Rick Wayne's Blog, page 11

(Art) The Book of Death

Danish illustrator Kay Nielsen produced these illustrations for exhibit in 1911 called The Book of Death. Unlike his other work, they were never published in a book.

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(Fiction) As If To Swallow Me

Bistro Indigenes was packed with the dinner crowd. Male and female servers scurried about in neat black aprons and matching bandannas. By the time I got there, Amber was already waiting, which embarrassed me a little and I apologized profusely. I repeated how I hadn’t showered and I wasn’t dressed nearly as nice as her. I lifted the strap of my work bag, still slung over my shoulder, in apology. She was in a dress—fancy casual I guess you’d call it—and she was wearing more makeup than I’d seen on her before. She looked really nice. But she seemed uncomfortable. She told me it wasn’t a big deal, quickly adding that she wasn’t sure if I’d made reservations, so she had put our name down. The hostess told her there was no guarantee we’d even get in before closing. The place was hopping.

“Shit.” I’d been so preoccupied, that possibility hadn’t even occurred to me.

“Should we go somewhere else?” she asked. It was pretty clear she wanted to. She kept looking around with a kind of exaggerated curiosity, as if everything were more interesting than it was, the way you might scan a party for your ex while trying not to make it obvious.

Someone touched my shoulder lightly and I turned. It was the chef’s assistant, or whatever she was. Milan. She was all class, just like before, in khaki pants and a white-and-rainbow wrap. She looked like an Eastern European model, something straight out of a magazine. The cut crystal still dangled from the long chain around her neck. It reflected the light in an odd way. Half of it was tiny rainbows. The other half was dim, as if catching an invisible shadow.

“Dr. Alexander,” she said. “How nice to see you again. We’ve been holding your table.”

“My table?”

“I’m so sorry,” she told Amber. “I didn’t realize you were with the doctor’s party.”

The waiting booth in the foyer was full of hungry hipsters who’d been standing forever. They eyed us resentfully.

Dr. Massey turned to me wearing a bemused smile. “Well, well, Dr. Alexander,” she mocked.

Milan spoke to the host, a thickly mustachioed Salvadoran man with pomaded hair who glanced at us and nodded before leading us to a table with a good view of the open kitchen. In the center was a large stone-block hearth. A fire raged. It seemed much bigger than it needed to be. Like someone had trapped a devil inside.

We ordered wine, and when the waiter left, there was another awkward silence.

“So . . .” She leaned over the table. “I have a confession. I’m so embarrassed.”

I swallowed. I scanned her hand for a wedding ring. Just as empty as before. I still wore mine. I moved it to my lap.

“I don’t even know your first name,” she said, red-faced. “Your real one, I mean.”

I laughed. Three times we’d met, plus a bunch of text conversations between. I guess it never came up.

“Uchewe.” I spelled it for her and explained how white folks down south always wanted to call me “You-Chew.”

“It’s beautiful.”

“My brother tried calling me Che, you know, like the revolutionary, but it never took. He tried calling me lots of names, actually.”

“Why’s that?”

“I guess because I called him Bug and it stuck and he wanted to get me back.”

“Did something happen with him?” she asked. “Sorry.” She covered her mouth again like it was filthy. “Is that okay to ask? It’s just, you mentioned him once before, and both times you looked . . . I dunno. Away, I guess.”

I hadn’t realized. “No, it’s okay. He died. That’s all. When I was young.”

“I’m so sorry. How old were you?”

“Fourteen. It’s actually funny you bring it up. I’ve been thinking about him today. Don’t know if you heard. The boy died.”

“Are you kidding?” Her eyes got big. “The whole city knows. It’s all over the news. They’ve been flashing those dimples at every commercial break. ‘Unknown killer claims the life of a seven-year-old boy. Latest at 11.’ I’m surprised no one’s tried to interview you.”

“Naw, the police have the case now. I only met him once, but it hit me—Well, I guess I thought . . . I dunno.”

“That you could save him? You can’t save people. Believe me.” She made a face, like she was an expert and I had no idea. She washed it away with a quick drink from her glass. “They’ll take everything from you if you let them,” she added a moment later. “If that’s why you do it, you’re gonna get burned out. Really fast.”

There was an edge to her then that I hadn’t noticed before. Almost cynical.

“So why do you do it?”

Before she could answer, menus came. A pair of well-dressed servers placed them gently in front of us. They were fancy. Really fancy. Leather-bound and heavy. And there were no prices, as if that kind of thing didn’t matter to the people who ate there.

I leaned over the table. “You really don’t have to pay, you know.”

She held up her menu so it covered all but her eyes, which scanned the room. “So nice, right? I don’t know what it says about me, but I’ve never been to a place like this. Thanks for suggesting it.”

The menu wasn’t prix fixe, but it wasn’t quite a la carte either. It was whatever Étranger wanted it to be, and it changed with his mind. That night we had our choice of four set meals, one for each of the seasons, wine and dessert included. I ordered Spring and was brought an appetizer of “cud-grass soup with boiled tripe.” I ordered it because it sounded intriguingly distasteful, but the tripe was thinly stripped and tender, almost like the noodles in my grandma’s chicken noodle soup, and the vegetable stock was salty and clear and pleasantly bitter with an aftertaste of jasmine and wild herbs. It actually tasted like I was lazing about in a sunlit field watching the clouds roll by. The accompanying entree was roasted hummingbirds, eight of them, glazed with sweet nectar and served on a bed of leafy greens and stuffed zucchini flowers. It was delicious.

Amber ordered Summer. Her appetizer was a shaved-ice curry that tasted way better than it had any reason to, with a texture sort of like iced coffee. It was creamy and cold and earthy and a little bit sweet, and the spice clung to our lips, which both of us licked two or three times after each bite.

“Wow,” she said, shifting in her seat, the spice warming her face like a tropical sun.

We shared each other’s dishes and mostly talked about the food, which was exotic enough to make easy conversation. Every dish was a novelty, unlike anything either of us had had before.

“How you holding up?” she asked finally in a lull between courses. She’d been dancing around the subject, waiting for a moment of comfort. By then we were both on our second glass of wine, although technically I hadn’t finished my first. She had. Buttery whites aren’t really my thing and this one made its way to her side of the table pretty quick.

She sloughed off my noncommittal reply. “Tell me about the case then, if you don’t want to talk about you.”

“It’s not that. I just don’t know what to say. How am I holding up? I dunno. If I say ‘not good,’ it makes it seem like I’m in real trouble. If I say ‘not bad,’ it makes it seem like everything’s great.”

“Do you overthink everything like this?”

“Ha. Yeah. Usually.”

“I suppose it’s good for your job, being a scientist and all.”

I put my napkin on the table. “The whole truth?”

“Not if you don’t want to.”

I thought for a moment. I thought about my stint in Africa, about the bodies there, how they had looked after a week in the sun, how the whole experience was totally different, how the international team I’d belonged to didn’t get much support from the local government, but how they stayed out of our way all the same. They knew that without us, and the money that came with, they’d have a problem they couldn’t hope to contain. So we did whatever needed to be done. Everyone on the ground was active, dedicated, smart. I felt like the dumbest guy there and loved it. So much to learn. And when we were ultimately successful, I had a sense of worth and accomplishment like I’d never felt before. I’d been a part of something bigger than myself. We’d taken direct action. We’d saved lives. We don’t get enough opportunities like that in life.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, we’d just found five dead bodies in a basement, and just because they were born on a different continent, there was some question as to whether their deaths would even be investigated. The mood in Africa had been electric. At the Chinese grocer, I felt like I was walking into the DMV. Everybody was waiting for someone in some other part of the big machine. When the case inevitably hit the news, instead of buckling down and doing what they should’ve done from the start, everyone overreacted, like it was a complete surprise.

I wanted to tell Amber all that. I wanted to tell her more people would die. I wanted to tell her about the ring around the city, and The Rat King, and the shiny steel padlock in the basement of an otherwise abandoned school, about the bone labyrinth and the eerie symbols I found there and under the grocer’s. But I didn’t. As I opened my mouth, I was saved by dessert, which appeared in front of us as if from nowhere.

“How’d you even get on this case?” she asked, poking at a sort of julep parfait. “You never told me.”

I nodded in recollection. She’d asked at one of our earlier meetings. I said it was a story and I’d have to tell her sometime. I never had.

“I wasn’t ducking the question. It’s just boring work stuff.”

“So give me the short version.”

“Well. Believe it or not, I was working on this program the department runs with the sex worker population.”

“Prostitutes? Really?”

“Yeah, and related activities.”

“What’s related to prostitution?”

“Strippers. Porn stars. Burlesque shows.”

“Burlesque?”

“Hey, man.” I held up my hands. “It’s a thing.”

She was taking tiny sips of her wine, which was almost gone, to make it last longer.

“You want another?” I asked, nodding to the glass.

“I probably shouldn’t.”

I took a drink of my own.

“So what were you doing with those prostitutes?”

I smiled and thought for a moment how to explain it. “Okay, so there’s two parts to the survey. There’s a stratified area probability sample where we break the city into grids and then sample some percent of the grids in each borough.”

“What do you mean grid?”

“A standardized city block, basically. Once a block gets selected, we do a survey in that grid. We talk to everyone we can about, for example, whether they’ve ever bought or sold sex. If so, how often, how much did they pay, did they use protection. All that.”

“And people answer these questions honestly?”

“Everybody always asks that, but you’d be surprised. We actually have a way of testing for honesty, too. We ask multiple questions that get at the same thing in different ways and we space them out so that it’s hard for people to hide when they’re lying. Every response gets a congruence score. Responses with low internal congruence have a higher chance of containing falsehoods and are either weighted down or discarded entirely. And the instrument itself, the survey questionnaire, is tested first—calibrated, we say, against verifiable data, so we’re confident it’s working as expected.”

“I totally didn’t realize it was that complicated.”

I realized I was getting defensive. “Yeah, it’s really rigorous, not like a marketing survey or whatever. Point is, people love talking about themselves. The johns, maybe not so much, but the pros do. An average day for them is all about the customer, and a lot of them don’t have the best home life.”

