Mortal Sins (Conspiracy of Angels short story)

by Michelle Belanger

  Restlessly, she tapped her cane on the tiles. “I’m not an idiot,” she snapped. “But as you say, you have the ring. You’ll find him now. The only question is when. I might as well get something for my trouble.”

  “He’ll hate you,” I warned.

  “He hates me already.” Her wrinkled face contracted until it was nothing but lines. “Fool boy threw everything away for that little Mooliachi. Now,” she said, squaring her shoulders as much as she was able. “Swear to the bargain.”

  I hovered by the doors, my fingers clenched around the ring.

  “It’s a trick. You’ll just come after me.”

  “So make that part of the bargain,” she purred. “It suits my interests if you don’t come after me and my own. Mutual non-aggression?”

  “Not forever,” I snapped. “Not if I find you’ve done something else.”

  Her lips flattened into a pale line. “Set a limit, then,” she hissed. “A year?”

  “A month,” I answered. My eyes drifted to the people around us. They carried on, oblivious.

  She tapped her cane with a frown.

  “Six.”

  “Three.”

  “Done,” she said with a subtle grin. “Swear to the bargain, and we can conclude.”

  I studied the stooped old woman, hesitating. She was crazy if she expected me to swear on my Name. An oath like that was binding in ways I found suffocating. Tuscanetti hadn’t earned that much. But a gentleman’s contract—that I could manage.

  “Favor for favor, action for action,” I echoed, hoping it sounded sufficiently formal. “You release the girl’s spirit and tell me where to find Dominick, then some time down the road, I’ll help you with something non-lethal. And for the next three months, we leave each other alone. You have my word.”

  A broad and ugly smile split her face.

  “So let it be witnessed,” the witch declared.

  She raised her walking stick and struck the tiles with a resounding crack. A burst of power spread out with the sound, tousling my hair in its updraft. Maybe I’d avoided swearing on my Name, but this was still way more potent than a nod and a handshake. I wondered exactly how deep a hole I’d dug for myself this time.

  In clipped and formal tones, she said, “I’ll release the girl’s remains before the next full moon. There are rituals to be observed in unwinding all that power. As for Dominick,” she spat. “My son lives on the second floor of a house off East 152nd, on Utopia—and don’t think this is some maudlin reconciliation on my part. He nearly spoiled ten generations of careful breeding. I do not want to see him. Let him live out his days. He has nothing I want.”

  “I’ll check on her,” I warned. “To make sure you’ve let her go.”

  “I’m sure you will.”

  With a sneer, she turned and shuffled into the crowd. Ominously, she called over her shoulder.

  “I look forward to future dealings with you, Zaquiel.”

  She made a cutting gesture with one bony hand. The swirling motes of her cloaking spell flared briefly, then winked out like embers scattered on the wind. In the wake of their light, the crone vanished. I stood there cursing myself a few minutes, and wondering if it wouldn’t have been smarter just to kill her.

  People began to stare again.

  A tapping on the window behind me made me nearly jump out of my skin. It was Lil, gesturing impatiently for me to join her outside.

  7

  I couldn’t shove my way through the revolving door fast enough. I marched up to Lil.

  “Where the hell have you been?” I demanded.

  She gave me a look like I’d just asked why the earth went round the sun. “Getting work done.” She gestured toward her car, which was parked half on the curb, its hazards flashing. “You did your job and kept her distracted. Now let’s go.”

  “Was that the plan?” I grumbled indignantly. “Keep her distracted? Would have been great if you’d mentioned a plan.”

  “You’re a smart guy. I thought you’d figure it out on your own,” she said with a shrug. “Worked fine last time.”

  “Sure,” I responded. “And almost got me devoured for all eternity.”

  “Quit your bellyaching,” she snapped. “You talked. I fixed things. Now get in the car.”

  My hand stalled with the passenger-side door half-open. “Hold on a minute,” I demanded. “What do you mean you ‘fixed things?’”

  She ducked into the driver’s seat. Her door slammed. The Sebring lurched as she threw it into gear, already starting to pull away.

