty was an hour ride on the Pelham and J lines from my Mott Haven squat, a narrow dirty building crammed between a dodgy barbershop and a dirt parking lot. It was marked by a six-by-five-foot steel plate bolted over a pair of metal blast doors. The sign featured a grinning Cheshire cat: silver raised detailing, black burned outline, anodized rainbow fill. It had a mouthful of pointed teeth crafted from old bullet casings. The sign, the building, and my bones thrummed with sound, filling my mouth with clashing colors and textures. It pulsed behind my eyes like migraine aura.