Night and Chaos: An Ashwood Urban Fantasy Novel (Half-Lich Book 3)

by Lee Dignam

  “And it’s going to stay that way.”

  “You cannot be serious. Didn’t you say you wanted us to go out on a double date? How are we supposed to do that if you won’t even let us see her?”

  “I don’t remember saying that.”

  “I do. I remember it perfectly, as a matter of fact. We had just come out of our weekly meeting last Friday. Isaac, Jim, and I wanted to go get a bite to eat. We asked you to come. You said you had plans with Becky. I said bring her. You said no, some other time. I said double date? And you said sure.”

  “Isn’t Isaac the one with a photographic memory?”

  “He’s rubbed off on me.”

  “I bet he has,” Cameron said, with a smirk on his lips to match Alice’s.

  “Number one, screw you,” she said, pointing her index finger at him. “Number two, if I don’t meet this beautiful, mysterious bassist soon I’m going to assume you’re making her up.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Fine. Then maybe I’ll bring Silver on my next hunt. I’m sure he’s dying for a chance to be set loose on some Pain Children. He doesn’t need that amulet you’re wearing to protect him from their magic, either, so he’s less of a liability.”

  Cameron looked down at the amulet lying on top of his black shirt; a brass pentacle with a ring around it. He wasn’t used to wearing it, but after the battle at the cemetery Isaac had decided it best to create these amulets, which were decorated with Void Weaver sigils and infused with a protective spell designed to keep Nyx and her Children’s magic from corrupting him like it did everything else it touched. Jim wore one, too. Silver, the newest addition to the team, didn’t need one—but he was a special case; he had been touched by the Void before and, like Isaac, didn’t need an amulet.

  “That’s low,” Cameron said.

  “I play dirty,” Alice said.

  Cameron was about to speak again when a sudden, loud knocking on the door stole their attention. Alice could have jumped out of her skin at the sound and almost did, but only stiffened in response. It was late, and while most clients showed up on her doorstep after hours, this one made her jump.

  Alice put her hand up to stop Cameron from rising and circled around the desk. Normally she wouldn’t have hesitated, but after their encounter with a Pain Child tonight she wasn’t about to take any chances. When Alice peered through the peephole, she saw a young woman standing on the other side. She had an elfin face with pointed features, a slight build, and a messy tumble of chestnut hair, most of which was hidden inside a hoody.

  “Jinx?” Alice said to herself.

  She opened the door to the outside and cocked her head at the woman standing there. Jinx never showed up in person, and the fact that she was here meant something was up.

  “Hey… are you okay?” Alice asked.

  “Can I come in?” Jinx asked.

  “Yeah, sure,” Alice said, stepping aside to let Jinx in.

  Cameron stood and turned to look at Jinx. She pulled her hoody down and ran her fingers through her hair to shake droplets of water out of it. Though her clear, green eyes weren’t exactly glowing per se, they did seem oddly bright against the dimness of Alice’s office. Jinx pulled an earbud out of her ear and stuffed it into her shirt. A moment of silence hung, until finally she said “Hi?”

  “Hi,” Alice said, “Yeah, sorry, I’m just surprised to see you. You don’t normally come here.”

  “I thought I should this time.” Jinx’s bright green eyes flashed at Cameron, and without speaking asked the question who’s this guy?

  “Oh, yeah,” Alice said, “This is Cameron. He’s a friend of mine. Cam, this is Jinx.”

  Jinx nodded. “Is he cool?”

  “Cool?” Cameron asked.

  “If he wasn’t we wouldn’t be talking in front of him.”

  Again she nodded. “Okay, because what I’ve got to tell you is… sensitive. And urgent.”

  “Urgent? It’s not another contract, is it?”

  “No, but it isn’t exactly a social visit either.”

  “Dammit,” Alice said, groaning. “Then what is it?”

  Cameron hastily removed his phone from his pocket. It was vibrating. “It’s Isaac,” he said.

  “Answer it,” Alice said.

  He nodded, pressed the green button, and put the phone to his ear. “Isaac,” he said, “What’s up?”

