by J. P. Sloan
Ches sucked in a breath, and coughed.
“My God. Did… did this guy just murder these people?”
I shook my head and pointed to the center of the chalk art, where a large swath of the chalk had been swept in a line racing toward the perimeter, at the end of which lay a particularly crumpled body.
“These were his students,” I whispered. “Something went horribly wrong, and I doubt it was Zeno.”
I backed out of the room, grabbing Ches by the back of her shirt to urge her to follow.
When we returned to the anteroom, we found Zeno pacing a circle, his face flushed and his chest heaving. Seemed the shock had subsided and the panic had set in.
“Frater?” I said. “You with us?”
He shook his head, balling his fists. “It wasn’t right. The key was perfect. It’s always perfect.”
“What key?” Ches asked.
I answered over my shoulder, “Key of Solomon. Summoning and binding sigils. The chalk on the floor.”
She whispered, “Obviously, it wasn’t perfect.”
Zeno froze and gave her a skin-peeling glare.
“Every. One. Is. Perfect.”
I held up my hands, hoping to keep him calm just in case I was wrong, and he did actually go slice-and-dice on his students.
“I believe you, Frater. But, still… something happened.”
“It wasn’t the key,” he said, returning to his pacing. “It was the Aretic hedge. Had to be.”
Ches gave me a look, but I could only shake my head in confusion.
Zeno paused as he stepped into the puddle of blood. He lifted his shoe slowly, inspecting the leather for “untidiness,” before bustling to a side door in wet slips of red against the white marble floor.
Ches and I stood awkwardly as retching noises filled the silence of the building, followed finally by a flush of a toilet and a long rush from a sink. After several minutes, Zeno returned, much of his dignity seemingly restored. He had pulled off his sweater and balled it up under his arm. Now standing before us in shirt-sleeves, he removed his spectacles, and pocketed them. The odd transformation of his image was jarring. He almost looked normal.
“It was the hedge,” he repeated with a steadier voice. “It was contaminated. The Arête was out of sync with the summoning circle.”
“Ah,” I muttered. I turned to Ches, and explained, “You know that surge of energy we felt walking through the door?”
She nodded.
“Someone’s screwing with the Arête, or chi, or whatever you want to call the focused energy of this place. In Goetia, everything has to be perfect.”
Zeno blurted, “It was.”
I gave a so-so gesture with my hand. “Well, obviously not so much.”
Ches lifted her hands and stepped between us.
“Boys. Seriously. Why are we not calling the police at this point?”
Zeno lifted a brow at Ches and scowled.
“Because, my dear girl, they would arrest me, and I simply can’t have that.”
She stiffened, then tossed a hand at the dead body in the room.
“You got dead guys. Dead guys need cops.”
“They knew the risks,” Zeno scoffed. “They all knew the risks.”
Ches’s voice wavered into a panicked pitch. “This guy right here. He’s broken in half. In half! What did this? I mean, what the hell actually happened here, Frater?”
Zeno lifted a finger. “No. You don’t get to call me ‘Frater,’ little girl.”
Her jaw stiffened, and for a second I thought she was going to slug him across his smug face. More than half of me wanted to watch her do it.
Zeno turned to me and added, “Same goes with you, Lake. You are not members of this lodge and as such have no fraternal rights to address me.”
Ches turned to me for one final reason not to take Zeno’s head off his shoulders, so I gave her a calming lift of my palm.
“Zeno,” I stated, “you don’t have a lodge left, by the looks of it.”
He cocked his head, and nodded. “That’s true.”
“Can we focus here, Zeno?”
He looked to the front door, then hopped over with renewed energy. “There’s a tap in the energy. I can feel it.”
“Yeah, I felt it when we stepped through the doorway.”
He ran his hand along the door jamb, shaking it periodically. When he had concluded, Ches reached out and tossed him my salt sachet. Zeno rolled it in his palms and screwed his brows together.
“I’m more accustomed to siphons. Built protections against those. But this? Someone poured unreconciled energy into this entire property at just the right moment. This was quite intentional.”
Ches and I exchanged looks, and Zeno spotted it.
“You know what this is?” he demanded.
I answered, “The Presidium is executing a purge, Zeno.”
He shook his head slowly as his upper lip pulled into a sneer.
“This… was the Presidium?”
“They’ve taken out at least one other that I know of. Lillian Hsu, in Pittsburgh.”
“What brought this on?”
“You don’t watch the news, do you?” I quipped. After a space of baffled silence, I elaborated, “Congressman Durning. He outed a couple dozen members of the Presidium on live television just before his heart stopped in his own living room.”
“What does a dead Congressman have to do with me?”
I rolled my eyes. “Clearly, it has plenty to do with you, and all of us whom the Presidium perceives as a threat.” I took a breath and peered out the front window. “Ches is right, Zeno. The police will be here, and they’re going to be all over you.”
“Then I shan’t tarry.”
He swept around Ches and moved for the front door before he paused.
“What did you want?”
“Mostly for you to get the hell out of Dodge.”
“No,” he grumbled. “You wanted to ask me something. It’s why you’re here.”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll catch up with you later.”