  “Fuck me,” I grumbled. It was dive into the car, or get left standing on the curb.

  I dove.

  Lil continued without even glancing over to see if I’d made it intact.

  “You get anything useful while you two were posturing in there?” she asked as I yanked my door closed.

  “I know where to find Dom,” I said, repeating the address the crone had shared with me. Lil made an impatient sound and thrust her smartphone into my hands.

  “Just put it into the map function,” she said.

  She peeled onto Superior, and I almost lost the phone to the sudden momentum. A lumbering salt truck pulled in front of her and we both nearly kissed the windshield as she braked. The dirt-caked city vehicle trundled lazily along, taking up nearly two lanes of traffic and subsequently forcing our progress to a crawl.

  During the relative lull, I strapped my seatbelt on. Though I was effectively immortal, Lil’s driving remained a great motivator to follow the “Click-It or Ticket” law. She snarled at the salt truck, slamming her palms furiously against the steering wheel. I finished with the map function and snapped the smartphone into its hands-free cradle.

  “Are you going to tell me what the hell you were up to while I was getting useful stuff like his address?” I asked.

  Instead of an answer, she spat a scathing comment about the salt truck driver’s disreputable parentage, then swerved into oncoming traffic to get around. She briefly played chicken with an old Cadillac, then cut back to her own lane at the last possible instant. A massive pothole stretched in front of us and Lil hit it hard enough to shake loose a few fillings.

  “Do you have to drive like you’re possessed?” I choked.

  “You’re immortal,” she snapped. “Suck it up.”

  “This body isn’t!” I objected.

  She aimed for another pothole out of sheer spite. I heard a whump and the whole car shuddered. Then she whipped onto Ontario, playing dodge ’em with the slower cars—which was all of them. The whump sound came again, except this time there was no pothole.

  “What the hell is that?”

  “Benny must be waking up,” she observed. “Don’t worry. The trunk’s warded.”

  “Shit, Lil,” I choked. “Stop. Stop now, and turn around.”

  “Don’t get your boxers in a twist,” she said. “I said it’s safe. He can’t cast.”

  “No,” I insisted. “You don’t understand. We have to let him go. I negotiated a non-violent agreement. Hostages weren’t part of that.”

  She turned and gaped at me—nearly driving us off a bridge in the process.

  “You,” she said, genuinely incredulous. “Non-violent. You’re kidding, right?” A rapid series of thumps shook the back seat, and the car shimmied as we sped down the road.

  “I gave my word,” I replied. “This goes against the arrangement.”

  “You and oaths,” she spat. “We’ve discussed this.” She drummed her nails on the steering wheel as she drove. Benny started thrashing again, and she flicked her eyes to the rearview mirror.

  “It was the best solution, given the situation,” I insisted. In my head I added, Because I thought you up and left. Maybe she could hear me anyway.

  Lil punched me in the upper arm. “I went through the trouble of catching a Streghoneri for you, and now he’s trussed up in my trunk, flyboy. You better not change your mind again if we let him go.” She turned her attention back to the road lo
ng enough to swerve around a rattletrap pickup going approximately three miles an hour, then rolled through a three-way stop. “Come on, Zack. I know you want to kill that asshat as much as I do. Didn’t you say he’s the one who made your ghost?”

  It was tempting—really tempting. I had no doubt that Benny was a murderer, and probably several times over. He wore violence like a comfy second skin, and Momma Tuscanetti had all but confirmed it—the girl had been killed because she wasn’t the right color to be accepted into their family. That was a miserable reason for murder, but then, the twentieth century had seen a lot of monstrous things done in the name of “purity.”

  “She didn’t ask me to avenge her,” I answered. I was staring at my knuckles. They bore scars from fights I could no longer recall. I wasn’t that different from Benny, when I thought about it. Violence clung to me, and I was even comfortable with the impulse. But that didn’t mean I had to give in to it.

  With quiet fervor, I said, “She asked me to get a message to someone she loved. I think the ghost has the right idea on this. No one dies tonight.”