  Alice listened.

  “Right now?” Cameron asked. There was a pause. “Uh-huh. And there’s nothing you can tell me? Right, not over the phone. Okay. We’ll be there.” Cameron hung up. “He needs us back at HQ.”

  Jinx’s face lit up with alarm. “No,” she said, “I need you. Like, right now. This is important. I wouldn’t have come here if it wasn’t.”

  Alice pressed her lips into a thin line. “Did Isaac say what he wanted?”

  Cameron shook his head. “He couldn’t. Only that he wanted all of us back there—Jim too.”

  “Okay… you go. I’ll catch up.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah, I can’t just leave Jinx hanging and we can’t exactly bring her with us.”

  “Why not?” Jinx asked.

  “Are you a mage?” Alice asked.

  “No.”

  “There’s your answer.”

  “You aren’t one either, last I checked.”

  “Cam,” Alice said, “Just go. Tell Isaac I’ll be there later.”

  Cameron nodded and headed for the door. He opened it, letting in the cool night breeze, and said “If you need anything, just call me.”

  “I’ll be fine,” Alice said. Turning to Jinx, Alice said, “Alright, I’ve taken the bait. What is it?”

  “I’ll tell you what I know,” Jinx said, “But you should know two things first.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Number one, we don’t have a lot of time. And number two, you won’t be joining your friends anytime soon. Something weird happened tonight.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Ten of Swords

  Alice regarded Jinx carefully, aware of the way those green eyes of hers seemed to almost shine from within like lit pools. There was something in those eyes of hers, a kind of ancient wisdom wielded only by old sages in robes. Alice knew little about Jinx’s origins and her powers—probably as little as Jinx knew about Alice—but she was one hell of a tracker, and if it hadn’t been for her, those four Pain Children Alice had found and hunted down would still be at large.

  Before getting into any conversation, Alice sat at her desk, opened one of her desk drawers and pulled several hundred dollar bills from out of a money clip. She handed them over to Jinx.

  “Your commission,” Alice said.

  Jinx nodded, took the money, and slipped it into her wallet. “Thanks,” she said, and she sat down by Alice’s desk.

  “So,” Alice said, “What’s going on?”

  “I wanted to ask you the same question,” Jinx said.

  “Me? What do you mean?”

  “Well, in the last month I’ve found four contracts dealing with stuff that’s way more dangerous than your usual work.”

  “Steady work is always good, right?”

  “Can you just tell me what’s going on? Please? I’m starting to get a little freaked out and what’s happened tonight hasn’t helped things.”

  “The whole story is too long and complicated for me to get into, Jinx.”

  “Just give me a run down, then. What am I tracking for you and why are there so many of them?”

  Alice sighed. “I call them Pain Children—spirits that have been tainted, corrupted, and transformed into nasty pieces of work by their master who, incidentally, is quite the piece of work herself.”

  “And why are they here?”

  “Because their master got out of the dimension she had been confined to and now she’s causing all kinds of merry hell. She’d been quiet for a few months, but…”

  “There’s been an increase in activity?”

  “Mor
e like… they’re the tremor before a volcano explodes.”

  “Then you’re probably not going to like what I have to tell you.”

  Alice let herself sink into her chair and said “Alright. Hit me with it.”

  “I wouldn’t get so comfortable.”

  “By the serious look on that little face of yours I’m not going to get another chance at being comfortable, so you’ll excuse me if I do whatever the hell I want right now.”

  Jinx rolled her eyes, a motion that caused the whites to shine even brighter somehow, and then settled her gaze back on Alice. Outside, the rain had started to fall even harder, filling the air with a droning, static hiss pockmarked by the occasional thudding of heavy droplets on the dumpster in the alley behind Alice’s window.

  “Someone else needed help tonight,” Jinx said. She reached into the left breast pocket of her leather jacket and produced a purple velvet pouch. From it she pulled a deck of clean, glossy cards with pictures on one side and a purple, gold, and blue pattern on the other, and began to shuffle them. When Death slipped out of the deck and landed on the table Alice immediately knew what these cards were.

