Nicolas Wilson's Blog: News about the novels and writing of Nicolas Wilson, page 2
October 15, 2013
Now through Friday, snag Nexus for $.99
I've teamed up with some other amazing scifi authors to show off some great indie published space opera series.
Many of the authors, myself included are deeply discounting their books. Nexus will be $.99 through Friday. Also, you can sign up to win a new paperwhite to read said books on.
To sign up and view participating authors' work, drop by here:
http://jonathancg.net/spaceoperapromo
Many of the authors, myself included are deeply discounting their books. Nexus will be $.99 through Friday. Also, you can sign up to win a new paperwhite to read said books on.
To sign up and view participating authors' work, drop by here:
http://jonathancg.net/spaceoperapromo
October 10, 2013
Preview: Banksters, Part 2
And here's the next section of Banksters, due end of October/early November. Ride shotgun with a sociopath accelerating his ascent to corporate power.
Point of interest, Banksters was originally syndicated daily, as written, during National Novel Writing Month 2011. It's a funny tradition of mine, to peel back my skin a bit and share my work as it happens. If you want to tag along for this year's NaNo project, Twist, a psychological thriller, visit NicolasWilson.com and check the blog daily, beginning November 2nd. Performance art, but with only metaphorical nudity.
Previously:
Banksters, Part 1, Howdy
Banksters, Part 2, Secretive
I spent a few minutes at my computer after the meeting typing. Corporate communications are second-nature to me: cold and utilitarian and efficiently artless. I'd brought my old printer from downstairs, and printed the memo on it.
I looked at it a moment, to be sure it was exactly how I wanted it, and then took it down the hall. Security had its own executive level office- just not the title, and Daria was sitting in the same chair, at the same desk, as I had, the standard one. Which meant either she hadn't been offered the perks of the floor, or hadn't accepted them.
Daria Rheme. Beautiful. Obsessive. And potentially a very large pain in my ass. She had long, wavy, dark hair. Raven, I think, being the preferred term, and pale skin that complemented her delicate features. F; K if necessary, though if things went to plan, it wouldn't be.
She was in charge of corporate security. And she was really good at what she did. Thorough. Scrutinizing. I couldn’t have that. In the end, I wanted what was best for this company- which generally translated to what was best for the senior executives. But she was a firewall, standing between them and me. And that wasn't something I could suffer to continue.
I smiled nervously at her for effect. “Daria? It's my first day on the floor, and I'm still getting used to operating at this level.”
“The altitude this many flights up is killer,” she said with a smile. Under other circumstances, I probably would have found her charming. The smile faded as she noticed my hands. “But gloves? You're not planning a murder, are you?”
Planning one? No. But you never know. I stretched my fingers in my black leather gloves. “Bad circulation. My fingers get cold. Especially with the central air. Hopefully I'll acclimate.”
“Oh, I know. They can never seem to find a good medium. Most of the time, in the summer they keep it too cold, and in the winter I swelter until I've stripped down to my skivvies.”
“But, uh, I wondered if you could take a look at this memo. I don't want my first day here to be my last day.”
“Usually I'd have one of my,” she glanced at her computer, then the empty inbox on her desk, and didn't finish the thought. “Sure. Just don't expect it to become a habit.”
“Of course.” She scanned it. There was a typo in there she either didn't catch or didn't mention, but she did hone in on the important part.
“You're CCing and blind copying this all over your division, but you left in contact information for your executive VP. Most of these people would be able to get that, anyway, but as it's presented, he'll be the one inundated with concerns or questions, and Cliff hates that.”
“That's good, I hadn't thought of that” I told her, which was a lie. “And from a security perspective?”
“Otherwise it looks fine. If that were releasing to the press obviously it'd be different- the numbers and direct email, like I said- but for internal consumption it's okay.” She handed me the page back.
“Thank you,” I said, I did a little bow and left.
I walked back to my office, where I slid the memo into my desk drawer, and grabbed my coat. I pressed the intercom button to talk to Petra. “You about ready for lunch?”
“Really?” she asked, a little surprised I remembered.
“Of course.”
She was already wrapping herself in a fur-lined coat by the time I got out to her desk. She followed me down to the parking garage, and got into my car. “Where would you like to go?” I asked her.
“You're new to the floor, not new to the city,” she said. But I was new to the life, and when I didn't reply, she added, “Brooks.”
I drove us there, about a mile north. At dinner, Brooks would have been impossible to get a seat for without a several day old reservation, but the lunch crowd was thinner, since nobody's ever impressed or that impressive at lunch.
The host stared with some irritation at Petra. “Something wrong?” I asked him, giving him at least as good a glare as Richard used at the meeting earlier.
“Uh, no, sir,” the host said, and led us to our seats.
I helped her into her chair before sitting in my own. She was anxious, and the host's reaction to her had only justified her fear. “I really thought you were going to tell me 'no' about coming here.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because I'm not dressed for this kind of place.”
“No, that's why you wish I'd said no. Not why you thought I would.”
“I'm just a...” she trailed off.
“Just a secretary? Is that what you are?”
“Well, administrative assistant,” she said sullenly.
“If I thought that, I'd fire you,” I said, and unfolded the menu to scan it. “Do you think that?”
She made an unexpected lemon face. “You're looking for 'no,' right?”
I looked up at her. “I'm looking for what you think. Do you think you're just an administrative assistant?”
“No,” she said quietly, but still tried to hunker down in her chair. The part she didn't say, the part she didn't want to admit, is that whatever her own grand designs, she was just an assistant, at least to the people she worked with. And that kind of marginalization weighed on a person.
I made a sweeping gesture with my arm. “Look around. That woman has had easily $50,000 worth of plastic surgery. The one at the back's wearing a $9,000 dress. It's a light lunch crowd, but the women in this dining room have spent, cumulatively, a million dollars to not look as good as you do, right now. Wearing what you wear into the office, on a typical day. This is you not trying that hard.” She bristled at that. She had made some token effort to clean up for the new boss, apparently. But that was far to the side of my point. “You look gorgeous, and I'm sure you know you have no reason to feel self-conscious about being here. But what I want to know, and I want you to really think about it before you answer me, is are you just an administrative assistant?”
She exhaled, annoyed at my question. But she looked around the room, and sat up a little straighter. “No.”
“Good,” I said. “Because I'd look capricious after telling Ed that I'd keep you if I fired you a few hours later.” Her eyes opened wide. “Trust me, when I say this, you never want to be saddled with anyone who is just anything- it's so limiting. I've never been just anything. I've always been in the process of becoming something else.” I noticed she was rereading a page on the menu a third time. “But on the subject of limitations, order what you like.”
“Really?”
“Money's no object. Besides, what you order tells me something about you, something far more valuable than what anything on this menu costs.”
“And what if I just wanted a salad? What does that tell you?”
“Lots of things, little things. One, you don't believe what I just said, about wanting you to order whatever you want.”
“Unless I just want a salad.”
“Nobody wants just a salad. It's not in human nature. It's settling for a salad. And there are lots of interesting reasons why you might settle. To impress your boss with your frugality. To maintain your figure. To punish yourself for something.”
“Or because I actually wanted a salad?”
The server came by. “Two salads, please, whatever's tastiest.” I said to her, barely paying her enough mind to decide F.
“To drink?”
“Two glasses of white wine, whatever you'd suggest to complement the salads.”
“Very good.”
Petra was in shock. “After all that, you just give yourself a pass and order a salad?”
“We spent so much time talking about them that I started to crave one. But what's to say I'm not prey to the same issues we were discussing?”
“You're a man, and an older man.”
“Older?” The server brought the wine first, and Petra waited until she left to react.
“Older than me, anyway. I'm a professional woman. I'm not allowed to let my figure go.”
“The social constraints are certainly different. But I have pride. I don't like the idea of needing new suits, or gaining weight.”
“But you're a man. That affords you the luxury of choice.”
The server returned with our salads, and set them discreetly down in front of us. “But you had a choice, too. And you chose a salad. And what's more, you chose to have this conversation in an attempt to give me nothing to know you better with.”
She thought about that for a moment, probing for a way she could contest it, but gave up. “You flustered me, with your logic and your piercing blue eyes.”
“Are they?”
“That's just a trick question, to get me to look into them some more, and get me more flustered.”
She did, and I fixed her with them for a moment, before asking, “Where did you go to school?”
“Who said I did?” she asked. She still felt combative, if playfully so, but then realized I wasn't batting at her anymore. “Columbia's journalism school.”
“So you wanted to be a journalist?”
“From a little kid, reading Lois Lane comics.”
“Are you really that old?”
“No; but the moment I found out they had Lois Lane comics, not just Superman with her as arm candy, but Superman's Girlfriend Lois Lane comics. I was hooked. I had to crawl through musty old comic bins to find them, and they were cheesy and often kind of lame, but I gathered every single issue in the run, and that comic ran for years. They're not mint or anything, just...” she stumbled on the next step in her story.
“So what happened?”
“Journalism dust-bowled. There's hardly anyone actually writing news stories anymore. There's a handful of people who work for the AP, and then that gets reworded, rewritten or just plain linked to a hundred thousand times for different papers and blogs. I even tried doing entry level, like mail room kinds of jobs in the industry, and couldn't even find something that paid enough to cover my loans.”
“Until.”
“I started with a temp agency. Not exactly the glamorous world I was expecting on the other side of my degree. But it was the only place that would even entertain the idea of hiring me fresh out of school. And it turns out that most of my journalism skills translated decently well to secretarial work: detail orientation, taking dictation,” she licked her lips, and I told myself it had to be because she had some dressing on them. “But what's with the twenty questions? The only person who ever spent this much time trying to know me was Ed Noakes, and he lost interest in a real hurry when he realized I wasn't going to blow him on my lunch hours.”
“Because I wanted to know that you weren't just my assistant. And now I do. Right now that doesn't mean a lot. Right now, you just have a title, and not a very pretty sounding one. But in the coming days, that will change. I've found finance to be awfully competitive, and some days the work is more akin to battle than business. If I'm going back to back with someone, I want to know what kind of stuff they're made of before I turn my back. And I think we have a beautiful partnership ahead of us.”
I raised my glass, and she clinked it with hers.
Check back next week for another excerpt or join my mailing list to be notified when Banksters is available for purchase.
Point of interest, Banksters was originally syndicated daily, as written, during National Novel Writing Month 2011. It's a funny tradition of mine, to peel back my skin a bit and share my work as it happens. If you want to tag along for this year's NaNo project, Twist, a psychological thriller, visit NicolasWilson.com and check the blog daily, beginning November 2nd. Performance art, but with only metaphorical nudity.
Previously:
Banksters, Part 1, Howdy
Banksters, Part 2, Secretive
I spent a few minutes at my computer after the meeting typing. Corporate communications are second-nature to me: cold and utilitarian and efficiently artless. I'd brought my old printer from downstairs, and printed the memo on it.
I looked at it a moment, to be sure it was exactly how I wanted it, and then took it down the hall. Security had its own executive level office- just not the title, and Daria was sitting in the same chair, at the same desk, as I had, the standard one. Which meant either she hadn't been offered the perks of the floor, or hadn't accepted them.
Daria Rheme. Beautiful. Obsessive. And potentially a very large pain in my ass. She had long, wavy, dark hair. Raven, I think, being the preferred term, and pale skin that complemented her delicate features. F; K if necessary, though if things went to plan, it wouldn't be.
She was in charge of corporate security. And she was really good at what she did. Thorough. Scrutinizing. I couldn’t have that. In the end, I wanted what was best for this company- which generally translated to what was best for the senior executives. But she was a firewall, standing between them and me. And that wasn't something I could suffer to continue.
I smiled nervously at her for effect. “Daria? It's my first day on the floor, and I'm still getting used to operating at this level.”
“The altitude this many flights up is killer,” she said with a smile. Under other circumstances, I probably would have found her charming. The smile faded as she noticed my hands. “But gloves? You're not planning a murder, are you?”
Planning one? No. But you never know. I stretched my fingers in my black leather gloves. “Bad circulation. My fingers get cold. Especially with the central air. Hopefully I'll acclimate.”
“Oh, I know. They can never seem to find a good medium. Most of the time, in the summer they keep it too cold, and in the winter I swelter until I've stripped down to my skivvies.”
“But, uh, I wondered if you could take a look at this memo. I don't want my first day here to be my last day.”
“Usually I'd have one of my,” she glanced at her computer, then the empty inbox on her desk, and didn't finish the thought. “Sure. Just don't expect it to become a habit.”
“Of course.” She scanned it. There was a typo in there she either didn't catch or didn't mention, but she did hone in on the important part.
“You're CCing and blind copying this all over your division, but you left in contact information for your executive VP. Most of these people would be able to get that, anyway, but as it's presented, he'll be the one inundated with concerns or questions, and Cliff hates that.”
“That's good, I hadn't thought of that” I told her, which was a lie. “And from a security perspective?”
“Otherwise it looks fine. If that were releasing to the press obviously it'd be different- the numbers and direct email, like I said- but for internal consumption it's okay.” She handed me the page back.
“Thank you,” I said, I did a little bow and left.
I walked back to my office, where I slid the memo into my desk drawer, and grabbed my coat. I pressed the intercom button to talk to Petra. “You about ready for lunch?”
“Really?” she asked, a little surprised I remembered.
“Of course.”
She was already wrapping herself in a fur-lined coat by the time I got out to her desk. She followed me down to the parking garage, and got into my car. “Where would you like to go?” I asked her.
“You're new to the floor, not new to the city,” she said. But I was new to the life, and when I didn't reply, she added, “Brooks.”
