Everything I owned that might defeat a wizard sat in the box at my feet. I lifted it and set it on the table.
It was the middle of the afternoon, and the sun was shining outside, but there were no windows inside Sully’s, my second-favorite dive bar, and the room was soaked in a permanent smoky dusk. Sully’s was a holdover from the days when you didn’t want your churchgoing neighbors to know you were backsliding, the kind of place that didn’t care if you broke the city’s no-smoking ordinance. I sat in a booth at the back and carefully lit a cigar. I’d handed in my badge that morning and had been dodging calls from Hammond and my brother ever since. I can only imagine the one called the other. After taking a puff to make sure it was lit, I opened my box of tricks and took out the round ampules of holy water, tied together on the same length of cord like a string of grenades, and set them on one side of the table. I took out the giant salamander claw, dried and crisp, that dangled from a leather strap looped through the flesh at one end. I set it by the ampules. I took out the Coptic cross and the shiny avian bezoars and the brass pentacles, like coins, and all the rest. Soon, the box was empty. I looked at it all laid out neatly on the round table. I moved the wax voodoo doll to one side. Next to it, I put the broken wand, which tapered neatly at the tip. The bottom end was splintered—frayed like a cut rope. I removed the talisman from around my neck and set it with them.
That was it. Those three. The rest were either frauds, mysteries, or, like the holy water, nothing useful in a battle with a wizard. I took another drag from my cigar.
“Fuck.”
I put the talisman back around my neck and was replacing the rest in the box when a man walked in from the back. The place was dead, which meant I would’ve noticed him anyway, but he certainly stuck out in his tailored overcoat and vest. He stopped at my table. He had pomaded hair.
“Nice tie pin,” I said. It was blood ruby.
“Thank you.” He unbuttoned his coat, draped it neatly over the back of a nearby chair, and moved it so that he sat facing me.
“Do I know you?”
“Not at all.” He was serious. Very serious. “But we have a mutual acquaintance. She may have mentioned to you that one of us would be coming.”
Granny.
I exhaled smoke, which blew in his face, but he didn’t flinch. He simply reached into the pocket of his coat and removed his own cigar, which he lit by pressing against his bare palm. After a moment, it began to smoke.
Warlock. You can always tell. They have a kind of sheen.
“What do you want?”
His cigar smelled a lot better than mine.
“My acquaintances and I are not good people,” he said, taking a puff. “But our chief concern has always been the conjuring of money. The spells we’ve built to do that on an industrial scale are large and complicated and took decades to construct.” He rolled his cigars in his fingers and examined it. “As such, we do, on occasion, stoop to baser behaviors, but only to protect what we’ve built.” He paused. “Usually.”
“You have a point?”
“Yes, and I’ll get to it. There was a man who came through the city last year, a government bureaucrat.”
“Someone I know?”
“I doubt it.”
“What about him?”
“He disappeared.”
“Shame.”
“Yes. Left a wife and daughter behind. Atlanta, I think. Then, last summer, a young Chinese immigrant came into possession of a very rare artifact, an artifact so old and powerful that it has been used at least twice to conquer most of the known world.”
“You don’t say?”
“It was weak from long isolation. Its magic has to be . . . charged, if you will. The quickest way to do that is to feed it souls.” He stressed the word.
“Are you suggesting someone fed her to this thing?”
“Oh, I’m suggesting more than that.” He took another puff and leaned toward me and whispered. “I’m suggesting that she helped plan it. Her own murder. Then sat by idly as it was carried out.”
“So, she was enchanted,” I drolled. “So what?”
“Hmm.” He sat back again. “I don’t know how much you’ve learned in your adventures. The self-taught always have a surprisingly odd mix of knowledge, so forgive me if this is known to you, but enchantments and illusions don’t convince people to see what isn’t there, or to shroud what is. Only the casting of darkness can do that. Rather, they convince people to see what’s there as if it were something else. You’d be hard-pressed, for example, to find a single sane person who would say that murder isn’t wrong. The question is always what counts as murder. If a soldier shoots someone, it’s patriotism. If you do, it’s manslaughter. If I do, murder. If the government takes your money, it’s taxation. If anyone else does, it’s theft. In both cases, exactly the same act has taken place. It’s simply a matter of interpretation.”
“What does this have to do with the girl?”
“I couldn’t tell you what convinced her to help plan her own murder, but clearly she didn’t see it as murder. She saw it as sacrifice, just as the government bureaucrat I mentioned didn’t abandon his wife and child. But he left them all the same, I suspect for what he thought was a very good reason. The fact is, most people are unreliable narrators, even of their own lives. If you had walked up to these two people before the fact and asked them to do exactly what they later did, they would’ve thought you were crazy. And yet . . . the world unfolded such that they did exactly what he wanted them to, swearing all the while that they did it of their own volition.”
“He?”
The warlock smiled.
It made my stomach turn.
“So, what is he after?” I asked.
“I think he blames the world—the modern world—for the death of his people, the loss of his village, of everything he knew and loved, of the plight of the earth, who was his lover.”
“His lover?”
“I suspect he wants to send us all back to the Stone Age, or some silly thing. Who knows, really? Unfortunately, with the artifact in his possession, he has the means to do exactly that. Of course, without modern methods of production, the food supply will rapidly dwindle, as will the supply of medicines. Even if by some miracle they are eventually restored, whatever crisis he unleashes will precipitate an unprecedented global catastrophe. Imagine how many will die before a new equilibrium is restored.”
“You talk like the world is a market.”