“That’s sad.”

“So, if you can get them to open up, they’ll talk your ear off. They’ll tell you all this stuff you don’t need, like the first guy they blew and the sick shit all their ex-boyfriends wanted them to do. But then, it helps that it’s all anonymous. We don’t take names. They can give us a fake one, it doesn’t matter. We don’t save anything identifying.

“Anyway, that’s one part. Along with the field survey, we also do one of the prison population on the theory that if we can establish the relationship between the prison population, which is known, and the wider city, which is unknown, then we can get excellent stats on, for example, the number of sex workers in the city, or the prevalence of HIV and how it’s moving, or whatever.”

“That’s really smart.” She’d finished her wine.

“Well, unfortunately I can’t take credit for it. They’ve been doing it for a while.”

“Why are you always making excuses for how smart you are?”

“Am I?”

“Sorry, I interrupted. Please continue.”

“Um. Yeah, so the problem is . . . the parts of the city you’re most interested in are also the parts that are too dangerous to go into with a whole team and everything. We already gotta do everything with pen and paper because if you use any kind of handheld device, some percent of your interviewers will get robbed. And that’s not even in the really bad parts of town. Certain grid squares get flagged, either based on crime stats or interviewer feedback, and instead of doing a survey there, if one of those blocks gets randomly selected, we try to do some spot interviews, just to get something rather than nothing, and then pick again.”

“So what you’re saying is you volunteered.”

I smiled. “It was my first week. I got the right color skin. Plus, I grew up in a place like that. They needed someone to get it done. So, yeah. I volunteered. I thought it would be a good way to make a quick splash. You can’t go in with any kind of credentials, though, or they’ll just think you’re a cop. Most of these folks either don’t know or don’t care about the alphabet soup of agencies. You flash an ID card of any kind and you’re just another authority figure they got no reason to talk to. Some of the churches do good work, but building those relationships takes—” I stopped. I remembered she worked in community health. “You know what I mean.”

“So what’d you do?”

“Left my wallet at home and went with a giant bag of suckers.”

She laughed out loud. “Suckers?”

“Yeah, you know those little round suckers that come in giant bags of 100 or whatever? It’s a great conversation starter. Everybody likes to pick out their favorite flavor. A lot of these girls don’t have regular meals either. And a sucker is something they can have in their mouths that doesn’t exactly turn the clientele away, if you know what I mean.”

“See? Very clever, Doctor.”

“There’s this concept in survey methods called reciprocity, where if you do something for people, they’re more likely to do something for you. It’s the reason charities always send those free preprinted address labels in the mail. Because they know they’ll get more responses if they send you something first. By the second night, though, it was kind of a joke. Girls were seeking me out. Pimps were, too. I got told to mind my own business a few times and had to turn around and walk the other way.”

“Dangerous.”

“Eh, not as much as you might think. Pimps are a different breed. Not like dealers. Anyway, the last night, I was out pretty late. I was basically just hanging around looking for girls I hadn’t already talked to when these kids came up and said this woman Cheri was sick and would I take a look. Cheri Cardenas. They didn’t know who I was, just that I was going around talking about health and stuff. I didn’t know what the hell I could do. But it sounded serious and I didn’t have my phone with me. I’d left it at home with my wallet. So I figured I oughta at least see what was going on. As soon as I did, I told the boys to run to a convenience store down the street and call 911.”

I stopped and she waited.

“And?”

“She was dead. To be honest, I hadn’t remembered talking to her until I saw the apartment. She was so emaciated, I didn’t recognize her face. But I remembered talking to a girl with a heavy Brooklyn Latina accent. She wasn’t working. She was sick and staying at her grandmother’s. Grandma was apparently stuck in some horrible nursing home. I tried to get the name from her, but she wouldn’t say. Like she was scared.”

“What happened?”

“Same as everybody else. She was in bed. Her grandma’s bed. You could just tell it had been an old lady’s apartment. There was crap everywhere. Old crap. Not stuff a young woman would have, even a hoarder. Stacks of country lifestyle magazines with, like, a million Catholic saint candles lying around. The poor girl looked like she’d shriveled. All her hair had fallen out. Half of it was on the pillow. I guess maybe it was because I’d seen it up close, seen her and how awful it was. No one else acted like it was a big deal. Bad drugs or something. But there’s not that many things that can do that to a person, especially not that fast.”

“So you put out your health alert.”

“Ha. You make it sound easy, like I just filled out a form or whatever.”

“I’m sure you put up a big fight.”

“I made my arguments. I think at the end, Dr. Chalmers agreed just to shut me up. But . . .” I raised my glass to Amber before downing the last swallow. “Without her, you and I never would’ve met. You wouldn’t have told me about Alonso, and we wouldn’t be sitting here.”

“What do you think is going on?” she asked, suddenly very serious. “Like, really.”

The question caught me off guard and I paused.

“I think someone is making people sick,” I said solemnly.

“You mean accidentally. Like a company or something.”

I shook my head and washed down the bitter wine with a drink of water. All the ice had melted. The water was tepid and unrefreshing.

“On purpose? Why? What would be the point?”

“I don’t know.”

“So, wait. You think there’s some nut case—”

“No. Nothing like that. I don’t think he gets any enjoyment out of it. Or she. Whatever. Serial killers, you know, they have to be there to witness the suffering of their victims. To inflict it. That’s the whole point. It’s sick, but it’s that very deprivation of their victims’ humanity that drives them to kill.

“Normal people don’t care about the suffering of others. Okay, maybe that’s not fair. They might prefer it not happen, but that’s not the same. People are suffering all over the world tonight. In this city, even. And here we are having a nice dinner.”

Amber got quiet. “I know . . .”

My shoulders dropped. “Not trying to guilt you. I’m just saying, whoever is doing this isn’t getting off on it. They’re not hanging around to watch. A serial killer kills to fill a need, because they feel powerless. I doubt whoever is doing this feels powerless. Not at all. And I doubt they even see these people as people. Not really. They’re just a means to . . .”

I paused as Amber studied my face with her head tilted slightly to one side. “To?”

I shook my head slowly.

“Hm. So, what are you gonna do?”

Her question seemed like a polite way to express skepticism about the whole thing, and I can’t say I blamed her. I immediately felt uncomfortable, not so much at what I’d said but how much. I was being chatty. I was sure I’d bored her with all the work talk, and I realized then that I might’ve had a little too much to drink.

I took back the reins of my mind that instant.

“I dunno . . .” I said, sitting up. “You’re the first person I’ve told. No one would believe me anyway. Which I’m sure was the point of picking the people they did.”

“Well, I believe you.”

I smiled. “Thanks. You might not be the only one, actually.”

That seemed to genuinely interest her. “Oh?” Her head turned the opposite way. “Who else?”

I looked at the restaurant logo on the white napkin that had kept the condensation on my water glass from reaching the tablecloth. Bistro Indigenes.

She noticed something behind me and went for her purse. Seemed like maybe the waiter was coming with the bill. The way she moved, I thought I might have to arm wrestle her even to see it. I at least wanted to know how much I was in her debt. But when the waiter arrived, he explained to us politely that there was no bill. He’d been told that our meal was on the house. Amber looked to me for an explanation, but I had none. She said something about me really knowing how to impress a girl, and we got up to go. She touched my arm to steady herself. I held on as we walked to the front. Outside, I turned my head almost incidentally to the side door, the one Milan had led Ollie and me through the other day. It was open.

Wide open.

But dark.

“So, do you wanna maybe share a cab or something?” she asked. “We could talk on the way. I always hate that quiet cab ride home after a nice evening. Don’t you? It’s so depressing.”

I could feel the open door behind me, like the warmth from a radiator.

I must have waited too long, or maybe it was the look on my face, because she said “Oh my God” and put her face in her hands. “Oh my God,” she repeated. Even her ears were red. “I just thought . . .”

Our eyes met.

“Oh wow.” She walked to the curb. “Wow. It’s been a really long time since I made this big an ass of myself.”

I wanted to object, but she didn’t give me the opportunity.

“It’s just, you know, I met you. And you care. You really do. And you seemed lonely. And I thought, here we are, two lonely people who care.”

I got it. I had gotten it the first day I met her. I got it when she confidently asked to show me around the city. I was safe. Not only was I married, I would be gone at the end of my appointment. Whatever she had planned for herself and her career, I wouldn’t be the guy to muck it up.

Dr. Massey stood on the curb and waited for a taxi. I walked over and put my hand on her shoulder. Not intimate. But not distant either. Friendly. I squeezed.

“I like you, Amber. If I led you on—”

“No,” she said in a way that invited no further comment. She stepped free of my grasp.

I glanced back to the open door. No movement. No nothing. It had been shut and locked before. We weren’t exactly in a bad neighborhood, but there aren’t many places in New York that leave their front doors open, especially at night.

A taxi stopped and she opened the door without making eye contact.

“Your wife is very lucky,” she said, climbing into the car without a glance.

The door shut. The taxi pulled away. I raised my hand in parting, but it was dark and I couldn’t tell if she saw me or not.

My hand dropped.

“She doesn’t think so . . .”

When the car was no longer in sight, I turned to the open door.

It yawned, as if to swallow me.

Get it here.

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(Fiction) The Knife That Killed Albert Gallagher Twice

I pulled Etude down, down, down endless flights of stairs: stairs that curled, stairs at right angles, stairs that cut a straight line, our feet quickstepping across stone. By turn after turn, we descended deep into the Keep of Solomon, ahead of the shouts and calls. If it had been a rational structure, we might have been caught. So too if The Masters had ever wandered from their high apartments, where each was lord, to explore the castle of which they were stewards. But they did not. Its passages were as unknown to them as their servants’ quarters and we were molested only by a trio of bald, brown-robed librarians, who heard the shouting and gathered to investigate. They tried to stop us, but I punched one squarely across the jaw, and he doubled over, clutching it. We made our way to an arched vestibule at the very bottom of the library which formed a small monument. A modest fountain gurgled at the center. Around it, braided columns twisted upward. Carved into their capitals were various artisans and craftsmen responsible the Keep—for its architecture or its interiors or its upkeep through the centuries. Each was depicted from the waist up and seemed to hold the weight of the Keep on their shoulders. Their heads were bent in struggle, their hands lifted to grasp the ceiling.