I drove us there, about a mile north. At dinner, Brooks would have been impossible to get a seat for without a several day old reservation, but the lunch crowd was thinner, since nobody's ever impressed or that impressive at lunch.
The host stared with some irritation at Petra. “Something wrong?” I asked him, giving him at least as good a glare as Richard used at the meeting earlier.
“Uh, no, sir,” the host said, and led us to our seats.
I helped her into her chair before sitting in my own. She was anxious, and the host's reaction to her had only justified her fear. “I really thought you were going to tell me 'no' about coming here.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because I'm not dressed for this kind of place.”
“No, that's why you wish I'd said no. Not why you thought I would.”
“I'm just a...” she trailed off.
“Just a secretary? Is that what you are?”
“Well, administrative assistant,” she said sullenly.
“If I thought that, I'd fire you,” I said, and unfolded the menu to scan it. “Do you think that?”
She made an unexpected lemon face. “You're looking for 'no,' right?”
I looked up at her. “I'm looking for what you think. Do you think you're just an administrative assistant?”
“No,” she said quietly, but still tried to hunker down in her chair. The part she didn't say, the part she didn't want to admit, is that whatever her own grand designs, she was just an assistant, at least to the people she worked with. And that kind of marginalization weighed on a person.
I made a sweeping gesture with my arm. “Look around. That woman has had easily $50,000 worth of plastic surgery. The one at the back's wearing a $9,000 dress. It's a light lunch crowd, but the women in this dining room have spent, cumulatively, a million dollars to not look as good as you do, right now. Wearing what you wear into the office, on a typical day. This is you not trying that hard.” She bristled at that. She had made some token effort to clean up for the new boss, apparently. But that was far to the side of my point. “You look gorgeous, and I'm sure you know you have no reason to feel self-conscious about being here. But what I want to know, and I want you to really think about it before you answer me, is are you just an administrative assistant?”
She exhaled, annoyed at my question. But she looked around the room, and sat up a little straighter. “No.”
“Good,” I said. “Because I'd look capricious after telling Ed that I'd keep you if I fired you a few hours later.” Her eyes opened wide. “Trust me, when I say this, you never want to be saddled with anyone who is just anything- it's so limiting. I've never been just anything. I've always been in the process of becoming something else.” I noticed she was rereading a page on the menu a third time. “But on the subject of limitations, order what you like.”
“Really?”
“Money's no object. Besides, what you order tells me something about you, something far more valuable than what anything on this menu costs.”
“And what if I just wanted a salad? What does that tell you?”
“Lots of things, little things. One, you don't believe what I just said, about wanting you to order whatever you want.”
“Unless I just want a salad.”
“Nobody wants just a salad. It's not in human nature. It's settling for a salad. And there are lots of interesting reasons why you might settle. To impress your boss with your frugality. To maintain your figure. To punish yourself for something.”
“Or because I actually wanted a salad?”
The server came by. “Two salads, please, whatever's tastiest.” I said to her, barely paying her enough mind to decide F.
“To drink?”
“Two glasses of white wine, whatever you'd suggest to complement the salads.”
“Very good.”
Petra was in shock. “After all that, you just give yourself a pass and order a salad?”
“We spent so much time talking about them that I started to crave one. But what's to say I'm not prey to the same issues we were discussing?”
“You're a man, and an older man.”
“Older?” The server brought the wine first, and Petra waited until she left to react.
“Older than me, anyway. I'm a professional woman. I'm not allowed to let my figure go.”
“The social constraints are certainly different. But I have pride. I don't like the idea of needing new suits, or gaining weight.”
“But you're a man. That affords you the luxury of choice.”
The server returned with our salads, and set them discreetly down in front of us. “But you had a choice, too. And you chose a salad. And what's more, you chose to have this conversation in an attempt to give me nothing to know you better with.”
She thought about that for a moment, probing for a way she could contest it, but gave up. “You flustered me, with your logic and your piercing blue eyes.”
“Are they?”
“That's just a trick question, to get me to look into them some more, and get me more flustered.”
She did, and I fixed her with them for a moment, before asking, “Where did you go to school?”
“Who said I did?” she asked. She still felt combative, if playfully so, but then realized I wasn't batting at her anymore. “Columbia's journalism school.”
“So you wanted to be a journalist?”
“From a little kid, reading Lois Lane comics.”
“Are you really that old?”
“No; but the moment I found out they had Lois Lane comics, not just Superman with her as arm candy, but Superman's Girlfriend Lois Lane comics. I was hooked. I had to crawl through musty old comic bins to find them, and they were cheesy and often kind of lame, but I gathered every single issue in the run, and that comic ran for years. They're not mint or anything, just...” she stumbled on the next step in her story.
“So what happened?”
“Journalism dust-bowled. There's hardly anyone actually writing news stories anymore. There's a handful of people who work for the AP, and then that gets reworded, rewritten or just plain linked to a hundred thousand times for different papers and blogs. I even tried doing entry level, like mail room kinds of jobs in the industry, and couldn't even find something that paid enough to cover my loans.”
“Until.”
“I started with a temp agency. Not exactly the glamorous world I was expecting on the other side of my degree. But it was the only place that would even entertain the idea of hiring me fresh out of school. And it turns out that most of my journalism skills translated decently well to secretarial work: detail orientation, taking dictation,” she licked her lips, and I told myself it had to be because she had some dressing on them. “But what's with the twenty questions? The only person who ever spent this much time trying to know me was Ed Noakes, and he lost interest in a real hurry when he realized I wasn't going to blow him on my lunch hours.”
“Because I wanted to know that you weren't just my assistant. And now I do. Right now that doesn't mean a lot. Right now, you just have a title, and not a very pretty sounding one. But in the coming days, that will change. I've found finance to be awfully competitive, and some days the work is more akin to battle than business. If I'm going back to back with someone, I want to know what kind of stuff they're made of before I turn my back. And I think we have a beautiful partnership ahead of us.”
I raised my glass, and she clinked it with hers.
Check back next week for another excerpt or join my mailing list to be notified when Banksters is available for purchase.
October 4, 2013
Preview: Banksters, Part 1
Yep, I'm very late in beginning to share these. But it's time to get underway with our next story, Banksters, due end of October/early November. Ride shotgun with a sociopath accelerating his ascent to corporate power.
Point of interest, Banksters was originally syndicated daily, as written, during National Novel Writing Month 2011. It's a funny tradition of mine, to peel back my skin a bit and share my work as it happens. If you want to tag along for this years NaNo project, Twist, a psychological thriller, visit NicolasWilson.com and check the blog daily, beginning November 2nd.
Banksters, Part 1, Howdy
My name's Mark Dane. I’m a sociopath. Howdy. It's my first day as an associate vice-president. Like most sociopaths, I work in finance. It’s the sector of the economy where smart, unscrupulous bastards can legally take money from people who don’t know any better.
And get a pat on the back for it.
See, people are stupid. They’ll sign a document that financially chains them to an agreement they may not live to see the other side of, all without understanding it. Sometimes it’s because they don’t speak legalese; sometimes it’s because they’re lazy- but that’s even stupider. I mean, somebody incapable of understanding their loan agreement, evolution didn’t prepare them for this complicated world we live in. But the moron who glanced at the pages and decided his future wasn’t worth fifteen minutes of reading- that’s a nurture problem, there. Mommy and daddy loved them too much, so now they think the world is here to wipe their ass- when it’s my job to kick them right in the racing stripe.
I started in home loans, back when that was still a lucrative market, before people started to realize that every strip of dirt was worth, you guessed it, dirt. Okay, maybe not dirt, exactly, but closer to dirt than the wishful thinking, pie in the sky, just because wages are flat doesn't mean people can't pull extra greenbacks out of their backsides forever inflated real estate prices of yore.
But the glory of the mortgage market is we found a way to make money off making bad loans. That's how goddamn brilliant the financial sector is. We figured out how to talk people into home loans that they could never pay back, because we didn't care if they couldn't. We knew the moment they signed on the dotted line, we would package their loan with dozens like it, call it a security and sell it off to some half-wit investor.
It worked mostly because we convinced people we were selling sacks full of money for 80 cents on the dollar. And initially, it wasn't such a bad deal. But at a certain point, we ran out of good mortgages to sell. By then, people believed we were handing out free money, and weren’t looking too closely at what was in the sacks. So we paid people to take a heaping shit in the sacks, and sold those, too. And people stomped all over each other to buy them.
And the dirty little secret: any smart loan packager knew how absolutely shit his loans were, but still bundled them up, had one of the ‘credible’ ratings agencies put their legitimizing stamp of approval on it and then sold it to some poor schmuck who didn’t do enough research to know better. It was like taking candy from babies, only we offered them less than wholesale for it. So it was nice and legal, and they were actually happy with the transaction.
Even people who should have known better, like hedge fund managers, whose existence is supposedly justified by the fact that they're the people who know better, thanked me, personally, for taking their money in exchange for worthless strips of paper.
Of course, that's just how I got my foot in the door. That particular gig is up. Not that it's illegal, just that the rubes who bought the ratings-inflated securities know better, now, and the ratings agencies themselves already got pretty publicly caught with their hands up the cookie jar's skirt, so they don't want to risk the bad press of a second go round- at least not for a few more years, when collective memories have moved on to other bogeymen.
Not that any of that matters. Because those of us who made money off the deals still have it. And our bosses, and our shareholders, they have even more money than the bundlers and traders.
But that was the past. Like I said, it was my first day in the new job. The man in the ugly gray suit prattling on, but likely too stupid even to recognize it, was Edward Noakes; to look at it, you'd think it was a cheap suit, but I've seen in it on the rack and I knew that wasn't true. Kudos to Ed for finding a way to look like a bank teller while still paying more for a suit than said teller paid for his car. He's an AVP, too, and he's been helpfully showing me the ropes; though, as we're both now in line for succession to the vacant VP slot, I imagine he's hoping to loop some of that rope around my neck.
At least, that's what I'd be doing in his place.
This floor was only three stories from my old one, thirty feet as the shit falls, but it seemed so much farther away from the little cubicle farm I just escaped. No more chintzy partitions, just white walls, fine art prints, and personal offices.
And my own secretary. F. Though I imagine she saw herself as the waiting-for-M kind, the boys she “dated” in college notwithstanding. She was pretty, with shoulder-length blond hair, and blood red lips. She seemed to recognize me, but she also didn't seem happy to. “She belonged to Jameson,” Ed told me, then lowered his voice, but not so low she couldn't hear him- which I figured was intentional. “I don't know how much you heard from the lower floors, but he left under a bit of a cloud. The feeling is that his secretary's been tainted by it. I'd get rid of her; don't want the stink of another man on your girl.”
I saw terror in her eyes, and opportunity. “I think I'll keep her,” I told him. “Maybe she can teach me how things work up here. Wouldn't make sense to have both of us wet behind the ears at the same time.”
He seemed taken aback. Even though he was probably used to people ignoring him, it was the first time I'd contradicted him, and probably in record time. He wasn't used to people from my floor coming with their own backbone. But contrary to how he wanted to perceive it, it wasn't about him. It was about her. I was new, untested, and without much a power base to call my own. I was going to need every ally I could muster- every ally who mattered, anyhow, and one look at her told me I'd take her over a dozen Eds. “And what's your name?” I asked her.
“Petra. Valentino.” I saw it in her eyes. A couple of words in her defense, a little attention, and she was mine. She'd do anything for me; it was loyalty like a dog's- and given just as wantonly. Too needy to M; definitely F.
“That's a lovely name,” I said. “I look forward to working with you.”
Ed led me into my office. I had a view of the city I could hardly believe. We were so high up if I shoved Ed through my floor-to-ceiling windows, he'd have time for a full Catholic confession before he hit the pavement, and probably even time to wait for the call to ring through- assuming his bishop had a cell in his pocket and didn't have to hobble to his land line.
The carpet was a little too short to be comfy; I preferred feeling like I was stepping on a sheep, even with my socks on, and it was beige; the perfect color to stain while remaining completely bland.
My new desk was modern in its sensibilities, black wire frame, glass top. “The desk is standard,” he told me, running his hand over the glass table top, smearing his fingerprints across it. I didn't know him well enough to know if it was a dominance play, marking my office, or if he was just that callous and unaware that he was smearing his grease all over my things. “If you want, you can look at the catalogs Suzanne has; there's some nice furniture in there. I'm partial to cherry wood, myself.”
“But I'll let you get settled in,” he said. “Your first staff meeting starts at 11. Feel free to acclimate, until then.”
I sat down at my desk. Then I called in my secretary. “Ms. Valentino. Could you come in here, please?”
“One moment.” She was faster, even, than that. “What can I do for you?” she asked.
“Close the door, and have a seat.” She did, and leaned forward in her chair. I couldn't tell if she intended to show me her cleavage or not, but she did. “I don't want to get off on the wrong foot, here, so I'm trying to figure out what my predecessor did right and did not so right. What were his mornings like?” She averted her eyes. “It's okay, I'm not going to blame you if he spent them on eBay or whatever. I just want to know.”
“Mr. Jameson spent his mornings chatting with under-aged boys on the internet and trying to get them to send him pictures with their clothes off.”
“We'll skip that, then,” I said, trying to calm her with my smile. “What about his afternoons?”
“He spent his afternoons meeting transgender prostitutes.”
“He had a full social calendar. But I'm assuming there were times when he actually did his job.”
“Tough for me to say,” she said. She didn’t look at me as she continued. “I always thought he was working. Video-conferencing, off-site meetings. They wanted to fire me with Denny, but that security bitch interviewed me, and I told her I hadn't known anything before IT came to her with his internet logs.” She was upset; she felt hurt by his conduct, even betrayed.
