Still Not Dead Enough , Book 2 of The Dead Among Us (19 page)

Now that he realized he wasn’t going to be killed or harmed outright, Paul felt a bit belligerent. “Why not?”

The shadows hiding the man’s face were too deep to be real. “Come now, Paul. You know what this is about, and you know such situations can’t be handled in mundane ways.”

Paul shrugged, acknowledging the fact. “What do you want?”

“To talk.”

“I don’t know that I know anything that can help you. I’m kind of new to all this stuff.”

“I’m aware of that,” the stranger said, and Paul was almost certain he’d heard that voice before. “But it doesn’t really matter. I’m not here for you to talk to me. I’m here to talk to you.”

“Ok . . . talk.”

The man took a sip of beer, put the bottle down on the table and Paul caught a glimpse of his hand. His skin was coal black. “You’re Dayandalous. I remember you.”

The shadows that obscured Dayandalous’ face thinned and his eyes flared red for a moment. “Yes, Paul. And you remember me because I want you to.”

Paul didn’t like the way that each time they met, within moments of parting he completely forgot the man. “The forty-fourth floor. That was a clever trick, really threw me for a loop. And in the Netherworld. And in Belinda’s apartment. And in Faerie. You just show up at the oddest of times, and afterwards I completely forget you.”

“And you’ll forget me again, once we’ve had this conversation.”

“Did you give Katherine that sword?”

“Ah, again you’re quite perceptive.”

“So why are you here now?”

“To impart a little information. A little lesson, as it were.”

Paul got the impression Dayandalous was grinning, laughing at him quietly. “First, about the fey. The royal lines of the Sidhe Courts are immortal, nearly impossible to kill.” Paul didn’t miss the word
nearly
. “They don’t age and die, and in Faerie they are enormously powerful, almost impossible to overcome . . . in Faerie. But they can be killed. And to do so you must separate the head from the heart. Then impale both the head and the heart on cold iron, and hold the iron fast until their struggles cease; a difficult proposition, to say the least.

“And then there is the matter of traveling between the Realms. Many of the fey do not need a boundary, or a ley line. They just need to know where they want to go, then they twist reality to make it so.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Remember what I’ve said, Paul. Also remember that if you ever must fight a Sidhe royal, do not hold back. It will be a fight to the death, and you must show no hesitation, no mercy, no compassion. For they will show no hesitation, no mercy, no compassion.”

Paul had no intention of getting into any battles with Sidhe royals. “Again, why are you telling me this?”

“In time, all will become clear, Paul.”

. . . Now why had he opened two bottles of beer. Just sitting there by himself in his kitchen, a half empty bottle in his hand, another on the table in front of him, as if someone had sat there sharing a beer with him. All this magic crap made his head spin, made him forgetful.

