Abracadaver (Esther Diamond Novel)

by Laura Resnick

  As I continued petting Nelli, she wriggled a little, pleased with the attention, and then gave me a convivial head butt. As I staggered back a step, Lucky said, “See? She’s actin’ completely normal. Like it never happened.”

  That was a relief. We didn’t have a maddened mystical familiar on our hands who outweighed me. Nonetheless . . . “I’m really worried,” I said. “Scared. What if—”

  “No, let’s not spectorate,” Lucky interrupted.

  “I think you mean speculate,” I said. Like a lot of wiseguys, he tended to mangle the language.

  “This ain’t our area of expertise, so we don’t wanna run away with our imaginations. Let’s wait until we tell Max what we saw, and we’ll hear what he thinks.”

  I nodded and tried to push my fears out of my mind.

  Lopez . . .

  I didn’t really know what I thought Nelli’s odd behavior today suggested. I just knew that, because of it, I was afraid that Lopez was in danger at this very moment. At every moment, in fact, until we knew what was going on.

  Lopez was also, I suspected, thinking about breaking up with me again. His exasperated comments a little while ago had indicated as much.

  The light on Canal Street changed, and I tromped across the slushy boulevard with Nelli, Lucky, and a gazillion other people while a chill wind whipped at my cheeks and hair.

  We were going to have to talk (again) about last night. Lopez knew what I had done. I knew better than to hope he’d just drop the subject. And I certainly knew better than to hope he’d believe me the next time I explained that the reason I had broken into his car to steal his gourmet fortune cookie was because it contained a mystical curse that would cause his death as soon as the cookie was cracked. (Susan wanted Lopez dead because, as a favor to me, he was helping Ted with location permits for the film.) After stealing the deadly treat, I had taken it to Max to be neutralized.

  No part of this explanation would be helped by the fact that my on-again, off-again boyfriend (mostly off-again) was a confirmed skeptic who clung resolutely to his steadfast belief in mundane phenomena and conventional explanations. (Well, to be fair, most people clung to that. I had clung to it, too, until it was no longer possible.)

  He was also a detective in the New York Police Department’s Organized Crime Control Bureau. Thanks to his job skills, he had easily found out who the culprit was last night after finding his car window smashed in and only one thing (his cookie) missing from the vehicle. Detective Connor Lopez was also not at all happy that the car in question belonged to the police department; I gathered that meant the smash-and-grab involved additional paperwork, thus augmenting his overall exasperation with having a patently insane almost-girlfriend.

  But he didn’t intend to turn me in for what I had done. That much was clear . . . and it was another reason that he was so conflicted about me.

  Lopez was a straight-arrow cop and an honorable man, so he felt guilty and full of self-reproach every time he gave me a pass—and he’d given me a few by now. In fact, he’d completely violated his deepest principles a few times for my sake, and his tension over this—which I understood and regretted—was something else that came between us. In addition to, you know, his conviction that I was demented.

  I wondered what it said about him that despite thinking I was nuts, he kept coming back.

  I also wondered how to convince him I wasn’t demented—or even unstable. Could I convince him? Just how rigid was his stubbornly conventional worldview? Would it alter, or at least loosen up a little, if he saw some of the things I’d seen since becoming friends with Max and discovering what a deeply weird place the universe really is?

  In any case, yes, Lopez and I were going to have to talk about last night. And it wasn’t going to go well.

  Brooding about a man you’re obsessed with can be so absorbing that I didn’t hear the approaching siren until Lucky said, “Come on, let’s not get run over. Pick up the pace.”

  He put a hand under my elbow and hustled me along. I glanced over my shoulder and saw a fire truck coming this way. We trotted the rest of the way to the sidewalk, along with all the other pedestrians crossing the broad width of Canal Street, then pushed our way through the throng there, eager to avoid the icy spray from passing wheels as the truck sped through the slushy streets. The vehicle slowed down when it reached our corner and honked loudly as it turned down the street. Since the noise was earsplitting, Lucky and I paused a few seconds to let the truck get ahead of us, then went in the same direction.

  A moment later, we heard another fire truck screeching in the distance. It, too, turned down this street. We were half a block from the Yee family’s store.

  “Oh, Lucky,” I said with dread, quickening my pace. “Do you think—”

  “Don’t jump to conclusions,” he replied, also walking faster. “It’s a holiday. Firecrackers. Smoke. Lions with flammable fringe.” We rounded the next corner. “We got no reason to assume—Whoa.”

  We stopped in our tracks and stared at Yee’s Trading Company. The building where I had left Max earlier today was now engulfed in flames.

  2

  Smoke poured out of the windows of the century-old building which had housed Yee & Sons Trading Company for decades. Fire roared upward through the roof and out the front door. Emergency services were still arriving. As I stood there, my mouth hanging open, an ambulance and two squad cars pulled up, their sirens wailing and lights flashing.

  And then, without conscious thought—certainly without anything resembling a decision—I dropped Nelli’s leash and ran toward the burning building, screaming, “Max! MAX!”

  A policewoman dived out of a squad car and threw herself bodily against me. The momentum knocked us both sideways, so that we staggered against another police car that had just pulled up.

