The Left-Hand Path: Mentor

by T. S. Barnett

  “Not quite,” he grinned, pointing through the cracked windshield at a brightly lit green sign advertising the entrance to a bar. “Why don’t we just have some fun, and we’ll see if Mr. Willis is able to catch our scent? We ought to give him a chance.”

  “Nathan, I’m underage,” she pointed out. “They aren’t going to let me in.”

  “You just saw me buy you a hat with money made out of air,” he argued as he parked the car. “You need to start thinking a little more magically, my love. Come on. This one’s free, but the next time we do this, you’re casting your own illusions, do you understand? Being on the run is no excuse to slack off.”

  “Yes, sir,” she laughed, and he winked at her and dropped down out of the driver’s seat. She took the folded napkin he handed her, prepared to pretend it was a driver’s license until it became one in her hand at a single word from Nathan. The man at the door let them in without questioning Cora’s make-believe identification, and the two of them took a seat at the bar.

  They each ordered a beer, Cora following her companion’s lead as far as brand, and Nathan turned on his stool to look out at the room. The bar was dingy and dark and filled with so much cigarette smoke that Cora’s eyes watered, but Nathan almost tingled with glee.

  “Right,” he said as he set his half-full bottle of beer back on the bar, “I’m going to make some friends. Shall we make some friends?”

  “I don’t really—I mean, you go ahead, I’m not very big on...mingling.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  Nathan turned out to be exceptionally good at making friends. He chatted with people, bought them drinks paid for with illusions, bummed cigarettes, and Cora even saw a woman he was talking to laugh and kiss him right on the mouth.

  “Who has some cards?” Nathan asked the room, and when a deck was produced and offered to him, he took up residence at a round table near the lone window. “Right then; who wants their fortune told?” The blonde with slender hips who had kissed him earlier seemed content to linger behind him and touch him on the shoulders while he shuffled the cards, but a black-haired woman with dark copper skin took the open seat beside him. She leaned her elbow on the table and rested her chin in her hand as she grinned at him.

  “I thought you needed special cards to tell fortunes.” Her voice was lightly accented by a Spanish history, and Nathan hummed his approval.

  He scooted his chair closer to the table and lit another cigarette, exhaling the smoke away from her and nodding as he noticed Cora approach. “Only amateurs do. What’s your name, sweetheart?”

  “Maria.”

  “Maria,” he echoed with a smile, and he passed his hand over the deck of cards between them, not caring if she heard him mutter the word rale. A card pulled its way out of the deck as his hand went by, and he snatched it up before it could drop to the table, turning it in his fingers to show her the Queen of Clubs. “A dark-haired woman with a confident spirit,” he told her, and she smirked. “What is it you want to know, Maria? Looking for love, money? Want to be famous, get pregnant, live to a ripe old age?” He placed the card face up in front of her and shuffled the deck again without taking his eyes off of her.

  “I’m open to lots of possibilities,” she said, touching the Queen’s face with her fingertips. “Why don’t you just tell me what the universe has in store?”

  “Just give it to you straight, hm?” He laughed and held his cigarette in his lips, offering the deck of cards to her so that she could cut them. That done, he shuffled them one last time and called the cards he wanted, allowing her to see them pull out of the deck of their own accord. This brought an appreciative gasp and a giggle from the blonde leaning over his shoulder, but he ignored her. “Let’s see,” he said with a grin, and he turned the first card face up, showing a King of Spades. He gasped as though surprised by this turn of events, and the woman laughed, leaning over to look at the card.

  “What does it mean?”

  “The King of Spades is a dark-haired man full of ambition and want,” he explained, and he tapped the card with one finger, catching her eyes with a slow smirk. “Whatever could this mean for you?” Her smile indicated that she was onto his games, but he only lifted the next card from the table and flipped it over. “Would you look at that. A Nine of Hearts. Do you know what the Nine of Hearts means, Maria?”

  “Tell me,” she said indulgently.