“STOP!” came a shout from above.

The six Masters and Mr. Morgan stood at various landings in the library. I don’t think any of them knew which of its winding paths led to that lowest of floors which I had discovered on my many perambulations.

Etude spun and saw no exit. “We are trapped!”

“I thought you were a shaman,” I accused. “Can’t you lead us through the shadow realm?”

“The veil must be pierced! I do not have my drum or flute. We have no ritual fire, no fall of water, and I do not know the spirits of this place!”

“But I do.”

I nodded to a dark arch, where a maid’s pale face—and nothing else—was barely visible, as if peering in from a wall of shadow. It hung there for only a moment before it retreated completely. I suspect she had come and gone so many times through the barrier, the veil between our world and the shadow-place, that it had been worn thin under that arch. Etude took my hand and with a silent look made it clear I should stay silent as well, and also that I should not let go.

It was as if we walked for hours through someone’s dark and anxious dreams. He navigated it as only a spiritwalker can, a man trained since birth not only to battle evil spirits but also to retrieve the lost souls of the sick. We emerged sometime later in a church in Italy. We gave the parish priest quite a fright as we stepped from the gap in a marble ensconcement at the back of the sepulcher. The clock tower in the square outside made it clear we had covered not only distance but time. It was then several hours earlier than when we had left. It was odd, I remarked, to think that right then, the two of us were also standing in the grand hall before the High Arcane. Could we not go and alter events? But he said no, that no matter which path we took from that church—train, automobile, helicopter—we would not be able to reach the Keep of Solomon one moment before we left, and so the paradox was always avoided.

“Such is the shape of space-time,” he said.

An older gentleman, a head shorter than me with long sideburns and a derby hat, shuffled by and made a face at our clothes, and again at Etude’s bare feet.

“I have heard that time is also money,” I said. “Perhaps you could find a way to render it so.” I lifted the legs of my cotton pants. “We need new clothes. We look like cultists in these outfits. Someone is bound to call the police.”

“Really?” he asked, looking down at his shirt. “I rather liked them.”

By means of a metal plaque at the door of the church, we discovered we were in Bergamo, in the foothills of the Alps. Like most Italian towns, its three- and four-story buildings were all of a similar design, and they lined the cobbled streets on both sides without gaps, as if forming the walls of a maze whose paths were never straight. Every avenue bent slightly and at odd times, seemingly for no reason other than to make sure you never quite knew where you were. It was a world unto itself and made to be so. It existed for the people who lived there and no one else. We found a quiet nook off a blind alley, too narrow for cars to pass, and sat under a cluster of hanging potted plants contemplating our options.

After a brief meditation, Etude raised his hands. Nothing happened at first, but before I could inquire as to his intentions, a rat appeared. It did nothing at first, as if it were afraid to approach. When a pair of pigeons landed nearby, the rat dared approach. It was followed in turn by all the animals of the city, not just rats and pigeons but kestrels, blackbirds, red foxes, bright finches, mouse-sized bats, feral cats—even wall-climbing lizards and a handful of frogs who hopped out of the gutter or from the mouths of dark pipes that fell from the rooftops. He asked them if they knew of the shiny metals and bits of paper that the humans traded, and they said yes. He asked if they might bring them, and they agreed. They seemed quite eager, in fact, for no one had bothered to talk to them in a very long time.

A brown rat the size of a small dog was the first to return. It walked headfirst down a vertical drain pipe carrying something in its teeth. It dropped it on the ground near Etude’s bare feet. It was a silver ring, quite large and heavily tarnished, with swirling bands at the top that held in place a sapphire of at least ten karats. Etude bowed to the rat and introduced himself and me. The rat was the wisest of his kind and told my friend he had come as soon as he heard the news, for it was rare anymore for people to honor the old ways—the ways before towns. He said that under that city many babies were starving, and Etude promised to knock over a rubbish bin near the river, which he did on our departure. The wise rat thanked him and left.

On and on it went. An animal appeared bearing a small treasure, something lost in the cracks and sewers, and asked a favor of the shaman, which he happily obliged. Most were quite simple. A kestrel had some plastic netting wrapped around its feet and tail and asked that it be removed, which I was happy to do. She left us a single diamond earring. A mother cat with Gucci collar brought a snarling kitten, a child from a recent litter—a matted, angry little menace of a cub that her owners had discarded. The mother had rescued it and kept it in secret, but it bit her and refused to eat. The young shaman wasted not a moment. He lifted the tiny terror by the scruff of its neck. It hissed and tried to bite him, but he merely moved his hands over it and spoke in a low voice. Even animals can be possessed, it seems. When the spirit was mesmerized, Etude passed his hand through the kitten’s body and brought it out in a closed fist. He whispered words to his fingers, then opened them and blew, and black ash scattered on the breeze. He returned the tiny kitten, now mewing plaintively to its mother, whose gave us her owner’s gold money clip, stuffed with neatly folded bills—so many, they could not be easily counted.

Before long, there was a line of animals stretching around the corner, and I felt like Etude and I were royalty, receiving gifts and entreaties from our noble subjects. We were polite to them, and they were polite to us. There was much bowing and speaking of ancient oaths. Soon, as word spread to the wilds that a true shaman had appeared, all semblance of order was dropped. As their numbers grew, the animals took to frenzy, agitated to excitement by the mere chance to see the strange bald man who remembered the ancient treaties, when men and beasts had warred and then made a pact. Birds of all stripes and colors swooped into the alley and dropped prizes. Bullfrogs croaked and hopped laboriously forward amid a tangle of rats and mice and more than a few voles who scurried so quickly that it was very hard to see them. Each deposited before the feet of the shaman the shiny detritus of the city—metals and papers and strange cut rocks.

As the animals swarmed, the pile at Etude’s feet grew, and he raised his arms in thanks. And so he stood amid the chaos, hands high, like the barefoot conductor of a great pastoral symphony. And then, just like that, it was done. Etude brought his hands down and the animals scurried away in all directions, as if they forgot that they could speak, and we were alone.

The pile we had amassed was mesmerizing. There were rings, bracelets, necklaces, loose gems and pearls, earrings, cash, and coins. Quite a bit of the jewelry was costume, of course, and amid the coins, I found several bottle caps, a penny slug, and some brass tokens to various laundromats and arcades. There was also a dog’s tag, three key chains (two with keys attached), and a ring fashioned from a nail. The birds had snagged a handful of restaurant receipts, presumably mistaking them for cash, including one bearing a freshly written phone number next to a hand-drawn heart. They had also pilfered someone’s grocery list and part of a newspaper crossword puzzle, all in Italian.

Even still, by the time the symphony reached its sudden climax, enough valuables had been delivered to fill a small chest. It was a genuine treasure. I had never seen a treasure before. Etude knelt and thrust a hand into it and lifted a full fist. Gold fell from between his fingers and clinked on the cobblestones.

“Will this do?” he asked.

I nodded meekly.

It took us some time to gather and sort it all. The crown jewel was an emerald necklace that I was certain dated to the 17th century. There was also a casino chip worth ten million lire and a Roman-era coin that we would later sell for a sizable sum.

“This looks old,” I said, raising another coin from the pile.

It was roughly the size of a silver dollar and irregularly circular. The markings, as well as the faces that had been stamped onto both sides, were worn with age. Etude went pale when he saw it and cursed softly in his mother tongue, a language I rarely heard pass his lips. It had been lost, we would discover, by an American GI during the liberation of Italy. His name was Albert Gallagher and he had wagered it in a card game against a fellow serviceman. Although no one knew it, Private Gallagher regularly cheated at cards with magic. In fact, he hadn’t lost a single game the entire war. Private Gallagher met his match, however, in a man from a different regiment, a mizzen from New Orleans named Paul Remi. Facing the prospect of losing everything, Private Gallagher played the penny. He was certain he couldn’t lose, for he knew there was no magic that could overturn it. But lose he did, to a seven-high straight, and after carrying that coin across the whole of North Africa and through seven near-death encounters, he watched it walk away in the pocket of the smiling Cajun, along with all his cash.

It was only later, after he was sober, that Private Gallagher realized the mizzen had cheated—but not with magic—simply with sleight of hand. He must have. There was no other explanation. Albert Gallagher was furious—furious that he had been beaten by a mizzen, and when finally he found Corporal Remi, they quarreled and Private Gallagher was killed. He had already spent the Moirai penny. In trying to take it back, Gallagher’s luck reversed, and he slipped and fell on his own knife—the knife that killed him twice.

As it happened, the Albert Gallagher who died that day in Italy, the day the coin was ripped from a pocket and lost down a gutter, was not the real Albert Gallagher from Ames, Iowa. The real Private Gallagher, aged 20, had lost his parents and two brothers to various unfortunate circumstances, and when the war broke out, felt that volunteering was the best way to honor their memory. However, before reporting for duty at an army base outside Mobile, Alabama, the young recruit thought he might see some of the country he was pledging his life to preserve. He hitched south and one night found himself playing a swell game of cards with some men in back of a service station. The men were smoking and drinking and shared stories of their lives. The young and inexperienced recruit let slip he was alone in the world—an innocent admission, but one that sealed his fate, for it meant there was no one alive who could identify him.

After the card game, Albert went to relieve himself by a tree, where one of the other players slit his throat with the knife. His body was buried in a bog, but not before his uniform and papers were taken. So it was the man who reported for duty in Mobile was not Albert Gallagher from Ames, Iowa, who knew nothing of magic, but one Wilbur Tuesday, aged 28, who was then wanted by the law in eight states. To keep him safe in wartime, his teenage wife, Livonia, who loved the violent, reckless Wilbur as nothing else in the world, gave her husband a gift, something she had stolen from her mother. She gave her Wilbur a silver penny, which she had been instructed not to touch. She gave it to her husband along with similar instructions. He was never to spend that penny nor even let it fall from his person—lest grave things happen. Of course, once Livonia’s mother, an old-timey witch from the hills of Tennessee, discovered it was missing, she had words with her daughter. The two fought, as mothers and daughters do—but also not as mothers and daughters do—and one of them wound up in the corn field.

