He promised!
I awoke lying in the back seat of the Chevy pickup into which I’d been placed. I think it was Dench’s. It was older, or so the smell and the squeaking brakes told me, but it ran well. Milan was behind the wheel and driving fast. There was some trash on the floor in the back — a fast food bag that still smelled of burger, and some chip packages and things. But I didn’t get the impression the man was a slob. More that he’d been waiting somewhere for a long time, like a stakeout.
The engine revved and I felt the truck pull hard to the right and around a slower vehicle, which was just about all of them apparently, because barely three seconds later, Milan repeated the same move, only to brake hard again. That was presumably at a light, given that we came to a hard stop, which nearly sent me to the floor. I was pretty sure that exact maneuver was what had woken me.
I saw a half empty water bottle in the center console between the front seats. I swallowed dry. I was about to damn etiquette and ask for someone else’s drink when Milan struck the steering wheel hard several times.
“Shit shit shit shit!”
She gunned it a moment later and wove back and forth and back again.
I opened my mouth to ask for the water, but she beat me again.
“He promised,” she breathed.
Dench didn’t respond. He just nodded obliviously, as if merely confirming the authenticity of her remark. I was sure then that he’d never been married, or if he had, it hadn’t lasted long.
“He promised me he’d stop using the chair,” she added after a moment. “He sat right in front of me at Martin’s funeral and swore on the world tree that he’d never use it again. Ever. Not for any reason.” She braked hard and I almost fell again. I braced myself with an arm, but pulled it back quick when I realized it might give away the fact that I was awake.
Dench stared out the windshield. Whether he was ignoring her or deeply contemplating her words, I couldn’t tell.
“He’s going to get himself killed,” she continued in a whisper before gunning it again.
Out the window, I saw lighted a green road sign pass overhead announcing the upcoming freeway.
“Sometimes I wonder if that’s even possible,” he said without a hint of concern, as if it were a purely academic question and he genuinely had no feelings on the man’s death one way or the other.
“Of course it’s possible,” she objected.
“Can’t he just come back again? Like the last couple times?”
“Her protections only work here. They don’t convey when he crosses over.”
Dench nodded slowly as if considering that for the very first time. Then he scowled. “So why now? We’ve gotten this close before.”
“I’m not sure we have.” She leaned forward to look up through the windshield. “He thinks it will be out in the open tonight. Our best chance in years.”
“And this one?” Dench nodded back to me and I shut my eyes quickly. “If that’s true, it would be a lot easier if we didn’t have to keep dragging him around with us.”
“He got closer to the book than anyone yet.” She glanced back to me. She saw me looking then. She turned straight and slowed a little.
“I don’t suppose I could have — ” I had to clear my throat. I coughed as well. “I don’t suppose I could have that water.”
Dench handed it back to me and I unscrewed the cap and drank just about all of it.
“Slowly,” Milan urged.
She was accelerating cleanly now. Must be on the freeway.
“So what’s this about a book?” I asked.
My companions stayed quiet.
“Come on, guys. I could hear you talking.”
“It’s nothing,” she said.
“It’s nothing,” I parroted. “Is that like a town in Poland?”
She didn’t say.
“What’s in this book?” I asked.
“Recipes,” Dench said, stoic as always. Then he turned to Milan, as if absolving himself of any further reply and waiting for her explanation.
“It was stolen,” she said. “A long time ago.”
I waited. “And?”
“And we’ve been trying to get it back. Or see it destroyed. When you and Oliver showed up talking about the mushrooms, we were scared and encouraged.”
I had the sense that was only half true, but I didn’t know which half. “Scared I get. Why encouraged?”
“Because we had a lead. For the last several years, it’s been . . .” She hunted for the right word. “Hidden from us.”
“Hidden? By who?”
“Whom,” Dench corrected.
“Gesundheit,” I said, finishing the last of the water. “So what happens tonight?” I added the empty bottle to the trash on the floor.
“You need to rest,” Milan accused sternly.
I couldn’t argue with that. Now that I had a short nap and some water in me, my blood was flowing again, which sent a fresh a headache hammering the back of my eyes. I shut them. I laid back and wondered to myself if I really believed any of the stuff I was hearing — doomsday books and bargains with old witches and everything. While weighing the merits of both sides, pro and con, I passed out again with my elbow draped over my eyes to block the passing street lamps.
The truck stopped hard and the motion sent me into the trash. I pushed myself up and saw ee were at the restaurant. That didn’t seem possible. It didn’t seem like I’d had my eyes closed for more than a minute. Maybe two. But here we were. The place was closed for the evening, which meant it had to be sometime after 11. The Jag was nowhere in sight. I had the sense that Etude had beaten us there by more than just a few minutes, although I didn’t see how, given the way Milan was driving. She didn’t wait for us. She hopped out and ran around to the back of the building while Dench helped me to me feet.