  “The Nine of Hearts is a wish. It means your desires will be fulfilled. Now, let’s see, what is it you could desire? Normally the preceding card shows your want—oh, my. The dark-haired man,” he finished with a smirk, and he took a long drag from his cigarette, exhaling through his nose and pooling smoke on the table between them. “How strange,” he mused. She tilted her head at him and pushed a lock of hair behind her ear, but said nothing. “But you still have one more card.”

  He took the last card from the stack and faced it up on the table. “The Three of Spades. Oh, my. I’m afraid this is bad news, Maria. Could be very bad.”

  “What does it mean?” The poor thing actually seemed a little concerned.

  “The Three of Spades means a break in a relationship. It looks like things might be rocky for you and your dark-haired desire. Perhaps it wasn’t mean to be, long-term. What a shame.”

  She shook her head with a soft laugh. “You’re a clever one. It’s a very good trick,” she admitted with a knowing nod. “How do you do it?”

  Nathan did his best to look offended. “Trick? Madam, I am merely a messenger. The fates have spoken.” He laughed at her skeptical look. “Shall I try again? A question about your long-term future, perhaps.” He scooped up the cards and shuffled the deck again, calling three cards and laying them face up in a line in front of her.

  “What is that you keep saying? You want us to think you’re doing real magic over there, don’t you?”

  “Aren’t I?” He caught Cora’s dubious expression over the woman’s shoulder, but he only smiled at her.

  “Of course not,” Maria scoffed. “Magic isn’t real.”

  “It’s more real than reality television,” Nathan said with a mild sneer, and he leaned on the table and pointed out each card in turn with his cigarette between his fingers. “The Eight of Spades. Temptation. You can’t decide if I’m conning you, but even if I am, it’s a very clever con, and I’m very attractive. The Seven of Hearts. Someone whose affection is fickle and unreliable. I’m clearly only trying to sleep with you, but you sat down here beside me, so the thought crossed your mind as well. And you haven’t even asked for my name, so you don’t really care. The Four of Clubs. Deceit. You’re married. I can see the line on your finger where you took your ring off before you came in.”

  She hid her hand under the table and frowned at him while Cora stared open-mouthed. “I don’t know what any of those cards mean,” Maria objected. “You could be taking any cards and saying they mean whatever you want.”

  “You people,” Nathan sighed. “Never want to see what’s in front of your faces, do you? There’s a whole world out there that you’ll never understand.” He tucked his cigarette into his mouth and opened his hand in the center of the table. “Sorche.”

  A rolling, vaporous ball of blue light formed in his palm, and Cora audibly choked. It was the simplest of spells, but it was aesthetically effective. The few people gathered around the table took a noticeable step back as the light shone water-like ripples onto the surface of the wood, and Nathan looked directly into Maria’s eyes. “Touch it,” he offered. “Try to find the trick.”

  A man pulled the blonde woman away from Nathan’s side and whispered something in her ear. Cora couldn’t hear very well over the chatter and the music, but she thought the man said something about “devil work.” She couldn’t help rolling her eyes.

  Maria’s fingers disappeared into the ball of light, slipping deeper until her fingertips touched Nathan’s palm and she jerked back with a small start. She frowned at him and reached out fearlessly to lift his hand from
the table. Finding nothing underneath, she leaned under the table to check for anything incriminating, but she sat back in her chair with a puzzled look when she came up empty.

  “I can’t figure it out,” she said with a short puff of air, and Nathan closed his hand to destroy the orb, wiggling his fingers at her to show that there was nothing left.

  “That’s because there isn’t anything to figure out.” He looked up at Cora and gave a bright smile. “Are you paying attention, my love? Test later.”

  “You are crazy,” she mouthed at him behind Maria’s head.

  The door to the bar slammed open, causing Cora to jump, and a man scanned the room for a moment before approaching the table and snatching up Maria’s wrist.

  “What the hell are you doing in here?” he hissed at her. His eyes fell to her empty ring finger, and then he turned his angry scowl on Nathan. “This is how you spend your time, asshole? Hitting on men’s wives?”

