by Danny Bell
“Well, I’m giving you an out, right?” she asked. “I’m well within my rights to exact revenge for what your friend did. Start picking your nearest and dearest off one by one, make your life hell at all the worst possible moments; I’ll play it by ear. Or you agree to try it my way for a bit. Work with me. See new places, do murders, the whole song and dance. I’d be willing to forget the whole thing.”
“I’ve got a better plan,” I seethed. “You realize that you messed up letting me see your face and that you should really, really consider everything you know about me and what I do to people who threaten my friends and the innocent, and then do the smart thing and run as far away from me as you possibly can.”
Her smile bordered on ecstasy now, growing fuller than it had this entire time. “Or what?”
The question hung in the air like a taunt, and I wasn’t sure how to answer it.
Kate looked pleased with herself and pressed further. “You gonna beat me up? Big bad Elana Black, the sheriff ’round these parts, gonna run me out of town?”
I fumed silently, wanting desperately to wipe that smug look off her face.
Kate shrugged and pat down her coat as if looking for something. Some of the mirth in her expression was replaced with sincerity. “Yeah, I know about your victories, but there’s a difference between me and everyone else you’ve faced in your short time as a defender of the downtrodden. I’m not going to underestimate you,” she continued. “I’m not afraid of you, because I know what you’re capable of and how far you’re willing to go. I came prepared. I’m like nothing you’ve ever faced, and you’re not going to get a lot of chances to stop me. But you know what? You don’t need to tell me what you’re going to do about it. I’m going to give you one of those chances to show me right now.”
“Yeah?” I challenged, hoping to lead her away from these people. “Are we going to take this outside?”
“If you like, but first, one small thing,” she replied and lifted an open palm above the table where she’d been scratching. I saw the sigil she’s scratched into the table about a split second before her palm slammed over it and a burst of power poured out of her hand.
“Keep away, it’s mine!” Kate, our waitress, shrieked. The violence was immediate, and the screaming was unintelligible. In moments, it spread from the waitresses and the line cook to the patrons as well.
“Cursed coin,” the woman across from me said nonchalantly as she stood up. “Started as soon as our waitress touched it. Now, as long as the mortals can see it, they will want to possess it, and as long as another person wants to possess it, well… that’s all going to get very messy sooner rather than later. Looks like you can stop me or save them, it’s your call. Once I’m gone, though, you’re not going to like the next time you see me. So, what’s it going to be?”
“You know damned well what it’s going to be, you psychopath!”
Kate began sauntering backward towards the door, pulling a pack of cigarettes out of her blazer “Obviously, this is just the beginning, but come on, for a starter you have to love a classic. You’ll see it my way one of these days, I’ll see to that. But hey, you got a lot on your plate right now, what with the heist and all of this, and I don’t want to be a third wheel, you know? I’ve got all the time in the world and can really think about how I’m going to do this, maybe I’ll go see the sights. Really nice meeting you. Tell Kate to go ahead and cancel that milk. See you ’round, Black.”
I waited the agonizing seconds until Kate was out of the building before I turned my attention towards the sigil on the table. It looked seared into the wood, parts of it softly glowing, and I had no idea how she etched something this intricate without looking at it. I glanced back at the melee. The one she’d called Carl held the coin now, eyes manic as he stared at it held high above his head in a chubby paw. Blood dripped down his face where nails had raked deep into his cheek, and the combined efforts of everyone in the room seemed ready to bring him down.
I’d be ripped to pieces if I tried to get involved, but I had a hunch I could shut this down if I could break the sigil. I held out a hand in the direction of the sigil and felt for the memory of ice and cold in my mind as I shouted, “Le givre!”
No magic came forward, but the sound of a bone snapping made my stomach drop.
“Goddamnit,” I swore under my breath, and pointing the rod at the table, I wordlessly unleashed a liquid nitrogen cold blast into the table and then brought the rod down into it like a hammer. The sigil fractured and, all at once, the sound of bodies collapsing was the last sound I heard before everything went still. I gave the table an extra slam in frustration. Me and my damned magic words! I still didn’t have them down, and it was probably time to try a new language. My carelessness just got someone hurt as well, and I still needed to find out how badly.