He finished his beer, poured the remnants of the other into the sink. The beer made him drowsy, so he rolled into bed, was practically asleep before his head hit the pillow.

~~~

Ag screamed hysterically at Sabreatha. “We had a contract. You were to kill the necromancer.”

The
black fey
stood before the Winter King casually and showed no fear at his rage. The soft hiss of her voice sent a shiver up Anogh’s spine. “I delivered
les flèche du coeur
. The contract is complete.”

“No,” Ag screamed, “you took contract to kill him with the heart arrow.”

“Nay, I took contract to deliver the heart arrow. The contract was clearly stated, and it is complete.”

Chapter 14: An Unexpected Visitor

McGowan had asked Paul to meet him at an address in a part of the Haight-Ashbury district referred to by most locals as the Upper Haight, an area filled with nineteenth century, multi-story wooden houses. While the
summer of love
had long since left the Haight behind, there were still a few retro clothing shops on Haight Street, the main drag, mixed among the tattoo parlors, restaurants and jewelry stores. It hadn’t really gone upscale, though to some degree it still maintained its bohemian style. But the Haight now seemed more focused on tourists, crowds of which wandered up and down Haight Street almost any day of the week.

The address led Paul to a small shop named
Alternate Earth Books
, nestled among residential structures in the Upper Haight. When Paul opened the front door it triggered a small bell. He stepped inside and closed it behind him, stood facing row upon row of musty old books, not sure how to proceed. A sixtyish woman approached him wearing a tie-dyed dress, too much makeup, a few too many years and a few too many pounds. She smiled at him pleasantly. “Can I help you?”

“I’m supposed to meet someone here,” Paul said. He looked about. The shop was small enough that if McGowan were already there he’d spot him easily. “But it doesn’t look like he’s here yet.”

Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Are you here to meet Walter?” She winked at him knowingly, gave him a conspiratorial look as if they were collaborators in some secret scheme.

“I’m here to meet Mr. McGowan. Yes.”

She winked again, as if they shared some vast secret, then leaned close and whispered, “He’s in the back room where I keep the old books. Follow me.” She turned and spun on her heal like a schoolgirl. As Paul followed her he opened himself to his power, but couldn’t sense any capability within her.

She led him to the back of the shop and into a small room where McGowan stood flipping through the pages of a large book. He looked up from the book as they entered. “Paul, glad you could make it, kid. You’ve met Dorothy?”

McGowan introduced him to the old hippie whom he learned was also the shop’s owner, and as Paul shook her hand politely she gave him that conspiratorial look again, though at least she didn’t wink this time. “I’ve got to watch the front of the shop,” she said, beaming at McGowan, almost gushing at him like a teenager with a rock star, “so I’ll leave you two to your browsing.”

When he and McGowan were alone, Paul quietly asked, “What’s with all the winking and nudge-nudge-poke-poke?”

McGowan turned back to the book he’d been examining, whispered, “She’s a member of a coven, thinks we all share the same secrets.” McGowan winked at Paul.

Skeptically, Paul said, “I couldn’t sense any capability in her.”

McGowan chuckled and grinned. “I made a point of meeting her sister witches, just in case one of them did have any abilities. Not an ounce of power among the lot. But they like to get together and do some chants, practice some rituals, hold a séance, call some spirits, though I’ll bet the closest any of them has ever come to calling a spirit was when one of them farted after one too many tokes on the bong, and they all thought it was the smell of brimstone leaking over from the Netherworld.”

McGowan handed Paul the book. “Take a look at this.”

The book’s title,
A Grimoire of Alternate Realities
, flowed across the cover in large, flowery script. It appeared to have been printed in the mid nineteenth century, seemed quite old, though Paul was not qualified to judge its authenticity. “A book of magic spells. Is this for real?”

“Useless drivel,” McGowan said, shaking his head. He reached up, pulled another book off a shelf. “Here. Look at this one.”

The instant the book touched Paul’s fingers he felt a mild tingle of power from it. McGowan saw the look on his face. “When it’s real, and it’s been used by someone who was a real practitioner, they leave an imprint on the book. It’s involuntary, like leaving your fingerprints on a glass when you drink from it. So you’ll always know a real grimoire when you touch one.”

Paul picked up the first book again. “So this one’s a fake?”

McGowan grimaced. “It depends on what you mean by fake. Dorothy knows her books, so if it was a fake she’d have attached a note to that effect, or a note to the effect that she hadn’t been able to authenticate its pedigree. So the fact that it’s here without such a note means she’s done her homework and is satisfied it’s real. My guess is some nineteenth century charlatan wrote it, some fellow running a scam as a fake wizard, or someone who, like Dorothy, was sincerely deluded. Séances and all sorts of mumbo-jumbo crap were quite popular about the time this was written. It may even have some antique value, but I don’t collect old books for the sake of old books.”

Paul flipped through a few pages of the real grimoire. “It’s in Latin.”

“Most of the older ones are. That’s why you need to study Latin. Right now I’ll make a present of this one to you, and maybe someday you’ll find something useful in it. But remember this shop, and keep your eye out for others like it. Anyone collecting old books might have something valuable you can use, especially someone like Dorothy who’s always picking up old grimoires. Most of them are crap, but you can spot the real ones.”

~~~

McGowan bought the old book for Paul then drove them both back to his Nob Hill place. Inside, he marched Paul straight to his workshop, saying, “Today, we’re going to learn a bit about the Netherworld, kid. I’ve stayed away from it because it’s really dangerous stuff, thought I’d wait until you had a chance to learn more, but recent events tell me we can’t put it off any longer. You need to understand what you’ve faced with these demons. But I want you to promise—I want your word—that you’ll stay away from demon magic and the other black arts until you’ve had more training. And even then, this stuff can easily leave a taint on your soul, so it’s not wise to delve into it regularly or deeply.”