  Nathan held up his hands, but his chuckle only seemed to make the stranger angrier. “Marital strife is not my problem.” He got to his feet and pushed in his chair as he looked down at Maria’s guilty face. “I’m sorry, sweetheart, but it seems our affair was fated to be brief after all.”

  “What affair?” the husband snapped, taking a step closer to Nathan.

  “Oh, for—it’s an expression,” he said, ignoring Cora’s worried gestures.

  “I’m going to show you an expression,” the man growled.

  “Honestly,” Nathan sighed. “Can none of you cuckolds ever look to your own shortcomings for the source of your wives’ indiscretions? Go about your business, my friend, and leave me out of it. You don’t want to start this fight, and you damn sure don’t want me to start it for you.”

  “What the hell did you call me?”

  Nathan looked the other man up and down briefly. He was much larger. Broad, muscular; a construction worker type. All things being equal, he probably could have snapped Nathan in half. But it wasn’t really in Nathan’s nature to keep things equal.

  “Honey, stop it,” Maria protested as he released her arm in favor of approaching Nathan with a foul glare.

  “Listen to the woman, honey,” Nathan said.

  “You listen here, you son of a bitch—”

  “That’s uncalled for,” Nathan cut him off, leaning over to put his cigarette out on the table. “Remember when you wake up tomorrow that you asked for this.” He felt one of the beads on his bracelet grow hot even before he lifted his hand. He raised his palm to the level of the man’s chest as the familiar scratches burned onto the cylindrical bead, forming one of Nathan’s favorite words.

  “Bak,” he spoke simply, and the man’s feet skid backwards across the floor as he was shoved forcefully back, crashing through a table behind him and collapsing against the bar. Nathan closed his hand in front of him as the word pije slipped from his lips, and a strangled gurgle sounded from the man on the floor. His torso crumpled, drawing cries and frightened gasps from the small gathering.

  A few people had already made for the door. Some stared in disbelief, some shouted and pressed back against each other in an attempt to distance themselves from the scene. The bartender began to dial the phone behind the bar, presumably calling the police, and Maria leapt to her husband’s side, shouting at Nathan and calling him monster.

  “He’ll live,” Nathan pointed out with a half shrug. “And I did warn him. Time to go, dear,” he called over his shoulder to Cora, who hesitated half a moment before trotting to the door after him. “Get a move on,” he urged. “We don’t need to be picked up by the regs before our dear Chaser has a chance to find us.”

  “What did you do?” she asked him as she climbed hurriedly into the passenger seat of the Jeep. “That man’s really going to live, isn’t he?”

  “Definitely. Just a bit of bruised ribs. He’ll be fine. Maybe he won’t start fights next time. Humility is good for you, you know. He’ll thank me later.”

  “You don’t seem like you have a lot of that, yourself,” Cora muttered, and he laughed.

  “Humility is good for mundanes,” he clarified. “You and I can feel just as superior as we like.” He took his hands off the steering wheel at a stop light and rubbed his hands in an attempt to stroke out the slight soreness in his tendons. He waved off Cora’s concerned look as he began to drive again. “It’s fine. You aren’t likely to strain yourself levitating glasses.”

  “That’s normal?”

  “Every spell has a cost,” he shrugged. “It’s tiring, and it’s been a busy evening. If it’s all right with you, I’d like to get some sleep now. Unless you’d rather get into a bit more trouble.”

  “I think I’ll let you decide how much trouble is enough,” she chuckled. “You’ll wear yourself out trying to look so cool all the time.”

  “Who’s trying?” He smiled at her and leaned forward to turn the radio on.

  4

  Elton could feel the lump forming at the back of his head as soon as he opened his eyes. He touched it and came away with blood on his fingertips. With a soft curse, he pulled unsteadily to his feet and looked around the abandoned apartment. Somehow, he had expected the adventurous and cavalier Nathaniel Moore to live somewhere that wasn’t quite such...crap. The carpet was worn, and the wallpaper looked on the verge of peeling away. There wasn’t much in the way of personal touches or décor; it was kind of a bare, depressingly beige place, actually. He had expected trophies, knick-knacks, something, but the only items he found that were even marginally out of the ordinary were a spare oxygen tank and some medical bills piled up on a table. The apartment still smelled of incense, and the cabinets he checked were full of bottles and jars of various unlabeled liquids, dried animal parts and bones, and numerous talismans and tokens. He hadn’t taken any of it with him, but these were certainly things he wouldn’t have wanted to leave behind.

