The only way in through the back without a sledgehammer is to come to it from the dead side. Clever or coincidence, I’m not sure, but I’m leaning toward clever.
I focus my will to grasp the doorknob and turn it. It’s like trying to grab hold of a greased weasel, but eventually I get it open. Inside the room is bare. I can make out the faint outlines of furniture on the living side, but there are no clues on this side as to what’s going on.
I pull myself back to the land of the living. Experience that jet engine noise, the rush of colors slamming into me as the world takes shape.
At first I think I’ve just lost my bearings. Sometimes that happens. Dizziness washes over me, but I get control of the vertigo. But there’s something wrong. It takes me a second to place it and when I do I realize I’m probably screwed.
I can’t feel any magic.
“You sure about that address?”
I nod, worrying about mold spores. The basement space that had once been Olyphant Books (the plate glass still reads USED | NEW | ESTATE SALES; the old shelves are still lined with ancient, crumbling books) feels damp and smells damp, so it’s easy to imagine all the hungry single-celled organisms of the world breeding like mad, releasing cancerous spores into the air, killing us all.
Digory Ketterly looks at me from under his white eyebrows and over his square black glasses, his salt-and-pepper hair a little too long to be reputable. He glances at Mags and dismisses him; so far, Ketterly hasn’t spoken a word to Mags, regarding him as a temporary anomaly in his world.
“You know that’s where they took down Aednat Deasmhumhain, right?”
I blink. I have a flashback to my time with Hiram, my estranged gasam. He liked to start his lectures with a question I couldn’t answer, too, the miserable bastard.
Ketterly sighs. “Maybe a century ago. Deasmhumhain . . . she had ambition. Wild enustari, dressed like a man—short hair, three-piece suits. Bled men exclusively—that shit got the attention of all the male ustari out there, believe me. She never made it onto the global stage, but for a few years there she basically ran this city, and squeezed a lot of innocent blood out of it. Until every mage of any status in the whole state came down here and put her down.”
I picture the skinny house, trying to imagine a war on that spot: fireballs and golems and spells that warped reality—I flash to the way the house seemed to be there but not there at the same time. I tell Digs about the house and what we experienced. He leans back and rubs his face with one hand.
“That place is like radioactive from all the spells spoken and blood shed there, soaking into the ground. Kind of out of my league, Lem Vonnegan. You need someone with some heft, some experience. Saganustari, maybe. Ask your gasam.”
I shake my head, turning to watch Mags straining to reach a thick, dusty book on the top shelf, up on his tiptoes, his hand outstretched like a kid reaching for candy. “Me and Hiram aren’t on speaking terms, Digs.”
He snorts. “Still? You’re a stubborn bastard, Vonnegan. That old thief ain’t ever releasing you from your bond.” He sighs. “I can put you in touch with Volker, you hear of him?”
I think for a moment. “Maybe. The guy with the cats, right?”
It’s an ancient townhouse up in Harlem, like deep up embedded in Harlem, where money used to be, has left and come again three or four times. It’s weathered like a stone formation, made from pieces that were monumental on their own. I have Mags stand a few steps down in order to appear smaller and less likely to break everything in sight, and ring the bell. I can’t smell any magic or any blood, but Digs swears this guy is saganustari, maybe even enustari. Deep magic.
The door cracks open, and a unique smell creeps out from the house and wraps itself around me, temporarily paralyzing my brain, which dedicates 110 percent of its processing cycles to identifying the components.
“What do you want, idimustari?”
It always bothers me how the more experienced mages can always tell I’m a shitheel, a Trickster. Maybe it’s the scars, because I won’t bleed anyone but myself. “Digory Ketterly sent us.”
The old man cracks the door open a little more. He’s tall, like inhumanly tall, maybe seven fucking feet, with a long oval face that seems to sag off the skull and a shag of white hair that hangs to his shoulders and looks to have been chopped short by a dull knife. His squinted eyes flick to Mags. I stop myself from turning to glance back, but even so I’m pretty sure Mags has just waved and smiled.
