At the Behest of the Dead (20 page)

I was looking for something else. Some hint. Maybe
Balkir left a book lying around titled “Evil Plans to Fuck Over Phineas”.

I looked under his massive four-poster bed but it was bare of all
besides dust bunnies. The duvet looked like a summoning pentagram complete with tiny demons leaping out from the edges. I touched it and found down filling that deflated and quickly filled in again once I withdrew my hand. Demons were stitched into the bedspread.

Bonus points for creepy.

I didn’t touch the old man’s potion kit. Most of his vials weren’t even labeled. Was that what being that old was about? Remembering your spell components by sight? I was afraid I’d get a dose of Habius Cornette mixed with some komodo dragon pus and cause a rip in the space time continuum from which even Doctor Who would never be able to save the universe.

I looked in drawers, peered under desks. I poked his computer keys a few times but it was locked
, and no matter how good of a warlock I was there was still no spell for hacking past a PC’s password. I shifted tapestries, looked for hidden doors. I rifled through books that were stacked to the ceiling, felt along marble posts that held up the stacks of books. Felt along carpet edges, and even lifted the aquarium where he kept some kind of green and blue speckled egg that vibrated.

After an hour of
this, I grew weary and took a seat on his very comfortable couch. It was new and it wasn’t from Ikea. The massive leather sectional could comfortably seat at least six.

I felt the cushions, running my hand across the surface. I poked, prodded
, and pushed down on them until I found the one I had been looking for. It rode farther down than the other cushions, so I took a seat on this place Balkir was likely to have spent the most time.

I stared
, and that’s when it clicked.

Most have something they look at during down times. I had a crappy TV with giant push buttons
, and at one time it may have had a remote that probably relied on a click.

What did
Balkir do for fun? Did he play Parcheesi? Knit shawls? Surf Warlocks Anonymous?

No. He sat in this seat for a reason.

Balkir had chosen a tapestry as his object of affection. I sat in his seat and studied the giant black piece of art. An old man with a flowing white beard, who I had initially assumed was Balkir, fought a dragon with a long staff. It was the kind of thing you saw on a fantasy book cover. A single wizard against a nearly unstoppable force.

I wasn’t interested in any of that, though. What I was interested in was what the man carried.

A large, thick, white wooden staff. Then it clicked. The voice that had invaded my dreams while I lay in a daze. It had been my old friend Salazar. He had been trying to tell me something, or maybe it was just my subconscious. Either way I knew I had found my answer.

**

Salazar’s room was untouched, except that his body was gone. I hoped they treated it gently. I cursed Balkir, the old demonologist who had slayed him, once again. I wished he were here for some more friendly persuasion with my fists. Not the most elegant tool, but it had gone a long way towards making me feel better.

I only had one run in on my way to Salazar’s room
, and it nearly blew my cover. As I entered an elevator, I came face to robe with Lukan, who was muttering to himself. He had a large book in hand. So large in fact that he could barely hold it. He didn’t even bother to look up as I entered the elevator and took the corner opposite.

He mumbled as the elevator sped down. A
pparently I couldn’t read the arrows and had picked the wrong direction.

“Inquisitor, I apologize. I was absorbed in writ.”

“No bother.” I deepened my voice again. Slowed down my speech pattern.

“You are here for the investigation, I presume? That man, that charlatan, he needs to be brought to us.
To the demonologists. He must answer.”

“I am considering all options.”

Lukan tried to peer into my robe. His eyes narrowed at my words, but he didn’t dare challenge me.

“Not m
uch to consider? Fact: Phineas was the last one in the room with the head of my order. Fact: he summoned the demon that killed Salazar. Fact: he probably planned to kill the old man all along, and then Balkir, so he could take over.”

“This Phineas sounds
like a very powerful warlock. Summoning demons? Killing grand masters? My advice is that you steer clear of someone of his,” I paused and looked him up and down, “caliber.”

Lukan
was completely silent as I left the elevator.

**

The men outside Salazar’s room bowed but didn’t say a word. They wore the dark clothing of security and both had a full set of powerful glyphs wards etched into their robes. I wouldn’t want to take on one of them, let alone two. Thankfully, they moved aside and let me pass without question or demand for identification. Probably Collin’s doing. He might be getting into Glenda’s leathers, something I found myself oddly jealous of, but I had to thank him later for making this operation so smooth. I’d never really liked Collin, but my opinion of him was changing rapidly.

They’d brought in plywood to cover the huge hole in the side of the building, and taped it shut
, but air still managed to whistle in, making a forlorn sound like an animal in pain.

I looked over the room, hoping to find something of the old man
’s. I found his belongings where they should have been. His drawers were closed, his tomes on shelves, and I found his robes in order. Points to the old man for that. I hadn’t managed to keep one robe clean, let alone a closet full of them.

I inspected the reclining chair I’d
often found Salazar occupying late at night, and I paid close attention to the base. It seemed to be unmoved, so I proceeded on.

As I walked around the room, hands behind my back, the same hint of dizziness come over me. I wandered near the summoning station and that’s when it struck with full force.
While I stared at the metal runnels that lined the ivory insets and studied the lines of summoning, the wooziness came back.

As I stared and stared
, I felt myself sinking into the circle that made up the middle of the pentagram. It was getting closer, or maybe I was leaning over. Then it hit me. Something so strong it made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. I gagged as my breath was stolen away. I had to plant my hand on the metal rail to keep from falling over. I stayed this way, in a daze, for what seemed an hour.