“I’m fine,” I said, even though I wasn’t. I asked where she was going.
“To let us in,” he explained.
Only he didn’t meant to the apartment, which we entered with ease. I don’t think it was even locked. He meant the sanctum, whose stacked-stone doors were shut and sealed. We waited in the hall for several minutes before they finally swung open, slow and silent. Must be a back door. Right away I smelled smoke, but not like from a fire. More like someone had burnt the pot roast. I leaned against the wall and didn’t move right away. Not until I saw the body.
The big room was no less impressive for seeing a second time. In fact, it seemed even more full. But this time it was uncomfortably warm, and the tips of a couple branches of the tree were on fire. It wasn’t much. The tree was alive and full of water and not in any danger of bursting into flames, but the dry tips of a couple small branches were burning like candle wicks. And the Japanese screen, the one that had covered the central alcove, rested at an odd angle as if leaning against something big on the other side. I still couldn’t see what it was hiding, but I caught the end of a taut chain, bolted through a steel loop to a square slab. The rock around the bolt was charred, as if the metal — both chain and loop — had been red hot and casting off sparks.
The chef was on the floor, face down, wearing his feathered garb. He wasn’t moving. His mask was upturned several feet away. Milan was leaning over him, feeling for a pulse.
“Doctor!” she called.
I moved as quickly as I could. “I’m not a real doctor,” I said, kneeling.
Étranger’s bald head was covered in running sweat, like he’d just spent eight hours in a sauna. I didn’t hear or see him breathing, but with his face down, either option was possible.
That’s when I noticed the books on the wall of shelves. It looked like there’d been a massive earthquake. Almost every single volume had fallen from the shelves to the walkways. Those that hadn’t laid sideways on each other.
“Jesus . . .” I said, turning my eyes over the mess. “What the hell happened in here?”
“Get some water,” Milan ordered.
She and Dench turned the chef over and worked the brightly feathered parka over his head. His arms were completely limp. His armpits were drenched in sweat. I could see his breath was very shallow and his eyelids fluttered like he was asleep. Or delirious. Milan pressed her ear to his chest and listened.
I stood in the semi-circular kitchen and I tried to remember where the chef had gotten the glass he had given me earlier. I opened one cupboard and a tarantula hawk — a wasp as large as three of my fingers — buzzed at me from inside a jar. I heard a clink as it tried to sting my hand through the glass.
“Ah!” I jumped back, which made me dizzy. And my movement was exaggerated, which meant my brain was working slow, probably from a shortage of oxygen due to not enough blood to carry it.
Why would he keep a wasp like that?
“Doctor!” Milan called.
I found the glasses on the other side of the sink. Fine mist rose from the tap as I filled one. It wasn’t until a moment later, when the heat penetrated the wall of the cup, that I realized it wasn’t mist. It was steam.
“Ow!” I dropped the glass and it broke in the sink.
“Doctor!” Milan yelled angrily.
“Fuck.” I had my fingertips in my mouth. “It’s hot!” I said.
“Please hurry!”
I scowled. She clearly didn’t understand what I meant. It wasn’t hot like when you let it run too long. It was hot like it was just poured from a boiling pot.
I grabbed another glass. I had lifted the handle of the faucet straight up, rather than to either side, yet what came out was instantly hot, which meant the water had boiled in the pipes. I let it run for a moment before I risked dabbing a hand in the stream. It was still quite warm, but it was approachable. I filled the glass and carried it over, fighting the urge to gulp it myself.
“What happened?” I asked again.
“A fight.”
She took the glass from me. “This is hot water.”
“You said to hurry.”
She lifted the man’s head to help him drink. I don’t think he was conscious. His lips pursed from the movement and smoke came out. I caught a whiff of sulfur. I turned to the Japanese screen. But I couldn’t see anything. Just a calm scene of a songbird on a branch.
I grabbed his limp wrist and felt for a pulse. His fingertips were dark, as if covered in charcoal ash. “He needs to go to the hospital,” I said. I switched from his wrist to his neck, hoping for a different result.
Dench shook his head. “No hospitals.”
“You don’t understand. He has a serious arrhythmia. Right now his heart is deciding whether it wants to keep beating or not. He could literally die at any moment.”
“No hospitals,” Milan repeated sternly but softly.
Étranger’s left arm started twitching and Milan pushed me back. “Benjamin.”
Dench helped him to his feet.