Volker looks back at me. “One of Ketterly’s projects, eh?” He steps aside, opening the door. “Come in, then, come in.”
I don’t want to. The smell is something that will attach itself to me and follow me everywhere for the rest of my days. It’s musty and earthy and thick. After a moment I follow, gesturing behind me that Mags should stay put. I can’t do much for the big idiot, but I can spare Mags this smell.
Inside, there is barely room to move; piles of newspapers and cardboard boxes fill everything except a space near the door that allows them to be cracked open, and a narrow lane that leads deep into the shadows of the house. I glance down; two large—like, overly, unexpectedly large—cats are peering up at me, sitting there with their orange tails curled around their paws. Their stare is steady and intelligent, yellow eyes and fierce, thick whiskers.
As I stare, one of them yawns, showing me its teeth.
I follow Volker down the lane, sidestepping cats along the way. They’re all huge, coming up to my knees, and they all could not be less impressed with me.
I find myself in the kitchen, similarly stuffed full of boxes and junk, except for the lane and small areas around the appliances. Volker is standing at the small sliver of counter that isn’t covered in stuff. He has a pile of dead rats there. He follows my eyes and turns back, unsmiling.
“Like you, I avoid bleeding humans,” he says, his voice deep, his words slurry, like he doesn’t do much talking. “My Pride hunts for me, brings them alive.”
I nod as if this is perfectly reasonable. Mags and I have nothing against rats, either. A sleek black cat, even larger than the others, leaps up onto the counter and sits there next to Volker, grooming itself while somehow appearing to keep one eye on me.
“Ketterly told me you might be able to help me with information about Seventy-Five and a Half Bedford Street and Aednat Deasmhumhain,” I say, watching the cat.
He purses his lips and looks happier. “Yes? An interesting subject! You have seen the house, yes? The building that is not really there? I have made a study of it.”
I nod. “A Glamour. A very good Glamour.”
He shakes his head. “No! Not a Glamour at all! It is an extrusion of reality. It is one of the greatest spells ever cast, and it was cast under such pressure! Ustari come to kill and destroy Deasmhumhain, and she not only resists and counterattacks, she manages that.” He snorts. “They were right to resist her, to come in force. Deasmhumhain would have destroyed us all if she’d been allowed to prosper!” He sighs happily. “I have studied Bedford Street for my book.”
I am instantly terrified he’ll start telling me about his book. “What do you mean ‘extrusion of reality’?”
Volker is getting excited. “Pancakes!” he shouts, and the black cat leaps off the counter, startled, and zooms past me, making me flinch. “You must think of different realities as pancakes stacked on top of each other. The barrier between them is thin, but difficult to pierce. When you break through, it is like a cone: You pull some of your own universe in after you, create a bubble. Deasmhumhain may be one of the only ustari to have ever managed this.”
I blink. This is way above my education.
Volker holds up a hand, sensing my confusion. “Imagine: A rubber sheet. You poke your finger into it. It distends into the space beyond, but does not break. That’s what you have at Bedford Street. Realities overlapping, and bringing their own rules with them.”
I am suddenly glad Mags is outside, because if he asks me to explain this to him I�
��d have to resort to threats and abuse.
“My advice?” Volker says. “Stay the fuck away from there. If Deasmhumhain did something to cause this, there’s a plan behind it, and you don’t want to find out what it is.”
I sigh, a cold bubble of dread in my belly. “I know what it is: She’s siphoning gas from us, one bleeding idiot at a time. But I don’t know why.”
Volker smiles again as a gray and white cat the size of a Greyhound bus leaps onto the counter and then onto his shoulders in what looks like one graceful dance move. “You could ask her. If she’s on the other side, as you say, siphoning, you might contact her.”
He clearly thinks this is a ridiculous, terrible idea. But then my whole life, from the moment I showed up in New York looking for a magician to teach me about magic, has been a long list of ridiculous and terrible ideas. I nod. “I think I will.”
I try to call fire to my fingertips. It’s one of the first spells every mage learns. It’s a good test to make sure everything works.