Etude took the penny from my hands without a word.

We purchased new clothes, which suited me nicely, as well as train tickets to Milan, the nearest city, where I said I had an important errand. We found lodging at a small guest house and I went to the library. I knew exactly the book I needed. I had already found it in the Keep of Solomon. I needed merely to photocopy some of the pages. I was walking toward the front door, treasure in hand, when I saw Beltran waiting for me in the foyer. No one paid him any mind despite that he was dressed in a long coat and high fur hat. On the second level, one of his men was standing by the railing, keeping an eye on us both. My pace slowed. I stopped.

“Mila.” He nodded. He motioned to the door, but it was not threatening. “May I walk you back to the inn?”

“That implies I have a choice.”

He held the door for me and I stepped onto the sidewalk. The sun was shining. There were plainclothes guards at both street corners. He saw me notice them.

“They are for our protection.”

“How did you find me?”

We walked down the steps toward the street. The man from the balcony exited the doors behind us and kept a distance of twenty or so paces.

“He said you went to the library,” Beltran explained. He took one of the books I carried from my hand and stopped to examine it. “Medieval architecture?”

“Am I to suppose that by ‘he’ you meant Etude?” I took the book back.

“Yes.”

“And where is he?”

“Back at the inn. I thought we could talk alone. If it’s all right with you.”

“That depends.”

“On?”

“What you’re going to say.”

Beltran hadn’t stood on the walls of the Keep with his colleagues. He hadn’t cared to chase us. Indeed, he’d ordered his men—the last loyal to him, anyway—not to give pursuit. Instead, he stood in the grand hall contemplating the inescapable meaning of the shattered Eye. He picked up one of the shards and in its polygonal facets saw one final image before the last of its magic faded: the little inn in Milan where Etude and I took refuge.

“I have only come to say goodbye,” he said softly. “I thought we might have a few moments while your friend is busy unwrapping his present.”

“Present?”

He nodded. “A wardrobe. From China. A gift from the great Master Wu, who, it seems, had predicted these events would transpire.” He motioned to a street side cafe. “Shall we?”

I took a seat at a small table where I could keep an eye on the men keeping an eye on us. Beltran ordered two espressos.

“I suspect that knowledge,” he continued, “and not anything untoward by Master Tresillian, was the true reason for Master Wu’s disappearance.”

“That implies he told you what was coming.”

“No. He gave me the wardrobe, sealed, at our last encounter and said it could only be opened by ‘he who will blind us all.’ Until these events, I had no way of knowing it would be your friend.”

Our coffees came and we stirred them and each took a sip.

“The story will be…” he began, “that a new book was written.”

“By Etude?”

He nodded gravely.

“So. Your colleagues are going to cover up their failure by blaming an innocent man. A boy, no less.”

He nodded again.

I looked at the bar. A businessman in patent leather shoes was buying a pastry.

“They’ll despise him,” I said. “Everyone. They’ll all blame him for whatever happens.” I sighed. “And he’ll let them.”

Beltran studied me. “You mean to fight them, then? Our resurgent foes.”

I leaned forward. “They’re afraid. They’re scared of him. Of what he can do. And that means we can beat them.”

“I don’t think you’ll have to.”

“What do you mean?”

“The Eye has cracked. The end has come.”

“Just like that? After 700 years?”

“Oh, I imagine it will take a little time yet, perhaps even several years. But yes. The Eye wasn’t just the means by which The Masters kept power over others. It was also the only real mechanism of trust between us. It not only gave each visibility into what the others were doing, but also the understanding that the others had the same visibility into their own activities. Without that, suspicion will take over. They will plot against each other if only to avoid being plotted against.”

“And you?” I asked. “What will they do with you?”

“Exile,” he said without pause or grief. “I had already agreed to step down anyway. I will use this as an excuse to return to my family’s estate.”

In the mountains east of the Black Sea. Where we spent our first winter. Where we fell in love. He was telling me he was going to spend his last days in the place he’d been happiest in his life.

It took me a long moment to respond. “But surely you don’t need to honor their demands now.”

“Why? Because I can get away with not honoring them? I gave my word, Mila. Whether such men deserve it or not, I gave it all the same.”

“We could use your help,” I said softly.

He leaned forward then as well such that our faces were not so very far apart. “Are you asking me to come with you?”

“Maybe.”

“And if I asked the same?”

“Please don’t try to talk me out of it.” I wasn’t sure I could resist.

“The truth is, I’m not sure what I could do for you,” he said. “It takes me twenty minutes to straighten my back in the morning, and I can never be far from a toilet! You don’t know how lucky you are, Mila.”

Beltran’s back was permanently stiffened during the ritual that he claimed had destroyed the book. But it hadn’t. He had merely wrecked himself against it, it seemed.

“I wish you had told me the truth,” I said.

He couldn’t look me in the face. His own sagged with age and regret.

“I came into this fight protecting you,” he said looking at the table. “That was my first mission. And that is how I will leave it. It is true, I suppose, that my actions in pursuit of that aim have not always been virtuous, but I could not have done any different.”

I saw my husband then. There was still a little of him left. I leaned over the little table and took his face in my hands and kissed him, long and full, and when our lips parted, he was teary.

“Mila…” He sighed and took my wrists in his hands. He kissed my palm. “I never should have taken office.”

“No. You needed to count. If you had declined, you would’ve always regretted it. It would’ve changed nothing. Sooner or later… Well, we are who we are.”

“So it was doomed? We were doomed?”

“No. But everything comes to an end. And we had many good years together. It wasn’t all deception, was it?”

Beltran and I had split for a very simple reason: I refused to give him children. Seeing me with the orphans, how happy I was, he became convinced that I wanted to be a mother as much as he wanted to be a father—the kind of father he never had. And perhaps part of me did. But I said no all the same. Always, I said no, no matter how often, how strenuously he asked. Or demanded. To him, it seemed the greatest betrayal—worse, I think, than if I had taken another lover. But how could I have children? How could I watch them grow old and die? It would’ve broken me. As nothing else ever could.

“We must live with the choices we make,” I said.

“Where will you start?” he asked, clearing his throat of tears.

“When Mr. Morgan interrogated me, it was in an old orthodox church somewhere in Central Asia. There was an arabesque carved into the wall.” I lifted one of the books I’d gotten from the library: Far Under Heaven: Christian Churches of the Silk Road. “I remember those churches. I doubt Morgan thought anything of it. No one does these days. But those patterns were all unique. It shouldn’t be too hard to find it. When he returns, we’ll be there.”

He smiled at me, ruefully.

“What?” I asked.

“He won’t know what hit him,” he said proudly. “This is the Mila I remember. The fighter. Not the woman who cowered in the mountains, afraid of her own shadow. You have fixed yourself.” He admired me. “I only got in the way.”

I frowned.

“Have I offended you?”

“No. It’s… Mr. Morgan suggested I didn’t who I was anymore—if I was aristocrat or thief, governess or spy. For a while, some part of me worried he was right. I couldn’t say which of those things I was. But I know who I am. I am all of those things. And now I am friend and teacher as well.” His hand rested on the linen and I took it. “We couldn’t stop our enemies. We threw everything we had at them, and it wasn’t enough. They endured. But now we have someone who can finish what we started.”

“Is he ready for such a position?”

“No. But that is what I can do. Get him ready.”

We were silent a long time, holding each other’s hand. We shared glances and looks that only we knew.

“I don’t want to say goodbye,” I said, feeling myself grow weak.

“Then don’t.” He stood resolutely and straightened his coat on his shoulders, the coat that seemed just a little too big for him anymore. “I will protect you from that as well.”

I stood. “Beltran—”

“I have given my colleagues false information,” he said, dropping some money on the table. “Our enemies will be looking for you in all the wrong places. But be careful. I’m not sure how much time it will buy you. And you know well that these men are dangerous.”

“I know,” I said.

He nodded, lips pressed together. “Farewell. My love.”

And with that, he walked away. He nodded to his men and they followed him, leaving me alone.

I wandered with my books back to the little inn where Etude and I had hidden. I stopped on the landing at the top of the stairs and let several tears fall. I knew I wouldn’t be able to hold it if I kept everything in. I thought about high mountain meadows and wildflowers and the scent of fresh game on the fire. I thought about waking naked in the night, wrapped in that great fur coat, and watching him sleep and thinking that Beltran was the bear of heaven himself come to earth. Ursa Major. The constellation my father had taught me when I was a girl. The stars on our family crest.

I heard a noise and wiped my face and cleared my throat and stepped into the room. It was long and narrow. The ceiling sloped down on one side following the line of the roof. There was a small balcony at the back and two single beds in the middle. I had thought the room’s walnut wardrobe, which dated from the 1930s, was beautiful, but the one that now stood awkwardly in the narrow floorspace was absolutely stunning. It was dark and accented in the traditional Chinese style, with simple, clean lines and a circular brass fixture connecting the front doors, which had been opened to reveal a rack of sliding shelves and small cabinet drawers. Etude was sitting on the bed removing packing paper from the object in his lap. There were books and artifacts everywhere. On the floor by my feet was a wooden box with a polished inlay depicting scenes from Chinese mythology. The rectangular border was adorned with the full collection of trigrams. It was beautiful.

“What’s this?” I asked, kneeling to it. I lifted the lid. Inside was a coat—foggy gray, folded neatly.

“That is not coming with us.”

I held it up. It was clearly old. And gorgeous. Each of the three buttons was different. There was a dollop of polished amber with an insect trapped inside, like a winged spider with an elongated body and a barbed stinger—the first wasp.

“Well?” I asked.

“Well what?”

“Have you at least tried it on?”