“The security...”
“Daria, you'll meet her. She'll be at the executive meeting. Always stands at the CEO's side, like she's his little attack dog.”
“Is she all that bad?” I asked, treading that treacherous ground between questioning interest and dismissal. I already knew about Daria. But I wanted a firsthand account.
“She's an inquisitor. I felt like I was a terrorism suspect.” She was a former detective with the local police, vice into homicide. She retired after she filed a sexual harassment claim against one of her superiors, and the rumor was that she received a sizable settlement in exchange for her discretion. The rumor was half-right. She was offered the settlement, and refused it. She didn’t want public money for a private failing. That, and it was hush money, and she didn't want the bastard free to do it again to some other girl.
“Well, I'll be careful of her. And I'll see to it she never has a reason to question you, ever again.”
She heaved a relieved sigh that seemed to surprise even her, then stood up. She checked her watch. “Meeting starts in ten minutes.”
“Thank you, Ms. Valentino. And if you're free, it seems like you've had a lousy morning, I'd like to buy you lunch. Get to know the new boss kind of deal.”
“Sure,” she said, smiling as she left.
At ten to eleven I walked to the executive conference room. It was early enough to be punctual, but not so early as to be wasting company time. Though the meeting proved to be that, anyway, and was boring, to boot. All of the action was happening in Administrative, Alice Mott's division, and I got the feeling that was the case 80% of the time. After all, this company's bread and butter was still banking, even if the margin on it was lousy. Ops and Finance were better money-makers, dollar for dollar, but the senior staff didn't have nearly as much to do with the day to day in those departments- probably didn't really understand them- and even with the better margin there was only so much to squeeze from that stone.
The only bright spot in the entire tepid affair was an off-color remark the president, George Morgan, made at his brother Richard's expense. Big brother Richard was CEO, and board chairman, and he treated his little Georgie like he was still a gawky child. Richard was throwing a party tonight at the office, ostensibly to welcome Sam and Alex Warwick onto the board. But the party just happened to coincide with Richard's birthday. “Finally figured out a way to get people to show up to your birthday party?” George chided him.
Alice chortled at that, and Richard glared. She was the only woman at the table, at least today, and certainly at her level, so his glare didn't faze her. So he shared it with George, then the rest of the room. I dutifully looked down and away.
Cliff hadn't made it into the office, so without trying to figure out who from our division was next in line, George spoke to me and Ed collectively as “finance” and told us to draft up a new memo. We both nodded our heads, without looking up to see if Richard was still glowering.
Check back next week for another excerpt or join my mailing list to be notified when Banksters is available for purchase.
Point of interest, Banksters was originally syndicated daily, as written, during National Novel Writing Month 2011. It's a funny tradition of mine, to peel back my skin a bit and share my work as it happens. If you want to tag along for this years NaNo project, Twist, a psychological thriller, visit NicolasWilson.com and check the blog daily, beginning November 2nd.
Banksters, Part 1, Howdy
My name's Mark Dane. I’m a sociopath. Howdy. It's my first day as an associate vice-president. Like most sociopaths, I work in finance. It’s the sector of the economy where smart, unscrupulous bastards can legally take money from people who don’t know any better.
And get a pat on the back for it.
See, people are stupid. They’ll sign a document that financially chains them to an agreement they may not live to see the other side of, all without understanding it. Sometimes it’s because they don’t speak legalese; sometimes it’s because they’re lazy- but that’s even stupider. I mean, somebody incapable of understanding their loan agreement, evolution didn’t prepare them for this complicated world we live in. But the moron who glanced at the pages and decided his future wasn’t worth fifteen minutes of reading- that’s a nurture problem, there. Mommy and daddy loved them too much, so now they think the world is here to wipe their ass- when it’s my job to kick them right in the racing stripe.
I started in home loans, back when that was still a lucrative market, before people started to realize that every strip of dirt was worth, you guessed it, dirt. Okay, maybe not dirt, exactly, but closer to dirt than the wishful thinking, pie in the sky, just because wages are flat doesn't mean people can't pull extra greenbacks out of their backsides forever inflated real estate prices of yore.
But the glory of the mortgage market is we found a way to make money off making bad loans. That's how goddamn brilliant the financial sector is. We figured out how to talk people into home loans that they could never pay back, because we didn't care if they couldn't. We knew the moment they signed on the dotted line, we would package their loan with dozens like it, call it a security and sell it off to some half-wit investor.
It worked mostly because we convinced people we were selling sacks full of money for 80 cents on the dollar. And initially, it wasn't such a bad deal. But at a certain point, we ran out of good mortgages to sell. By then, people believed we were handing out free money, and weren’t looking too closely at what was in the sacks. So we paid people to take a heaping shit in the sacks, and sold those, too. And people stomped all over each other to buy them.
And the dirty little secret: any smart loan packager knew how absolutely shit his loans were, but still bundled them up, had one of the ‘credible’ ratings agencies put their legitimizing stamp of approval on it and then sold it to some poor schmuck who didn’t do enough research to know better. It was like taking candy from babies, only we offered them less than wholesale for it. So it was nice and legal, and they were actually happy with the transaction.
Even people who should have known better, like hedge fund managers, whose existence is supposedly justified by the fact that they're the people who know better, thanked me, personally, for taking their money in exchange for worthless strips of paper.
Of course, that's just how I got my foot in the door. That particular gig is up. Not that it's illegal, just that the rubes who bought the ratings-inflated securities know better, now, and the ratings agencies themselves already got pretty publicly caught with their hands up the cookie jar's skirt, so they don't want to risk the bad press of a second go round- at least not for a few more years, when collective memories have moved on to other bogeymen.
Not that any of that matters. Because those of us who made money off the deals still have it. And our bosses, and our shareholders, they have even more money than the bundlers and traders.
But that was the past. Like I said, it was my first day in the new job. The man in the ugly gray suit prattling on, but likely too stupid even to recognize it, was Edward Noakes; to look at it, you'd think it was a cheap suit, but I've seen in it on the rack and I knew that wasn't true. Kudos to Ed for finding a way to look like a bank teller while still paying more for a suit than said teller paid for his car. He's an AVP, too, and he's been helpfully showing me the ropes; though, as we're both now in line for succession to the vacant VP slot, I imagine he's hoping to loop some of that rope around my neck.
At least, that's what I'd be doing in his place.
This floor was only three stories from my old one, thirty feet as the shit falls, but it seemed so much farther away from the little cubicle farm I just escaped. No more chintzy partitions, just white walls, fine art prints, and personal offices.
And my own secretary. F. Though I imagine she saw herself as the waiting-for-M kind, the boys she “dated” in college notwithstanding. She was pretty, with shoulder-length blond hair, and blood red lips. She seemed to recognize me, but she also didn't seem happy to. “She belonged to Jameson,” Ed told me, then lowered his voice, but not so low she couldn't hear him- which I figured was intentional. “I don't know how much you heard from the lower floors, but he left under a bit of a cloud. The feeling is that his secretary's been tainted by it. I'd get rid of her; don't want the stink of another man on your girl.”
I saw terror in her eyes, and opportunity. “I think I'll keep her,” I told him. “Maybe she can teach me how things work up here. Wouldn't make sense to have both of us wet behind the ears at the same time.”
He seemed taken aback. Even though he was probably used to people ignoring him, it was the first time I'd contradicted him, and probably in record time. He wasn't used to people from my floor coming with their own backbone. But contrary to how he wanted to perceive it, it wasn't about him. It was about her. I was new, untested, and without much a power base to call my own. I was going to need every ally I could muster- every ally who mattered, anyhow, and one look at her told me I'd take her over a dozen Eds. “And what's your name?” I asked her.
“Petra. Valentino.” I saw it in her eyes. A couple of words in her defense, a little attention, and she was mine. She'd do anything for me; it was loyalty like a dog's- and given just as wantonly. Too needy to M; definitely F.
“That's a lovely name,” I said. “I look forward to working with you.”
Ed led me into my office. I had a view of the city I could hardly believe. We were so high up if I shoved Ed through my floor-to-ceiling windows, he'd have time for a full Catholic confession before he hit the pavement, and probably even time to wait for the call to ring through- assuming his bishop had a cell in his pocket and didn't have to hobble to his land line.
The carpet was a little too short to be comfy; I preferred feeling like I was stepping on a sheep, even with my socks on, and it was beige; the perfect color to stain while remaining completely bland.
My new desk was modern in its sensibilities, black wire frame, glass top. “The desk is standard,” he told me, running his hand over the glass table top, smearing his fingerprints across it. I didn't know him well enough to know if it was a dominance play, marking my office, or if he was just that callous and unaware that he was smearing his grease all over my things. “If you want, you can look at the catalogs Suzanne has; there's some nice furniture in there. I'm partial to cherry wood, myself.”
“But I'll let you get settled in,” he said. “Your first staff meeting starts at 11. Feel free to acclimate, until then.”
I sat down at my desk. Then I called in my secretary. “Ms. Valentino. Could you come in here, please?”
“One moment.” She was faster, even, than that. “What can I do for you?” she asked.
“Close the door, and have a seat.” She did, and leaned forward in her chair. I couldn't tell if she intended to show me her cleavage or not, but she did. “I don't want to get off on the wrong foot, here, so I'm trying to figure out what my predecessor did right and did not so right. What were his mornings like?” She averted her eyes. “It's okay, I'm not going to blame you if he spent them on eBay or whatever. I just want to know.”
“Mr. Jameson spent his mornings chatting with under-aged boys on the internet and trying to get them to send him pictures with their clothes off.”
“We'll skip that, then,” I said, trying to calm her with my smile. “What about his afternoons?”
“He spent his afternoons meeting transgender prostitutes.”
“He had a full social calendar. But I'm assuming there were times when he actually did his job.”
“Tough for me to say,” she said. She didn’t look at me as she continued. “I always thought he was working. Video-conferencing, off-site meetings. They wanted to fire me with Denny, but that security bitch interviewed me, and I told her I hadn't known anything before IT came to her with his internet logs.” She was upset; she felt hurt by his conduct, even betrayed.
“The security...”
“Daria, you'll meet her. She'll be at the executive meeting. Always stands at the CEO's side, like she's his little attack dog.”
“Is she all that bad?” I asked, treading that treacherous ground between questioning interest and dismissal. I already knew about Daria. But I wanted a firsthand account.
“She's an inquisitor. I felt like I was a terrorism suspect.” She was a former detective with the local police, vice into homicide. She retired after she filed a sexual harassment claim against one of her superiors, and the rumor was that she received a sizable settlement in exchange for her discretion. The rumor was half-right. She was offered the settlement, and refused it. She didn’t want public money for a private failing. That, and it was hush money, and she didn't want the bastard free to do it again to some other girl.
“Well, I'll be careful of her. And I'll see to it she never has a reason to question you, ever again.”
She heaved a relieved sigh that seemed to surprise even her, then stood up. She checked her watch. “Meeting starts in ten minutes.”
“Thank you, Ms. Valentino. And if you're free, it seems like you've had a lousy morning, I'd like to buy you lunch. Get to know the new boss kind of deal.”
“Sure,” she said, smiling as she left.
At ten to eleven I walked to the executive conference room. It was early enough to be punctual, but not so early as to be wasting company time. Though the meeting proved to be that, anyway, and was boring, to boot. All of the action was happening in Administrative, Alice Mott's division, and I got the feeling that was the case 80% of the time. After all, this company's bread and butter was still banking, even if the margin on it was lousy. Ops and Finance were better money-makers, dollar for dollar, but the senior staff didn't have nearly as much to do with the day to day in those departments- probably didn't really understand them- and even with the better margin there was only so much to squeeze from that stone.
The only bright spot in the entire tepid affair was an off-color remark the president, George Morgan, made at his brother Richard's expense. Big brother Richard was CEO, and board chairman, and he treated his little Georgie like he was still a gawky child. Richard was throwing a party tonight at the office, ostensibly to welcome Sam and Alex Warwick onto the board. But the party just happened to coincide with Richard's birthday. “Finally figured out a way to get people to show up to your birthday party?” George chided him.
Alice chortled at that, and Richard glared. She was the only woman at the table, at least today, and certainly at her level, so his glare didn't faze her. So he shared it with George, then the rest of the room. I dutifully looked down and away.
Cliff hadn't made it into the office, so without trying to figure out who from our division was next in line, George spoke to me and Ed collectively as “finance” and told us to draft up a new memo. We both nodded our heads, without looking up to see if Richard was still glowering.
Check back next week for another excerpt or join my mailing list to be notified when Banksters is available for purchase.
September 18, 2013
Cover Reveal: The Necromancer's Gambit
I'm excited to share this with you guys, and more excited to get The Necromancer's Gambit out to you in a few days. And then on to the next project. We'll start sharing previews from Banksters next, a sexy thriller following the machinations of a sociopath, due for release early November.
Visit The Necromancer's Gambit's goodreads page for quotes and early reviews, as they come in, or join my mailing list to be notified when The Necromancer's Gambit is available for purchase.
Visit The Necromancer's Gambit's goodreads page for quotes and early reviews, as they come in, or join my mailing list to be notified when The Necromancer's Gambit is available for purchase.
September 16, 2013
Preview: The Necromancer's Gambit, Part 7
And now, the last preview for The Necromancer's Gambit, due September 23rd. The Necromancer's Gambit follows the travails of a cell of mages operating in Portland. Stay tuned later this week for the cover reveal.