Nothing happens.
I’ve heard of shit like this before, but this is the first time I’ve run into it. Places covered in runes and spells where magic flat-out won’t work. It’s like a Faraday cage. Nothing goes in, nothing comes out. Nothing works inside.
They’re great mage prisons. Or mage traps. I’m not sure which one this is.
The room itself is done up like a nineteenth-century salon. Guttering gas lamps on the wall, crushed velvet seats, a wooden table, the veneer worn through until bare wood is visible. Real antiques. How the hell they got gaslight in here when nobody’s used it in a hundred years is beyond me.
There’s a door leading to the rest of the house and the windows and door leading outside are here, but they’re boarded over on the other side with the new construction.
I check the desk drawers, look for something with a name on it. Checkbook, credit card statements, gas bill, anything. The drawers have fountain pens, bottles of ink, stationery. The last drawer I hit pay dirt, a journal.
It’s a heavy book, thick. A meticulously organized diary of someone named Deasmhumhain that starts about ten years back. I skim through it. Most of it’s in English, but there are words I’ve never heard before. Ustari, Gasam, Idimustari, Enustari. What is this, Greek?
As it gets closer to the present the runes I found carved on Hobo Bill start popping up. There’s talk about magic in the blood. About spells that only work “over here,” and not “over there.” I’m not clear on what that means until I hit a passage from about five years ago that makes no sense on its own, but taken into context with everything else gets me thinking.
In this world the magic is everywhere. In the air, the water, not locked away in blood. Maddening that it’s so useless to me. And outside this small bubble of my world the Words are useless. The rules here are different. But the tunnel I’ve created between my world and this one through the land of shades is growing. I think I’ve figured out how to tap into the spirits of the dead. I’ll still need the occasional Bleeder, but once I have things established I’ll be able to grow the bubble faster and larger than ever before. Can I encompass all of New York? All of this world? I don’t know.
But I’m going to try.
My mind races. Puzzle pieces clicking into place. If I have this right, the reason I can’t feel the magic, or even cast a spell, isn’t because I’m blocked from it, it’s that I’m not even in my own fucking world.
I let that sink in for a minute.
This bubble I’m in is connected through the land of the dead to Deasmhumhain’s original home. A place where the magic works differently. Where it’s in the blood. And she’s using the souls of the dead to make the bubble bigger, bring more of her reality into mine.
That’s not good.
It occurs to me that I have a straight razor, no magic, and I’m in a house that’s part of an alternate universe where a mage who can travel between worlds is living.
This is my cue to leave.
I open my straight razor and head to the door. I get three steps when I feel a tugging at the back of my mind. It’s magic. I can tell that much. But it’s nothing like any magic I’ve felt before.
The bottom drops out of my mind, I stumble, catch myself on the wall as everything shifts and goes wrong. I can hear a voice. Words in a language I don’t understand, but there’s a power to them.
I can feel a shape in front of me, forming as if from smoke. The faintest outline of a man. I haul myself to my feet, reach for it, grab something solid.
And yank.
It’s representative of my low station in life that breaking into a house at night is firmly in my skill set. It doesn’t even take much gas; I’m good with the Words, and all I need is a pinprick on my thumb, a bead of red, and two syllables to make the lock on the basement entrance of 75 1/2 Bedford Street click.
“You remember her spell?”
I nod. Mags believes memory to be a superpower. I have always been able to pick out the Words of a spell, understand the grammar, and cut away the bullshit. Celine tried hiding hers with nonsense sounds, but I have a good idea of how it’s constructed. I’m not feeling so strong; I’d bled for Celine earlier, and it’s going to take another healthy bleed to cast her spell. I take a deep breath as I roll up my sleeve, take out my switchblade, and drag the edge along my forearm, adding a new line to the mesh of white and pink scars there.
I begin speaking the Words.