  One object tucked away in the back of the closet pantry caught his eye. A small black box was hidden behind a half-empty sack of jasmine rice, covered in dust and forgotten. It was marked all over with chalk scratches and symbols and held closed with a simple brass latch. Elton turned the box in his hands, trying to determine its purpose, but he didn’t recognize any of the symbols drawn onto the wood. He thought he heard a faint hiss as he opened the latch to check the interior, but when he opened the lid, there was nothing inside but a few broken chicken bones, and he could sense no black magic in it. He left the open box on the shelf and turned his attention to the rest of the house.

  He searched the rooms for any hint as to where Moore could have gone or who had hit him in the head. He had only been able to see his attacker for a moment, but they had seemed small. A woman? That wouldn’t be entirely unexpected given Moore’s history. He hadn’t anticipated him having an accomplice. A callow oversight.

  The drawers in the bedroom had been turned out, but everything else had been left untouched. Behind a thin white curtain hung across the corner of the room, he found a strange altar with candles still burning. Red drapes were pinned to the wall above the table, framing a charcoal drawing of a dark man holding a simple staff. It didn’t look like anything Elton had seen before. He avoided disturbing the golden cross, myriad glass jars, statues, and bowls of unknown liquids, not certain what kinds of traps might have been left for him. He only licked his fingers to extinguish the candles. Moore had left in a hurry.

  When Elton tried to step out the front door, he hit an invisible wall that sent him stumbling back into the living room. He put a hand to his sore nose, his eyes moving instantly to the chalk marks on the door jamb.

  “Cheeky shit,” he muttered as he wiped away the lines with a simple incantation.

  If nothing else, Elton’s embarrassing failure had proven that he had found the real Nathaniel Moore. Unfortunately, the fact that he had then allowed the man to escape meant that someone’s life was in danger. He didn’t doubt for a moment that Moore would make use of the arcela airet now that he knew someone was on
his trail. He had very limited time.

  Elton climbed into his rental car and glanced at the cell phone sitting on the passenger’s seat. Missed call from Jocelyn. He knew that his wife was less than pleased with his decision to take off suddenly on the trail of an extremely cold case, but she understood his eagerness. He had been on the case for a long time, and there was no telling how long his lead would stay good. He would call her later; right now, he had to find Moore before someone got hurt. On such short notice, it was unlikely that he got on a plane, so he probably wasn’t far, but he could have gone in any direction, and there were too many witches in the area for Elton to pick up his trail inside the city. Moore was probably smart enough not to use any magic nearby anyway.

  He turned on his police scanner and drove through the streets surrounding the apartment building, listening for any trouble that could have been caused by Moore’s kind of antics. He had been flagrantly disregarding every law set down in the Concordat for at least a hundred and fifty years, and those coincided with mundane laws with unsurprising regularity.

  The laws of the Concordat were simple. Dorche, or black magic, was forbidden of course, because it just caused problems. Love spells, spells that wound, spells that kill, spells that dominate or persuade— these were detrimental to a functioning, peaceful society. In addition to his most heinous transgression, the use of the arcela airet, Moore had killed or injured countless people, both witches and mundanes. Which, of course, is how he broke the other unbreakable law of the Concordat—the law of secrecy. Remaining hidden was the only option for maintaining even a relatively peaceful world. Modern mundanes wouldn’t be able to handle real, living fairies, merfolk, banshees, or vampires, and all of the nations recognized this. Even the werewolves adhered to the Concordat for the most part, and they didn’t have a coherent society or leadership. Even dogs could recognize the importance of the laws, but Nathaniel Moore believed himself exempt.