His brow lifted. “It’s very unlikely you’ll see me ever again, Lake, so ask your question.”
I looked to Ches, who gave me an urging nod.
“I wanted input on a curse. How to dismantle it.”
“You don’t know how to dismantle your own curse?”
“Not mine. Someone else’s. It’s kind of urgent.”
Zeno looked past my shoulder at Ches, then glanced back at me with an impatient twitch of his lip.
“Not really my expertise, Lake. That’s really more your bailiwick, wouldn’t say?”
“Not really.”
Zeno shoved his hands into his pockets. “You’re the Curse Merchant, Lake. Not me. You’re the one with the enviable corpus of Netherwork tomes locked away. I grant you value my opinion, but I won’t be of any help to you this time.” He gave Ches a nod. “Best of luck to you both.”
Before I could return the sentiment, he jerked the front door open and disappeared.
Ches sniffled behind me, and I turned to find her rubbing the bridge of her nose.
“Well, this was a complete abortion,” she groaned. “What the hell killed these people anyway?”
“I think you know,” I muttered.
“I’m not going to say the word ‘demon’ out loud, because I don’t want to sound like a tourist.”
“Then call it one of the Dark Choir’s butt monkeys. Whatever you want to call it. Something dangerous and horrible and really pissed off.” I reached for the door with my hand inside my sleeve, wiping the latch as I pulled it wider. “Speaking of pissed, if the cops arrive before we make a quick retreat, we’re going to end up on the news.”
Ches nodded and slipped out the door. As we pulled out onto Charles, she asked, “Are we really sure that Zeno dick didn’t actually murder everyone?”
“He wouldn’t. It would be… beneath him.”
“Then why did he survive?”
I smirked. “When he took off his sweater, did you catch a glimpse at the shadow underneath his shirt?”
“Can’t say I was paying that much attention.”
“Fifth pentacle of Mars. Goetic protection rune tattooed directly onto his chest, probably by a capable sigilist practiced in blood scribing. He’s basically bulletproof, Goetically speaking.”
“You’re going to have to teach that one to me,” she said reaching over to me with a flat palm. “Give me your phone.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re driving.”
“Why do you want my phone?”
With a sniff and shake of her head, she answered, “We’re not just leaving dead guys lying there in their own blood and… stuff.”
“Ches, the cops are going to ask us umpteen godzillian questions, and that’s a lot of complications for―”
“―those boys have families, Dorian.” She let a heavy silence hang in the car before adding, “We can’t let them rot in that house.”
I thought it over for a block, then fished Turner’s card out of my pocket. “Here. Call this number, ask for Detective Turner.”
“Isn’t he that hard-ass from the tavern?” she asked.
“Tell him who you are. He’ll remember you. He’s probably won’t make our lives much more difficult than he already has. And if he does, I can always call Claye.”
Ches called Turner and described the situation, giving me hard looks when his voice bellowed from my phone off and on. By the time we returned to the house, Malosi was waiting for us at the doorway. Ches tossed me my phone and trotted up into the house as I paused by the door.
“What’s up?”
“Your phone.”
I held it up and evaluated it. “What about it?”
“No,” Malosi grumbled. “Your land line.”
“Again, what about it?”
“It’s on the blink.”
I shrugged. “Welcome to Baltimore, hon.”
“There’s an energy thread tugging at the entry into the house. I followed it as far as I could.” He motioned for me to follow, which I did. He led me around the corner of the house where the cables rose to meet the pole on the side street. “Couldn’t button down your wardings with this thing sending shit into the side of the house.”
“Malevolent?”
“Possibly.”
I nodded. “I’ll call the phone company, and check to make sure.” I turned to Malosi. “You’re stuck here for the night, then?”
Malosi sighed, then shrugged.
“That’s okay. Things are getting very specifically gruesome out there, and I don’t mind a little muscle in my corner.”
“I’m not your muscle.”
“No, but you have more muscles than I do, so as if by magic you become the Muscle on Amity Lane. Congrats. I’ll get you a shirt made.”
I tapped Malosi twice on the arm before hustling back into the house with all alacrity.
Inside I found Ches and Ricky sitting across the table from Ricky’s sobriety coach. She was a middle-aged woman with an impossibly warm face. She jotted notes as she gestured with her free hand at Ricky. His grins and nods led me to believe she was getting the job done. Money well spent.
Ches sat with her arm around his shoulder, her eyes set, dead serious on business. I watched the scene for a moment, feeling some weird call of nostalgia. My throat caught for a second as I remembered my homework sessions in my kitchen in New York. Long afternoons as Mom walked me through advanced algebra.
I turned away and nearly stepped directly into the wall of Reed Malosi. His brow was level and stern.
“You want me to be your muscle, you need to recognize two things.”
I nodded.
“One,” he spat with a lift of a single finger, “I work for Jean Clement. He pays my salary, and if you have any interest in securing my services toward short-term personal protection, you will have to come to an arrangement with him.”
He was right, of course. Shifting Malosi into any kind of professional capacity would slip me into Clement’s debt, as a matter of course. Malosi knew precisely what that meant. He was sharp, and I had to stop looking down on him when I got around to it.
