The Initiate

by James L. Cambias

  But on the last day of September Sam got a text from Lucas: “come 2 lunch grand cent oyster bar urgent.”

  He took a cab to spare his knee. The noise level in the oyster bar at lunchtime was such that no eavesdropper, human or spirit, could make out a word of what they said. They sat side by side at the bar with a dozen Prince Edward Island oysters each, and conducted their conversation by leaning over and shouting in each others’ ears.

  “I need you to eliminate Zadith, soon.”

  “How come?”

  “He knows Stone’s name. The fat fool didn’t tell me until just now. You must get rid of Zadith before Stone becomes Master of the Manhattan Circle.”

  “What protections does he have? Zadith, I mean.”

  “A great many. I have a list. You know he isn’t really alive, yes?”

  “Moreno told me. How soon is soon?”

  “Before Halloween. That’s when Stone takes office.” Lucas passed him an envelope holding a single folded sheet, which Sam slipped into his pocket.

  “That’s only a month!”

  “As I said, I only just found out. Can you do it? Be honest.”

  Sam finished his last oyster as he thought. He had no reluctance to do it, that was certain. Whatever Zadith was, he was no longer human. The only question was could Sam do it? How do you kill someone who isn’t really alive?

  “Well?”

  “Yes,” he answered. “I can do it. I may need some help—I’ll let you know what I need in a couple of days.”

  Zadith didn’t look like he went out much, so Sam had to arrange an assault on what was probably the most magically protected building in the city.

  From their lunch meeting Sam went directly downtown to the Department of Buildings offices and used magic to convince the young man in the archive that he was a legitimate researcher with a legitimate reason for looking at the remodeling blueprints for the Pythian building, where Zadith lived. It had been built in the twenties as a Knights of Pythias temple, then passed through various incarnations before being converted to luxury condos. Relying on his own memories of his visit to Zadith with Moreno, Sam sketched out a partial floor plan.

  He consulted Lucas’s laser-printed list of Zadith’s defenses. Of course it wasn’t handwritten. Sam was willing to bet money that a police DNA test could find no trace of Lucas on the page. The list was an impressive one; Zadith had spent the past thirty years making his condominium into a magical fortress.

  Lucas had identified three watching spirits bound into the bas-reliefs of the building, in front and back at ground level and one on the roof. One of the Assyrian bulls over the entrance actually held a bound lamassu spirit, presumably ready to take physical form to protect Zadith if enemies tried to force their way in.

  Sam had already experienced the illusion cloaking the fifth floor, and apparently it even extended to the windows. The windows were also enchanted with strong, permanent spirit-banishing spells. According to Lucas, Zadith renewed those spells twice a year, and cloaked them in additional layers of enchantment to conceal their nature from anyone snooping about. Half a dozen spirits circled the building endlessly, watching and guarding. Exactly how Lucas knew all that Sam could only guess; Sam was starting to appreciate how many decades Lucas had put into gathering information and making plans, even before he found someone willing to be his assassin.

  That accounted for all the permanent enchantments on the building, but gave Sam no clue about what might be waiting within Zadith’s apartment, or bound to his person. A man willing to turn his own body into an animated mummy presumably also had protective spirits around him, and probably a bunch of magical guardians on speed dial. Sam began to wonder if anything would be able to crack Zadith’s defenses.

  Sam took to hanging out on Seventieth Street, but found that keeping Zadith’s condominium in view wasn’t simple. There weren’t any convenient coffee shops or bars in the whole block, and simply standing around on the sidewalk made him feel very conspicuous. Finally he resorted to going without a shower or shave and parking himself on doorsteps or in alleyways with a hand-lettered cardboard sign asking for handouts. It was a great way to keep watch, and he found himself wondering how many of the city’s other panhandlers were undercover cops or investigators of some sort.

  He had to stop performing the ritual to open his Inner Eye on the mornings when he went to watch the building, as the bound spirits guarding it could tell when he was looking at them. None of them were as powerful as Feng’s dragon, but the sheer number was staggering.

