by Jes Battis
“Precisely.”
I finish my second drink and Modred pays the bill, which is nice of him. I hate when vampires try to pull that whole I don’t carry cash because I’m ageless bullshit. We take a cab to the party, which is in Shaugnessey. Trees bow beneath the weight of the neighborhood’s largesse. Signs decorate the Chinese consulate building. We get off at the corner of West Eighty-seventh and walk to the house, a standard late-seventies bungalow whose lawn has been brought up-to-date. Two vampires meet us at the door. Modred simply looks at them, and they let us by (although one of them rakes my ass with his eyes).
The living room is packed with all sorts: humans, demihumans, semi-friendly monsters, and an inchoate bartender. There are goblins on the couch, sharing a joint and a bowl of dried fruit. A few people are dancing in various states of undress. I cast my senses out like a net, dragging the room. Everything, alive or undead, has a unique print. Sort of like an aura, but funkier. The goblins are topaz lights that remind me of indolent glowworms; the vampires move in cold flashes, dropping carnelian sparks that dance with them. I look at Modred, and it’s clear that he’s the oldest thing in the room. He burns like a bed of coals.
Modred taps one of the dancing vampires on the shoulder. “Hwelp,” he says, “hwær es eower cwene?”
“Dude, what are you talking about?”
He sighs. “Where is the lady of the house?”
“You mean Quartilla? I think she’s in the kitchen.”
Modred turns to me. “I’ll go talk to her. Mingle, but do not touch.”
“Don’t worry. This isn’t my first rodeo.”
“I have no idea what that could mean, but I will return.”
He moves through the crowd and vanishes into the kitchen. I walk over to the bar, which is really just a table covered in sweating bottles of vermouth. The bartender is semiopaque. I think she might be a phasma. I watch her mix a mojito, which she gives to one of the goblins. He drops a toonie into a jar full of change. She may be a ghost, but she’s making great tips.
She turns to me and asks: “Qui potus volas, amica?”
“I’m sorry. I don’t speak Latin.”
“What would you like?”
“A scotch and soda.”
“Coming right up.”
I drop a twenty into the change jar. Without looking up from mixing my drink, she says sweetly: “Twenty gets you a heart-warming story. If you actually want me to answer a question, it’s going to cost you.”
“How much?”
“A kiss.”
I consider this for a second. I’ve never been propositioned by a phasma before. She is pretty, despite the fact that I can see through her.
“Fine. Don’t steal my soul, though.”
“I’ll only take a crumb.”
We kiss. I feel pins and needles in my mouth. True to her word, she steals barely a flake from me, but I’m still left light-headed. She smiles and hands me the drink. “That was nice. You’ve had an interesting life.”
“Yeah. I’ve always been a bit touched.”
“Plane-walkers. Manticores. Necromancers. You’re like an occult fire sale.”
“That’s a strange compliment, but I’ll take it.”
“So what do you want to know?”
I tell her about the amped-up vampire who attacked me. I try to make it sound like a mugging that just happened to take place in the water. I keep my voice low, lest the dancing vampires overhear me.
“Vampires don’t usually drink,” she says. “It’s one of many reasons that they’re bad for business. However, there are a few intense barbiturates that can get a vampire really strung out.”
“Like Hex?”
The phasma casts a glance around the room. Then she leans in close, as if to kiss me again, and says: “Pharmakon.”
Before I can ask her what this is, something vaguely eldritch walks up to the bar and orders a Chi-Chi. The phasma sighs and reaches for the pineapple juice. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Even at a party like this, a kiss can buy you only so much.
I make my way into the kitchen. Modred is talking to a beautiful vampire with short black hair. They’re speaking Anglo-Saxon, and all the fricative consonants give them a chance to exercise their fangs. When she sees me, she smiles, and switches to faintly accented English. Her cuff links, I realize, are finger bones.
“Hello, child. Welcome to my home.”
I incline my head. “Thank you, Quartilla.”
“How do you know Modred?”
