by J. P. Sloan
“Besides, I’m expecting you to take point with your brother. I’m more than happy to help, but I’m not holding his head when he yaks in the hall toilet.” I poured a glass and lingered. “You might want to reconsider moving in.”
I braced for an argument, but received nothing but a thoughtful nod.
I took a few sips of juice before venturing, “It would be easier for everyone.”
“You’re right. It would.” She rolled her head, then closed her eyes and nodded once. “I’ll grab some things this evening after you get back.”
Footsteps bumped along the ceiling near the front of the house.
“He’s up. You should probably go to him.”
She nodded again and slipped out of the kitchen and up the stairs.
Well, then.
Another roommate.
Oddly, I felt more nervous about Ches moving in than Ricky.
The drive to Pittsburgh was uneventful. I’d almost have called it picturesque. Fruit trees had started blooming, and yellow buds of leaves were washing into vibrant greens along the Allegheny hills.
Then I hit Pittsburgh, and most of the green evaporated.
Lillian had arranged to meet me for lunch on Penn Avenue. I struggled a while for parking, but managed to make the bistro just before noon. I wandered inside, hands in my pockets, clutching a notepad under my arm. It was a casual place, but entirely populated with men and women in suits with briefcases stashed underneath their chairs. Something of a finance crowd, by the feel of it. I stepped through the space searching for Lillian, and it wasn’t easy. I had met her exactly once, over five years ago. She had long hair, then. Which was why when the tall Chinese woman with a salt-and-pepper bob gave me an affably condescending beckoning gesture with her fingertips, it took me a moment to realize it was Lillian.
I approached her table and set my notepad down before offering a hand.
“Lillian?”
“Dorian Lake, good to see you again.” She shook my hand before briefly returning her attention to a tablet in front of her on the table. She waggled a stylus between her fingers, tapping her tablet overhand with a series of quick stabs, much like a drummer hammering out a snare roll. Her tablet streamed with what looked like commodity prices. Perhaps stocks. It was hard to tell, as most of it was in Chinese.
She looked up and gestured at the opposite chair. “Oh, do sit.”
“Thanks for meeting me,” I replied as I took my seat. “I’m in a situation, kind of feeling my way through a dark room if you will.”
She nodded as she stabbed her tablet some more. I didn’t seem to have captured her full interest.
“…and I’m hoping you can turn a light on for me.”
“Tell me about it.”
I waited for her to give me her undivided attention, but as she leaned back in her seat with her eyes and hand still glued to her tablet, I decided it was best to simply trust her multi-tasking skills.
“I have a client who was cursed with a heroin addiction.”
Lillian looked up for a brief second. “Are you sure the addiction was the curse?”
“Actually, no. It could have been more general, and the addiction is just how it manifested.”
“Go on.”
“That’s basically it. His wife has already left him, and now she’s threatening to challenge his parental rights. I’m trying to help him clean up before she takes him to court, and if I’m right… dismantling this curse will take the pressure off. Maybe even patch things up.”
She lifted a finger and tapped out a quick message to someone.
“I do apologize,” she offered with a sheepish smile. “I’m not usually this rude, but I have a shipping container of shi from Nanjing arriving in an hour from New York, and my network smoke-blower is having more trouble with the Feds than I’d like.”
I gave her a cordial if baffled look.
She nodded with a smirk. “You’d know them as Fu Dogs.”
“Ah. Statues? I’m assuming… they’re statues, right?”
“Yes, they’re statues. But no ordinary statues. They’ve presided over ancestral tombs for several hundred years. After eight weeks of transit on a freight liner, they’re going to be… grumpy.”
“Again, we’re talking about statues?”
Lillian set down her stylus and cracked her knuckles. “I have over forty bound ancestral spirits loaned out across the Mid-Atlantic, and some of my customers are complaining of poor behavior. The shi are as much enforcers as they are guardians, and should bring my assets back into a cooperative posture. Granted,” she added as she reached for some coffee, “the shi are bound to feel a degree of distress at being removed from their generational posts, but they are just animals.”