  He didn’t dare talk to any of the building staff, or even the other residents; he had to assume all of them were controlled by Zadith to some degree. But—out of his panhandler disguise—he did speak to doormen and security guards at the other condos in the block, asking about the Pythian and its occupants. He barely needed to use magic; unlike Moreno, Zadith didn’t buy expensive whisky for anyone.

  At night he watched the illusions cloaking Zadith’s living quarters. Sam could see people inside some of the nonexistent apartments on the fifth floor, though careful study over multiple nights revealed that they repeated every evening.

  Finally, he took the risky step of buying a little quad-rotor drone with a camera and flying it around the building at night. The structure was architecturally interesting, so he had at least a plausible excuse if anyone noticed and somehow traced the drone to where he sat in a rented car around the corner. Looking at the building through cameras did let him see past the illusions on the fifth floor: He could see that the windows were all dark, covered by fitted opaque blackout shades.

  The more Sam studied the Pythian building, the more impregnable it seemed. Even if he could somehow evade the guardian spirits long enough to break into Zadith’s floor, he still had to face more protections there, and all of it had to be done without anyone seeing him. Maybe he could find a way to lure Zadith out?

  A week’s work provided him with some useful facts. As he had suspected, Zadith never left the building. The good-looking young man who served him did. In fact, he spent most of his time elsewhere. Typically he arrived about dawn, looking disheveled, and disappeared inside until midafternoon. At three or so he went out again for an hour of yoga and cross-fit exercise followed by grocery shopping. From the amount he bought, Sam guessed that the young man was the only one who actually ate anything. Once a week he took a cab to Chinatown and bought herbs and live animals.

  He went out every evening, looking very sharp in bleeding-edge fashion from Milan. Sam followed him a few times, and satisfied himself that the boy was basically living the life of a well-funded man-about-town: dinners at the city’s most expensive restaurants, drinks at the hippest bars, a little discreet cocaine now and again, classical music concerts, clubbing after midnight—and most nights saw him going home with ridiculously hot girls.

  In a Brooklyn bar with eye-watering drink prices Sam risked being recognized in order to sit near Zadith’s servitor and get a good look at him. His Inner Eye showed no spirits lurking about the young man. Apparently Zadith didn’t care how he spent his time. If he was feeding off the boy it was hard to see any effect. He was still as absurdly good-looking as ever, and he certainly didn’t seem to be wasting away. If anything he looked a bit fatter than when Sam had seen him the first time.

  And that was when the penny dropped. Sam got out of the bar as quickly as he could, and called Lucas right away.

  “I know how to get Zadith. At least, I know what has to be done, but you have to teach me how to do it.”

  “Do you know what time it is? What’s going on?”

  “I have to meet with you as soon as possible. I need to know everything about exorcisms and how to trap ghosts.”

  “Tomorrow. Rent a car and cross the Hudson by ferry at the turning of the tide. Meet me at the bookstore in Woodland Park.”

  Sam went home but was too excited to sleep. It was nearly dawn when he finally dropped off. He was up again by ten, and crossed the George Washi
ngton Bridge precisely at noon, as the tide peaked and began to go down.

  At the big-box bookstore Lucas sat in the cafe section, ostentatiously reading a copy of Magic for Dummies. When he saw Sam he put down the book, tapped it, and went off to the men’s room. Sam took his seat, flipped through the book, and found a note directing him to a particular grave in Laurel Grove Cemetery, just across the Passaic River.

  Sam got there first, and after a few minutes wondered if he had misunderstood the instructions. But then Lucas turned up lugging an enormous picnic basket and a rolled Turkish carpet. “We may as well make ourselves comfortable while we talk,” he said as he unrolled the carpet on the grass and began unpacking the basket.

  “I know how to get Mr. Z.,” said Sam. “I mean, I know what to do, but I’m not sure I can do it myself. I’m going to need your help.”

  “Do you mean you want me to participate?”