  “No! Stay back!” she shouted.

  Nelli was barking, distressed by my screaming and this altercation. I heard Lucky shouting, but I had no idea what he was saying.

  I fought the policewoman, wailing Max’s name as I tried to get free of her grasp. Another cop joined her in restraining me.

  “You have to get back, miss!” he shouted into my face. “Stop!”

  I barely saw or heard the two people wrestling with me. All I could see was the burning building that had swallowed my cherished friend. “Max!”

  “Esther! Esther!”

  The familiar voice penetrated the panicky roaring in my ears.

  Panting and still fighting the two cops, I called, “Max?”

  “Esther, I’m here! I’m right here!”

  I looked around—and when I saw Max trotting toward me, I sagged with relief. The cops were shouting stern instructions into my face, but I ignored them.

  “Max!” I flung myself at him, squeezing him tightly and giving a sob of relief.

  “It’s all right, my dear. I’m fine.” He returned my hug and patted my back. “Everyone is fine. No one was hurt.”

  “God, you scared me.” I put a hand over my pounding heart as I stumbled back a couple of steps to get a good look at him.

  A short, slightly plump man who looked about seventy (though his true age was well over three centuries), Max had innocent blue eyes, fair skin, a neatly trimmed white beard, and slightly long white hair. He was usually tidily dressed, but he’d obviously had a narrow escape from the fire. From head to toe, Max was smeared with soot and ash. His elegant calf-length Russian coat would never recover from this incident, and his hat was singed and stank of burned fur.

  “Thank God you got out okay!” Lucky, who was holding Nelli’s leash now, put a hand on Max’s shoulder and gave it an affectionate squeeze. “Grazie a Dio!”

  “We all got out.” As the police loudly urged us to step behind the barricade they were erecting, Max gestured over his shoulder. I looked across the narrow street, and I saw that Lily and Ted were
both there, alive and well, though as smudged as Max. After a moment, Max added quietly, “Grazie a Dio.”

  Standing behind the police barricade now, I watched Ted and Lily arguing on the other side of the street. Two police officers approached them. I could tell from their gestures that the cops were urging them to get farther away from the burning building. Ted and Lily were too engrossed in their argument to pay any attention. The rest of the street was being evacuated, and the police were taking control of the scene quickly, despite the crowds and the chaos.

  Between the festival, this fire, and Susan’s attempt to kill John, this precinct was having quite a busy day.

  I turned my gaze to the burning building, recalling the abundance of retail stock inside the confusing maze of the Yee family’s store. There had been some lovely objects and art in there, as well as some mind-bogglingly expensive furniture and antiques. I mostly had negative memories of the place, but it seemed like a sad loss, even so.

  Watching the building burn, I asked, “Max, what happened?”

  He started to speak, coughed a little, and pulled a bottle of water out of his pocket. I supposed that first responders had given it to him right before we arrived. He took a few sips, then cleared his throat and began explaining.

  “Lily and I went down to the cellar to destroy the workshop where she and her daughter made those curse-carrying fortune cookies.” Max’s English was excellent, but it was not his native language. He had a slight, elegant foreign accent, reflecting his origins in Central Europe centuries ago. “Lily asked Ted to stay upstairs and mind the store, but he followed us down to the cellar, full of questions, accusations, and recriminations. I do not think he can forgive his mother or sister for any of this.”

  “Go figure,” I said.

  Lily had inflicted bad luck, illness, and injuries on Ted’s associates, but she had not planned to kill anyone. Susan was the one who had raised the stakes by adding murder to the mix. And Lily, who had taught her dark secrets to her talented daughter, soon realized that she couldn’t control her. But the two women didn’t fall out until Susan decided to kill John Chen.

  Lily had not prevented the other murders—nor the attempt on Lopez’s life only yesterday—but she had drawn the line at letting Susan kill a fine young man who was a longtime family friend. Lily had destroyed the cursed cookie Susan was preparing for John, which was why Susan—by now reckless in her homicidal obsession—had resorted to the more mundane method of simply trying to shoot him. She got the gun from a local thug named Danny Teng, who had been loosely connected with ABC.

  I shuddered when I thought of Danny, who’d been hanging around the film set lately, bullying Ted, eyeing me with lip-smacking lust, and making lewd comments. There was at least one benefit to production shutting down and costing me my job: I’d never have to see that dangerous creep again.

  Max continued, “But although Susan had run mad, her intelligence did not desert her. She suspected Lily might have an attack of conscience and try to destroy the workshop.”

  “So she booby-trapped it?” Lucky guessed.

  “Precisely.” Max removed his singed hat and examined it with regret. “A mystical booby trap. Susan didn’t have the necessary time or skill to conjure wards that could withstand an assault from her mother, who possesses power similar to her own. Instead, she tried to make the consequences of destroying the workshop too dangerous to risk.”

  He dropped his ruined hat into the ankle-deep slush at our feet and gazed up at the burning building. “It was quickly apparent to me there would be a cost for obliterating her dark ritual space. But I underestimated how destructive Susan could be. Even knowing about the murders, I still didn’t anticipate that she was prepared to destroy her home and her late father’s legacy—the shop has been in the Yee family for many years.” Max shook his head. “So I proceeded. And by the time I realized the full extent of the danger, it was too late. The whole building burst into flames. As you see.”