“Of course not.” He scowled. “It is the coat of a great Taoist sorcerer, a relic of the second century. Not outerwear.”

“Well, Master Wu obviously wanted you to have it. I’m certain he didn’t mean for you to put it in storage.”

When he didn’t answer, I set it down gently.

“Ms. Milanova—” he began.

“No. Don’t call me that.” I went to the balcony and looked out on the rooftops of the city. It was a beautiful, sunny day. “I think Lady Milanova has lived her life, several times over, in fact.”

“A new identity then?”

I nodded.

“And what will you call yourself?”

A pair of birds flew over the rooftops and in front of a spire of an old church. I could see the Alps in the distance. “How about… Milan?”

He shrugged. “As you wish.”

“And I will practice an American accent. An American can be from anywhere. People born since have no idea what a joy that is.”

When I walked back into the room, he was scowling at the pair of crystal orbs he held in his hands. I watched him pack them in felt. I walked to the door and lifted the coat again.

“Put it on,” I said. “Just once. For me. And if it doesn’t fit, we’ll seal it up forever.”

He sighed and stood. I held it out and he stuck his arms into the sleeves. He turned to face the mirror. I could tell by the look on his face that he saw exactly what I did, even if he didn’t say it.

“It looks very good.”

It fit perfectly. But then I suspect he knew it would.

He adjusted his shoulders and tugged on the sleeves and looked at himself. Wearing that fantastic foggy coat.

I stood next to him, my bald-headed friend, and took the wrinkled crook of his sleeve in my arm.

“We’ll need a cover,” I said. “Some way to avoid suspicion.”

He nodded grimly. “I have been contemplating it.”

“And?”

“I thought, perhaps, a series of dinners.”

“Dinners? Well.” I pondered it. “They would have to be quite exquisite dinners. Fantastical, even. If they’re to do the job.”

He nodded and studied himself in the mirror. “I have some ideas. But.” He looked at me gravely. “There is one final errand first.”

“Errand?”

“It will only be a matter of time before our enemies return to the forest. They will not have risked a second breach so soon. They would wait until they were sure suspicion has passed safely to me. We must act quickly. We must take from that place that which we found. We must steal the darkest object in it, you and I, even if it is the end of us. We must see that what is bound inside that chair stays bound. Forever. On this, all depends. For if it escapes, I fear there is not a soul left on the earth that can stop it.”

Start here.

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(Art) A Visual Feast

The Art of Feast of Shadows

For every book I write, I collect a gallery. Some of these images I found before I started composing and so influenced the output. Others I stumbled upon later and collected for their thematic (or, in some coincidental cases, literal) similarity to characters or scenes from the book.

Anyone looking for a sense of it, look here. The story concludes with Part Two, available Friday.

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(Fiction) You Don’t Even Wanna Know

We tracked the kidnapper to a swanky private club on the Upper East Side. The old stone building looked like any other row mansion on the street—walled and immaculate and seemingly impenetrable. The only hint of a difference was the dark metal plaque next to the front gate, half-covered in ivy.

MALEFICIUM
Est. 1980

“And you’re sure this is it?” I asked.

We’d been watching the place for almost half an hour. The shadows on the upper floor curtains revealed plenty of activity inside, but no one had come or gone through the front door, which we could just make out through the locked wrought iron gate.

“That’s the word,” he said in his odd accent, like a Caribbean Cockney. “The little skint went into that building couple hours ago.”

“There must be a private entrance. Maybe at the back. Let’s take a look.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” He held out a dark hand to stop me. I could see the grime in his fingernails. “Hold up. I ain’t goin in there.”

“Come on, Soolkie. I need your help.”

I was pretty sure Soolkie wasn’t his real name, but that’s what everyone called him on the street. He was very shabbily dressed, including a pair of torn, mismatched shoes, and he smelled faintly of urine.

“You asked if anyone saw the man,” he said, “and I found him. The end. You know what they do in there?”

“No, what? Interrogate terrorists or something?”

It was a very strange place for anything dangerous. The street lamps clicked on overhead as a white-sided delivery van drove by and parked at the curb three doors down. The driver hopped out and trotted up the mansion steps to the door, where the owner waited in a striped cardigan and house slippers.

He snorted. “Naw, nuffin like that.”

“Then what?”

“You don’t even wanna know.”

“Then why did you ask?”

He watched me take off my floral-print Keds.

“You really goin in?” he asked. “This ain’t a joke or nothin?”

I felt even shorter in socks. “Why do you think I schlepped all the way out here?”

“I dunno. To call the cops?”

“And say what? Can you please get a warrant and raid the home of some rich people based entirely on the word of my homeless friend?”

He thought for a moment. “Good point.”

“But . . . if we don’t get him now, they’ll move him again, or worse, and we’re screwed.” I paused. “You know what, though? That was a good idea.”

“What was?”

“As soon as you see me get inside, call the cops and report a break-in. In this neighborhood, they’ll respond to that.”

“Call them with what?” he scoffed.

I scowled and handed him my phone. He examined it close to his face like he thought it might be fake.

“I want that back,” I said.

He grunted skeptically. “How you know this’ll work?”

“I don’t. That’s why you gotta sell it. You can’t just half-ass the report, man. You gotta act all—”

“Naw, I mean how you gonna get in there? Look at that wall.”

We turned to the mansion-club. The wrought iron gate was built into an ivy-covered block-stone wall at least ten feet high. A camera perched at an angle over it kept watch on the street. Past the wall was a small gravel courtyard, elegantly rimmed in potted flowers and exotic shrubs. The ground floor windows were closed and dark, as was the high front door—pitch black with a silver knocker.

“It’s not about walls. It’s about people. Just make sure you call the police. Got it?”

“Got it.”

“I’m counting on you.”

“I said I got it.”

I trotted in my colorful striped socks across the street and stuck my shoes under the hedgerow just below the angled camera. Then I reached around and buzzed the intercom, out of view.

“Maleficium,” said the sultry voice on the other end.

“Yeah, where do you want these prawns?” I called in a Bronx accent.

“I’m sorry?”

“Prawns. You know: giant shrimps. We got four hundred in the truck.”

“You must have the wrong address.”

“This is Ma- . . . Malay- . . . Male-Whatever-The-Fuck right? Look, I got 400 fresh tiger prawns and eight more deliveries to do before 9:00. You don’t wan’em? We’ll stack ’em here by the gate. I’m sure your ritzy neighbors won’t mind the smell.”

“Wait there.”

The speaker clicked and I quickly tied my hair behind my head and stretched flat behind the square brick post at the end of the wall. Sometimes it pays to be small.

I heard the front door unlock and footsteps on the gravel. The iron gate swung open and a man in a suit stepped out. His jacket bulged from his chest.

“Hey!” he called toward the truck driver down the street, who was just returning. “Hey, buddy! We didn’t order any prawns. Get that thing outta here.”

The two men started to argue and I slipped inside the closing gate.

There were no cameras in the courtyard, which was strange. There were cameras on the roof, two of them, but they were fake. No wires. The club clearly wanted to discourage unwanted visitors—the cameras they used were bulky white boxes, meant to be noticed—but it seemed they didn’t want a photographic record of anyone actually inside the compound, which suited me just fine. Glancing back to the gate to make sure I wasn’t seen, I grabbed a garden light—a solar-powered job pushed on a spike into the dirt—and quick-stepped up the stairs to the unusually tall front door. If I could seal it behind me, the guard would have to run all the way around the block to reach the other side of the row house, by which time I intended to be gone—assuming I could find what I was looking for.

I shut the door and rammed the spike into the gap of the frame at the back. I pushed hard until it wedged. I turned and froze at the sight of the opulent decor. I almost whistled. The oval foyer was stunningly elegant—more even than I expected. Everything was perfectly maintained. There were no scuff marks on the white walls nor on the marble floor, which was polished to a high shine. The built-in bookshelves on the far side were lined in rows of matching tomes, like a legal library. Enormous bouquets of fresh flowers filled impossibly huge antique vases on the side tables and in a pair of nooks over the flanking curved staircases. There were so many flowers, in fact, that their aroma filled the air and there was no need for potpourri or artificial scent. I looked up at a chandelier made of Bulgari crystal.

There was a party, it seemed. I heard the faint rumble of chatter broken by the occasional laugh. While listening, I heard someone approach on the second floor, already too close. The soft carpet had muffled their footsteps. I ducked under the foyer’s center table as a young woman in fancy French maid lingerie, complete with stocking and high heels, stepped to a side door at the top of the stairs carrying a silver platter of drinks. She knocked and the door opened. I could hear men’s voices, and I caught a glimpse of another woman in bare-breasted lingerie. Her nipples were clamped in fuzzy tongs. I slapped my hand over my mouth to avoid an audible exclamation.

What kind of club is this?

The door handle jiggled behind me. The guard was returning from his encounter with the delivery driver. He pushed the door in but it was jammed. I heard the sound of keys jingling. I needed to hurry. Glancing toward the party, I stripped quickly to my underwear. I tossed my clothes behind a polished walnut hutch. An ornate mirror hung over it, and I could see myself: pale athletic bra, red-and-white Spider-man boy shorts, colorful striped socks. I pulled off the socks and tossed them with the rest. I untied my hair and pulled it out and shook it. I looked ridiculous. But it would have to do.

“God, I hate this.”

In nothing but my undies, I strode the steps to the second floor. The carpet felt like it was giving me a foot massage. At the top was a plush hallway with a cross junction halfway to the back. I heard giggling and crouched behind a hutch as a couple passed. As soon as they were gone, I tiptoed through the junction to the rear of the mansion, where curved double staircases rose in a helix to connect each floor to the ones above and below. I saw what looked like a butler walking up the right-hand steps from the first floor, and I scurried up the left to the third. There, some of the doors were open, and I passed more splendor than I had ever seen: candelabras and gilding and plush-upholstered antique furniture. But no two rooms were the same, or even similar. Each had a completely different style, color, and decor. There was a white room and a scarlet room and a blue room. And all of it was immaculate.