  “I’m afraid so. See, I realized something about those eye-candy rent boys he keeps around.”

  “His catamites?”

  “Nope. That’s the cover story, but he’s not fucking them. How could he? He can barely move his lips to talk—I think his dick would literally fall off if he tried to have sex nowadays. No, he’s possessing them. It’s Zadith who’s going out every night, eating and drinking, doing coke and E, and hooking up with anything that moves. That explains why he goes through them so fast. They get fat and addicted and probably catch fifty kinds of venereal diseases.”

  Lucas looked delighted. “This calls for a toast.” He took a pair of champagne flutes out of the basket and opened a demi-bottle of Prosecco. “To a masterful bit of analysis.” He took a generous swallow, but then his expression hardened again. “Why do you need me? Why not just put a bullet in the back of his vessel’s head?”

  Sam hadn’t thought of that, and for a moment his mouth went dry at the thought of murdering the (relatively) innocent young man whose body Zadith controlled. He shook his head. “Would that get Zadith? Wouldn’t he just bounce back to his regular body?”

  “Good point. The shock might kill one of us, but if Zadith has been doing this for years, he probably can survive being disembodied for a while. All right, what’s your idea?”

  “Just treat Zadith like a case of demonic possession: do an exorcism and then bind his spirit into something. It only has to last a couple of days.”

  “I want him permanently removed.”

  “Oh, he will be. With his spirit trapped, all we have to do is call up the NYPD and tell them there’s a dead body in his apartment. They go in, find Zadith—”

  “—Who actually is a dead body, yes—”

  “—And they’ll take him to the medical examiner!”

  “Ah!” said Lucas, and raised his glass of Prosecco in another toast before draining it. “Even if Zadith can find his body again before his spirit dissipates, it will be missing a number of important bits. Very clever. I can instruct you in how to perform the rituals, but I cannot assist you directly.”

  “I’ve never done this before. I need your help!”

  “You forget. I have sworn oaths. I’m afraid that by explaining your plan you have made it impossible for me to lend a hand. Not directly.”

  Sam wondered if Lucas was actually bound—or was this just a ploy to avoid getting his hands dirty in case Sam failed?

  “The actual exorcism should be fairly simple,” Lucas continued. “I rather doubt the young man actually invites Zadith into his mind, so we will have an ally—an inside man, so to speak.”

  “The big problem is that I don’t know where he’s going to be, so I can’t prepare anything in advance. It all has to be portable and fast. That’s why I need your help.”

  “Yes. We must choose the day carefully. A Friday night would be ideal—Friday is Isis’s day, an auspicious time for casting out unclean spirits. And Saturday, of course, is the ideal time for bindings of all kinds. Saturn is also Osiris, which should work in our favor against Zadith. Twilight on a Friday would be best—the transition between the two days. I shall consult the Book of Coming Forth by Day for some incantations. How’s your ancient Egyptian?”

  “I can read it out phonetically, but I don’t really speak it.”

  Lucas shrugged. “It will have to do. Can you remain undetected while you chant in Egyptian in some public place?”

  “I’ll figure something out. I guess I can try to work it while he’s at dinner.”

  “I regret that we have to be so rushed and sloppy, but I am afraid of what may happen if Zadith has influence over Stone when he is installed as Master. It occurs to me that with access to the blood samples he could conceivably possess other Apkallu. That would give him the power to do magical workings in another body. He need never return to his mummified form at all. That is worth preventing in and of itself.”

  Sam pondered for a moment, imagining Zadith hopping eternally from one body to another while his mummy form rested in some ultrasecure hidden vault. Yes, Lucas was right—putting his own vengeance aside, that was worth preventing.

  Chapter 15

  Friday the twenty-third of October was a lovely day, and Sam spent most of the afternoon in a parked rental car watching the doorway of the Pythian building from his drone. The nice weather drew Zadith outside earlier than usual—the young man strolled out just past three in a lapis-blue wool suit with a jaunty yellow cashmere scarf around his neck, heading toward Central Park. Sam recovered the drone and stuffed it into his shoulder bag as he hurried after his target on foot, almost panicking when he couldn’t find him on the sidewalk ahead, until he spotted the blue suit turning south on Columbus.