McGowan’s house was one of those early twentieth-century wooden structures built on a steep hill in such a way that the entrance let you onto the second floor, with the first floor down the hill and at the back, a total of five floors in all. McGowan’s workshop occupied the entire first floor and was large enough to contain Paul’s whole apartment. Like Katherine’s workshop, it had a workbench, shelves, chairs, and also like Katherine’s workshop all were located along the walls to leave the center of the room open and clear. However, McGowan had tiled the floor in marble, and installed a large circle of beaten silver permanently embedded in the marble. Outside the silver circle he’d also fashioned a silver pentagram, also embedded, its interior lines touching the circle as Katherine had described to him.

The first time Paul had seen it, McGowan had said proudly, “Beat that silver and installed it myself. Otherwise it wouldn’t work for me, which is the reason it won’t work for you.”

McGowan closed the workshop door and locked it carefully. “Katherine said you’re a natural with a circle. And the damping exercises we worked on yesterday took care of another prerequisite.”

The previous day McGowan had taught Paul how to conceal his power from a demon, how do damp the emanations the exercise of power naturally produced, a most important prerequisite to the summoning of demons. Paul likened it to a fat man on the beach sucking in his gut so he could pretend he still had a flat stomach. If he wasn’t too fat, just a little gut, it worked fairly well, but only as long as he kept those abdominal muscles clenched. And likewise, Paul’s damping exercises worked reasonably well, as long as he kept his magical muscles clenched. McGowan assured him that, as he grew more experienced, it would come naturally, kind of like if the fat man went on a diet and started exercising. Eventually, he might develop nice washboard abs and the flat stomach would come without any effort.

“First I want to see you close a circle. I trust Katherine’s judgment, but I still want to see it myself.”

McGowan had him draw a circle of salt in the way Katherine had taught him, using the embedded silver circle as a template, then Paul sat down and began feeding power into it. And when he sensed that unmistakable moment when the circle was ready, he shouted, “Bullshit,” and closed it.

“Bullshit?” McGowan asked.

Paul shrugged sheepishly. “That’s my word for closing circles.” And at McGowan’s questioning look, he added, “Long story. Not worth telling.”

McGowan shook his head, walked back to his workbench muttering, “I have to have a talk with that daughter of mine.” He retrieved a walking stick that belonged more in a Victorian era movie, walked back to Paul’s circle.

McGowan slapped the walking stick against the invisible wall of the circle about waist high. It hit the wall with a muted thump but didn’t penetrate. He walked around the circle tapping at it with the cane, trying several times to drag the tip of the cane through the salt to break the circle. “Good job, kid. Now break that circle and let’s get down to some real work.”

Paul broke the circle with a thought. He didn’t have to redraw the circle, but McGowan made him draw a pentagram of salt outside it, again using the embedded silver pentagram as a template, while McGowan carefully inspected Paul’s work, insuring that the five interior sides of the pentagram touched the circle solidly without distorting it.

“Now, if we wanted to pull in a really big nasty,” McGowan said, while rifling through his storage cabinet, “we’d have started fasting last night at midnight, and we’d perform the calling tonight at midnight, after twenty-four hours of fasting and some serious cleansing rituals.”

McGowan lifted a small copper dish out of the storage cabinet. “We will wait until after dark, but we’re only going after a minor demon so we can skip all the preliminary nonsense.”

McGowan also retrieved four wax candles, each about six inches long, and a large, flat cardboard box, from which he pulled a mirror about three by two feet mounted in an ornate wooden frame. McGowan handed the mirror to Paul and he noticed it did a poor job of reflecting his image. “That’s a dark mirror. Essentially a piece of glass painted black on the back side.”

McGowan then handed Paul the four candles, explaining, “These candles are infused with the vaginal secretions of sexually excited, pregnant virgins.”

Paul couldn’t believe it, said, “That’s incredible! Where do you get such candles?”