Previously:
The Necromancer's Gambit, part 1
The Necromancer's Gambit, part 2
The Necromancer's Gambit, part 3
The Necromancer's Gambit, part 4
The Necromancer's Gambit, part 5
The Necromancer's Gambit, part 6
The Necromancer's Gambit, Part 7, The Interrogation, continued.
I barely have to look at Pawn for him to go scurrying for the halvah and the CF. He’s in deep shit, and he knows it. And Rook’s full of righteous pissiness. I should have expected as much, since it’s noble goddamn sentiment that’s kept most of the covens out of proper government.
“Let me see if I’ve got your job description straight: you beat and bully the people who help you until they probably won’t help you next time?”
I try not to snap at her. Interrogation’s never pretty, even when Pawn isn’t involved. And I also don’t have the heart to tell her just how vanilla this one actually was. “That’s probably how this played out. But more often than not, interrogation gets you information a witness wouldn’t give up willingly. Interrogation’s a part of what I do. So’s scene investigation. Tracking. Pawn goes home and blackout drinks tonight away, and Bishop, after a day or two pulling apart that overcooked McNugget gets to set it aside. But this case is mine until I bury it. Pawn’s an ugly little thug-”
“Thanks,” he says, before realizing he should have kept his nose buried in his refrigerator, trying to find the halvah.
“but he’s a terrier, and barks real loud to keep people in check. But when they become unchecked, it’s my job to find them and shut them down.”
She wants to fight it out, but her diplomatic instincts kick in. “Fine.”
“Just take it,” I hear Pawn from the other side of the room. Cedric walks toward the door, and Pawn keeps jabbing him with the halvah and CF; he won’t take them, and I understand why. I grab them from Pawn, and Cedric takes them, gently, out of my hands. He nods to me, but his eyes are sad.
“Sorry about that little trip you took,” Pawn says, and claps him on the shoulder.
Cedric’s eyes go red again, and he nods in my direction. “If he weren’t here, I’d rip through your neck like tissue.” He slams the door before Pawn’s hand can start to gravitate to the snub-nose in his pocket.
“Guess I won’t be using him as a CI anymore.”
“They’re gone,” I tell him. “Whatever goodwill he banked with us or the VC, he can’t trust anymore. So he’ll take Patrice and disappear, go to a new city, start over with a different colony.”
“Hey, don’t blame me,” Pawn says, before I even get a chance to. “I know Patrice, and that she’s been hanging around Cedric. But I didn’t fucking know he turned her. Christ. I’d have torn out his fangs if I’d known that. You know those VC fucks- look for any reason to pitch the blame on us humans.”
“They’re human, too,” I correct him.
“Keep telling yourself, that, pal. I prefer not to share a species with people who see me as livestock.”
“What’s our next step?” Rook asks.
“Pawn will track down Patrice, if he can, and I’ll ask her, gently, what went on.”
Pawn, midshaft on the cock-n-balls, glares at me. “But their story seems to match Tim’s, so it’s probably a dead end. Otherwise we’re waiting on Bishop.”
“Want to get some more coffee?” she asks.
“Slightly warmer, or colder, this time?”
“Sure. Let’s walk.” I figure pumping her legs will get some of the tension out so we hoof it to Voodoo. We get less than a block before I realize she’s watching over her shoulder. “Worried about the vamp?”
She blushes. “Shouldn’t I be?”
“Wary, not worried. One to one, a mage trumps a vamp. They’re faster, stronger, more agile- but that only matters if they can get in close. So it’s basically suicide for a vamp to attack a mage. It might be worth it for him to try to kill Pawn- he’s a big enough prick- but you and I, no. That’d be suicide times 2.”
“Unless there’s more than one of them.”
“There’s a treaty, between the vampire colonies and the gambits. They don’t attack us, we don’t attack them. It’s a fragile peace, but one that’s beneficial enough that nobody’s looking to violate it. And Cedric has broken their rules; he can’t trust any of them with it- so he couldn’t ask any of them for back up.”
“How close do you work with the colony?”
“Kind of depends. If they’ve got trouble they’ll consult with us. If we’ve got a vamp suspect, we’ll consult with them. Theoretically, we could call them for back-up in a pinch- but I’d hate to have to rely on that. In a city this size, you’re almost guaranteed to have either an infestation or a colony. Since Salem’s the capital, I’d be surprised if you didn’t have a few vampires there, hangers-on or manipulators. I know a good extermination guy I can recommend to your Circle.”
“A hunter?”
“Not one of those genocidal pricks. More of a catch and release specialist. Besides, if you can point them out to a nearby colony, they’ll take care of it.”
“I don’t think I like the euphemism.”
“It isn’t one. Most likely they’d set up a colony. Organize it. Without it, pretty soon you end up with an infestation- a de facto colony that’s rogue, doesn’t enforce the rules, and tends to attract the worst elements. Then it’s kill or be killed.” I hand her a card. “Just talk to my guy. Better to know. What the Circle does with the information is up to them.”
She’s still mulling the idea when I get a call. It’s Bishop. “Better fucking come down here.”
“B? What’s wrong? You in trouble?”
“Just fucking come. And bring Pawn.” We run back by the safe house. He’s doesn’t say a thing, but he’s ready when we get there- him not dragging his ass shows just how rattled he is.
Bishop’s never been this taciturn before. I don’t know what that means- but it’s bad. I speed through several of Portland’s perennial construction zones, and it’s probably a miracle I don’t get pulled over.
Bishop opens her door as we pull up, leaves it ajar. She’s standing by the body, staring, by the time we cross the threshold. “I didn’t want to do this over the phone. Even with the protective spells. It’s Castle.”
“What’s Castle?” I ask, because she can’t mean what I think she does. “Did he call you? Is something up?”
“No, that corpse is Castle. Our Castle.”
“Shit.”
Check back next week for another excerpt or join my mailing list to be notified when The Necromancer's Gambit is available for purchase.
Previously:
The Necromancer's Gambit, part 1
The Necromancer's Gambit, part 2
The Necromancer's Gambit, part 3
The Necromancer's Gambit, part 4
The Necromancer's Gambit, part 5
The Necromancer's Gambit, part 6
The Necromancer's Gambit, Part 7, The Interrogation, continued.
I barely have to look at Pawn for him to go scurrying for the halvah and the CF. He’s in deep shit, and he knows it. And Rook’s full of righteous pissiness. I should have expected as much, since it’s noble goddamn sentiment that’s kept most of the covens out of proper government.
“Let me see if I’ve got your job description straight: you beat and bully the people who help you until they probably won’t help you next time?”
I try not to snap at her. Interrogation’s never pretty, even when Pawn isn’t involved. And I also don’t have the heart to tell her just how vanilla this one actually was. “That’s probably how this played out. But more often than not, interrogation gets you information a witness wouldn’t give up willingly. Interrogation’s a part of what I do. So’s scene investigation. Tracking. Pawn goes home and blackout drinks tonight away, and Bishop, after a day or two pulling apart that overcooked McNugget gets to set it aside. But this case is mine until I bury it. Pawn’s an ugly little thug-”
“Thanks,” he says, before realizing he should have kept his nose buried in his refrigerator, trying to find the halvah.
“but he’s a terrier, and barks real loud to keep people in check. But when they become unchecked, it’s my job to find them and shut them down.”
She wants to fight it out, but her diplomatic instincts kick in. “Fine.”
“Just take it,” I hear Pawn from the other side of the room. Cedric walks toward the door, and Pawn keeps jabbing him with the halvah and CF; he won’t take them, and I understand why. I grab them from Pawn, and Cedric takes them, gently, out of my hands. He nods to me, but his eyes are sad.
“Sorry about that little trip you took,” Pawn says, and claps him on the shoulder.
Cedric’s eyes go red again, and he nods in my direction. “If he weren’t here, I’d rip through your neck like tissue.” He slams the door before Pawn’s hand can start to gravitate to the snub-nose in his pocket.
“Guess I won’t be using him as a CI anymore.”
“They’re gone,” I tell him. “Whatever goodwill he banked with us or the VC, he can’t trust anymore. So he’ll take Patrice and disappear, go to a new city, start over with a different colony.”
“Hey, don’t blame me,” Pawn says, before I even get a chance to. “I know Patrice, and that she’s been hanging around Cedric. But I didn’t fucking know he turned her. Christ. I’d have torn out his fangs if I’d known that. You know those VC fucks- look for any reason to pitch the blame on us humans.”
“They’re human, too,” I correct him.
“Keep telling yourself, that, pal. I prefer not to share a species with people who see me as livestock.”
“What’s our next step?” Rook asks.
“Pawn will track down Patrice, if he can, and I’ll ask her, gently, what went on.”
Pawn, midshaft on the cock-n-balls, glares at me. “But their story seems to match Tim’s, so it’s probably a dead end. Otherwise we’re waiting on Bishop.”
“Want to get some more coffee?” she asks.
“Slightly warmer, or colder, this time?”
“Sure. Let’s walk.” I figure pumping her legs will get some of the tension out so we hoof it to Voodoo. We get less than a block before I realize she’s watching over her shoulder. “Worried about the vamp?”
She blushes. “Shouldn’t I be?”
“Wary, not worried. One to one, a mage trumps a vamp. They’re faster, stronger, more agile- but that only matters if they can get in close. So it’s basically suicide for a vamp to attack a mage. It might be worth it for him to try to kill Pawn- he’s a big enough prick- but you and I, no. That’d be suicide times 2.”
“Unless there’s more than one of them.”
“There’s a treaty, between the vampire colonies and the gambits. They don’t attack us, we don’t attack them. It’s a fragile peace, but one that’s beneficial enough that nobody’s looking to violate it. And Cedric has broken their rules; he can’t trust any of them with it- so he couldn’t ask any of them for back up.”
“How close do you work with the colony?”
“Kind of depends. If they’ve got trouble they’ll consult with us. If we’ve got a vamp suspect, we’ll consult with them. Theoretically, we could call them for back-up in a pinch- but I’d hate to have to rely on that. In a city this size, you’re almost guaranteed to have either an infestation or a colony. Since Salem’s the capital, I’d be surprised if you didn’t have a few vampires there, hangers-on or manipulators. I know a good extermination guy I can recommend to your Circle.”
“A hunter?”
“Not one of those genocidal pricks. More of a catch and release specialist. Besides, if you can point them out to a nearby colony, they’ll take care of it.”
“I don’t think I like the euphemism.”
“It isn’t one. Most likely they’d set up a colony. Organize it. Without it, pretty soon you end up with an infestation- a de facto colony that’s rogue, doesn’t enforce the rules, and tends to attract the worst elements. Then it’s kill or be killed.” I hand her a card. “Just talk to my guy. Better to know. What the Circle does with the information is up to them.”
She’s still mulling the idea when I get a call. It’s Bishop. “Better fucking come down here.”
“B? What’s wrong? You in trouble?”
“Just fucking come. And bring Pawn.” We run back by the safe house. He’s doesn’t say a thing, but he’s ready when we get there- him not dragging his ass shows just how rattled he is.
Bishop’s never been this taciturn before. I don’t know what that means- but it’s bad. I speed through several of Portland’s perennial construction zones, and it’s probably a miracle I don’t get pulled over.
Bishop opens her door as we pull up, leaves it ajar. She’s standing by the body, staring, by the time we cross the threshold. “I didn’t want to do this over the phone. Even with the protective spells. It’s Castle.”
“What’s Castle?” I ask, because she can’t mean what I think she does. “Did he call you? Is something up?”
“No, that corpse is Castle. Our Castle.”
“Shit.”
Check back next week for another excerpt or join my mailing list to be notified when The Necromancer's Gambit is available for purchase.
September 12, 2013
Preview: The Necromancer's Gambit, Part 6
And now, part 6 of the preview for The Necromancer's Gambit, due September 23rd. The Necromancer's Gambit follows the travails of a cell of mages operating in Portland.
Previously:
The Necromancer's Gambit, part 1
The Necromancer's Gambit, part 2
The Necromancer's Gambit, part 3
The Necromancer's Gambit, part 4
The Necromancer's Gambit, part 5
The Necromancer's Gambit, Part 6, The Interrogation
The safehouse is on the other side of town. We stop at Voodoo Doughnut because they have the least bad coffee around at this time of night. Rook orders a voodoo doll and a diablos rex; “You’re practically a stereotype,” I tell her. She refuses to try a bacon maple bar.
On the way back out to the car she says, “I couldn’t help but notice you left a fairly sizeable tip in the jar- well north of fifteen percent. There an actual Vodun Botono in there?”
“I have no idea. Once I complained when their coffee gave me heartburn, and for a week I had blood in my stool,” she looks down at her already headless voodoo doll donut with concern. “But I’m a regular, and you don’t screw with the people who make your food.” She shrugs, and bites off another of his limbs.
The safehouse is within walking distance of Voodoo, and I can’t help but think that isn’t coincidence, but we drive, anyway. Pawn’s smoking in the alley, and I hand him a box from Voodoo, the phallic cock-n-balls with “eat me” written down the shaft in red frosting. “Again?” he asks.
“If you didn’t slurp the whole thing down every time I brought you one-”
“Prick.”
“And the nuts. I’m told it’s important you don’t neglect those.” He grinds his cigarette out on the brick and lets it fall. I catch it in my hand and bring it inside, throw it in a trash basket. It’s sloppy- leaving around something personal like that- but that’s Pawn. I can’t honestly tell if he’s just come to expect me to clean up his messes, or completely doesn’t give a fuck.