There was a lot to do before I got out of there. First things first, I wrapped the coin in a big wad of napkins and shoved it in my pocket. Next, I looked over the patrons and workers. They were all passed out hard. The feedback of dark magical energy being sucked out of them like that would definitely do that. Miraculously, everyone but the one Kate thought of as Carl was physically okay, in the sense that there was nothing here he couldn’t recover from with a first aid kit; though I had no idea what they’d remember or how long the emotional trauma would stick around. The big guy who’d had the coin last was bleeding from the face and had a broken arm. I wanted to set it but realized I didn’t know how and that I’d probably make it worse. That left one last thing, the security cameras. If the video of this got out, especially with me in it, life would get a lot more complicated than I needed it to be right now.
The manager’s office was bolted shut, but I wasn’t wasting any time with magic words. I poured a bit of energy into my gloves and, remembering the lessons of Chalsarda, tried to punch through the door rather than stopping at the point of contact. I’d meant to make a hole that I could reach through to unlock the bolts. Instead, I felt the impact up into my shoulder, and my entire arm went numb as the door swung wildly inward. Holy shit, that was going to hurt later.
On the back wall of the tiny, windowless room was the security system, looking like it hadn’t been updated in decades. They still used physical tapes. I wasn’t even bothering trying to conserve magic at this point. I ejected the tape, set it on fire, and then drenched the whole system with a wordless water spell just to be on the safe side. The angry crackle of electronics shorting out answered my unasked question. I considered for a second that maybe I should just torch the entire room, but the last thing I needed was an uncontrollable fire with unconscious civilians while I made my escape. I didn’t touch much in the place during my brief visit; the door, the table, and, possibly, the napkin dispenser, but I tried to wipe down everything I could before knocking a landline receiver off the hook and using my knuckle to punch in 9-1-1 before getting out of there.
There always had to be one more problem, didn’t there?
Cautiously, I threw my hood up as far forward as it would go. No sirens yet, no cars, and no witnesses outside. I resisted the urge to sprint for my car, instead opting to lightly jog across the street, I yanked open my car door, and drove off.
I couldn’t get those screams of mindless rage out of my head. If I’d gone straight home, those people wouldn’t have gone through all that. Rationally, I knew that if it weren’t them, it would’ve been someone else. That creature, Kate—if that was her real name, was going to strike eventually, and I should’ve been thankful that it hadn’t gone worse than it had. No one had died and no one suffered an injury they couldn’t recover from.
That didn’t make me feel any better, though. Three people who were just trying to earn a paycheck. Three people who just wanted a bite to eat. All left lying on the floor with an otherworldly shock that they couldn’t understand. All because I wanted five minutes to myself.
I tried to process what I could do about all of this. I could check on the staff in a week or s
o, see if I could, maybe, find a potion or a charm to help ease the aftereffects, but what about the older gentlemen with the broken arm? He’d probably have facial scars now. What about those two boys on their date? I’d probably never see them after tonight and, once again, I’d come face-to-face with the harsh reality that I couldn’t help everyone. That, while I’m around, people are going to get hurt. Even those that I could help, like the staff… I couldn’t show my face in there for a long time. Maybe even ever again. I’d have to get my friends to help, put more of a burden on them, and the circle of hurt only gets bigger and bigger until the next catastrophe.
I slammed my palm against the steering wheel, forgetting for a moment how sore my arm was from earlier. The impact immediately reminded me of what I’d done to it, and the shock brought me out of my head for a moment.
Just in time for me to slam on my brakes as I saw the flashing lights of a police car coming around the corner. Panic flooded me as my tires screeched. Part of me was sure I was going to T-bone the cop. My book bag and its contents spilled into the backseat, scattering everywhere.