As she said that last bit, her eyes adopted a razor sharp quality, and in a split-second I was reminded that Lillian was, in fact, one of the more successful Netherworkers in North America. She was a capable and dangerous woman, and it was a damned good thing I remembered this before I got too deep into my dealings with Lillian.
“I’ll try to make this quick,” I said, pulling out a pen. “I’m willing to do whatever it takes to dismantle the curse. I’d prefer to do so with a minimum of collateral damage, if you know what I mean?”
She straightened her sleeves and shifted her posture, leveling me with a casual stare. “First thing you should know is that, in the Chinese culture, the dividing line between dark magic and medicine isn’t so clear. Get rid of your Aristotelian notions of elemental theory.” Lillian returned her attention to her tablet, hammering out a quick message to her associate while muttering, “Dammit.”
“So, what is the foundation of Chinese magic?”
Distracted by her tablet, she responded with a wave of her hand, “Traditional medicine.” Lillian swept aside a text with her stylus and leaned back to rub the bridge of her nose. “When it comes to cursing an enemy, there are infinite possibilities. It would help if we could narrow down the one who crafted the curse to begin with. Their specific traditions, area of influence, elemental affinity―”
“I know who cast the curse.”
She opened her eyes and tilted her head. “Oh?”
“Are you familiar with the Dead Dragons? A cabal in the Pacific Northwest?”
She stared stone-faced for a second before erupting into a fit of laughter. I looked around, giving onlookers a queasy wave of my hand to assure the bistro that we were not, in fact, lunatics.
“Oh, Mister Lake. Of course I’m familiar with the Dragons.”
My heart picked up a few beats per second, and I leaned forward. “That’s good. I mean, that is good, right? You have a finger on their pulse, then?”
She wiped a tear from her eyes as she continued chuckling. “I apologize, Mister Lake. If I had known, I wouldn’t have had you drive all the way here.”
“That doesn’t sound terribly promising,” I grumbled.
She wiggled a few fingers at me and returned her focus to her tablet. “Thank you, though. I really needed a laugh today.”
“Well, I’m happy to help, but I get the feeling I’m somewhat fucked, here.”
“Fucked may be a strong word.” She finished another text, then continued, “I should be more clear. The Dead Dragons are mostly second generation immigrants, like myself. Their hermetic practice is as American in its mixture of traditions as is any cabal on this continent.”
“Oh. So, you’re saying I probably have as much chance of taking these guys on with my own knowledge as I do any other group of terrifying, death-dealing psychopaths?”
She simply nodded.
I sat staring at my notepad, and tucked my pencil back into my shirt pocket.
“Well, I’m very sorry to have inconvenienced you, Lillian.”
She looked up at me with a quizzical lift of her brow. “I am not inconvenienced. I’ve enjoyed this.”
“Out of curiosity,” I asked as I pulled the notepad from the table and dropped it onto my lap, “if you don’t
mind me shooting straight with you… why are you helping me? I’m used to professionals in our line of work leveling me with some demand or trade for information.”
“Would you like to offer me anything in return?”
I shrugged. “Um, I would. But I don’t know what you’d want that wouldn’t be karmically toxic for me.”
She smirked. “I’m helping you, Mister Lake, because it suits me to do so.”
“Well, then. I’m grateful. And a little weirded out. Still, though… I suppose I should leave you to your Fu Dogs.”
She reached across the table and shook my hand with her fingertips before returning her attention to her tablet.
I stood up, slipping the notepad under my arm, then halted.
“Lillian?”
“Hmm?”
“How much soul magic do you run into in Chinese traditions?”
She looked up slowly from her tablet. “Soul magic?”
“Right. Say, a soul is separated from a physical body. Any precedent toward finding it again?”