“He saved me from a crazy necromancer.”
She rolls her eyes. “We’ve all been there.”
Modred looks at me. “Are you ready to go?”
“I think so. It’s getting late.”
Quartilla frowns slightly. “You smell curious.”
“I’ve been told that before.”
Modred suddenly grabs my hand. “We had best be going. It was lovely talking to you, Quartilla.”
“Of course. The pleasure was mine.”
Modred doesn’t let go of my hand until we’re outside. Then he takes a step back, looking almost embarrassed.
“Sorry. I was trying to mask your scent with mine.”
“I don’t know how to respond to that. Thank you?”
“I did not want Quartilla to smell the Magnate on you. If she knew that the two of you were connected, she might take an unhealthy interest in you.”
“Right. That makes sense. Did you learn anything from her?”
“Nothing I did not already know. There are always newly sired whelps running around, wreaking havoc, but she has not seen anything untoward.”
“What’s Pharmakon?”
He looks angry. “Who spoke of this?”
“A phasma with a bit of a crush on me.”
He relaxes slightly but still looks annoyed. “It’s an elixir. It can act as a powerful opiate, but very few understand the distillation process. Some don’t even believe that it exists. You can’t believe everything a dead bartender tells you.”
“What’s it made from?”
“You do not want to know.”
“Awesome.”
Modred puts a hand on my shoulder. “Ask no one about this. Do you understand? It is forbidden. Anyone who knows about it will kill you the moment the word ‘Pharmakon’ leaves your lips.”
“That doesn’t leave me with a lot of options.”
“I will make some inquiries, but I cannot promise anything.”
“Why do I feel like you’re managing me?”
He says nothing.
“Fine. Tell me why it’s forbidden, at least. It’s not like vampires are morally queasy about most things.”
“The less you know about it, the better. I brought you with me so that I could keep an eye on you. I don’t want you wandering around asking random demimortals about things like this.”
“Modred. Come on. You’ve got to give me something.”
He hails a cab. “You shall have a ride home. Anything more will have to wait. Just this once, you must promise not to be reckless.”
“I’ll consider it,” I say, “if we can stop for curry fries.”
7
I’m wired when I get home, although the curry fries have taken the edge off. Modred waits in the cab until he can see that I’ve opened the door. He has the dating instincts of a Teutonic Knight. I hear music from the hallway. I take off my shoes and walk barefoot into the living room. Lucian is on the couch, drinking a beer and listening to CBC Radio 2. He sees me and smiles.
“Hey. I got your text.”
“What text?”
He hands me his phone. There’s a text from me, sent two hours ago, which says: brg 2 prngls sksi.
“I must have sat on my phone.”
“I thought you were saying, Bring two pringles, sexy. So I brought both sour cream and barbecue. They’re in the kitchen.”
“Wow. Thank you. I just ate with Modred, but those are going to be bully when I wake up tomorrow and don’t feel
like cereal.”
“Should I stay?”
I sit on his lap. “Yes.”
He kisses me. “How was the party?”
I could be surprised, but at this point, it’s a waste of effort. “You got wind of that tricky maneuver, did you?”
“Quartilla’s parties are well-known. It’s already all over Twitter that Modred showed up there with an OSI. Plus, I can tell that you touched a phasma.”
This makes me hesitate. “Oh, really?”
“Yeah. Your breath’s frosty.” He draws me closer. “You think I can’t tell that you’re healing from an attack. I hear your bones mending. You don’t have to tell me what happened. Just promise to be careful.”
“You first.”
“Did you learn anything from Quartilla? She’s an aging hipster, but she knows a great deal.”
“Lucian.”
“What?”
I kiss him. “Was there a funeral?”
He looks at me strangely for a second. Then he touches my face. “Yes. Trinovantum is in mourning. The nightingales sing of nothing else.”
“You must miss him.”
“I do. He was a fair lord and a friend.”
“I wish I could tell you something, but”—I arrange myself in his arms—“Selena tells me nothing. I’m caseless. I just follow vampires around and get hit on by spirits.”