The other vehicle was aware of me, as well, and the driver slammed on brakes of their own, narrowly avoiding me. The world came back into view then, and I was now aware of the sirens as well as the lights, and the angry, disbelieving glare of the officer mere feet away from me.
I nearly took out a cop in Inglewood with my car. Forget the Orochi, I’d be lucky if I weren’t arrested in the next five minutes.
Chapter Nine
For several agonizing seconds, I stared at the faces of two incredulously furious cops. More times in my life than I’d care to admit, I’ve had to slam on my brakes to avoid hitting something or someone, and there’s a sort of divine adrenaline rush that comes with the knowledge that you’re able to drive away after having narrowly avoided catastrophe. This was a new sensation. I was not being allowed that relief because every cell in my body was still preparing for the worst. If they looked in my car, I’d have no way to explain any of this. How would I explain my singing stone? What would happen to the city if I were in jail when it started to rain? How would I ever afford to get my car out of impound? What if they connected me to all those people back there? What if they touched the coin and ripped into each other?
Also, did I mention how much I disliked and didn’t trust cops?
While I was panicking over every worst-case scenario, afraid to breathe or let my fingers unclench from the steering wheel, a deafening and very nasty message about not texting and driving was relayed to me over a loudspeaker before the cop car sped off towards the IHOP.
The breath I’d been holding in came out of me as several creative profanities with the intense relief that they were responding to my 9-1-1 call and getting to the scene took priority over ruining my life. That, of course, meant that I had approximately zero seconds to get the hell away from there before someone came looking for the ancient yellow station wagon driven by the manic redhead.
This was one of those times where being a Los Angeles native came in handy, because I knew exactly where to go. I wasn’t far from LAX and the 405, but an empty freeway would be easy to pick me up on, and there would, of course, be five thousand cops around the airport. Any major streets like La Brea would also be off-limits, so it was all side streets the entire way home for me.
I shouted an apology into the backseat at my singing stone for the rough ride, but no response came. I’m not sure what reaction I was expecting from a fist-sized chunk of gold on the floor of a Chevy Cavalier, but some feedback would’ve been reassuring.
There was a long list of reactions I’d be expecting in the near future, and my Singasteinn just happened to be first by way of physical proximity. Freya had to know right away that someone else, or rather something else, knew about her plans. My report earlier had been made on incomplete information. Whatever Kate was—and I was only about fifty-fifty that she was human—she was dangerous, and she knew a lot about my friends and me, and she’d been watching me for months.
Then there was Chalsarda. I was trying really, really hard not to jump to conclusions, but the night I’d had was making that into a Herculean effort. Kate had known that I’d freed Chalsarda from Abarta’s hold, so how did she find out? It had to be Abarta somehow, but I knew I was ruling out Chalsarda’s possible role because of my personal feelings for her. But what reason could there be for Chalsarda to let someone like that know her business? What reason would there be for Abarta for that matter? It wasn’t adding up.
Then there was the matter of Kate’s words in the first place. If she was a human, then everything she said could be taken with a grain of salt, but if she was a Fae creature? It would stand to reason that she couldn’t lie, which would reveal some horrible things about my friends. I’d never known Chalsarda to be a killer, but Kate’s beef with me seemed tied to someone named the Abbot of Kinney being killed when Chalsarda brought his killer to him. If he was anything like Kate, maybe Chalsarda saw his death as necessary, but why not tell me about it?
That left Ann, as well. Both of them were involved, and Ann’s involvement in a murder seemed a lot less likely. Chalsarda was a two-hundred-year-old elven warrior who I’d known for about half a percent of the time she’d been alive. So yeah, maybe I didn’t know everything there was to know about her, but Ann has been one of my closest friends since high school. We knew an uncomfortable amount of personal information about each other. I knew her back when we all thought she might still have a growth spurt. On her twenty-first birthday, we got day drunk on warm thermos wine and visited the otters at the Aquarium of the Pacific. The worst thing I’d ever seen her do was cuss at my cats. Ann wasn’t a murderer, and I had to believe she would’ve said something to me. That Kate knew her name at all was troubling.