His vampire CI’s in the next room, visible through a one-way mirror. Rook’s staring at the glass, trying to figure it out; there’s a slight flicker that gives away that it’s not just half-silvered. Then she spots a small red mark in the corner. “That sigil blocks light going in but not out,” I tell her. “It sidesteps the second law of thermodynamics by mimicking an optical isolator, somehow imitating a Faraday rotator. I have almost no idea what that means, but Bishop was adamant it involves physics.”
Pawn ignores the science talk, and starts speaking through the cock-n-balls in his mouth, “Gothy little fruit goes by Maleficitus. Real name’s Cedric. Kids an illegal and a vampire- and a simperer, for what that’s worth. He’s just a winner on all kinds of fronts.”
“Why’s he bleeding?” I ask.
“He tripped, and landed on my fist.” He laughs, and genuinely doesn’t seem to understand why nobody laughs with him.
I open up the door into the interrogation room. “You’ve really got to be more careful,” I said, and close the door on him before he can follow me in. “You okay?” I ask the kid.
“What the fuck, man? I’ve always been straight up with the gambit.”
“I know.” I pick up a box of tissues on the table, which he seems to be stubbornly refusing, and offer them to him. “And we appreciate that, we really do. But Pawn’s a dick, and about the only way he knows to show his appreciation is to spit in your face.”
He takes one of the tissues and dabs at his bleeding nose.
“You have any idea how hard it is to get vampire blood to coagulate?”
“I know you’re not the first vamp to bleed all over this carpet; we may still have some coagulant factors.” A few seconds pass and Pawn opens the door long enough to hand me a bag and an IV; he waits there a second, hoping his fetching it means I’ll let him into the room- but I don’t. I jab the needle in Cedric’s arm, hand him the bag, and position his arm so the bag stays above the needle.
“Thanks.”
“Yeah. I’m sorry, about all of this. It’s inconvenient, even if it weren’t for Pawn. But I have contacts in the police. If I were to handle it the way they’d like, you’d be sitting in their interrogation room. And they wouldn’t make the kind of accommodations it’d take to keep you alive. Not to mention that if you tried to tell them you were a vampire, they’d figure you for a lunatic and pin the murder to you and never bother looking anyplace else.”
“I didn’t do shit, man.” But I get the feeling he doesn’t quite believe that; he’s hunkered down, only occasionally looking up at me, like a dog who hopes his master isn’t pissed anymore.
But I’ve got no reason to beat on him. “I’m not accusing. Or threatening, for that matter. I just want you to know your place in the world at the moment: it’s precarious. You were the first person on my scene. Did you see anyone suspicious? Smell anything?”
He sniffles through blood still coming out his nose. “Won’t be smelling shit for a while.”
I’m getting tired of the petulant act. “Don’t pretend you couldn’t tell me everything about everyone in the room, down to their blood types.”
“Blood’s about the only thing I do pay attention to.” He’s preening- and yeah, now I do want to beat on him a little- but Pawn’s already a lock for bad cop. But ‘bad’ is relative.
“I’m not some college girl you’re trying to bang- I know you’re a predator. And you know your prey. You have to. Especially in a place like the Cauldron. It’s the only way you can keep from trying to feed off a mage or a hunter, or maybe something worse.”
“Mages stink to high fucking heaven of the craft. It’s in your blood, on your clothes, fingertips. I ain’t ever been close enough to know if you shit magic, too. But hunters, yeah- never know when the rabbits have claws unless you’re careful.” Something flashes in his eyes, and I know- and suddenly all his bravado makes sense.
“You don’t know the room, do you? Because you weren’t there- not initially. So who the fuck pointed you towards the body?
He is a predator, and knows he’s cornered, so it’s die trying to kill me, or, “Patrice.” He says the name softly, protectively.
I change my tone, trying to reassure him. “And who’s she?”
“Girlfriend.” He clams up anyway. The body’s likely a dead end, and whatever is going on with this vamp is probably my only lead- and no amount of magic can heat back up a cold trail.
“You kept her out of your narrative. Why? Or maybe you’d like to tell me why you haven’t asked for an advocate from the VC. You know that’s your right, by treaty, right?” He doesn’t deny it fast enough, and he knows I have him by the short hairs. “I got all day. And Pawn’s got all night. Given the amount of blood you’ve lost already, I’d be surprised if you’ll last that long.”
His eyes flash red at me, but before he can do something stupid he recognizes it’s the situation that’s gone wrong on him. Being stupid only makes it worse. “I turned her.” He flicks his tongue over his eye teeth, and I notice his fangs are drawn- he was that close to jumping me. But it’s out there, now. His secret. Even if he could delude himself into thinking he could kill me straight up- fighting his way out, through Pawn, and I’d be surprised if he hadn’t smelled Rook, too.
I try not to betray too much. By treaty, the vampire colonies police their own. Anything that might endanger the colony- like turning a human without sanction, or killing during feeding- is forbidden. Which means if they find little Cedric and his lady out, they either murder the both of them, or spend the next decade torturing him to make sure the lesson sticks. Maybe both, if he finds the colony in a lousy mood.
But that’s if they find out. “We’ll need to talk to her.” There’s a moment, where he calculates attacking me, and how many milliseconds it would take to tear out my throat, and I pull the meanest spell I can remember into my forethoughts, but his muscles relax. “I don’t report to the colony authority, and what consenting adults do is their business. But I need to know what I can about this murder. So I’m asking that you bring her in, so I can talk to her.”
“Not that little pit bull of yours?” He’s earnest; it’s at least a part of why he lied to us- he knew Pawn would get his licks in, and he was trying to shelter her.
“He doesn’t even need to be in the room.”
“So am I free to go?”
“Keep her nose clean. You know what they’ll do to the both of you if she gets found out. Other than that, yeah. I’ll see if we have a brick of halvah, and I can get you another bag of coagulant factor, unless you want me to try to cauterize it.”
“You’re as likely to burn a hole in my face.”
“Fair enough.”
Check back next week for another excerpt or join my mailing list to be notified when The Necromancer's Gambit is available for purchase.
Previously:
The Necromancer's Gambit, part 1
The Necromancer's Gambit, part 2
The Necromancer's Gambit, part 3
The Necromancer's Gambit, part 4
The Necromancer's Gambit, part 5
The Necromancer's Gambit, Part 6, The Interrogation
The safehouse is on the other side of town. We stop at Voodoo Doughnut because they have the least bad coffee around at this time of night. Rook orders a voodoo doll and a diablos rex; “You’re practically a stereotype,” I tell her. She refuses to try a bacon maple bar.
On the way back out to the car she says, “I couldn’t help but notice you left a fairly sizeable tip in the jar- well north of fifteen percent. There an actual Vodun Botono in there?”
“I have no idea. Once I complained when their coffee gave me heartburn, and for a week I had blood in my stool,” she looks down at her already headless voodoo doll donut with concern. “But I’m a regular, and you don’t screw with the people who make your food.” She shrugs, and bites off another of his limbs.
The safehouse is within walking distance of Voodoo, and I can’t help but think that isn’t coincidence, but we drive, anyway. Pawn’s smoking in the alley, and I hand him a box from Voodoo, the phallic cock-n-balls with “eat me” written down the shaft in red frosting. “Again?” he asks.
“If you didn’t slurp the whole thing down every time I brought you one-”
“Prick.”
“And the nuts. I’m told it’s important you don’t neglect those.” He grinds his cigarette out on the brick and lets it fall. I catch it in my hand and bring it inside, throw it in a trash basket. It’s sloppy- leaving around something personal like that- but that’s Pawn. I can’t honestly tell if he’s just come to expect me to clean up his messes, or completely doesn’t give a fuck.
His vampire CI’s in the next room, visible through a one-way mirror. Rook’s staring at the glass, trying to figure it out; there’s a slight flicker that gives away that it’s not just half-silvered. Then she spots a small red mark in the corner. “That sigil blocks light going in but not out,” I tell her. “It sidesteps the second law of thermodynamics by mimicking an optical isolator, somehow imitating a Faraday rotator. I have almost no idea what that means, but Bishop was adamant it involves physics.”
Pawn ignores the science talk, and starts speaking through the cock-n-balls in his mouth, “Gothy little fruit goes by Maleficitus. Real name’s Cedric. Kids an illegal and a vampire- and a simperer, for what that’s worth. He’s just a winner on all kinds of fronts.”
“Why’s he bleeding?” I ask.
“He tripped, and landed on my fist.” He laughs, and genuinely doesn’t seem to understand why nobody laughs with him.
I open up the door into the interrogation room. “You’ve really got to be more careful,” I said, and close the door on him before he can follow me in. “You okay?” I ask the kid.
“What the fuck, man? I’ve always been straight up with the gambit.”
“I know.” I pick up a box of tissues on the table, which he seems to be stubbornly refusing, and offer them to him. “And we appreciate that, we really do. But Pawn’s a dick, and about the only way he knows to show his appreciation is to spit in your face.”
He takes one of the tissues and dabs at his bleeding nose.
“You have any idea how hard it is to get vampire blood to coagulate?”
“I know you’re not the first vamp to bleed all over this carpet; we may still have some coagulant factors.” A few seconds pass and Pawn opens the door long enough to hand me a bag and an IV; he waits there a second, hoping his fetching it means I’ll let him into the room- but I don’t. I jab the needle in Cedric’s arm, hand him the bag, and position his arm so the bag stays above the needle.
“Thanks.”
“Yeah. I’m sorry, about all of this. It’s inconvenient, even if it weren’t for Pawn. But I have contacts in the police. If I were to handle it the way they’d like, you’d be sitting in their interrogation room. And they wouldn’t make the kind of accommodations it’d take to keep you alive. Not to mention that if you tried to tell them you were a vampire, they’d figure you for a lunatic and pin the murder to you and never bother looking anyplace else.”
“I didn’t do shit, man.” But I get the feeling he doesn’t quite believe that; he’s hunkered down, only occasionally looking up at me, like a dog who hopes his master isn’t pissed anymore.
But I’ve got no reason to beat on him. “I’m not accusing. Or threatening, for that matter. I just want you to know your place in the world at the moment: it’s precarious. You were the first person on my scene. Did you see anyone suspicious? Smell anything?”
He sniffles through blood still coming out his nose. “Won’t be smelling shit for a while.”
I’m getting tired of the petulant act. “Don’t pretend you couldn’t tell me everything about everyone in the room, down to their blood types.”
“Blood’s about the only thing I do pay attention to.” He’s preening- and yeah, now I do want to beat on him a little- but Pawn’s already a lock for bad cop. But ‘bad’ is relative.
“I’m not some college girl you’re trying to bang- I know you’re a predator. And you know your prey. You have to. Especially in a place like the Cauldron. It’s the only way you can keep from trying to feed off a mage or a hunter, or maybe something worse.”
“Mages stink to high fucking heaven of the craft. It’s in your blood, on your clothes, fingertips. I ain’t ever been close enough to know if you shit magic, too. But hunters, yeah- never know when the rabbits have claws unless you’re careful.” Something flashes in his eyes, and I know- and suddenly all his bravado makes sense.
“You don’t know the room, do you? Because you weren’t there- not initially. So who the fuck pointed you towards the body?
He is a predator, and knows he’s cornered, so it’s die trying to kill me, or, “Patrice.” He says the name softly, protectively.
I change my tone, trying to reassure him. “And who’s she?”
“Girlfriend.” He clams up anyway. The body’s likely a dead end, and whatever is going on with this vamp is probably my only lead- and no amount of magic can heat back up a cold trail.
“You kept her out of your narrative. Why? Or maybe you’d like to tell me why you haven’t asked for an advocate from the VC. You know that’s your right, by treaty, right?” He doesn’t deny it fast enough, and he knows I have him by the short hairs. “I got all day. And Pawn’s got all night. Given the amount of blood you’ve lost already, I’d be surprised if you’ll last that long.”
His eyes flash red at me, but before he can do something stupid he recognizes it’s the situation that’s gone wrong on him. Being stupid only makes it worse. “I turned her.” He flicks his tongue over his eye teeth, and I notice his fangs are drawn- he was that close to jumping me. But it’s out there, now. His secret. Even if he could delude himself into thinking he could kill me straight up- fighting his way out, through Pawn, and I’d be surprised if he hadn’t smelled Rook, too.
I try not to betray too much. By treaty, the vampire colonies police their own. Anything that might endanger the colony- like turning a human without sanction, or killing during feeding- is forbidden. Which means if they find little Cedric and his lady out, they either murder the both of them, or spend the next decade torturing him to make sure the lesson sticks. Maybe both, if he finds the colony in a lousy mood.
But that’s if they find out. “We’ll need to talk to her.” There’s a moment, where he calculates attacking me, and how many milliseconds it would take to tear out my throat, and I pull the meanest spell I can remember into my forethoughts, but his muscles relax. “I don’t report to the colony authority, and what consenting adults do is their business. But I need to know what I can about this murder. So I’m asking that you bring her in, so I can talk to her.”
“Not that little pit bull of yours?” He’s earnest; it’s at least a part of why he lied to us- he knew Pawn would get his licks in, and he was trying to shelter her.
“He doesn’t even need to be in the room.”
“So am I free to go?”
“Keep her nose clean. You know what they’ll do to the both of you if she gets found out. Other than that, yeah. I’ll see if we have a brick of halvah, and I can get you another bag of coagulant factor, unless you want me to try to cauterize it.”
“You’re as likely to burn a hole in my face.”
“Fair enough.”
Check back next week for another excerpt or join my mailing list to be notified when The Necromancer's Gambit is available for purchase.