“Get him to the bed,” she ordered.
I was going to follow, but I wasn’t sure what I could do. I was still too weak to help carry him. But when the body was lifted, I saw something unexpected on the floor. When the others had turned him, they had covered it, but now it was clear. A symbol. Dark and powdery. Like it had been drawn in charcoal ash.
“Shouldn’t someone put out the burning tree?” I asked. But they were too busy grunting as they carried the limp chef in shuffling steps.
I went back to the sink and filled another glass — the water was much cooler now — and drank it. Then I filled it again and used it to snuff the smoldering branches. I washed the glass, filled it again, and drank. I leaned against the counter, cup in hand, and realized my hands were shaking, and my legs too, and my fingertips were tingling. I looked at the mark on the floor, near the discarded, upside down mask. It was a circle. There was a kind of crown shape in the center, but it was small. There was lots of space all around.
What the hell was it?
I looked up at the leaning Japanese screen. I walked to it. I reached up to slide it out of the way. But I stopped. My weak and trembling hand lingered inexplicably in midair as if, in being the closest body part, it was aware of some danger the rest of me was not.
Dench appeared in the door and asked if I’d like to wait up front. I took that to mean I wasn’t to hang around in Étranger’s private sanctum while the man himself lay near death in the other room. I followed him down the hall. Milan was nowhere to be seen.
I put my water on the carved stone table and collapsed on one of the couches. It felt great. I could’ve slept ten hours right then.
Dench just stood by the windows and looked at the floor. Motionless. Like a zombie.
“Is he gonna be okay?” I asked.
“Hard to say,” he mumbled.
That’s when I saw my bag. It was resting in the corner. I sat up with a grunt and walked to it. My phone was just about dead, and I found a nearby outlet and plugged it in.
36 hours.
That’s how long I was out of it. I’d missed the little boy’s funeral. I wondered if Marlene had called the police and what kind of shitstorm I was going to walk into at the office. If I hadn’t already been fired.
It was petty, I supposed, but the fact that the chef was possibly on his death bed in the other room washed away every last bit of anger I had. He’d risked my life, it was true. But he’d risked his own as well. That suggested whatever was set to happen that evening was a big deal, and that in his opinion it was worth both our lives to stop it. And to be fair, he had asked for my consent, in a sideways Étranger sort of way. In the car together, he’d asked if I would sacrifice myself to save my daughter.
Without hesitation, I’d told him.
I sat on the floor next to the plug with my bag on my lap and leaned my back against the wall. “So,” I said to Dench after a moment. “You can smell things.”
“Emotions,” he explained.
I raised my eyebrows. “No shit. What’s fear smell like?”
“Burnt hair.”
“Really? Huh . . . I wouldn’t have thought that.” I thought about Marigold. I would’ve given anything for a hug right then. “What about love?”
He just scowled. Like it was something truly nasty.
Milan came into the room from the hall. She stopped and put her hand to her forehead. “He’s resting,” she said with exhaustion.
She sat down and everyone was silent. It was the first moment we’d had to catch our breath. No one spoke.
“Make no bargain,” I said to myself. Neither of them asked my meaning.
Make no bargain, the chef had said. And yet he did. Granny said you could buy lots of things with a Moirai Penny, including time. And she ended up with a pocket watch. That seemed oddly significant.
A clock chimed. I’m not even sure where. From one of the rooms in the hall maybe. It was midnight. Somewhere in the city, I figured, something was happening that was worth my life and his. But none of us seemed to have a clue, save one.
A circle with a crown in the center.
But what did it mean?
I knew of a circle. I’d spent quite a lot of time recently constructing one.
I took out my tablet and brought up the map I’d made — the toadstool ring, a giant circle 30 miles wide — and zoomed in on the center.
Downtown. The financial district. Wall Street.
“Just a second.”
The others turned to me.
“What is it?” Milan asked.
To plot my dataset, I’d used the API of a publicly available map website. I wrote a quick script to make a best-fit circle and mark its exact center. I zoomed in on the dot. It fell directly over a public square that filled a gap between three high-rise towers. But the names of some of the prominent businesses were scattered around. One was called Royal Capital Management. I tapped the name, which brought up a website. Their logo was a crown.
I turned the screen around. “Mean anything to you?”
She stood. “We need to go.”
But she didn’t say it to me. She said it to Dench. I think they intended to leave me, but I wasn’t having any.
“Oh, hell no.” I stood.
I’m posting the chapters of my forthcoming hardboiled occult mystery in order until the book is released in early 2018. You can start here: I saw my first dead body the summer we moved to Atlanta.
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The next chapter is: It was a night effect
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