After that just left, I guess, everyone else. I couldn’t be sure what Claire would think about her shop being neutral territory in a fight with a snake monster, but I was pretty confident what the response wouldn’t be. Then there was the decision to tell Jason and Teague or not. They were off-limits as long as they didn’t get involved, but they might want a good reason for being told to get out of town, but maybe they were safer here than not. I couldn’t rely on Susano-o or his agents to play fair if they went out of bounds, and did that include just warning the entire city about a wrathful god’s storm? Not that anyone would believe me in the first place.
It took me twice as long as it should have, but I made it back to the shop without so much as hearing another siren. It’s entirely possible I might have overestimated my most wanted status. I checked the time. It was later than I would’ve liked, given that this was a weekday, and I was supposed to open the shop in a few hours. A glance into the backseat revealed an absolute mess, and I crawled back there while dialing Freyja on my phone, which still had an impressive twenty percent battery remaining. The call went immediately to a voicemail that I knew wouldn’t be checked, but maybe I could leave a message at the office in the morning. Freyja might be call in. I still left a voicemail just in case. Chalsarda went to voicemail as well, but I didn’t leave a message. If I was going to confront her about this, I wanted to do it in person. As badly as I wanted to sleep, I still had a cursed coin in my coat pocket, and I knew better than to leave cursed objects just lying about. Removing curses wasn’t particularly difficult, it’s just taxing and takes time.
I thought about Ann as I got into the store and started to get ready to deal with a curse. She was way, way better at this side of the magical things, and I would’ve loved to have the certainty that would come along with her doing the job, but I already needed to have one rough conversation with her, and she was almost certainly asleep.
Removing a curse sucks. First, you needed to determine the sort of curse an object had. Thankfully, I could skip that step since I already knew what I was dealing with. The curse here tied into greed and obsession, something straight-up evil that carries a lot of bad karma. Under no circumstances should you ever
mess with a person’s mind. Illusions were one thing, but once you started subjugating a person’s will or changing their heart unnaturally, you’re getting into some bad territory. Like anything, what you did and how you acted changed who you were. That whole “Do unto others” routine had some wisdom to it. Hold the door for people, feed the homeless, have a kind word for strangers; you’re going to naturally feel better about yourself. Cut people off in traffic, get into fights on the internet, take advantage of people; you’re going to feel empty and rotten.
Now apply that to how you use magic, and the effects are magnified and sandblasted onto your soul.
I was still careful not to touch the coin, even if my magic naturally insulated me a bit. Those poor people in the restaurant might’ve been temporarily freed from the immediate effects of the coin since I’d destroyed the sigil that had been supercharging the curse, but the underlying curse was still present, and I couldn’t be certain that Kate couldn’t or wouldn’t do something else to make it worse. In its current state, holding the coin would produce the same effect as it had in the restaurant, and in about three or four months of prolonged contact, and any mortal who had seen it in its amplified state wouldn’t be able to focus on anything else other than finding this coin, even if they didn’t remember it. It would be a miserable, Gollum worthy existence.
I got out my chalk and drew a circle in the middle of the store, a ring designed to keep magical energies inside rather than trying to keep things out. I placed the coin in the center of a bucket in the middle of the circle. The bucket wasn’t ideal, but I needed to run water over the coin and I didn’t want to ruin the circle or mop up later.
The rest of the ritual was standard, though obnoxious. You probably don’t think about safety goggles when you think about rituals, but when you need to burn cedar at five points around a cursed object to keep its curse trapped, they’re a godsend if you enjoy your vision. Then there was the chanting in Latin, which was a specific catchall that was good for these. Focusing on the chants was difficult when balanced against feeling for the cursed magic and coaxing it out with my will. All of this guided the energy into something easily destroyed. Moving the curse also weakened its power in the new object and, if I made an effort to keep moving the curse, it would eventually dissipate entirely, but that would be a waste of time and energy.