In the blue room, I saw a woman with long highlighted hair straddling a man in a high-backed chair, like something from a Bram Stoker novel. His pants were around his ankles. His hands were on her waist and he guided her up and down as she clutched her hair and moaned ridiculously. I stepped past and stopped again at a cracked-open door from which grunts and slapping emerged. It was a padded leather dungeon decked floor-to-ceiling in black and maroon. A balding, middle-aged man squatted on all fours. He wore a chain collar and nothing else. A Lycra-clad woman in stiletto heels stroked his hairy back with a riding crop.

“And how many people did we evict this week?” she asked suggestively.

“Thirty,” he grunted, as if his balls—which I thankfully couldn’t see—were gripped in a vise.

“Thirty?” she asked disappointedly. She whipped him with a slap. “Thirty!”

She whipped him again and again and again and he yelled. I saw strips of pink flesh raise on his back. Then she bent to his ear.

“You like doing it, don’t you?”

“Y-yes,” he whimpered.

“Does it make you feel powerful?”

The woman raked her impressive nails across the welts in his back.

“Ah-ah-haaa . . .”

“You sick fuck,” she growled, parting her leather dress to reveal her full, unshaven muff.

She grabbed the man’s head by the ears and pulled it to her groin, and he moaned orgasmically. Almost immediately though, she raked her nails down his neck and he screamed.

“Well, hello there.”

An older man wrapped his arm around me from behind and I shrunk away in shivers.

“Who are you?” he said coyly, leaning in to kiss my neck.

My skin crawled. I’m pretty sure I shook in revulsion.

“They didn’t tell me there was anyone new,” he said as I tried to gently pull away.

He looked like someone’s grandfather. He had a whiskey highball in his other hand, and he was trying not to spill it on the expensive carpet.

“I just started,” I said. “In fact, I’m not even supposed to be down here.” I chuckled in embarrassment.

“It’s alright,” he said moving in closer. “I won’t tell.”

He spoke in a high pitch, like he was talking to a little girl. Then he rubbed the tip of his nose against mine and a wave of nausea exploded from my stomach. He thought I was role-playing a little girl.

I pushed away and his drink sloshed. I’m pretty sure he was sloshed as well. The gold watch on his wrist was studded in diamonds.

“Now, now,” I said, backing away. “I don’t want to get into trouble my first day. But I’ll be sure to find you later.”

“You better. My name’s Randy,” he said, emphasizing the word. He jiggled his hips and chuckled at the double entendre.

I scurried up the front steps to the fourth floor, which looked more like a hotel than a club or parlor. The white doors were evenly-spaced and identical, and there were plaques next to each bearing a family name. I guessed they were rented rooms, similar to how smoking and athletic clubs will charge for permanent lockers. Soft moaning, obviously fake, emanated from the first, labeled Barker.

The club was bigger than I thought, and I was running out of time. I bent over and whistled in short spurts, like I was calling a pet.

“Frankie!” I called in a stout whisper, hoping he could hear me. “Frankie!” I whistled again.

It wasn’t until I got to the middle of the hall that I heard faint whining followed by a single high-pitched bark. The name on the plaque said Hardaway. That was it.

I opened the door confidently, expecting to find a couple inside. I was going to pretend to be lost and say I was new and that I was supposed to meet Randy there. But the opulent bedroom was empty, save for the canine carrier near the unlit fireplace.

Frankie the toy terrier positively vibrated at the sight of me. He wiggled his short tail and barked twice. I shut the door.

“Shhhh . . .” I said, bending with a smile to release him from his portable prison. “Hi, little guy. How are you doing? Did he hurt you?”

I lifted him and his tiny tongue frantically licked my face.

“Ohhh, who’s a good boy? Who’s a good boy? What happened to your collar?”

It had been removed. And judging from the smell, no one had let him out in hours. He’d been forced to relieve himself inside the carrier.

“You poor baby,” I said, rubbing his head. “Was the bad man mean to you?”

I heard the door open behind me and I turned. A hook-nosed old woman in a floor-length black satin dress, like something from the 19th century, stood glowering at me like a wicked stepmother. She wore red lipstick too bright for her complexion and had her hair pinned to her scalp.

“Find what you were looking for?” she asked sternly.

There were two guards behind her, including the burly-chested man I had seen out front. He looked pissed.

“As a matter of fact,” I said, standing tall with Frankie, “I did.” He licked my face repeatedly.

“That’s my dog!” a boy called from down the hall. He was dressed like he’d just returned from the club, with a silk button-down left untucked over designer jeans. Some bimbo was on his arm.

I call him a boy, but he was probably no more than a couple years older than me. His name was Jay Hardaway and he was the ex-sort-of-boyfriend of a friend and a total douche.

“He’s not yours,” I countered calmly. “He’s Shanna’s.”

Some of the other club members appeared at the top of the stairs then, drawn by the commotion.

“But I’m sure this is just a misunderstanding,” I said in my best snooty voice. “I’d be more than happy to call the police and resolve this.”

The red-lipped woman stepped back. “Take the dog,” she ordered the guards.

The big man moved to grab me. I’m sure he expected I’d be easy to handle. After all, he was easily three times my size. What could I do?

His eyes bulged in surprised when I tossed Frankie to him. As far as he knew, the dog belonged to a member. He couldn’t let it fall. He caught the dog just as I kicked him in the balls as hard as I could. When he doubled over, I pushed him into the others, grabbed Frankie, and ran.

“Stop her!” the woman yelled.

The members at the top of the double staircase, incensed by the intrusion on their folly, moved to block my way. Two of them spread out their arms to catch me. But I didn’t head for the stairs. I planted a foot on the railing and jumped over.

In any other house, I wouldn’t have trusted the light fixtures to bear my weight, but everything in that mansion was superb. I grabbed the hooked arm of a chandelier, swung, and dropped onto a side table on the floor below, totally destroying a vase of flowers in the process. I landed hard, slipped on the slick, polished surface, and jammed my thigh against the corner on my way to the plush carpet.

“Ow . . .”

Frankie took off, barking, and I chased him. I pushed past two of the lingerie-clad girls and scooped him up from where he had stopped to scratch at a brass vent near the floor. I ran right for the front.

But I was blocked. Two more suited guards waited for me.

“Jeez, how many of you are there?” I asked loudly, banking down a hall to the right.

It was a mistake. The room at the end was a dead end. I pushed through the double doors and shut them behind me.

“You gotta be kidding.”

Six-foot gold candelabras flanked the entry, which was recessed in a kind of nouveau arch. All I had to do to bar the way was pull one of the heavy metal candelabras to the side. It fell and lodged itself diagonally against the double doors. The men pushed in, but the metal held easily. I ran to the windows, but they were barred. Not that I would have anywhere to go if they weren’t. Below them was a short, spiked metal fence that ran along the wall separating the adjacent mansions. It was there to prevent anyone from doing exactly what I wanted to.

“There’s gotta be a way . . .” I looked out the adjacent window, but it was the same.

I had to set Frankie down, and he barked and ran under the piano to the other side of the room, where he scratched the hardwood at the base of the built-in bookshelves.

“Not now,” I said, trying to judge the angle of a leap. It was slightly possible that if I got the windows open, I might be able to squeeze between the bars.

Frankie barked again, insistently this time, and sniffed back and forth along the row of shelving. He scratched at the molding like he was trying to get under it. I was going to shush him again, but it was odd. He was so intent—sniffing and scratching as if there was an animal underneath. But there couldn’t be anything under there. I walked over and dropped to me knees as the crowd outside the door grew. I could hear shouts. They were arguing about how to get the doors down.

There was a gap at the floor. It was minuscule. If not for the dog, I never would’ve seen it. I ran my fingernail along. It wasn’t even wide enough for me to squeeze it inside, but I could feel a groove which stopped halfway across, as if there were something different about the middle section of shelving.

“No way.”

I stood and examined the wall as a drill whined against the double doors. They were taking them off their hinges.

“Shit . . .”

There was absolutely nothing about the shelves that indicated a mechanism, and there was no way I could try all of the books. But then, there was nothing that said it had to be a book. I started pulling on everything: a fluted light fixture, the knobs on the mantelpiece, the bust on the piano, which fell to the hardwood and cracked.

“Oops . . .”

I pushed a clock on a shelf and tipped a painting. Nothing. I heard the drill again. They just about had one door off, which would be enough to dislodge the candelabra. I grabbed a shelf and shook it in frustration—

It swung open. I grabbed Frankie and went down the wide stone steps beyond, which turned left at a landing, and descended further, dropping to a basement under the adjacent property. It was cool and musty, and I thought it was maybe a secret passage to the street, a holdover from prohibition, or some robber baron’s way of sneaking out to see his mistress.

At the bottom of the stairs was a 19th-century mosaic-tiled family crypt that now seemed to be a kind of display room for several museum-quality antiquities. It was a good way to discourage thieves.

The stonework of the walls was dark and intricately carved in shrouded skeletons and fanged knights whose shadows danced in candlelight. At the very center was an altar.

“Oh, wow.”

On top was a carved stone coffin, but it was tiny, like something a king would use to bury his child princess. I felt instantly sad and stood silent for a moment.

“Rich people are weird,” I breathed.

I heard them coming then. There were heavy feet on the stairs. Frankie barked, and I shushed him. But there was nowhere for us to go. I turned to face the clik-clak of dress shoes on stone and caught a speck of color reflected in the dim light. It was reddish brown and trapped in a groove in the floor. It was tiny, less than half a millimeter. I reached out to touch it and Frankie barked. I looked up into the eyes of the burly-chested guard, who grabbed me and threw me over the altar, still holding Frankie. I landed hard on my back and lost the breath from my lungs.

For a moment, I couldn’t breathe. This was not the reaction I expected over a stolen dog.

Frankie had come free in the fall but was so small he was completely unhurt. He wiggled his tiny tail and barked at the man, whose partner blocked the stairs. I grabbed my tiny charge as we were lifted into the air and dragged back to the main hallway, which was now all but empty. Either they were confining the members to their rooms or, more likely, had asked them all to leave out of an abundance of caution. The mansion was eerily quiet. There was only me, the guards, and the wicked stepmother, who held a long syringe in her hand.