  “Tarot?” Alice asked. “I didn’t know you played tarot.”

  But Jinx didn’t answer. Instead she delicately pushed the Death card to one side with her index finger and pulled another four cards from the top of the deck, laying them one on front of the other on the desk. Alice recognized some, but not all of them. Death, and The Devil, stood out, and Alice couldn’t say she was surprised to see them. But there were other cards in the line-up whose meanings Alice didn’t know. Three of wands, queen of swords, ten of swords.

  When Jinx had finished interpreting the cards, she looked up at Alice and said “You don’t play tarot. It isn’t a game.”

  “I’m sure it isn’t.”

  “You ever had a reading done?”

  “No. I didn’t always believe in that stuff anyway.”

  “Oh, so ghosts are real but the tarot is a bunch of bullshit?”

  “You ever been bitten by a tarot card?”

  “Just listen,” Jinx said, “This is how I find the people who need me. Every couple of hours I’ll run a simple spread of five cards, one in front of the other. The first four cards tell me who needs someone found and where I need to be in order to find them. The last card tells me why.”

  Alice leaned forward, interested. “That’s kind of amazing,” Alice said. “You sure you’re not a mage?”

  “What I am isn’t important right now. Anyway, concentrate. Whenever I see these cards together,” she said, pointing at the queen of swords and the Death card with her index finger and her pinkie stretched out, “I know that the person in need of help will need your specific services.”

  “Am I the queen of swords?”

  “Kinda.”

  “I can live with that.”

  “Yeah, anyway, the reason why I brought these out was to test a theory.”

  “And what theory is that?”

  “Do you have any idea how rare it is to get the exact same spread of cards twice in a row?”

  “I’m not a mathematician, but in 5-card poker the odds of hitting a Royal Flush are something like 1 in 650,000, I’m gonna go with… double that?”

  “It’s probably less than that, but it still doesn’t happen. I’ve drawn this exact same hand three times tonight.”

  “The same hand? In the same positions?”

  Jinx nodded.

  “That sounds pretty serious. You didn’t come all the way down here just because you drew the same cards a bunch of times, though, did you?”

  She shook her head. “What’s happening here isn’t normal,” she said, “It’s like I can’t get past this hand. I could grab the cards, throw them across the room, and this hand would come up again.”

  Alice’s arms began to prickle and she remembered the way the Death card seemed to have almost been yanked out of the deck a moment ago. “That’s creepy,” Alice said.

  “It’s fucking terrifying! The drawing didn’t feel natural. All of my instincts were wrong, I was thrown off, so I drew it a second time but again the same thing happened.”

  Alice hadn’t noticed but she had started to chew the back of a ball-point pen she kept on her desk. She pulled the pen out of her mouth and pointed at the cards. “Let’s try something,” Alice said. “Drawing the same hand three times in a row is unlikely, but it isn’t impossible.”

  “Alice—”

  “Just listen to me. Grab the cards and shuffle them into the deck.”

  Jinx frowned, and her peach colored lips turned upside down, but one by one she began picking up the cards and shuffling them like she was an expert poker player at the World Series. The cards whizzed out of her fingers, fanning rapidly from one hand to the other. No cards jumped out this time, so that was a start. When she was done shuffling, Jinx placed the deck on the table and lightly pressed her fingers on the top card.

  “Alright,” Alice said. “Let’s go.”

  One by one Jinx drew the cards out of the deck and placed them on the desk, and with every card she revealed Alice’s body temperature seemed to drop by a full degree until she was cold and prickling all over. Death and the Devil looked up at Alice from within a spread of cards that was identical in placement and positioning to the hand that had come before it.

  She didn’t know a great deal about the tarot, but not only were the cards themselves important, but so was their position on the spread, and whether they were right-side up, or upside down in relation to the person receiving the reading. Alice didn’t need to remind herself of the odds she had quoted a moment ago.

  “Okay,” Alice said. She could hear her heart thumping in her head. “That was weird.”

  “That isn’t the weirdest thing that’s happened with this deck,” Jinx said.