  Lil sighed like a child denied a trip to Disneyland. “All right then. Better hang onto something.”

  She tapped the brakes, then banked the car in a U-turn so tight I thought the Sebring would go up on two wheels—or flip over completely. Reflexively I seized the armrest, cursing under my breath. Once the centripetal force stopped making the convertible feel like a starship during red alert, Lil turned her attention from the road, and shot me a smile stitched from cunning and mayhem.

  “Don’t worry, Zack,” she said. “I know just the place to dump him.”

  * * *

  There was a construction site a couple blocks away from Aradia’s. Lil pulled in, parking the Sebring next to a ramshackle trailer. Rummaging through her purse, she produced a little pewter charm. In the stuttering glow of a nearby streetlight, she examined the crudely stamped disk of metal, then shook her head with a silent frown.

  Reaching again into the bottomless handbag, pushing aside her pearl-handled Derringer, she continued to dig.

  “You have to leave him alive,” I reminded.

  “Oh ye of little faith.” She savored the irony as she pronounced each word, then found what she was seeking, flipping an enameled bit of metal in the air with a look of triumph. I did a double take. Painted on the charm was an image of Warner Brothers’ odiferous Casanova, Pepé Le Pew.

  “Do I even want to know?” I muttered.

  “If you really want to keep this bloodless, we can’t have Benny-boy or any of his people figuring out who took him,” she answered, catching the amulet between her thumb and forefinger. She held it about an inch from my face. “This will cancel my trace, and make it really unpleasant for anyone who tries to employ tracking magic. Problem solved.”

  Amulets were sort of Lil’s thing. I didn’t know how they worked, and I’d never been curious enough to ask, but between the charmed objects, the spirit animals she could call up on a whim, and her talent for swift and merciless destruction, Lil was a one-woman Special Forces squad.

  “Sit tight,” she told me. “I’ll set it up so they can find him within the next twenty-four hours. He’ll be cold and pissed as hell, but it won’t kill him.”

  “Sure you don’t need a hand?” I asked as she opened her door and stepped out of the car. “That guy probably weighs a good three hundred pounds.” She popped her head back in, russet curls falling forward to only partially cover her magnetic cleavage.

  “The charm will only cover me, Einstein. Besides, I didn’t need help the first time. I’ve got Lulu.”

  The thrumming purr of a great cat ghosted to my ears, and something bumped against the passenger-side door with enough force to jostle the entire car. Lil’s spirit lion stood inches away. She turned golden eyes on me, and then rubbed her face against the side mirror, nearly tearing it from the Sebring. It was a hell of a trick, since the lioness wasn’t a creature of flesh and blood.

  “You named your lion Lulu?”

  “I didn’t name her, stupid.” Lil huffed and straightened away from the door. “That’s just her name. Now wait here, and don’t cause trouble.”

  For once, I didn’t argue. While she worked I kept my head down, idly tracing the pathways of old, white scars etched across the knuckles of my hand.

  * * *

  Lil finished getting Benny off our hands. When she was done, Lulu the lioness trotted off on paws the size of dinner plates.

  Climbing back into the car, Lil headed for the exit. We pulled back onto the road, and arrived at Dominick’s house on Utopia at half-past ten. It wasn’t a large building—all of the homes on this truncated side-street were relatively small.

  Painted the color of old coffee grounds, it had peeling trim and a second story porch that sagged in the middle. One of the gutters looked as if the next strong wind might tear it down, but the walk was neatly shoveled and the yard—what little was visible beneath the scattering of snow—was tidily maintained. Cheery Christmas lights twinkled in one lone tree, out of step with the current holiday.

  All of the insanity of the night had been hurtling toward this point, yet now I sat in the car, uncertain how to proceed. I had to go up and knock, obviously. Return the ring. Pass along the spirit’s message—but how was I supposed to start that conversation? Dominick—assuming he was home, assuming he even still lived here—had known the dead woman more than fifty years ago. Since then, he’d left his family. He had probably moved on with his life—

  “You going to sit there and brood all night?” Lil inquired. She smacked my arm, but the blow lacked her usual spite. I studied her face for a long moment—a proud face, fiercely beautiful with full red lips, warm bronze skin, and flashing gray eyes that forever belied her inhuman nature. Her bone structure reminded me of the pictures I’d seen of her sister Lailah—the woman I’d apparently been dating, but couldn’t even recall.