She swiveled her head left and right slowly, then leaned forward. “So, the rumors are true?”
“Depends on the rumors.”
“I heard you eliminated Neil Osterhaus.”
I took my seat again, and nodded.
Lillian clapped twice. “I knew I liked you the first time I saw you!”
“I’m… glad?”
“Osterhaus was a weasel. I could never abide his amateurish condescension.”
A smile spread across my face. “Well, he kind of pissed me off.” My smile faded as I added, “Do the rumors say how I did it?”
“Rumors are you’re quite the disciple of Emil Desiderio.”
My chest warmed at that. Not sure why.
“Then, let’s assume the rumors are true,” I said. “If Lillian Hsu needed to locate her own soul in the Nether, where would she start looking?”
She reached across the table and laid a hand on mine. We sat there for a strange, but oddly comforting moment, before she pulled her hand back and tapped at her tablet.
“I would look for the one person on this continent who specializes in soul magic.”
“And that would be?”
“A practitioner in Portland. Her name is Quinn Gillette.”
My stomach soured. I rubbed the back of my neck and sighed.
Lillian lifted her eyes to me, and her mouth drew down into an O.
“I’m sorry, you’ve met Quinn?”
I nodded.
“I’ll assume you are not on cooperative terms with her, then?”
I shook my head.
Lillian traced a slow circle on the table with her stylus. “You may have time. I can research the matter for you, if you like.”
“I would very much like… but I don’t think I have that much time.”
“Why do you say that?”
I shifted in my seat and gave the room another glance for no specific reason before replying, “I’ve been visited by Felix Parrish.”
Lillian blinked. Then she straightened in her seat as her face blanched.
“You…” she whispered.
“Yeah. Turns out, he’s real.”
Lillian leaned forward, sweeping her tablet out of the way. “You’ve seen Parrish?”
My blood cooled as her face drew into perplexed fascination.
“Yeah. We had a real peach of a conversation, the two of us.”
“You’ll pardon me if I seem dubious, but you would be the only person I’ve met who has seen Parrish and lived.”
I lowered my chin. “Well, we’ll see about that ‘lived’ part.”
She reached for her tablet again, and swept her text windows aside, tapping away on a fresh, clear screen.
“I have people who have people. You know how this sort of thing goes.”
I nodded.
“Give me a few days, Mister Lake. I have contacts abroad that specialize in such specific practices.” She gave me a firm look. “I know we can solve this problem.”
I sat in stunned silence, which for me is something of an accomplishment. I finally stammered, “That―that would be amazing. I can’t thank you enough.”
Her smile lifted into an interesting curve.
“I don’t enjoy seeing the bastards win, Mister Lake. I prefer seeing our kind,” she added with a shake of her index finger between the two of us, “slither out from under their boot.”
My drive back to Baltimore was a dreamy wash of confusion and awe. I had, in the last year, assumed the worst about my fate without really accepting it. I found it hard, therefore, to really believe there was someone out there who could help me. And without expectation of compensation. True, Lillian could have been playing me in a particularly hard, perverse game of emotional rugby. But I’d come to develop a nose for practitioners. She didn’t give me the sense that she expected me to wallow in a state of obligation to her. She seemed earnest. There was some edge to her last words… “people like us.” I figured she’d been screwed over by some other Netherworker in her past, and felt like playing out some kind of vicarious justice through my personal drama.
I was okay with that.
I gave Ches a call on my way into Baltimore.
“Hello?”
“Ches, it’s Dorian.”
“Where are you?”
“Rounding Gettysburg. Should be there in a couple hours. Did the coach show?”
Ches sighed into her phone. “Yeah. She came and went.”
“Everything okay?”
“No, Dorian. Everything is not okay.”
I held my usual smart-ass response. That wasn’t going to help, today.
“But she came?”
“Yes, she came. Walked me through the process. Dorian…”
“I know. It’s going to be hard. Fill me in when I get there.” I added as I changed lanes, “You’re strong enough for this, Ches. You’re a fighter. We’re going to get him straightened out.”