  “Really? Because it looks pretty fucked up to me. What happens now?”

  “Now I tell you what I did after I drew these cards the second time.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I checked the place out like I’ve done every time before coming to you with one of these weird jobs this past month. It’s the hospital on Clarkson drive.”

  “The old City General,” Alice said.

  “That’s right, but that place hasn’t been used in years. City council had plans to turn the building into something else after the hospital was relocated, but things just stalled.”

  “So after you checked the place out, I mean, what did you see around the area?”

  “Checked the place out? Hell no,” Jinx said, shaking her head. “Not this time. Creepy building in a bad neighborhood? No thanks. I don’t want to get stabbed by some lunatic with a rusty knife. That’s your job. It’s the reason why you’re the bounty hunter, and I’m just the fixer.”

  “I haven’t even taken the job.”

  “You have to. You’ve been summoned.”

  “Summoned? What am I, the devil?”

  Jinx didn’t point out the irony looking up from the desk with horns and a pointy red tail, but she didn’t have to. Alice noticed. She thought, for a moment, about picking up her phone and calling Isaac. He had, after all, spoken to Cameron only ten minutes ago so he had to have it on hand. But in calling him she ran the risk of Isaac wanting to get involved, and whatever he needed Cameron for sounded urgent; like it would take precedence over this.

  “You have to go,” Jinx said.

  “I know I have to go,” Alice said. “I know I do. It’s just, your magic requires there be someone in need of my expertise, which means there was someone in that hospital when you first drew those cards. What are the odds they’ll still be alive?”

  “I’m not about to spill my secrets to you, just know that time isn’t linear; when I draw the cards doesn’t matter. You’ll get to the place when you’re supposed to.”

  “I guess I’ll take you at your word.”

  Jinx paused for a moment, and the silence hung. “You haven’t aske
d me about the fifth card,” she said.

  Alice was starting to rise but she paused. “What do you mean?”

  “Remember how I told you it’s the first four cards that tell me the who and the where, but it’s the fifth card that tells me the why?”

  Alice nodded. “Yeah.”

  Jinx tapped the fifth card on the spread. The ten of swords. “Everyone thinks Death and the Devil are the two worst cards in the deck, the ones you never want to see appear in your own reading. But they’re wrong. This is the card you don’t ever want to pull.”

  “Ten of swords?” Alice’s eyebrows furrowed. “What does it mean?”

  “Upright as it is now, this card stands for absolute destruction. It stands for someone being pinned down and beaten until they’re defeated and bleeding. It’s the end of things.”

  Alice circled the desk and picked the card up. On it was a picture of a man lying on the floor with ten black swords sticking out of his back and neck. Blood was trickling from the wounds and pooling on the floor beneath him. The sky above the victim was filled with dark clouds, but a single ray of light was shining through.

  “This card isn’t all that bad,” Alice said, and she handed it to Jinx. “The ray of light; that’s hope, isn’t it?”

  “There’s always hope.”

  Alice nodded and grabbed her jacket and her backpack. She headed for the door, opened it, and stepped out into the street. Alice’s black Mustang was parked only a few paces away from the front door of the building. Jinx exited the office and pulled her hoody up. She shoved her hands into her pockets and started to walk down the street.

  “You sure I can’t convince you to come?” Alice asked.

  Jinx turned, walked backwards, and smiled at Alice. “Maybe one day I’ll hear the call to heroism, but today isn’t that day. Be careful out there.”

  Alice smiled, shut the door, and locked it. When she turned to face the street again, Jinx was gone.

  CHAPTER 3

  Master, Apprentice

  The old Ashwood Harbor became a ghost town many years ago. Two arms stretched out onto the ocean. One was a long, artificial, L-shaped arm on which cruise ships could dock and unload their living cargo of travelers hungry to experience a new city. The other was a crooked, stony, slightly curved arm on the tip of which stood a derelict hotel on the verge of collapse. The two arms were separated by a large lot on which, once, there had been an immigration building, a small gift shop, and a bus depot. Now those buildings were gone, replaced with crumbling, salt-beaten warehouses.