September 9, 2013
Preview: The Necromancer's Gambit, Part 5
Here's part 5 of your intro to The Necromancer's Gambit, due September 23rd. The Necromancer's Gambit follows the travails of a cell of mages operating in Portland.
Previously:
The Necromancer's Gambit, part 1
The Necromancer's Gambit, part 2
The Necromancer's Gambit, part 3
The Necromancer's Gambit, part 4
The Necromancer's Gambit, Part 5, The Investigation, continued
“Shouldn’t we analyze the crime scene?” Rook asks.
“This isn’t the scene, just where they dumped the body,” I tell her. But there’s something hopeful in her voice, so I decide to give her the remedial lesson quickly.
I kneel beside the body, and use my pen to move what’s left of his pants to the side. “Look at the burns, melted skin, charred muscle. Heat of this kind would have destroyed this room, but the carpet isn’t so much as singed. Point of fact, there’s no blood, no melted skin, nothing in the carpet. He was well-done before he ever got here.”
“The other reason we won’t find anything is here: look at the ankles. Snapped, but through the burnt flesh- you can see the difference between the meat on the outside and on the in; body fell post-mortem. And you smell the brimstone- sulfur, rotten egg stink? Killer teleported it in here, and either fucked up the transport spell or didn’t give a shit, because the exit was too high. Corpse came in in an orthostatic position- standing; the fall caused the compound fractures, probably to the tibia. Best we’re going to get will come from the corpse itself, but we’ll have to get it to the lab to analyze it.” I turn to Pawn. “Bring my car around.” I toss him the keys.
I unfold a wedge of silk and lay it flat next to the body. Tim helps me roll the corpse up in it like a burrito, and I put my coat on its shoulders. “Now help me lift the bastard.” I get most of the weight in the legs, and Tim lifts the head and throws that over my shoulder.
We make our way across the dance floor muttering apologies. “He’s a little drunk. Excuse me. My friend’s sick. Can you let me through?” We’re lucky it’s nearly last call, and everybody’s either hammered or looking to get laid. Rook’s an appreciated distraction, and makes two men carrying a body through the club less seedy than it should be.
Pawn pulls up, and I set the corpse in the front seat with a little difficulty, belt him in.
Rook gets in the back, and Pawn saunters off. “What was that about a vamp?” she asks as I start the car and pull out into traffic.
“That’s right, Salem doesn’t have a colony. But vampires can smell magic. They’re not too specific; this guy could either be magic or have died by it, but it at least lets us know when to look into things, and when to just leave it for the normal cops.”
“So where are we taking the body?”
“Bishop’s lab.” That didn’t seem to be enough for her. “You could call Bishop a renaissance man- but she’d probably say that’s sexist. She’s our resident polymath.”
“She?”
Her coven likely told her we don't allow women into gambits, which isn't strictly true- though it isn't the norm, either. “Yeah. We recruited her from a Seattle coven, when our old bishop, Alfil- the elephant- quit. We didn't think he’d retire. He never used to forget anything, but his mind started to go. First little things, incantations, names of spirits, but it got worse, until half the time he’d forget I wasn’t a pawn anymore.”
“About that. Pawn said he trained you. But unless I’ve got things backwards, you basically outrank him- at least as far as a gambit can be said to have ranks.”
“It’s a long story. And since you’ve only met him tonight, a little too early to tell. But that long story short, I took his spot, he took mine.”
“In other words, he got demoted, and they promoted you.” Almost too bad she isn’t looking to be a horsey. Seems to have the chops.
And I’ll cop to being impressed that when we get to Bishop’s lab, she isn’t dainty about getting the corpse out of my car and back on my shoulder. He’s still heavy, but I shudder to think how much he weighed before most of the moisture was cooked out of him.
Rook beats me to the front door by several seconds, and is about to reach for the knocker. “Wait.” She stops, and lets me through. I knock out, “Shave and a hair cut,” with my fist and leave a six beat pause before finishing with, “two bits.”
“A second,” comes Bishop’s voice through the door, then she opens it. Rook is shocked that Bishop’s younger than she is.
I push my way between them with the corpse. “Fresh delivery of long pig, a little overdone. But I know how you like your meat- as charred and blackened as your shriveled heart.” She grins at me.
Bishop never knew her father. Her mother told her he was in politics, though she never knew if that meant he was in the Seattle gambit or if he worked somewhere in the non-mage government. Her mother died when she was 16, officially protoscience-related lung cancer. Bishop spent her last two years as a minor as a ward of the gambit, apprenticing with the brightest minds they had. When she turned 18, King convinced her to come to Portland.
Because she was new, by far the youngest member of the gambit, and maybe because she was our only girl- try as Queen might to make that not true sometimes- she developed sometimes-paternal relationships with the rest of us- a whole handful of flawed father-figures.
On the subject of figures, she's maturing, aged enough I can't tell myself she's just the kid she was when she moved down here anymore. She's got short, red-brown hair that she's always forgetting to pin back. Because of that, it's rare when she doesn't have a piece of food or corpse hanging from it.
“You always bring me the nicest things,” she says, still smiling at me. “But come in, come in, the coffee’s a little cold, but the hot cocoa’s warm and fresh.”
I set the corpse down on her slab, while Rook stares at her. “You’re so pleasant, and, and bubbly, despite him setting a dead body down on your table. It’s weird.”
“It helps that the cocoa’s caffeinated. Loco Cocoa. But it’s only weird because of the dichotomy, since you spent the evening with the glower twins. They see the ugly side of people. I get to see the fascinating side- which is frequently the inside.” Bishop sets down her mug, and tears into the silk sheet, unwrapping the body like it’s Christmas. “You want the sheet back, or the usual?”
“Yep.” She’s got a chute down to her incinerator in the basement, and she drops it in. The silk is contaminated, physically from contact with the body, and magically, because I’ve been carrying it around in my jacket pocket. Burning it means keeping the next crime scene clean, and preventing somebody from dumpster diving and using it as the focus of a sympathetic spell against me.
“So this is the Salem Rook, huh? Seems a bit dainty to be a castle, but it’s nice to meet you.” Rook frowns, and looks at Bishop’s skinny arms with some confusion. “And nicer still that your coven is finally joining the 21st century.”
“Uh, it’s nice to meet you, too.” Rook reaches out and shakes Bishop’s hand, then immediately walks to the sink and begins vigorously scrubbing her hands.
“No offense. But I don’t want to contaminate the evidence.”
“Okay,” Rook says, while Bishop finishes drying her hands and puts on a pair of gloves. “So what is it a Bishop does?”
“I’m a protoscientist. I study things that aren’t accepted as fact by most people, but that exist anyway. Alchemy’s a good example. Before chemistry was a science, a lot of the foundation for it was laid by alchemists. Same with the astronomical aspects of astrology. But protoscience isn’t just limited to the arcane. For example a colleague of mine in BC is studying binaurul beats, used to induce specific brain states, applicable for health or just getting someone baked with sound. The theory is that it can be used to induce shamanic trances, but it’s really just sigil magic by a different name.”
Bishop spends a moment taking in the body, before she says, “I was thinking of getting some KFC, and when you said you were bringing the new Rook, I thought we could split a bucket, but now, the smell of this- why go out when we can eat in?” Rook stares at her with wide eyes. “What, are we not laughing about that, yet?” Then she says, “Oh, right- she doesn’t know the story.”
I take that as my cue to tell it- since Bishop only knows it secondhand, anyway. “Alfil, in one of his later in life oopsies- this was right before he retired- was supposed to check some decomposition for me, to see if it was natural or supernatural. Instead, he spent the better part of an evening performing a complex diagnostic spell on sliced, peppered turkey, while eating corpse, lettuce and tomato sandwiches. Really, he was lucky; he only got mild food poisoning. I get worse from the Chinese takeout down the street.”
“I think that’s because they age their corpses,” Bishop said solemnly.
“How long you think it’ll take to get an idea what we’re looking at?” I ask her.
“I can tell you you’re looking at a big burnt guy. If you want me to be able to point out more than roast chestnuts and a blackened tree stump, you’ll have to give me a few hours.”
“Cool.” I check my phone. “It looks like Pawn’s got his CI to the safehouse. Let us know when you've got something concrete.”
Check back next week for another excerpt or join my mailing list to be notified when The Necromancer's Gambit is available for purchase.
Previously:
The Necromancer's Gambit, part 1
The Necromancer's Gambit, part 2
The Necromancer's Gambit, part 3
The Necromancer's Gambit, part 4
The Necromancer's Gambit, Part 5, The Investigation, continued
“Shouldn’t we analyze the crime scene?” Rook asks.
“This isn’t the scene, just where they dumped the body,” I tell her. But there’s something hopeful in her voice, so I decide to give her the remedial lesson quickly.
I kneel beside the body, and use my pen to move what’s left of his pants to the side. “Look at the burns, melted skin, charred muscle. Heat of this kind would have destroyed this room, but the carpet isn’t so much as singed. Point of fact, there’s no blood, no melted skin, nothing in the carpet. He was well-done before he ever got here.”
“The other reason we won’t find anything is here: look at the ankles. Snapped, but through the burnt flesh- you can see the difference between the meat on the outside and on the in; body fell post-mortem. And you smell the brimstone- sulfur, rotten egg stink? Killer teleported it in here, and either fucked up the transport spell or didn’t give a shit, because the exit was too high. Corpse came in in an orthostatic position- standing; the fall caused the compound fractures, probably to the tibia. Best we’re going to get will come from the corpse itself, but we’ll have to get it to the lab to analyze it.” I turn to Pawn. “Bring my car around.” I toss him the keys.
I unfold a wedge of silk and lay it flat next to the body. Tim helps me roll the corpse up in it like a burrito, and I put my coat on its shoulders. “Now help me lift the bastard.” I get most of the weight in the legs, and Tim lifts the head and throws that over my shoulder.
We make our way across the dance floor muttering apologies. “He’s a little drunk. Excuse me. My friend’s sick. Can you let me through?” We’re lucky it’s nearly last call, and everybody’s either hammered or looking to get laid. Rook’s an appreciated distraction, and makes two men carrying a body through the club less seedy than it should be.
Pawn pulls up, and I set the corpse in the front seat with a little difficulty, belt him in.
Rook gets in the back, and Pawn saunters off. “What was that about a vamp?” she asks as I start the car and pull out into traffic.
“That’s right, Salem doesn’t have a colony. But vampires can smell magic. They’re not too specific; this guy could either be magic or have died by it, but it at least lets us know when to look into things, and when to just leave it for the normal cops.”
“So where are we taking the body?”
“Bishop’s lab.” That didn’t seem to be enough for her. “You could call Bishop a renaissance man- but she’d probably say that’s sexist. She’s our resident polymath.”
“She?”
Her coven likely told her we don't allow women into gambits, which isn't strictly true- though it isn't the norm, either. “Yeah. We recruited her from a Seattle coven, when our old bishop, Alfil- the elephant- quit. We didn't think he’d retire. He never used to forget anything, but his mind started to go. First little things, incantations, names of spirits, but it got worse, until half the time he’d forget I wasn’t a pawn anymore.”
“About that. Pawn said he trained you. But unless I’ve got things backwards, you basically outrank him- at least as far as a gambit can be said to have ranks.”
“It’s a long story. And since you’ve only met him tonight, a little too early to tell. But that long story short, I took his spot, he took mine.”
“In other words, he got demoted, and they promoted you.” Almost too bad she isn’t looking to be a horsey. Seems to have the chops.
And I’ll cop to being impressed that when we get to Bishop’s lab, she isn’t dainty about getting the corpse out of my car and back on my shoulder. He’s still heavy, but I shudder to think how much he weighed before most of the moisture was cooked out of him.
Rook beats me to the front door by several seconds, and is about to reach for the knocker. “Wait.” She stops, and lets me through. I knock out, “Shave and a hair cut,” with my fist and leave a six beat pause before finishing with, “two bits.”
“A second,” comes Bishop’s voice through the door, then she opens it. Rook is shocked that Bishop’s younger than she is.
I push my way between them with the corpse. “Fresh delivery of long pig, a little overdone. But I know how you like your meat- as charred and blackened as your shriveled heart.” She grins at me.
Bishop never knew her father. Her mother told her he was in politics, though she never knew if that meant he was in the Seattle gambit or if he worked somewhere in the non-mage government. Her mother died when she was 16, officially protoscience-related lung cancer. Bishop spent her last two years as a minor as a ward of the gambit, apprenticing with the brightest minds they had. When she turned 18, King convinced her to come to Portland.
Because she was new, by far the youngest member of the gambit, and maybe because she was our only girl- try as Queen might to make that not true sometimes- she developed sometimes-paternal relationships with the rest of us- a whole handful of flawed father-figures.
On the subject of figures, she's maturing, aged enough I can't tell myself she's just the kid she was when she moved down here anymore. She's got short, red-brown hair that she's always forgetting to pin back. Because of that, it's rare when she doesn't have a piece of food or corpse hanging from it.
“You always bring me the nicest things,” she says, still smiling at me. “But come in, come in, the coffee’s a little cold, but the hot cocoa’s warm and fresh.”
I set the corpse down on her slab, while Rook stares at her. “You’re so pleasant, and, and bubbly, despite him setting a dead body down on your table. It’s weird.”
“It helps that the cocoa’s caffeinated. Loco Cocoa. But it’s only weird because of the dichotomy, since you spent the evening with the glower twins. They see the ugly side of people. I get to see the fascinating side- which is frequently the inside.” Bishop sets down her mug, and tears into the silk sheet, unwrapping the body like it’s Christmas. “You want the sheet back, or the usual?”