  Sam tailed the young man to the Tavern on the Green in Central Park, where he spent the next couple of hours at a table on the terrace, putting away a huge luncheon of grilled asparagus, smoked salmon, mushrooms, and a whole bottle of Vouvray. Sam sat nearby in the Sheep Meadow, keeping an eye on his quarry via drone and wishing he could grab a bite himself.

  Zadith finished his meal by smoking a cigar in cheerful violation of every law and regulation, accompanied by a snifter of brandy. He strolled south through the park, taking such evident pleasure in a lovely afternoon that Sam found himself almost reluctant to go ahead. But he reminded himself that the man enjoying the afternoon was actually the leathery old mummy back in the Pythian building. The boy in the blue suit wouldn’t remember any of this pleasant outing.

  At Columbus Circle his quarry hailed a cab. Sam carefully noted the number and got one for himself at almost the same instant. He told the driver, “I’ll give you two hundred dollars if you follow that car.”

  The driver—a Cambodian named An Sem, according to the operator ID on display—didn’t need any magical encouragement, and Sam suspected he probably could have offered much less money. An Sem clearly enjoyed the chance to live an action-movie cliché for real.

  Zadith rode south to Washington Square Park, where he walked among the students studying or sunning on the grass with the air of someone shopping at an open-air market. Eventually he stopped to chat with a much-pierced girl. The combination of the young man’s extraordinary looks, his obvious wealth, and the easy confidence born of being controlled by one of the secret rulers of the world made the use of magic unnecessary. In marketing jargon, Zadith “assumed the sale” and was not disappointed. Less than twenty minutes later the young woman led him up the steps to her apartment while Sam watched from half a block away.

  He sat down on a fire hydrant to consider what to do. All his carefully worked-out plans had assumed Zadith would be in some quasi-public place—a restaurant, bar, or maybe a theater. Sam had spent several hundred dollars to have a strippergram performer waiting, ready to show up anywhere in the city as a distraction. He had no idea what to do if Zadith was snug in some young woman’s arms behind a locked door.

  Well, he wasn’t accomplishing anything by sitting around. Sam went down the block and touched the lock on the door of the young woman’s building with an ornate br
ass key. The gremlin bound into it opened the lock for him. It liked opening locks, and the more frequently Sam used the key, the more comfortable the gremlin was in its binding.

  He looked at the names next to the eight doorbells, but there was no way to tell which apartment Zadith had gone into. Sam went up the stairs as quietly as he could and began listening at doors. As it was not quite six o’clock yet, many of the residents weren’t home. At the first couple of doors all he could hear was silence, or the hum of appliances in empty rooms.

  The second-floor rear apartment on the right showed promise: Sam could smell weed near the door, and he heard music coming from inside. He took a couple of deep breaths, then touched the two locks on the door with his brass key and pushed the door open.

  Three NYU students sitting on the floor stared at him in mid-vape. A big bowl of bright orange cheese puffs sat between them. For five long seconds nobody said anything. Then Sam said, “You got a clogged drain here?”

  Middle-aged Latin-looking man, shaved head, bulky duffel bag slung over his shoulder, nondescript windbreaker and jeans, key to their apartment—he could almost hear the clicking sound from their heads as he dropped neatly into the “repairman” category. Their expressions changed from guilt and alarm to patronizing tolerance. “You have the wrong apartment,” one of them explained, with a wave of an orange-dusted hand.

  “Sorry,” he muttered, and went out.

  Third floor, then. It was warm up there, and the hall light was broken. Some past owner had painted over the skylight, but enough daylight seeped through cracks and flakes in the paint that Sam could see. He listened at the two front apartments. One was silent, and from the other he could hear Eyewitness News on WABC. That didn’t seem like the ideal soundtrack for lovemaking, so he moved on down the hall.