Then the floor shifted and I was falling. Fire rushed up to meet me.
A massive conflagration of forces, a maelstrom of wind and flame. I screamed, but nothing came out because it was too hot to even breathe.

Then I saw it. The cusp
. It stood like a ring of foreboding. The thing that I touched every day was right in front of me. Closer than I had ever felt it before. I had visited the underrealm and even rode close to the cusp, but this was not the same.

I wanted to reach out and scoop some of it out
, and when I tried to open myself to it I nearly burned the soul out of my body.

Power like
I had never experienced rushed under my skin. I was on fire then I was freezing. A mix of emotions hit me, elation, fear, and anger. I wanted to strike out at those that had caused Salazar to fall but Balkir was already in the pit, cast down, and experiencing the joy of the wards.

I was here, alive, touching something new
, and I was fine with never touching it again as long as I lived. Then it was like an electric shock rode my body. I burned with power as pulse after pulse suffused my being and strained to be let free. I knew that if I let it go, even for a second, it would consume me, and probably the entire building.

I fought it, wrestled it down. How in the world was I touching this much of the cusp?

My eyes watered as I battled. I strained to push it back where it belonged -- not in me. My eyes were stretched open just like my mouth, but no sound came out. I followed the curve of the cusp into the horizon and realized why it was so different.

It was the curve. I was seeing it from the wrong side.

I was somehow touching the cusp from the wrong side! I was in the wards!

I pulled back with a howl and my soul snapped up and found my body once again. Then I was picked up
, as if by a giant hand, and flung across the room.

I landed o
n a sofa, but it was nothing like the one Balkir had planted his ass on while studying his talisman. Salazar had been a hard man in life and lived in only moderate comfort, so hitting his couch was only slightly softer than landing on wooden planks.

I patted at my body
, expecting the robe to be in flames. I was surprised to see nothing in the way of smoke. I sat back and tried to catch my breath.

A pounding at the door brought me around.

“Are you okay, sir?” one of the guards called.

“Fine!” I yelled
, and jumped up, expecting the door to burst open.

I pictured the t
wo outside the door, whispering, “Should we go in? No he’s an inquisitor!”

I approached the pedestal again. As I got near
, I felt the calling, so I backed away. I didn’t want another trip down that rabbit hole. It had been one of the scariest experiences of my life.

I scanned the rest of the room and located the object. It had been placed upright in a corner. None would know it had been in Salazar’s possession and probably assumed it belonged in the room with all the other relics. 

I picked up the old ash staff and felt it thump in my hand. The wood felt like it pulsed as I studied it. It was old and it looked almost petrified. The heft was much greater than I had anticipated, and I wondered how it had come to be in such a state. If I had wiki loaded on a little smartphone, I would have been able to look up the petrification process in a heartbeat. Too bad my cell phone was older than my fashion sense.

The staff, Salazar had said to look to the staff
, but now that I had it in hand I wasn’t all that impressed. Was I supposed to do something with it? Unleash some mythical energy that would grant me the powers of a grand master? I scoffed at the thought. If I had that much energy at my command I would surely use it for ill, like changing into a giant condor so I could scare the shit out of Frank. Literally.

I ran my hands over the warm surface but didn’t detect anything. I took a seat on the old bench and appraised the length of wood, intent on coming up with something. But I didn’t have a
lot to go on. Fact number one: staffs are dumb. Warlocks hate them because they become a crutch for handling the power from the cusp. No self-respecting member of the guild would be caught wielding one.

So why had Salazar possessed it?

Fact number two: this wasn’t even wood. It was like a long chunk of stone that had been carved to look like ash, which was a special wood to warlocks. We used it in spells, extracted its essence for potions, and even imbued it from time to time as a power reserve. Warlock battery running dry? Grab your stash of ash and get right back in the game.

Fact number
three: the staff wasn’t really long enough to be a staff. If I tried to use it while walking, I would have to hunch over like an old man. It also wasn’t a wand because it was far too thick and heavy.

This couldn’t be what
Salazar had been talking about.

I looked around the room, though I
didn’t see any more staffs. I did, however, find an interesting space on a bookshelf. It was up high and bare of anything. The space was surrounded by tools, fetishes, books, and at least one small crystal ball with a claw gripping it from below.

I studied the blank space and touched it. Now why had he left this area empty and the rest filled with relics from another age? I tapped the wood experimentally and was greeted with a hollow thump.

I ran my hands over the space, but didn’t find an indent or a trigger. What I did find was the slightest of whorls that formed a tight little glyph. I traced it, muttered words. I tested the wood from underneath and even called it a few bad names, but nothing worked.

Finally I took the short staff and laid it on the space. This was going to be it.
The big reveal. A little genie was about to pop out of the wood and grant me three wishes.

Nothing happened.

Shit!

I hit the shelf, which caused the things around it to
shift around. A voodoo doll that was obviously a joke fell off its seat and hit the ground, causing me to gasp. Not at the doll but at the perch it had left behind.

I slid the seat over to the space and then pawed through the other things. The crystal ball I’d eyed earlier turned out to be the second one. When I removed the useless sphere and dropped it near the voodoo doll
, I knew I had the second part.

I turned it over and found a familiar pattern. Sliding it around the wood surface
, it finally clicked into place where I’d found the whorl.