“Wait a minute,” I said. “What is that for?”

“Who are you?” she demanded.

“Why do you have that?”

“Answer me.”

Frankie barked, and one of the guards tried to grab him.

“No!” I remembered the woman in Lycra and scratched the guard’s eyes with my free hand.

He screamed and I twisted free. I sprinted, but I only got as far as the balustrade over the oval foyer before I was gripped from behind and spun. The burly-chested guard held me as the wicked stepmother approached methodically in her long dress. She was in no hurry. But it seemed I had been wrong about the object in her hand. It wasn’t a syringe. It was a wand, like something a conductor might wave before a symphony.

“Whew,” I joked. “For a second there, I thought you all were trying to kill me.”

She wasn’t amused.

But she stopped. She looked up. Red-and-blue flashers reflected off the immaculate walls. The police were outside. I heard them arguing with someone at the door. I opened my mouth to scream, but it was covered at the last second. I braced my feet and tried to get leverage to kick the burly-chested man in the balls again, but he didn’t budge.

I saw his eyes then. He wanted to push me over the edge. Easy enough to call it an accident. I was barefoot and trespassing, after all.

Frankie snarled at him, and it gave me an idea. The guard had fat fingers, and I could just reach one of them with my teeth. I bit down hard and he yanked his hand free.

I screamed.

The raised voices at the front turned to shouting. The door popped opened and I heard a police officer speaking sternly just on the other side of the threshold.

“. . . and we had report of a gunshot.”

Soolkie had apparently embellished his anonymous report to include gunfire.

“I’m sorry,” said the man at the door, doing his best to block them. “This is private property, and unless you have a—”

“I don’t need one,” the officer said. “We found these out front.” The officer raised my flower-print Keds.

Which was why I had left them there.

The cops pushed into the foyer and saw me bent backwards over the railing.

“I surrender!” I said.

Not Harry Potter. Not Harry Dresden. The five full-length mysteries of FEAST OF SHADOWS are served as the courses of dark and dire meal. Urban and contemporary but with shades of Lovecraft and Tolkien, it is unlike anything you’ve ever read.

Start here.

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Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves. —Carl Jung

(Art) Ejiwa Ebenebe’s Amazing Afro-fantasia

Ejiwa Ebenebe, who goes by the nickname “Edge,” is an illustrator based out of British Columbia whose subjects, often young women of color, occupy positions of power and mystery in fantasia-like settings, where they stare back at the observer in ways both indifferent and angry, thereby rejecting the viewer’s gaze as a form of validation. But more than that, it’s just really cool stuff.

More can be found on her website, artofedge.com.

(Fiction) The Desire of Alchemy

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The police of any country tend to take the murder of a rich man very seriously. I could only imagine the important people pressuring them for an arrest. I was clearly one of the last people to see Luke Rottheim and his bodyguards alive. There were witnesses to our altercation a day or so before, including Mrs. Suleiman. Sooner or later the police would find the cash in the safe, if they hadn’t already. That plus a million dollars’ worth of liquidated assets suggested a payoff, which suggested a very serious motive. Blackmail maybe—perhaps over the contents of Lily’s womb.

The only people who knew my deal with Rotteim were dead—except Soolkie, who, let’s face it, wasn’t much help. A lack of physical evidence wasn’t proof of innocence. It was just a hurdle for a clever prosecutor. It was only a matter of time before I was questioned again, if not detained. Next time, I figured, I’d meet someone fairly important, a senior officer maybe, and they wouldn’t be nearly as polite. My alibi already sounded like a complete fiction—so much so, I’m not sure I believed it myself. I had no idea where to find Irfan or Bastien and no idea what either of them would say if questioned by the police. The Kingfish, for his part, would be happy to tell them whatever story he figured was most likely to send me upstate, which meant—for the time being, at least—I was fucked. Whatever spell had transferred the sin to me would continue doing its work. If I did nothing, I would go to prison for Lykke and William’s murder, the case would be closed, and the city would go on as it always had.

But in the interminable hours of waiting at the police station, something very important occurred to me. Too many things had had to happen at just the right time to leave me in that much shit—up to and including my unfortunate fall from the rooftops and right into the hands of the police. I didn’t know who could orchestrate something like that, but it seemed to me there were three suspects: the Kingfish, the man he was arguing with, or the chef, who I’m certain was in the alley. Only I didn’t know why any of them would want to murder Luke. All I knew for sure was that I wasn’t going to take the fall for it. I was going to find which of them had done such a wonderful job of setting me up and do something legitimately terrible to them—so terrible, in fact, I hadn’t actually thought it up yet.

I flagged a cab outside the station and went home. To be honest, I stiffed the poor guy out of the fare. I do feel guilty about that. I ran inside to get cash from my stash, only to find all of it gone.

“Soolkie . . . Damn it.”

I cleaned up quick and changed. Fresh panties, matching socks from the clean pile, and my best vintage green Captain Caveman tee, which I only wore when I needed the extra mojo. I stood in front of the mirror. I pulled up my shirt and looked at my tattoo in the reflection. I didn’t much feel like a fenghuang, but I was looking more like her. My black eye was healing, so instead of a consistent deep purple, there were now splotches of yellows and browns at the receding edge. I had a dark red scab on my ear, around which my skin was flushed and pink. There were a litany of cuts and bruises running down my forearms that looked almost like plucked feathers from a distance, and my neck was so stiff, I could only move it slowly. But Captain Caveman, at least, worked his magic. In a desperate search of my apartment for any and all loose cash, I found an old train card I thought I had lost months ago. With the additional $1.56 in coins I found scattered throughout the mess on my floor, minus the ones from Hong Kong and the random Canadian penny, I had just enough to get me where I was going. I snuck down the fire escape, just in case the cabbie was still out front, walked to the station, and exchanged both the card and the loose change for a little paper ticket. The woman behind the window looked at the change and at my black eye and then at Captain Caveman, but she didn’t say anything.

“Can I ask you something?” I said as she handed me the ticket. “Do I smell like dung to you?”

Let me just say, Bistro Indigenes is legitimately amazing, and not just the food but the decor. There’s this big stone hearth with a raging fire looking out over an open dining room that was relaxed yet graceful and classy, just like the hostess. I had come expecting an over-made teenager with lightened hair and a pre-summer tan, someone for the old guys with money to flirt with, someone I could bully my way past, but the woman before me had such poise and maturity that I was instantly certain there was no string of words I could utter that would convince her to act against her employer.

“Ms. Song,” she said, instantly perplexed at my face.

Suddenly, I felt like I wanted to cry. “I’m in over my head,” I told her, frowning. “Aren’t I?”

She smiled then, like my grandma used to smile—patient and caring.

“He’s been expecting you,” she told me. “He got pulled into a meeting, but he should be done any moment.”

My stomach growled then. I don’t think I’d eaten in almost 24 hours.

“Can we offer you an early dinner?” she asked.

“Um.” I looked at the dining room. It was only mid-afternoon but the place was busy. And everyone was so nicely dressed. I looked down at my jeans and flower-print sneakers. I don’t think I’d ever been nicely dressed before 7:00.

Before I could answer, the hostess nodded to a heavily mustachioed Latino man, who took me to a seat at the counter that ran around the open kitchen where I watched the chefs put on a little show. They were all pretty young. And relaxed. Joking with each other. It was nice. And the cuisine . . . The menu had only two options. “Man” or “Woman.” Guests were encouraged to choose the one “with which they most closely identified.”

One of the chefs, a woman in a dark bandanna, about my age, produced a basket from under a counter. It was full of spindle-like rolls of thread. Spider silk. She put three or four of them on a wire spoon and dipped them in boiling water. Then she set the blanched, sanitized, and deflated nests under a heat lamp to dry. She took some dry ones and put them in a round machine—like those rotary tubs carnivals use to make cotton candy, only smaller—and added a spoonful of thick crystals, sugar maybe. Finally she rolled a wafer twirl, a tubular cookie, around the center of the machine so that it accumulated a filamentous layer of red-violet fluff. I have no idea what candied spider web tastes like, but for the “Men,” that was dessert. Their entree was fatty chicken. The meat was stuffed and fired in clay that had to be smashed open after cooking. The chefs brought out this big mallet. Each time they smashed a pot, it was loud, and the crowd cheered. I guess since it was cooked at such high temperature and pressure, the meat fused with the marrow and spices and melted in your mouth. I chose “Woman,” because duh, and got sliced ox penis—which was like four feet long before they cut it into individual servings. It was soaked in chili oil, grilled over open flame, and served with a cold puree of parsnip, egg white, and flowering-cactus jelly that looked suspiciously like, well, you-know-what. The palate cleanser was a tiny glass of alcoholic chrysanthemum sorbet—sweet and sour, earthy and floral. And a little buzz to boot. Almost like the chef was sending you out into the world to make a poor romantic decision.

Before I had a chance to sample the dessert, the hostess came to get me. She took me back out the front and around to a side door. We walked up the stairs and the door swung open and—BOOM. There was a head, like a giant shrunken head—nine or ten feet, all gray and shriveled and nasty. Its eyes were stitched shut. Its mouth was pursed, like it was frozen in a perpetual wail. I slid past it and stepped into the living space. The floor-to-ceiling windows had a killer view of downtown. The sun was low and the light came in beams from between the distant skyscrapers. The room was like a little museum. A metal mobile hung from the high ceiling. A pair of couches faced each other in front of the windows. At the back was a wet bar. There was a big battle club and a mummified hand and some killer art on the walls, and that great view. In between the couches was a worn Buddhist stela that he was using as a coffee table.

The hostess motioned for me to sit and said he would be out soon. I nodded and she turned to leave just as a heavy-set, blustery man with a thick comb-over walked in from a side hall, through an open pair of French doors that looked like they might have dated from colonial Indochina. He looked so out of place in his tired suit and loose tie. At the other end of the hall I saw stacked stone cubes. Each cube was deep red and capped in a different Chinese character. I recognized the radicals but I didn’t know the script. It looked like some kind of ancient calligraphy.