“I don’t know much either. Deonara’s doing her best, but it’s not enough. Powers are shifting. I’d rather be in Vancouver at the moment.”
“You love us for our foliage.”
“Huh.” He kisses me. “You’re so right.”
We stop talking. We take off our clothes and get under the blanket. Lang Lang plays Liszt on CBC 2. His body is beautiful because I can feel its thorns. He’s like a flower doing its best on an asteroid, naked to so many cosmic terrors.
My phone lights up like a Christmas tree at three forty-five a.m.
It’s Selena. I think the first word out of my mouth is “brush” for some reason. I blink and listen to her. What I’ve always loved about my boss is how she can talk about a crime scene as if it’s nothing but a messy bedroom. She tells me that the Seneschal is dead. He was a very old bird. I expected him to die eventually, but not like this.
“Why do you need me there?” I ask.
“You’ll have to come see for yourself. Bring Siegel and Sedgwick.”
“They’re not in my pocket, Selena. I can’t just fetch them.”
She’s already ended the call.
I’m glad that Lucian went home earlier. I don’t want to have to keep waking up beside him with shitty secrets. I think about the text that I saw on his phone, but only for a second. “Bro” is something guys say because they dislike the texture of words like “sweetheart” and “beloved.” Maybe the text came from a necromancer school buddy. That would make him a necro-bro, which, now that I think about it, sounds offensive.
We take the van to Stanley Park. I can see flashes of light coming from inside the grotto of the Seneschal. The floor is made of hard-packed earth, so shoe covers don’t seem necessary at this point. Becka photographs the walls. Her blue forelock glows in the dark. Linus sorts through an already-overflowing box of bindles, all labeled, sealed, and time-stamped. Cindée, who almost never leaves the lab, is talking to Selena while holding what looks like an ancient Dutch haakbus. The place has been completely ravished. All the Seneschal’s beautiful and dangerous things lie scattered in piles on the ground, some broken, others angrily trying to get away. A clockwork duck walks around in circles, as if building up steam. As I watch in fascination, it shakes itself, then deposits a lump of metal close to my shoe.
I walk over to Selena and Cindée. “Where is the body?”
“In the bedroom,” Selena says. “Cindée, put that down.”
“It’s got a lovely firing mechanism.”
“It’s old and loaded. Put it down.”
“Fine.”
Derrick raises his hand. “Question. Why is Tess here?”
“That’s tricky,” Selena says. “Follow me. Don’t step on anything. He was a hoarder, and I’ve already learned once tonight that the little things are weirder and more dangerous than the big ones. Just be alert.”
We go down a narrow hallway. A spider crawls across the wall, and I wonder if it’s real or mechanical. There’s a spinning box on the floor. I gingerly step around it. Hellraiser taught me that pointy boxes are just bad news. The bedroom is little more than a cell with a stone slab. When I see the body, I can’t help but think of the legend of the phoenix, who gathers the kindling for her own pyre. What was once the Seneschal, an avian demon, is now a calcined nexus of bones and charred cloth. The smell is overwhelming. We pass around the Vicks bottle in silence.
“Is the stone actually burnt?” I ask finally.
“Oh, yes. It’s melted in places.” Selena turns to me. “The body isn’t what I needed to show you. Look up.”
“No. Not again—please let it just be the friendly giant this time.”
“Just look up.”
I do. My name is on the air, Corday, written in smoke. It drifts around the uppermost part of the cavern like a dazed moth.
“Is that Polybius magic?”
“That’s what it looks like.”
“Then why didn’t you call Lucian?” The words leave my mouth before I can stop them. I feel the need to come to the defense of my boyfriend, despite the fact that I know he doesn’t actually work for us.
Selena gives me a look. “Necromancers aren’t the only ones who know smoke magic. And I’m sure the Seventh Solium has enough fallout to deal with. Right now, what concerns me, Tess, is that your bloody name is hanging over us. Why would someone just leave your name here?”