  A sharp sense of loss welled up, stealing my breath.

  “Have I done stuff like this before?”

  Lil looked away. “You won’t like my answer.”

  “Tell me anyway,” I urged.

  Lil drummed her nails on the steering wheel. She made a show of gazing at the house, though I was pretty sure she wasn’t really seeing it. I resisted the urge to reach out and turn her so she faced me. She tensed a moment, as if sensing the very thought, then gave a slow exhalation of breath.

  “The old Zack believed in justice, but his way. Any time our paths crossed, they crossed in death. Mortals only counted as collateral damage. He never went out of his way to hurt innocents, but he didn’t make much effort to help them, either. ‘Individual lives are too brief to matter,’” she explained, adding, “And that’s a quote, Zack.”

  I cupped the old engagement ring in the palm of my hand, tracing its endless curve with one finger. The power invested in the little relic made the metal thrum faintly, and if I concentrated, I could feel the echoes of emotions clinging to it—joy, love, nostalgia, and the bitter pang of loss. If Lil was telling the truth—and I had no reason to believe otherwise—then the person I was, who I had been, wouldn’t even have bothered to pick the relic up.

  He would never have looked twice into the pleading eyes of the ghost, let alone dug as deeply into the source of her misery. He would simply have walked along, willfully ignorant to her heartache and loss, unable to appreciate that the life taken from her was a tragedy because it was the only one she had.

  “I’m not that guy anymore,” I reminded myself, and for the first time, the words weren’t shadowed by the specter of regret. I pocketed the ring, then stepped from the car and strode up to Dominick’s house.

  Lil didn’t offer to follow me.

  8

  The second-floor apartment was accessible from a long flight of stairs. They were high and narrow, and the carpet in the middle of each step was worn down to the backing.

  Little collections of everyday detritus rested at intervals along
the climb—a milk crate of cleaning supplies, stacks of old newspapers bundled with twine, a paper bag full of what looked like secondhand toys for a small dog. Cobwebs and dust hung like a pall over everything.

  Tiny wards were etched along the walls—weak and nearly invisible. They amplified the impression of dilapidation and disuse, weaving the subtle suggestion that there was no point in pressing on. Despite the wards, I made it to the top of the landing and, after a moment of feeling awkward, knocked on the door.

  There was no answer. The blare of a television chattered inanely through the heavy wood of the door, so I knocked again. Based on the bag of toys on the stairs, I half expected the shrill bark of some small, excitable canine. Nothing. Then the creak of the floorboards. Muted shuffling. The babbling television fell silent.

  A moment later, the door jerked open a crack. Rheumy brown eyes in a deeply lined face peered under the links of a security chain. For a startled instant, I wondered if the old witch had sent me to the wrong address. If this was Momma Tuscanetti’s first-born, the years hadn’t been kind.

  Only one way to test it.

  “I’m looking for Dominick Tuscanetti,” I said. “Does he live here?”

  The old man’s features twisted and he moved to slam the door in my face—except I’d stuck my boot between it and the frame. Steel toes. Gotta love them.

  “I’ll take that as a yes,” I said. “Look. I know it’s late, and the last thing you need is some weird guy in a biker jacket pounding at your door, but I found something that you need to see.”

  “Dominick Tuscanetti’s dead,” the old man grumbled. His voice was a frail echo of Benny’s. Unlike his brother, the years had whittled him down to a gaunt specter of a man. Maybe he lost the fringe benefits when he’d cut ties with the family. I remained certain it was Dominick, however. The face from the old photograph clung to life somewhere deep under furrows of worry lines and a corona of wispy, white hair.

  Wordlessly, I held out the ring.

  The old man’s jaw went slack enough that he was in danger of losing his dentures.