The man spun and yelled. “I don’t know what you expected. You can’t keep venomous spiders in a kitchen—” He stopped when he noticed me. He scowled. He took a deep breath. “Young lady, I hope you’re not here for a job.”

Then he stormed out.

I turned back to the hall and there he was. The chef.

“Ms. Song.” He was flat. Like he’d just gotten horrible news but was trying to be polite. “How nice to see you again.”

He had some folded papers in his hand. It looked serious. Like, legal stuff. You know, where the back page is blue and all that. I caught the words New York City Department of Health at the top.

“Is this a bad time?” I stood.

He handed the papers to the classy hostess.

She read them. “Again?”

“Please talk to Raul and finish the service immediately. We can begin calling next week’s reservations in the morning.”

“And the staff?” she asked.

He looked at me as he thought, as if I somehow figured into the equation.

“They may leave after the kitchen is clean.”

I pointed to the door, like I was happy to show myself out, but the chef was already walking toward those red stone doors, which swung open as he approached. I looked to the hostess. She nodded and I scurried after. It was so quiet up there. I passed the open door of a small office and bathroom. I think he lived up there.

I stopped in the stone doorway. “Wow . . .”

There was a high vaulted ceiling. And a tree! Like, a whole live tree inside! And this giant wall of books behind faintly tinted glass. Étranger walked to a semi-circular kitchen that arced around the tree trunk. It was raised a step above the floor. Around it were piles of reclining pillows. To the left were huge windows covered in symbols and writing.

But I barely saw it. My eyes went right to the chair.

No, not a chair. A throne. A bone throne.

It rested inside an arched brick nook under the wall of books, which was flanked on both ends by cast iron spiral staircases. It was made out of skeletons. The arms were arms. The feet were feet. In the middle of the back, which was an array of spines, sat a human skull, wedged between the vertebrae. It stared out at me through empty sockets. Like a sexual predator.

“Thank you for coming.” Étranger washed his hands and wiped them on a towel.

I was frozen. I couldn’t move my eyes. “That chair . . .”

He turned. “Hm?”

“It looks like it wants to kill me.”

“It does.” He was serious. “Don’t worry. It is quite secure.”

He was right. It was chained crosswise to a hexagram chiseled into the slab underneath. One continuous chain stretched over it and looped through grasping metal hands that erupted from the floor at all six points of the star. They were made of copper that had long since tarnished to a spectral blue-green, as if they belonged to ghosts reaching through the rock, and they seemed to be gripping the chains with force, holding back the chair, as if it were constantly struggling to break free.

There was a Japanese screen resting against the nook, and he walked over and stretched it across the opening, hiding the chair.

Something moved out of the corner of my eye and I turned. “Oh!”

Behind me, next to the doors, was an upright, man-sized terrarium with ferns and a few large branches. It was full of spiders. But not just any spiders. Fiddlebacks. Black widows, too. I stepped back when I saw the red marks. I could actually feel the absence of the terrarium’s front panel. It was completely open. I could’ve reached out and touched them as they perched silently on their silk.

“Won’t they crawl away?”

I had visions of sitting down to talk business and finding one crawling up my leg. One of them moved just then, and I fought the urge to shiver.

“Only if I stop feeding them.”

I didn’t want to ask what they ate. I turned away, but my eyes didn’t know where to go. There was something amazing in every direction. There was a mask and a colorful feather suit and writing on the windows and a stained glass in the ceiling and on and on. I turned around slowly. There was a tray on a reclaimed wood table.

“Are those . . .”

“Vulvas. Yes.”

He said it unflinchingly. I cringed a little on his behalf.

It looked like fine chocolate, a whole tray full. Each piece was different and extremely detailed, as if molded the real thing.

“Chocolates?” I asked.

“Yes. They were meant to go with the evening service: a light salted custard with chocolat avec de l’essence de la femme,.”

“Essence of woman?”

I looked skeptically at the chocolate vulvas, which had a light sheen to them.

“You’ve been having me followed,” I accused to change the subject. “Haven’t you?”

He didn’t deny it.

The big guy with the hunch wasn’t one of Luke’s. Luke was too busy getting brutally murdered.

The chef walked to the other side of the kitchen area and looked in one of the cupboards. “That was Mr. Dench. An associate of mine.”

He reached down and lifted my bag—or Lily’s bag, I guess.

“Fuuuck me,” I blurted. Then I covered my mouth. “Sorry.” But I couldn’t believe it.

My phone was dead. Big surprise. But everything was there, even the unopened tarot deck I bought at Sour Candy.

“Ms. Song,” he said. “Do you know what is happening?”

“A little. I think.”

He looked out the window to the city. “Great houses are warring.”

“Houses?”

“One of them is nearly as old as civilization. They fighting to sit at the head of the stone table.”

“Is that why Luke wanted the dagger?”

“Yes.”

I thought there would be more coming, but there wasn’t.

“I hadn’t thought about it at first,” I said, “but when I went to see Luke, he had a picture on his wall. He was very proud. It was from an old manuscript. A man stood in a circle surrounded by all these daggers impaled in the ground. There was a noose around his neck and a gallows above, but the rope had been cut.”

Still he didn’t say anything.

“It’s an allegory, isn’t it? Like with alchemy and all that. Cutting the noose. That’s what all this is about somehow. The escape from death. Immortality.”

“The desire of alchemy,” he said softly. “The desire of man,” he corrected himself.

“The Fountain of Youth and the Holy Grail and all that.”

“Not exactly. There are two universal principles, whose union begets all things. Light and dark. Yin and yang. Male and female. Matter and antimatter. One, symbolized by the chalice or fountain, is the source, as a womb gives life. The other is—”

“An athame,” I interjected.

“Not an athame,” he corrected as he walked back around the counter. “The athame. The original sacrificial blade, carved from the dome of the earth and gifted to the first dark priest. Cain, if you’re Christian.”

“I’m not.”

He nodded solemnly, like he was thinking.

“But what is it?” I asked.

“By intent, our destruction. One of three unholy relics, gifts from gods so old their names have been lost.”

“Gifts?”

“Sent to tempt us. I believe the idea was that if they gave us a big enough sword, we’d cut ourselves down and spare them the trouble of doing it themselves. Much of its history is lost, but we know the Spanish took it from the Aztecs. Where they got it is less clear. It may have been carried by Easter Islanders, fleeing the destruction of their home. They likely found it in the wreckage of an imperial Chinese trading vessel, blown far off course by unnatural winds. Before it was banished by the emperor, sent to be dropped into the deepest trench in the sea, it came to the Chinese from India, where it had been enshrined at the temple of Kali. Before that, it had been buried in a tomb in Bactria by the priests of Alexander, just before his great army—which nearly conquered the world—fell to chaos and turned back. Alexander himself took it from the Persians, who took it from the Hyksos, who took it from the Pharaohs, who took it from the Hebrews, who took it from the Babylonians, who took it from the Akkadians . . . And everywhere it went, ruin followed. The fall of the Aztecs. The Muslim conquest of Hindustan. The death of Alexander. The plagues of Exodus.”

There was a long silence.

“Wow,” I said. “Good job. I mean, I was expecting something like that but I totally got goosebumps.”

“In the sixteenth century, after the mighty Spanish Armada—whose ships stretched from horizon to horizon—was decimated in a freak gale that swept across the North Sea, the High Arcane had finally had enough.”

“The Masters,” I said.

He nodded.

“Who were they?”

“A secret society that traced its lineage to the fall of the Templars. Their agents wrested the blade from the Inquisitors, who thought the strength of their faith could contain its evil. But no one can. The blade has but one purpose. And since it could not be destroyed—at least, not without releasing, at once, all the evil it had accumulated—it was buried. In a place of forgetting. And left to diminish over the eons.”

“Apparently someone remembered.”

“Yes,” he said softly. “Unfortunately, the magic of that place was broken. Many years ago.”

I looked up at the tree behind him. I hadn’t noticed before, but there were tiny red fruits, like berries, peeking from between the leaves.

“Lykke Rottheim is the child of two great houses,” he explained, “who trace their origin to the first financiers. He was made to be king. But life has a certain cruel irony, and he has lost the favor of his gods, who are fickle and unforgiving. They have selected another.”

“The Lord of Shadows.”

He nodded.

“Who is he?”

“That is what I have been trying to ascertain. He has found a way to . . . hide himself from me.”

“How?”

“He is in possession of a book. The last of the three gifts. Only the dagger can counter it and return the House of Rottheim to the head of the stone table, where it has sat for three hundred years.”

“But he’s dead,” I said. “They killed him. Or someone did. And they’re trying to pin it on me.”

Étranger pressed his lips together and looked down. “Then once again, we are too late.”

He looked out the window and sighed.

“Ms. Song,” he said with some hesitation, “it is unfortunate I must be the one to tell you this, but you are in far greater danger than you know. Death has already marked you. Such a stain cannot be scrubbed clean. Courtesy dictates I suggest immediate retreat, if only to put your affairs in order and say goodbye to your loved ones. But in truth . . . we must recover the dagger—at any cost. Even our lives. If the Lord of Shadows walks with two unholy relics, he will be unstoppable.” He paused. “Do you know where the dagger is hiding?”

“No.” I said. “But I know who does.”

Snippet from Part One of my occult mystery, FEAST OF SHADOWS. Get it here.

(Art) The Occult Photography of Aki Pitkänen

The occult and dark fantasy photographs of Finnish artist Aki Pitkänen, AKA Narikka Photography, are so realistic and well-composed that it’s hard to believe they’re not paintings. Several of the artist’s images have inspired elements in my urban occult mystery, FEAST OF SHADOWS, which concludes this month.

Find more by the artist on his Tumblr page.

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(Art) The Imaginary Darkitectures of Gil Gorski

When built by nature or built by man, Gil Gorski’s subjects are imagined hyper-spaces, teeming like kaleidoscopic refractions of themselves.

Find the artist on his website.

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