“How should I know?” I feel myself growing defensive. “There are loads of Cordays in the BC Yellow Pages.”
“That’s pretty weak.”
I sigh. “You’re right. What does this mean, exactly?”
“It means that we’ll need to interview both you and your mother.”
“I hardly see what she has to do with this.”
“Maybe nothing. But she’s a Corday. She has to come in.”
“This is ridiculous. More so than usual.”
“You know,” Miles says. “There might be a way to tell where the smoke magic came from. I can ask the room.”
Derrick looks at him. “Maybe you’ve forgotten, but the last time that you queried a room like this, I had to rescue you from hungry materia vines.”
Miles signs, Thank you, dear. Then he says: “Point taken. But that was a trap laid by the Iblis. I don’t have such a bad feeling about this place.”
“Try it,” Selena says. “But take care.”
Miles approaches the cremains of the Seneschal. His expression goes blank. I feel the dark air skip a beat, as if the room is clearing its throat. Then Miles begins talking with his hands. There are some hand shapes that I recognize, like “power” and “demise,” but he’s talking too fast for me to connect anything. He touches his hand lightly to his mouth, then repeats the sign, which means “speak.” I watch my name turn lazily in the air above us. Maybe it’s just a metaphysical text gone wrong. Or the message is meant for my mother. Neither possibility excites me.
He’s silent for a few moments. What must a conference call with space feel like? I wonder. Stones usually just spit at you, unless you’re fluent in their language. Miles turns back to us, looking a bit queasy. I guess that’s my answer. Talking to space makes you carsick. He wipes his forehead, then says: “The room isn’t making sense.”
“Can you unpack that statement?” Selena asks.
“It contradicts itself. The space remembers fire and death. But it also remembers something being born. The Polybius magic was a part of neither. It came from somewhere else. The room says it doesn’t belong here.”
“Becka recorded it and took pictures,” Selena says. “That’s all we can do, since it won’t survive transpor
t. Even if it did, we have no tests for smoke.”
Our house has become a fair. There are booths, tents, and a real Ferris wheel. I have to find everyone so I can ask them what magic is. First I get mini-doughnuts, holding the hot, sugary bag to my chest in place of a map. I find Derrick in the fortune-teller’s tent. The fortune-teller is Mr. Corvid’s head. Derrick shuffles the deck out of kindness. They both ignore me.
“What is magic?” I ask Mr. Corvid’s head.
“A grindstone,” he says. “It scrapes you away, until only what’s sharp in you remains, until your iron grief is undressed.”
I turn to Derrick. “What is magic?”
He keeps shuffling the cards. “An alphabet,” he says. “A syllabary. Its conjugations are lightning, monsoons, and tectonic feuds.”
I leave the tent feeling less sure of everything. I find Mia on the Ferris wheel, admiring its polish. Our small car rocks back and forth. I wish she would hold on to something, anything, but she has no fear.
“What is magic?” I ask her.
“A needle,” she says. “It’s terrible. It cuts, it snags us by our loops, it makes minced pizza out of us, and there’s a lot of pain because it’s hard to move when you’re two-dimensional and stitched into an arras. But it also makes fruit, and foxes, and other important things.”
I leave her circling on the Ferris wheel. I find Patrick playing Skee-Ball. He hands me a Japanese body pillow, which he’s won. Holding it, I ask: “What is magic?”
“It’s like new pajamas. And Radiohead, I think.”
I take the body pillow and walk to the haunted house. I find Miles crouched underneath a table, pretending to be a disembodied hand in a bowl full of uncooked spaghetti. He waves at me.
“What is magic?” I ask.
“It’s several things,” he replies. “But don’t repeat them, okay? Hugging. Digging. Spelling. Sucking. Edging. Rimming. Meowing. Lying. Spitting. Presuming. Disinfecting. And Reverse Cowboy.”
I leave him and walk to the petting zoo. Modred is having some sort of colloquy with a Shetland pony. He has an endless supply of apple slices.