“It is. That’s exactly what it is, Detective. But I can see you’re skeptical of me, and you have every right to be. So consider this. My acquaintances and I profit very handsomely from the current state of affairs. Why would we do anything to upset it? It’s very hard to get rich off the labor of others when there are no others. Why would we be throwing spells at you?”
“Spells?”
I played dumb, but I knew what he meant. I couldn’t say with certainty that a spell had been cast, or that if not, something else entirely would’ve been discovered on that VHS tape. But that’s what magic is—the power to unfold the world as you will.
“Let’s say,” he went on, “that you manage to survive this round. How long until he targets those you care about? Not just your brother, but the good Detective Hammond, who is going to walk through that door in exactly six seconds.”
“What are you suggesting? I can’t exactly put a gold bullet in this guy’s head like Granny did to one of your bookkeepers.”
“Yes. An unfortunate business. But nothing that concerns you.”
“Yet,” I accused.
The door opened. The light from outside turned the interloper into a silhouette, but I would’ve recognized that block head anywhere. Hammond pretended he didn’t see us and took a seat at the bar.
“The chef has no shortage of enemies,” the warlock explained. “The problem is, he’s too well protected. Not just the marks on his hands but his sanctum. It’s a fortress—a fortress from which he emerges only when it’s auspicious.” He leaned toward me again. “It can’t be attacked from without. You learned that the hard way. But from within, all one would have to do is break the seal. Something as trivial as a baby sledgehammer would do the trick. Poke a hole in his defenses and the whole thing comes crashing down.”
I blew smoke at my companion again. “And then your people will do the rest, is that it?”
“Oh, not my people. We don’t do that kind of thing. But we’ll absolutely see that it’s done. You can count on that.”
“And what makes you think I can get into this so-called fortress?”
“That’s the clever part. It’s built to stop people like me and my friends, who have a certain . . . stain. Whatever else he is, he’s an arrogant fool. He’s not worried about the rest of you. There are minimal protections against—” He stopped.
“A smed?” I asked.
He smiled.
“Cute.”
“But you must understand, Detective, you’re only going to get one chance. And you’ll have to move quickly. Right now, he’s letting his spells work their effect. I can see them swirling around you, like smoke. Your only hope is to strike first. Get in, break the seal, and get out. Once he’s gone, his magic will collapse. Your career will return. Your relationships. You’ll even solve the Sacchi case, I imagine. Everything will go back to how it was. How it should be.”
He waited for a moment like he was expecting me to say something.
“That it?” I asked.
He reached into his pocket, removed a thick set of neatly folded papers—blue architectural plans, it looked like—and slid them across to me.
“What’s this?”
“A gift. To cement our good intentions. We’re not asking you to trust us, Detective. We’re willing to back up everything we say. These are the blueprints for the sanctum, which dates to the 19th century. Some very interesting architecture.”
“That’s a historic building,” I said. I had already checked.
After 9/11, the structural plans for various historic landmarks around the city were removed from public view, accessible only by permit. The idea was to make it difficult for any would-be terrorists to pack one of the city’s many abandoned underground spaces with explosives, Guy Fawkes–style.
“I would pay particular note to the hidden entry. Via the sewers.” He stood. “Good day, Detective.”
He replaced his coat and walked toward the front door. He nodded at Hammond, who was sitting on a bar stool with his back to us. “Detective,” he said.
Then he was gone.
I finished my drink in one gulp, coughed once, and dropped the cigar into the glass. I left a twenty on the table—surcharge for the municipal violation—and grabbed my box. I set it on the bar and pulled out a stool.
“There’s only so many places you go,” he said.
“How many you visit?” I asked.
“This was number three.”
“Huh. I didn’t think you knew about this one.”
He looked around. “Doesn’t look like I’ve been missing anything.”
“Yeah, it’s a shithole. That’s why I like it.”
“Hey,” Sully called jokingly from the end of the bar. “Careful.”
“Best damned shithole in the city,” I said as he stepped away to clear my table and give us some privacy. “Fred call you?”
He nodded. “Everybody’s worried about you, Har. Not gonna apologize for it either.”
“Yeah.”
“What’s in the box?”
I slid it away. “Just some things from the office.”
“Oh? Who’s the suit?” He nodded toward the door.
“Dunno. Didn’t gimme a name.”
“Seemed like you guys were getting on. What did he want?”
“What do rich assholes like that usually want from cops?”
Hammond thought. “To do their dirty work for them.”
I nodded. “Something like that.”
“Are you going to?”
When I didn’t answer, he studied me.
“What’s the word on the Sacchi case?” I asked.
“There isn’t one. Anything you’ve touched recently has been referred for review.”
“Jesus . . . That’ll take months.”
He nodded solemnly. “What’d you expect? The department’s gotta cover its ass.” He glanced at the box. “You’re not gonna tell me what that’s for, are you?”
I didn’t answer.
After a minute of silence, he got a text. His phone buzzed and he took it out. He nodded sharply and got up from his stool.
“That’s it?” I asked.
“Yup. Got a recital tonight. That was my reminder.” He shrugged. “I did my bit. I told Fred I’d talk to you. I talked. Not that I don’t know the answer to this, but I don’t suppose you’d want to come to the house? Recital won’t take an hour. The girls would like to see you. Been a while, hasn’t it?”
He was doing what everybody does after they get spooked: deny it. Go home and pretend like nothing happened. It never lasts, but it’s where we all start. Including me. Couldn’t exactly be mad at him for that.
“Rain check, okay?”
“Of course.” He paused. “Other plans, huh?”
I bobbled my head noncommittally. “Hoping.”
“Say hi to her for me.” Then he turned for the door. He raised a hand without turning back. “See ya around, Har. I’d say ‘don’t do anything stupid,’ but you’re already on a roll.”