“Yep.” She’s got a chute down to her incinerator in the basement, and she drops it in. The silk is contaminated, physically from contact with the body, and magically, because I’ve been carrying it around in my jacket pocket. Burning it means keeping the next crime scene clean, and preventing somebody from dumpster diving and using it as the focus of a sympathetic spell against me.
“So this is the Salem Rook, huh? Seems a bit dainty to be a castle, but it’s nice to meet you.” Rook frowns, and looks at Bishop’s skinny arms with some confusion. “And nicer still that your coven is finally joining the 21st century.”
“Uh, it’s nice to meet you, too.” Rook reaches out and shakes Bishop’s hand, then immediately walks to the sink and begins vigorously scrubbing her hands.
“No offense. But I don’t want to contaminate the evidence.”
“Okay,” Rook says, while Bishop finishes drying her hands and puts on a pair of gloves. “So what is it a Bishop does?”
“I’m a protoscientist. I study things that aren’t accepted as fact by most people, but that exist anyway. Alchemy’s a good example. Before chemistry was a science, a lot of the foundation for it was laid by alchemists. Same with the astronomical aspects of astrology. But protoscience isn’t just limited to the arcane. For example a colleague of mine in BC is studying binaurul beats, used to induce specific brain states, applicable for health or just getting someone baked with sound. The theory is that it can be used to induce shamanic trances, but it’s really just sigil magic by a different name.”
Bishop spends a moment taking in the body, before she says, “I was thinking of getting some KFC, and when you said you were bringing the new Rook, I thought we could split a bucket, but now, the smell of this- why go out when we can eat in?” Rook stares at her with wide eyes. “What, are we not laughing about that, yet?” Then she says, “Oh, right- she doesn’t know the story.”
I take that as my cue to tell it- since Bishop only knows it secondhand, anyway. “Alfil, in one of his later in life oopsies- this was right before he retired- was supposed to check some decomposition for me, to see if it was natural or supernatural. Instead, he spent the better part of an evening performing a complex diagnostic spell on sliced, peppered turkey, while eating corpse, lettuce and tomato sandwiches. Really, he was lucky; he only got mild food poisoning. I get worse from the Chinese takeout down the street.”
“I think that’s because they age their corpses,” Bishop said solemnly.
“How long you think it’ll take to get an idea what we’re looking at?” I ask her.
“I can tell you you’re looking at a big burnt guy. If you want me to be able to point out more than roast chestnuts and a blackened tree stump, you’ll have to give me a few hours.”
“Cool.” I check my phone. “It looks like Pawn’s got his CI to the safehouse. Let us know when you've got something concrete.”
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September 5, 2013
Preview: The Necromancer's Gambit, Part 4
Here's part 4 of your intro to The Necromancer's Gambit, due September 23rd. The Necromancer's Gambit follows the travails of a cell of mages operating in Portland.
Previously:
The Necromancer's Gambit, part 1
The Necromancer's Gambit, part 2
The Necromancer's Gambit, part 3
The Necromancer's Gambit, Part 4, The Investigation, continued
The bouncer is a few inches north of six foot, and with his shaved head looks like Mr. Clean. He has a sternness to him, like he’d prefer to crack your skull to talking, but there’s a childlike glee in his eyes- he enjoys playing the heavy, but play is all it is.
“Did you touch anything in the room?” I ask it flat- not quite mean, just cold. I haven’t figured out what kind of witness he’s going to be just yet.
“No.” He’s incredulous, almost laughing at the implication he’s involved.
“Not even the victim? Not to check for a pulse?”
He slows up, recognizes someone sizing him up, and levels his eyes at me- not menacing, but fixing me with his eyes to tell me he’s being polite right now instead of talking with his fists. “He’s a kebab. I also didn’t check my bacon at breakfast for a pulse- or my burger at dinner.”
“Bacon and burgers? Not going to live long that way.” His eyebrows shoot up. Pawn laughs, because between the two of us we justify keeping a Burgerville open 24 hours- the manager on MLK told us as much one night- whereas Tim's built like a Finnish underwear model.
“And who was here?”
“Just the stiff.”
“Why was the champagne room empty?”
“In this economy, we don’t always staff the room. Bringing in girls who can’t make cab fare during their shift - let alone cover the stage fee- that’s not fair.”
“Stage fee?”
“Yeah. It’s pretty standard. The venue charges a dancer a flat stage fee to perform, to me always seemed more honest than taking a cut. A lot of the clubs in Portland will hold the good shifts hostage unless girls commit to working dead weekday shifts. But they’re more dependent on dancers than we are. We cater to a slightly more diverse crowd.”
“So you’re not just the bouncer.”
“Part owner, now. I started bouncing, and back then room and board was part of the compensation. Then the recession hit and things started going lousy, Trish began paying me in shares of the club. Eventually I just owned half- so now it’s half mine and I work here for a cut of the profits- which is usually just enough to cover my tab at the bar, plus the cot and hots.”
“Was all that before or after you started shtupping Trish.”
He blushes a little, which is even easier to tell with his cue ball head. “Uh, I think I had about a 40 percent stake, then. We’d worked together for seven years or so. She tends bar, and I bounce, seven nights a week. Spend that much time with somebody and you either really get to appreciate them, or really start to hate them.”
“So you’re plowing the bartender, congrats,” Pawn says. “That part of your compensation package make up for the lost pay?”
“I could pop you like the hairy little zit that you are,” Tim says, without ever losing the glee in his eyes. I bet he could- and it kind of makes me want Pawn to keep provoking him.
But when he doesn’t, I continue with the questions. “That does muddy the waters, though. If your girlfriend is your alibi for not being in the room when it happened.”
“Ask around. The place wasn’t exactly empty when it happened. Just about any table should have at least one person who can vouch for me.” I nod at Pawn and he heads back to the main room to find out.
“You weren’t in the room. What’d you hear?”
“Loud pop. Like a car backfiring, or a gunshot. I actually got a little scared it was a gunshot.”
“This place got a gun?”
“Under the bar.”
“And you didn’t get it?”
He smiles, that kind of smile that says he knows he did something foolish. “Well, I’m four steps down the hall when I think I should get the gun. But then you have me turning tail away from trouble- which never looks good- a bouncer lives or dies on his reputation. And it would showcase me second-guessing myself, which makes me look like an indecisive fool.”
“In front of Trish.”
He blushes all over again. “Yeah. So I tell myself I’ve never had to pull the shotgun before, tonight can’t be the night I’ll need to. Denial to save my pride- and I’m sure Trish will give me an earful tonight about it. But I bust in. And there’s the corpse. I’m relieved, actually, not to have a gun in my face. So I come out all calm, shrug at people looking to me for some kind of information, and tell Trish we’ll want to put in a call to you. But then I see somebody at the bar, somebody I remember seeing with your stout friend.” He nods at where Pawn had been standing a moment ago.
“The vamp?” Pawn comes back in, and nods that he’s got confirmation.
“Yeah. So the vamp sniffs out the area, and of course there’s magic in the air. But before I can even get back to Trish to put through a call, your Pawn shows up.”
“Before?”
“Hey, I was in the car, in the area. On my way to a strip club, if you need to know, but I wasn’t more than three minute’s distance.” That seems too convenient. But I’d seen enough of Pawn’s expense reports to know he probably didn’t have a CI he didn’t wine and dine in strip joints.
“So am I done here?” Tim asks.
“I think so. But we’ll need to get the body out. You mind doing the honors?”
“I was hoping to go home not smelling like old jerky tonight.”
“And I was hoping not to catch a corpse. Tonight seems to suck all around.”
Check back next week for another excerpt or join my mailing list to be notified when The Necromancer's Gambit is available for purchase.
Previously:
The Necromancer's Gambit, part 1
The Necromancer's Gambit, part 2
The Necromancer's Gambit, part 3
The Necromancer's Gambit, Part 4, The Investigation, continued
The bouncer is a few inches north of six foot, and with his shaved head looks like Mr. Clean. He has a sternness to him, like he’d prefer to crack your skull to talking, but there’s a childlike glee in his eyes- he enjoys playing the heavy, but play is all it is.
“Did you touch anything in the room?” I ask it flat- not quite mean, just cold. I haven’t figured out what kind of witness he’s going to be just yet.
“No.” He’s incredulous, almost laughing at the implication he’s involved.
“Not even the victim? Not to check for a pulse?”
He slows up, recognizes someone sizing him up, and levels his eyes at me- not menacing, but fixing me with his eyes to tell me he’s being polite right now instead of talking with his fists. “He’s a kebab. I also didn’t check my bacon at breakfast for a pulse- or my burger at dinner.”
“Bacon and burgers? Not going to live long that way.” His eyebrows shoot up. Pawn laughs, because between the two of us we justify keeping a Burgerville open 24 hours- the manager on MLK told us as much one night- whereas Tim's built like a Finnish underwear model.
“And who was here?”
“Just the stiff.”
“Why was the champagne room empty?”
“In this economy, we don’t always staff the room. Bringing in girls who can’t make cab fare during their shift - let alone cover the stage fee- that’s not fair.”
“Stage fee?”
“Yeah. It’s pretty standard. The venue charges a dancer a flat stage fee to perform, to me always seemed more honest than taking a cut. A lot of the clubs in Portland will hold the good shifts hostage unless girls commit to working dead weekday shifts. But they’re more dependent on dancers than we are. We cater to a slightly more diverse crowd.”
“So you’re not just the bouncer.”
“Part owner, now. I started bouncing, and back then room and board was part of the compensation. Then the recession hit and things started going lousy, Trish began paying me in shares of the club. Eventually I just owned half- so now it’s half mine and I work here for a cut of the profits- which is usually just enough to cover my tab at the bar, plus the cot and hots.”
“Was all that before or after you started shtupping Trish.”
He blushes a little, which is even easier to tell with his cue ball head. “Uh, I think I had about a 40 percent stake, then. We’d worked together for seven years or so. She tends bar, and I bounce, seven nights a week. Spend that much time with somebody and you either really get to appreciate them, or really start to hate them.”
“So you’re plowing the bartender, congrats,” Pawn says. “That part of your compensation package make up for the lost pay?”
“I could pop you like the hairy little zit that you are,” Tim says, without ever losing the glee in his eyes. I bet he could- and it kind of makes me want Pawn to keep provoking him.
But when he doesn’t, I continue with the questions. “That does muddy the waters, though. If your girlfriend is your alibi for not being in the room when it happened.”
“Ask around. The place wasn’t exactly empty when it happened. Just about any table should have at least one person who can vouch for me.” I nod at Pawn and he heads back to the main room to find out.
“You weren’t in the room. What’d you hear?”
“Loud pop. Like a car backfiring, or a gunshot. I actually got a little scared it was a gunshot.”
“This place got a gun?”
“Under the bar.”
“And you didn’t get it?”
He smiles, that kind of smile that says he knows he did something foolish. “Well, I’m four steps down the hall when I think I should get the gun. But then you have me turning tail away from trouble- which never looks good- a bouncer lives or dies on his reputation. And it would showcase me second-guessing myself, which makes me look like an indecisive fool.”
“In front of Trish.”
He blushes all over again. “Yeah. So I tell myself I’ve never had to pull the shotgun before, tonight can’t be the night I’ll need to. Denial to save my pride- and I’m sure Trish will give me an earful tonight about it. But I bust in. And there’s the corpse. I’m relieved, actually, not to have a gun in my face. So I come out all calm, shrug at people looking to me for some kind of information, and tell Trish we’ll want to put in a call to you. But then I see somebody at the bar, somebody I remember seeing with your stout friend.” He nods at where Pawn had been standing a moment ago.
“The vamp?” Pawn comes back in, and nods that he’s got confirmation.
“Yeah. So the vamp sniffs out the area, and of course there’s magic in the air. But before I can even get back to Trish to put through a call, your Pawn shows up.”
“Before?”
“Hey, I was in the car, in the area. On my way to a strip club, if you need to know, but I wasn’t more than three minute’s distance.” That seems too convenient. But I’d seen enough of Pawn’s expense reports to know he probably didn’t have a CI he didn’t wine and dine in strip joints.
“So am I done here?” Tim asks.
“I think so. But we’ll need to get the body out. You mind doing the honors?”
“I was hoping to go home not smelling like old jerky tonight.”
“And I was hoping not to catch a corpse. Tonight seems to suck all around.”
Check back next week for another excerpt or join my mailing list to be notified when The Necromancer's Gambit is available for purchase.
September 3, 2013
Preview: The Necromancer's Gambit, Part 3
I know we're moving fast, but with the release date coming up fast, why not? Here's part 3 of your intro to The Necromancer's Gambit, due September 23rd. The Necromancer's Gambit follows the trevails of a cell of mages operating in Portland.
Previously:
The Necromancer's Gambit, part 1
The Necromancer's Gambit, part 2
The Necromancer's Gambit, Part 3, The Investigation
Rook follows me to the entrance of the Cauldron. I can already feel the oppressive bass pounding from inside, and the heavy stink of sweat and smoke on the air. I hand our cover fee to a woman in her mid-thirties trying too hard to cling to her late twenties. “Hand stamp?” she asks, and I shake my head. “You’re supposed to get a hand stamp,” she says, bored but annoyed.
I peel a Hamilton and set it on top of the cover. She shrugs and waves us in.
Rook gives me a look. “You don’t trust the ink?” Her tone is skeptical. Exactly how green are the witches out of Salem these days?
“Psychography- spirit writers.” I’m having to talk louder than I like to overcome the music, but the crowd in the Cauldron is 60% mage; it takes more than a dry discussion of magic to turn heads in here.