  “You and Lily and Ted were lucky to get out alive,” I said, feeling my chest constrict as I realized how close Max had come to death. He often said that fire was the weakest element of his power. His ability to shield himself and the Yees from that conflagration long enough for them to escape with their lives had probably been precarious.

  Thinking of fire made me think of Lopez again. He’d been present during Susan’s mad murder attempt today. I recalled the way that unexplained flames had suddenly poured from the mouth of John’s lion costume (he was one of the athletic dancers who roamed the streets during the festival), blazing at Susan the moment after she turned her gun on me . . . I felt sure Lopez had done that, though he didn’t know it.

  “We were very lucky indeed,” Max said, glancing to where Ted and Lily stood. “I shall not be taking any of life’s pleasures for granted for some time to come, I assure you.”

  I watched the flames rise from the building and recalled other incendiary incidents involving Lopez, before today’s fire-spewing lion costume had probably saved my life by distracting Susan.

  When Lopez was trapped in an underground tunnel with a serial killer who was about to slay again, there was a sudden, fiery explosion that killed the murderer while leaving Lopez and the other people present (including me) unharmed. When a villain had tried to escape from Lopez by holding a gun to my head, he’d been foiled by a shower of fiery sparks that rained down on him from light fixtures on the ceiling. On an occasion when Lopez and I were having a particularly volatile evening, my bed had burst into flames—while we were on it together. And during a Vodou ritual last summer, he had been involuntarily possessed by a fire spirit. Lopez remembered nothing about that trance, during which he had played with flames and hot coals without incurring any injury (though I assumed he’d had to throw away the trousers he’d been wearing that night, which were not nearly as impervious to fire damage as his own flesh was).

  When I had realized earlier today what Susan intended to do to John, I’d called in the cavalry—that is, I’d phoned Lopez, who arrived within minutes, accompanied by a reassuring number of police officers, to help stop her. And then an unexplained burst of fire saved my life at a moment when Lopez was scared to death for me—as he subsequently told me with more crankiness than affection.

  Given the pattern that seemed so apparent to me, I didn’t understand how Lopez could fail to realize—or at least start to suspect—that he was the common denominator in these fiery incidents. But Max, who hypothesized that he was exhibiting some form of pyrokinesis, didn’t consider his obliviousness surprising.

  If this was an ability Lopez had possessed since birth or early childhood, Max had told me, then the unconscious processes that created these events might feel so normal to him as to be unnoticeable. And since the incidents seemed to occur only in moments of extreme stress, then they might be too irregular for Lopez to perceive a pattern, let alone identify himself as the source of that pattern.

  In other words, I shouldn’t be puzzled by his obtuseness. Anyone as stubbornly prosaic as Lopez was bound to be dense about this sort of esoteric phenomenon.

  And it wasn’t a subject I could picture myself raising with him. Well, not unless our pending conversation about the misfortune cookie that I’d stolen from his car last night went a whole lot better than I was expecting it to go.

  As I watched the Yee family’s store burn, I wondered if anyone else in Lopez’s life—anyone besides me and Max—had ever suspected that he possessed mystical power of which he was unaware.

  “It looks like the building will have to be gutted,” I murmured. “They won’t be able to save anything, the way the fire is consuming the place.”

  “It had a fierce beginning,” Max said, “and it spread with terrifying rapidity.”

  “But despite the brushes with death on this one, I guess it’s all come out good, huh?” said Lucky. “Not even someone as smart as the Gambello family�
�s lawyer could get Susan off the hook after what she did today. Attempted murder right in front of a bunch of cops? Stupid don’t even begin to cover it.” He shook his head at the unprofessional sloppiness of that.

  “Susan has been taken into custody?” Max asked.

  “Yes. And she seemed completely demented while they were arresting her,” I said. “Max, do you think she’s got the ability to free herself from behind bars?”

  He shook his head. “Only if she’s in a facility foolish enough to let her set up a private laboratory and have access to many unusual ingredients. I’ve seen no evidence that she’s able to exercise power in other ways.”

  “Well, that’s a relief. I want her to stay in prison.” After all, besides Lopez, she had tried to kill me and John, too.

  Lucky said, “And what with this whole building burning down, the evil mother can’t get any second thoughts about rebuilding that basement workshop to do some more dark magic.”

  “True,” Max said pensively, his gaze drifting toward Lily for a moment.

  With her daughter in prison, her business destroyed, and her son presumably planning to distance himself from her, there might not be anything left in her life that Lily cared about enough to go to such lengths again.

  Max had told me before that Evil often consumed itself with its own voracious appetite. Looking at Lily, I realized once again that he was right about that.

  Assuming a deliberately more upbeat tone, Max noted, “Fortunately, despite inconvenience to the neighbors, no one in the area appears to have been injured due to this conflagration.”

  “And it looks like the fire department is managing to prevent it from spreading,” I added, watching them work and impressed by their efficiency. “So I don’t think anyone besides the Yees will lose any property, either.”