This time it feels like something invisible is opening up under me, a chasm I can’t see but can definitely fall into. Vertigo threatens to take me, and I have to strain to keep speaking, to stay upright, to hang on to reality as I know it. It’s a good spell: elegant, well-constructed. More powerful than it seems at first. Celine isn’t much more than a Trickster herself; someone very powerful and very smart taught her this.
As I speak, I can feel the greedy universe pulling the gas out of me, and it gets harder and harder to speak clearly, to focus. As I bleed, I get weak.
When I finish, there’s a strange sensation of sucking, almost similar to when Mags fucks up a spell and the magical energy collapses like a small explosion, except in reverse. It’s as if something has been pierced, and all the air in the room is being sucked away. And I have the sense that I can reach through that hole, touch something, listen . . . speak.
Tentatively, I push my thoughts at it. This is all new territory for me, this invisible shit, and I’m not sure how it works.
“Hello?” I say, my voice hoarse.
Suddenly, something grabs on to me, roughly. Physically, I’m paralyzed, but the sensation is violent, like someone grabbing you by the spiritual lapels and pushing you up against a wall.
A voice, then: You in on this? You part of this? You’re fucking up my town.
I struggle, but have no idea what to do. This spell is beyond my pay grade. I’m a con artist. I’m not an interdimensional enustari. “Who are you?” If the answer is Aednat Deasmhumhain it might be the last thing I ever ask.
There’s a moment of hesitation. I’m Eric Carter, the voice says, crackling like a long-distance radio transmission. Who the fuck are you?
My eyes tell me I’m grasping empty air; my hands and ears tell me something different. I can feel rough cloth, the solidity of a person. Hear the voice crackling and popping like a bad mic. But I can’t see anyone.
“Well? I showed you mine, now show me yours.”
Lem, the voice says after a long pause. I feel him trying to pull away, and I tighten my grip. He freezes. Lem Vonnegan. No, not my work. Not enough gas for me to pull this off. What are you? Saganustari? Enustari?
Huh. So that’s how you pronounce those words. Do I bluff? Tell the truth? If Lem is with Deasmhumhain I could be in trouble. But if he’s not, then maybe I can use him to pop her ghost-eating bubble.
“I have no idea what the hell those even mean,” I say, making my decision. “We don’t have whatever those are over here. I’m a necromancer. And I’m going to tak
e a big leap of faith here and say you’re not working for Deasmhumhain.”
I start to mold a spell in my mind. A quick fire spell in case he tries something weird. It might not do anything to him, since it seems he’s not entirely here, but I bet it’ll hurt. Then I remember I can’t cast over here and let it fizzle before it starts.
No. Voice wary. If he’s not trying the same thing on his side I’ll be surprised. I’m here to find out what the hell she’s doing.
“How much do you know?”
How much do you know?
Oh for fuck’s sake. “Short version. Deasmhumhain came to this world from yours through a tunnel through the dead side and built a bubble of her universe so she could use her magic and now she’s making it bigger through blood and feeding it ghosts. That about the size of it?”
Pause. Y-yes?
“Excellent. Now you tell me what you know.”
Lem fills in the blanks. Or some of them. He didn’t know about the ghosts. Didn’t know how Deasmhumhain came over here. He’s fascinated by the idea of a land of the dead.
Turns out Deasmhumhain’s over a hundred years old. Some kind of ubermage over in Lem’s world. She took a runner when a bunch of mages came after her. Part of her world came to mine, and part of mine went to hers. She’s been having an apprentice bleed for her and send the power through the tunnel, plucking ghosts to convince the rubes. Only not all the ghosts are coming from the right place.
We trade tidbits on how each of our magic works. All the power in his world is locked up in blood. The more blood, the more power.
“So you have to bleed somebody if you want to cast a spell?”
Every time.
“Dude, that’s fucked up.”
Says the guy who talks to dead people.
“Point. I need to kick Deasmhumhain out of here.”
And bring her back here? Lem says. No thanks.
“If she succeeds, what makes you think she won’t go back to kick all y’all’s asses? Anyway, I have a plan.”
Urban Allies: Ten Brand-New Collaborative Stories Page 28