“You sound weirdly optimistic. You’re not high, are you?”
“Let’s just say I have a firmer grasp of how to solve all our problems.”
“Our problems?” Ches prodded.
“Yeah. For once, I think we’re going to win.”
ulian had left a couple voice mails on my phone, and I couldn’t figure a good way to avoid returning his calls. Once I helped Ches carry two of her bags into the second, and last, of my spare bedrooms, I figured I’d have to touch base and see how much crow I’d need to fricassee in penance.
“Dorian?”
“Hey, Julian. I haven’t forgotten. Kitchen manager. I’m on it.”
“Please get on it quickly.”
I paused to hold the phone against my shoulder as Ches brandished an empty toilet paper roll at me in the hallway. I gave her a “one second” finger and continued, “Tomorrow. Honest to God.”
How did my life get so complicated in such a short span of time?
“Dorian?”
“Julian?”
“Is everything okay with you? I mean, with this Presidio thing?”
“It’s ‘Presidium,’ and yes. I’m totally Switzerland. Why?”
Julian tapped something in the background, probably typing on his computer.
“So, you’re getting a call from Ronetta.”
“Who’s that, again?”
“Ronetta Claye?”
Oh, right. The new Julian.
“What’s up?” I asked.
“No clue. And that worries me. Like, really. I don’t know what she’s up to, but the second she starts end-running me, I start stressing.”
“I’m sure it’s nothing, Julian. Probably just wants to buy a charm or something. Or, you know… not.”
“Yeah. Keep me posted. I’m not joking. Whatever she tells you, I need to know, Dorian.”
“Roger.”
Ches spent her first night in my house in Ricky’s room. The jitters and itches took him solid, and by midnight the retching had started. As I lay i
n bed, listening to the sounds of a man being tortured by his own body, I was thoroughly thankful to have Ches there to guide him along. I like people… generally. But I was ill-prepared to hold Ricky’s hand through this. Ches was my human half, the decent soul to walk him back to center.
I, on the other hand, could barely think of anything beyond beating Parrish at his horseshit game. If Lillian really had overseas contacts who could find my soul, then I might end up thumbing my nose at the entire Dark Choir. Emil would have been proud.
Ches holed up with Ricky during breakfast. I flipped up a couple dozen pancakes, in case they decided someone needed sustenance, and jumped out for the tavern.
My phone rang en route. Ronetta Claye, as forewarned.
“Mister Lake?”
“Ms. Claye. How are you this morning?”
“Very fine. How are you?”
“Elated. How can I help you, Ms. Claye?”
“I was wondering if you could meet my associate, Detective Grant Turner, in the next couple hours?”
I turned north onto the MLK, gritting my teeth. Here it came.
“What’s this about?”
“I’m aware of certain skills you’ve offered Julian Bright in the past.”
Ah hell. I was very sure this was news to Julian, which meant she had more oars in the water than he had given her credit for.
“If that’s the case, Ms. Claye, then I’d recommend we forego a cell phone conversation on the matter.”
After a pause, she responded, “Detective Turner will be at the Enoch Pratt library downtown in a half hour. If you’re available, I can have him wait for you.”
Enoch Pratt? What the hell was brewing with this woman?
“Let’s say I’m available, if very nervous.”
She coughed out a thin chuckle. “I’m sorry. I’m not used to this.”
“No sweat,” I declared in an up-swing timbre, “if you ever get used to this kind of conversation, I’m afraid I wouldn’t trust you much more than I trust black helicopters.”
I killed a couple hours at the tavern, rummaging around a couple job sites before heading back up Light Street for my meeting.
I pulled up Cathedral Street and found a street spot near the Basilica. I spotted a portly, red-faced fellow in a cheap suit lingering by the front steps of the Enoch Pratt Free Library, flanked by two uniformed cops.