“I thought that was mostly the ideomotor effect-” she yells back, “like dowsing, or using a Ouija board.”
“Adepts can transcribe otherworldly communication- but that’s only half the craft. They use apothecary inks- magic distilled in liquid form.” Generally, the covens like their magic fresh- fresh ingredients, fresh rituals- some bullshit about it being closer to the natural way of things, and more pure. Elixirs like apothecary inks never really caught on with them, especially in an isolated Circle like hers. “You ever been spirit-written? I don’t recommend it.”
I pull out my phone to send a text, tell Pawn that we’re here. “It helps if you claim to have OCD? Like how vampires tell people they have porphyria. Helps explain away the little eccentricities- keeps people from getting too curious about things they wouldn’t understand.”
Pawn sticks out as he pushes his way through the crowd. He’s in his late forties, early fifties, buzzed, thinning hair, short, stocky build. And he only sticks out more because he doesn’t recognize he’s at least fifteen years too old for this crowd. “Body’s in the champagne room,” he says, and spends a moment too long looking at Rook.
“Body?” she asks, pretending as a courtesy not to notice him leering.
Pawn leads us past a bouncer, into the backroom. There’s a corpse in the middle of the floor. The body’s charred, and mangled, in an unnatural pose; I’ve seen similar, from falls- particularly somebody who fell without trying to catch themselves.
Pawn stalks around Rook, seeing if she’ll respond to his assertion of dominance. When she doesn’t he figures she’s just a piece of meat. “So this is the rookie, huh? Gotta say, she’s a sight prettier than you when I trained you.”
“Yet you just keep getting uglier and fatter, as the years pack on,” I say. He grunts; from her look, I can tell Rook feels bad for him, but only because she doesn’t know him. “It’s burnt to hell. You have a vamp sniff it out?”
“Was a vamp that brought it to me, one of my CIs.”
“And I had my money on you pocketing the informant stipend.”
There’s a hint of pain in his expression before he buries it- he doesn’t appreciate being shamed in front of the new girl, but plays it off. “I take my cut, but the informant’s good. Never had a problem with him before.”
“Bring him in. I’ll want to know what he does. Witnesses?”
“Just the vamp.”
“The bouncer?”
“Tim. He was outside. Heard a crack, then the thump. Presumably the port, then the landing. Room was empty at the time. But he got the vamp to check it out.”
“You like the bouncer for it?”
“Nah. He’s a solid citizen. Worked here for better of a decade. Never thrown me out on my ass- which is something. Always pays his taxes. Besides which, bartender corroborates him being outside when she heard the sounds, then him fetching my CI.”
I’m not so sure. “Still, grabbing the vamp-”
“Cauldron’s been a hangout for most of his tenure. This ain’t his first dog and pony.”
Pawn’s being uncharacteristically thorough, tonight, but for some reason that puts me more on edge. “Get him in here anyway.”
Check back next week for another excerpt or join my mailing list to be notified when The Necromancer's Gambit is available for purchase.
Previously:
The Necromancer's Gambit, part 1
The Necromancer's Gambit, part 2
The Necromancer's Gambit, Part 3, The Investigation
Rook follows me to the entrance of the Cauldron. I can already feel the oppressive bass pounding from inside, and the heavy stink of sweat and smoke on the air. I hand our cover fee to a woman in her mid-thirties trying too hard to cling to her late twenties. “Hand stamp?” she asks, and I shake my head. “You’re supposed to get a hand stamp,” she says, bored but annoyed.
I peel a Hamilton and set it on top of the cover. She shrugs and waves us in.
Rook gives me a look. “You don’t trust the ink?” Her tone is skeptical. Exactly how green are the witches out of Salem these days?
“Psychography- spirit writers.” I’m having to talk louder than I like to overcome the music, but the crowd in the Cauldron is 60% mage; it takes more than a dry discussion of magic to turn heads in here.
“I thought that was mostly the ideomotor effect-” she yells back, “like dowsing, or using a Ouija board.”
“Adepts can transcribe otherworldly communication- but that’s only half the craft. They use apothecary inks- magic distilled in liquid form.” Generally, the covens like their magic fresh- fresh ingredients, fresh rituals- some bullshit about it being closer to the natural way of things, and more pure. Elixirs like apothecary inks never really caught on with them, especially in an isolated Circle like hers. “You ever been spirit-written? I don’t recommend it.”
I pull out my phone to send a text, tell Pawn that we’re here. “It helps if you claim to have OCD? Like how vampires tell people they have porphyria. Helps explain away the little eccentricities- keeps people from getting too curious about things they wouldn’t understand.”
Pawn sticks out as he pushes his way through the crowd. He’s in his late forties, early fifties, buzzed, thinning hair, short, stocky build. And he only sticks out more because he doesn’t recognize he’s at least fifteen years too old for this crowd. “Body’s in the champagne room,” he says, and spends a moment too long looking at Rook.
“Body?” she asks, pretending as a courtesy not to notice him leering.
Pawn leads us past a bouncer, into the backroom. There’s a corpse in the middle of the floor. The body’s charred, and mangled, in an unnatural pose; I’ve seen similar, from falls- particularly somebody who fell without trying to catch themselves.
Pawn stalks around Rook, seeing if she’ll respond to his assertion of dominance. When she doesn’t he figures she’s just a piece of meat. “So this is the rookie, huh? Gotta say, she’s a sight prettier than you when I trained you.”
“Yet you just keep getting uglier and fatter, as the years pack on,” I say. He grunts; from her look, I can tell Rook feels bad for him, but only because she doesn’t know him. “It’s burnt to hell. You have a vamp sniff it out?”
“Was a vamp that brought it to me, one of my CIs.”
“And I had my money on you pocketing the informant stipend.”
There’s a hint of pain in his expression before he buries it- he doesn’t appreciate being shamed in front of the new girl, but plays it off. “I take my cut, but the informant’s good. Never had a problem with him before.”
“Bring him in. I’ll want to know what he does. Witnesses?”
“Just the vamp.”
“The bouncer?”
“Tim. He was outside. Heard a crack, then the thump. Presumably the port, then the landing. Room was empty at the time. But he got the vamp to check it out.”
“You like the bouncer for it?”
“Nah. He’s a solid citizen. Worked here for better of a decade. Never thrown me out on my ass- which is something. Always pays his taxes. Besides which, bartender corroborates him being outside when she heard the sounds, then him fetching my CI.”
I’m not so sure. “Still, grabbing the vamp-”
“Cauldron’s been a hangout for most of his tenure. This ain’t his first dog and pony.”
Pawn’s being uncharacteristically thorough, tonight, but for some reason that puts me more on edge. “Get him in here anyway.”
Check back next week for another excerpt or join my mailing list to be notified when The Necromancer's Gambit is available for purchase.
August 30, 2013
Preview: The Necromancer's Gambit, Part 2
Time for another excerpt from The Necromancer's Gambit, due September 23rd. The Necromancer's Gambit is the perfect Halloween read, following the trevails of a cell of mages operating in Portland.
Previously:
The Necromancer's Gambit, part 1
The Necromancer's Gambit, Part 2, Initiative, Continued
“Got plans?” Female voice. Haughty. Not authoritative enough to be a cop- but it’s nobody I recognize.
“Excuse me?” I ask as I turn around.
“You know, if you’ve got a long night of date-rape planned, I can always come back in the morning. I’d hate to intrude on your evening.” I realize then it’s Rook.
“You’re late.”
“You must be Knight; Sister Magdalene said you were grumpy. I’m-” I grab her wrist and squeeze. If she isn’t who I think she is, this is the point I get maced, or maybe a fireball cast in my underpants.
“Don’t.” I give her a second to react, and when she doesn’t I let her go. “Never use your name with anyone if you can avoid it. Names have power.” Magic draws on connection. A name is giving someone a piece of you, and a stronger connection, one they can use to burn you from a distance. “Besides which, when the Salem Circle finally sets up its government, you’re going to be their castle, so you’ve already got a title. You’re Rook.”
“But don’t titles also have power?”
“Some. But less – for the same reason that saying goddamn the President isn’t nearly as effective as casting a diarrhea spell on Barrack Obama. Specificity is your friend- and your enemy.” I’m still awkwardly holding a coffee cup, and push it out to her. “It’s cold.”
“As in ice, or you didn’t grab one of those sleeve things?”
“As in whichever extreme I ordered it at wasn’t enough to overcome your extreme tardiness.”
“I’d retort with a witticism about your tardedness if I‘d had my coffee already.”
She grabs the cup and drinks it like a shot. There’s a sigil on the bottom of it. Not a spell in its own right, just an activator; the sugar in her coffee is transubstantiated. The spell turns it back into an artificial sweetener, one that in significant quantities acts as a laxative. She doesn’t notice the mark- didn’t even check for one- which almost makes me want to activate the spell.
But I don’t. Because I’m trying to be diplomatic, and there are probably gentler ways to teach her caution. “I’m still not 100% on why you’re riding along with me. Our Castle is friendly enough, loves to talk tradecraft, and actually has experience relevant to your new responsibilities.”
“I’m supposed to be Rook eventually. But right now I’m just another sister. Magdalene asked me to come and learn what I could about your gambit, so we could design our equivalent from a position of knowledge.”
“Magdalene? What is she, a first century prostitute?”
Her eyes flash with a memory, and I realize she knows Magdalene’s real name and wants to tell it to me, then she says “Names have power.” I know it, too; Magdalene and I have a history, but Rook doesn’t need to know that. History has power, too.
She takes another sip from her coffee, then asks, “So is this what a magical dick does? Sit around drinking old coffee? And why couldn’t you just wait for me to get here, then let me order for myself?”
“One, because this is the only block in Portland without a Starbucks on the corner, and two, because we have a case. The moment we're inside we're on the clock.”
“So that’s why you had me meet you outside the Cauldron. You didn’t strike me as a dance club kind of guy.”
“Am I that obvious?” I kneel in front of my homeless witness from before. It takes a moment for him to recognize me, and he worries for an instant that I mean to shut him up, until he sees the green of a bill in my hand. “Guy in the truck hit his head pretty hard. You want to keep an eye on him, for me?” He mumbles something that sounds like ‘sure’ and palms the twenty; we both wish it was more.
Check back next week for another excerpt or join my mailing list to be notified when The Necromancer's Gambit is available for purchase.
Previously:
The Necromancer's Gambit, part 1
The Necromancer's Gambit, Part 2, Initiative, Continued
“Got plans?” Female voice. Haughty. Not authoritative enough to be a cop- but it’s nobody I recognize.
“Excuse me?” I ask as I turn around.
“You know, if you’ve got a long night of date-rape planned, I can always come back in the morning. I’d hate to intrude on your evening.” I realize then it’s Rook.
“You’re late.”
“You must be Knight; Sister Magdalene said you were grumpy. I’m-” I grab her wrist and squeeze. If she isn’t who I think she is, this is the point I get maced, or maybe a fireball cast in my underpants.
“Don’t.” I give her a second to react, and when she doesn’t I let her go. “Never use your name with anyone if you can avoid it. Names have power.” Magic draws on connection. A name is giving someone a piece of you, and a stronger connection, one they can use to burn you from a distance. “Besides which, when the Salem Circle finally sets up its government, you’re going to be their castle, so you’ve already got a title. You’re Rook.”
“But don’t titles also have power?”
“Some. But less – for the same reason that saying goddamn the President isn’t nearly as effective as casting a diarrhea spell on Barrack Obama. Specificity is your friend- and your enemy.” I’m still awkwardly holding a coffee cup, and push it out to her. “It’s cold.”
“As in ice, or you didn’t grab one of those sleeve things?”
“As in whichever extreme I ordered it at wasn’t enough to overcome your extreme tardiness.”
“I’d retort with a witticism about your tardedness if I‘d had my coffee already.”
She grabs the cup and drinks it like a shot. There’s a sigil on the bottom of it. Not a spell in its own right, just an activator; the sugar in her coffee is transubstantiated. The spell turns it back into an artificial sweetener, one that in significant quantities acts as a laxative. She doesn’t notice the mark- didn’t even check for one- which almost makes me want to activate the spell.
But I don’t. Because I’m trying to be diplomatic, and there are probably gentler ways to teach her caution. “I’m still not 100% on why you’re riding along with me. Our Castle is friendly enough, loves to talk tradecraft, and actually has experience relevant to your new responsibilities.”
“I’m supposed to be Rook eventually. But right now I’m just another sister. Magdalene asked me to come and learn what I could about your gambit, so we could design our equivalent from a position of knowledge.”
“Magdalene? What is she, a first century prostitute?”
Her eyes flash with a memory, and I realize she knows Magdalene’s real name and wants to tell it to me, then she says “Names have power.” I know it, too; Magdalene and I have a history, but Rook doesn’t need to know that. History has power, too.
She takes another sip from her coffee, then asks, “So is this what a magical dick does? Sit around drinking old coffee? And why couldn’t you just wait for me to get here, then let me order for myself?”
“One, because this is the only block in Portland without a Starbucks on the corner, and two, because we have a case. The moment we're inside we're on the clock.”
“So that’s why you had me meet you outside the Cauldron. You didn’t strike me as a dance club kind of guy.”
“Am I that obvious?” I kneel in front of my homeless witness from before. It takes a moment for him to recognize me, and he worries for an instant that I mean to shut him up, until he sees the green of a bill in my hand. “Guy in the truck hit his head pretty hard. You want to keep an eye on him, for me?” He mumbles something that sounds like ‘sure’ and palms the twenty; we both wish it was more.
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