“Two,” he added with not the addition of a finger, but a substitution with a rather less polite finger, “I need full disclosure. Everything you encounter. Every cross-eye you catch from a stranger, every sound at night, every random phone call. I figure you had a moment today, out on your field trip.”
“What makes you say that?”
He grinned. “Honest truth, you have a tell.”
“What tell?”
He tapped his own chin. “You pucker.”
“I pucker what?”
“Your bottom lip does this thing.”
I crossed my arms. “I don’t have a tell, and I’m not entirely comfortable with you paying inordinate attention to my lips.”
Malosi slipped his hands into his pockets. “One tends not to preserve a long-term career in protection by missing physical cues.”
“Jesus, Reed. I’m going to need to start apologizing for everything I’ve ever said about you.”
He scowled. “What’re you saying about me?”
“I’ll call Clement tonight.”
“You solid with that?”
“I better be. I need you. We”―I gestured to the kitchen―“need you.”
He drew a long breath, then nodded. “Call the phone people, first. This is bugging me.”
his puts me in an awkward situation, Lake.”
“I recognize that. But things have escalated here in Presidiumland, and Malosi is one of the very, very few people in this world whom I trust. So, as a student of Emil Desiderio, you should appreciate the gravity of that statement.”
Clement snickered over the phone line. “I do, as a matter of fact. Fine. Reed is yours until the end of the month. Then I’ll need him back in Manhattan.”
“You’re a peach, Jean.”
“Have you reconsidered my offer, by any chance?”
I leaned back in my chair at my roll top desk, sneaking a glance through the windows at the utility guys climbing the pole by the side street. “I have not.”
“When you speak of escalation, I grow nervous.”
“So do I. But I’m not selling you the Library, Jean. Sorry, but that’s going to be a non-starter with me.” After a pause, I added, “Does this change your mind regarding Malosi?”
“Of course not.”
“I don’t mind saying, you are a very difficult man to get a bead on.”
Clement released a throaty chuckle. “Good. Then my entire career in esoteric brokerage hasn’t been an exercise in self-delusion.”
“I’ll be in touch,” I concluded, ending the call and drifting to the window to watch the activities at the utility pole.
A hand landed on my shoulder, and I nearly pissed myself.
When I spun around, I found Ricky giving me what I’ll charitably describe as an overly-amused grin.
“Didn’t mean to scare you.”
“How are you feeling?”
He nodded vigorously. “Really good. I think, for the first time, I have a grip on this.”
“That’s good,” I replied with a chuck on his shoulder. “But I’m going to ask you this question again tomorrow, and the day after. And you’re going to find it harder to say that.”
His eyes wilted, and a twinge of guilt stabbed me in my pancreas. It was a dickish thing to say, but it was the truth. And in my humble opinion, Ricky was shy of good solid truth in his life as of late.
“Guess that’s true. Anyways, I feel good now. That’s okay, right?”
“It’s one-hundred percent okay.”
“Thank you, Dorian… by the way. For this. For everything you’ve done for me.”
“I hate to break it to you, but I haven’t exactly done much to lift your curse. And a week from today, you’ll be back in Portland.”
He shook his head. �
�But you’re doing something, and you don’t have a good reason to do any of it. I want you to know that I’m grateful. Even if this ends bad, I’m grateful.”
“Well, you’re gonna love this.”
“Hmm?”
I turned a half-circle, trying my best not to look magnanimous and probably failing. “I hear you have experience in restaurant management?”
He backed away a step and held his hands behind his back. “Maybe? Why?”
“You know I’m part owner of a tavern downtown, right? We have this weird law in Maryland. A specific percentage of our sales have to fall in a category―”
“You have to serve food and not just booze.”
“In a nutshell.”
He rubbed the back of his head and released a dry snicker. “You want me to work for you?”
“For the week.”
“And after I go back home?”
“I’ll hire someone else.”
“How does that work, exactly?”
I took a seat at my desk. “Let’s just call this temp work. Help us unpack and set up this brand new kitchen. Pull off the plastic and get us running. Maybe set up a bone-crew staff so we can get food cooking this weekend?”
Ricky’s smile thinned. “I appreciate your confidence, boss. But I don’t think I’m ready―”
“You’re ready, Ricky, when you decide you’re ready.”
“I don’t know. I still get the shakes.”
“You’re almost out of the hard patch. Giving you a reason to get out of bed, out of this house, to do something with focus is going to help start up a forward momentum. Besides, I’m not shitting you. We really need some help, and I’m a little too busy to run a want ad.”
He stared at the floor, and began to slowly nod.
“Well, if you’re sure.”
“I’ll have Ches drop you off tomorrow around ten a.m.”
He crossed his arms, holding himself as his brow creased.
I stood up and gave him a friendly nudge on the shoulder.
“And you’ll be on a plane by Sunday. We’re going to get you clean and free of curses, and back with your kids.”
He surrendered a half-hearted smile and turned for the stairs, adding as he stepped out of the room, “Better ask Ches before you volunteer her to be a chaperone.”
“What?”
He didn’t respond, disappearing instead up the stairs.
