The Curse Servant (The Dark Choir Book 2) (2 page)

“I’ll make it up to you.”

“This thing with your soul. Is that what’s going on with you?”

I snapped, “I said not to worry about that, and I meant it.”

Julian blinked and nodded.

I had a good thing going with Julian before I screwed it up. I crafted charms for the Mayor of Baltimore, and Julian paid for it out of his own pocket. Not usually in the Deputy Mayor’s job description, but Julian believed in Mayor Sullivan the way most people believed in God. I liked Julian. He was always straight with me, and he always delivered, and he knew just enough about the hermetic arts to keep up in conversation. He had even convinced me to show him a few basics, but he proved unable even to execute the Lesser Banishing Cross, the first, most basic of exercises to clear a space of unwanted energies. The Banishing Cross anchored the practitioner in hermetic space through powerful thought bonds, often invoked as compass “quarters,” while filling the area with the individual’s personal charge. Julian couldn’t find a powerful enough image to connect with, and thus his energy only gushed around him like an unmanned fire hose. I figured his industry was better served in politics.

Then he got the idea of putting me on salary, which would have saved him money and given me some kind of regular income. At the time, it was a clear win-win. But Julian was right; I had been distracted lately. Ever since my botched attempt at outsmarting a weasel soul-monger, my soul had been floating in the dusty crawlspace between the hereafter and the here-and-now. I had to locate it and find a way to shove it back into my meat sack before something else found a use for it. The prospect of serving an eternity at the vicious whim of the Dark Choir was something of a focus-breaker.

Not that Julian fully understood what I was doing on my own time. I’d made an effort to segregate my business with Julian from the Craft. We’d made an arrangement, and I wasn’t holding up my end. I was the dick, here.

Amy coughed in her chair. Her feet jerked a little, and she released a pitiful moan.

Julian and I circled her, waiting to see who had the lights on.

“What―happened?”

Julian laid a hand on her shoulder. “You had an attack. You’re safe.”

Amy opened her eyes and glanced up at Julian. “What?”

“Some kind of fit. A seizure.”

She dropped her head slowly and pawed with her free hand at the tape binding her wrist to the chair. Her eyebrows screwed together. “What the hell is going on?”

I nodded to Julian. “I think she’s okay now.”

He picked at the tape and unwrapped it from her skin. She winced and looked away, her gaze settling on me.

“Do I know you?” she muttered.

“No.”

“I think I know you.”

“Probably just from the seizure.”

She squinted at me as Julian moved to free her other arm. “No. I feel like I know you. Like, I feel some kind of memory.”

“A good one, I hope.”

“No. Hate. I feel like I should hate you.”

It was probably a leftover from her possession, but there was no way I was going to even try to explain that to her.

“I have one of those faces people like to punch.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s going on. Who are you people? Why am I―”

Julian interrupted with one final tug of the tape, “My name is Julian Bright, Miss Mancuso. You had an episode while canvassing for the Mayor’s campaign.”

“Yeah, I remember that.”

“Well, you got violent and assaulted someone’s dog.”

“Oh, God.”

“Your team captain brought you back here, and you went into a seizure.”

“Where is he?”

“Hmm? Oh. I sent him home. I didn’t want him… I wanted to spare you the embarrassment.”

Amy looked back and forth from me to Julian, her face stiff and guarded.

“I don’t feel so good.”

“Come on,” he said, offering her a hand. “I’ll take you to the hospital.”

He helped her to her feet, and as they moved to the front door, she kept an eye on me. By the time Julian had unlocked the door and escorted her to the passenger side of his car, she was avoiding my face altogether.

Julian closed the car door and trotted around to the driver side, giving me a pointed look.

“We need to finish this conversation.”

I nodded. “Druid Hill, tomorrow night?”

His eyes narrowed. “Let’s make it Gordon’s, Monday morning.”

I shrugged, but it bothered me that Julian wasn’t coming to the Club anymore. I met him at the Druid Hill Club, after all. He was one of the last regulars before it nearly went under. Thankfully the Club was on the rebound, thanks in no small part, I liked to imagine, to my renewed patronage. I knew the real reasons were far more complex than that, but the narcissist in me enjoyed co-opting reality from time-to-time.

I watched Julian pull out of his parking space when I heard an engine start. A dark blue Chrysler was parked just across the grassy divide between the campaign office and the chain restaurant next door. The side window rolled up before I could spot the driver. Julian was out onto the main road before the Chrysler jerked out of its parking space and whipped around the rear of the restaurant.

Lovely.

I had grown more or less accustomed to the continuous feeling of the shadows staring down the back of my head. Ever since I’d lost my soul, I’d been plagued with the hungry interest the Dark Choir held for me. But the ephemeral nature of those nagging, little shadows and imp-like phantoms amounted to little more than the panic one feels after waking from a nightmare. They came rapidly and faded. Mystery sedans watching me from across parking lots, however? Not so ephemeral.

My phone rang and broke me out of my cold sweat. It was Edgar Swain, probably the only real friend I had in the world.

“Dorian, you in the city?”

“Close enough. What’s up?”

“Got lunch plans?”

I checked my watch. How was it almost noon already? “Not really. Where are you?”

“The Market. I got someone I want you to meet.”

Edgar was remarkably well-connected. He was one of the most reliable suppliers of hermetic materials and reagents in the Mid-Atlantic. He was what people in my circle called a Collector, a practitioner who acquired and occasionally re-sold objects of esoteric value. This private collection of Edgar’s was rife with cursed objects and other items his wife would rather see dumped into the Chesapeake. That collection also earned him the notice of the Presidium, unfortunately. And that had become something of a cornerstone for our friendship. We were two sorry bastards small enough to operate directly under the Presidium’s nose, gambling with their mercurial sense of what is and isn’t permissible. It was the business plan of Damocles, but at least we didn’t have any competition.

“Sounds good. I’ll be there in forty.”

exington Market was essentially the nerve center of what locals called “real Baltimore.” It had operated continually since just after the founding of the nation, and was about as far from the white-washed tourist mecca of the Inner Harbor as one could imagine. It was cramped, unsanitary, and reeked of fish. But on a busy day, it thundered with conversation and the odd jazz trio huddled in front of one of the grocery stalls.

I’d made it a point to meet with Edgar every time he managed a trip to Baltimore. Edgar kept poking his nose around the Market, looking for some side-obscured stall with an old school Collector who had managed to avoid the Presidium’s all-encompassing attentions. Before 1812, when the Presidium effectively seized power in D.C., Lexington Market was the port-of-call for the European cabals trafficking in any kind of worthwhile hermetic interest. It had been Collector Heaven.

I found Edgar standing in front of his favorite falafel cart. He sported one of his obnoxious floral print shirts. His head bobbed in conversation with a short man wearing a threadbare plaid blazer. The man was mostly bald with the remnants of a ginger mane mixing with silver ringing his ears. His face was wrinkled, his cheeks stubbled in white and red whiskers.

“Dorian, man!” Edgar bellowed as he spotted me. He handed me a foil-wrapped falafel. I never had the heart to tell him I despised the dreck that stall called food. He was such a fan.

“You really shouldn’t have,” I mumbled as I nodded to Edgar’s friend. “Hello.”

Edgar announced, “Dorian, I want you to meet Del Carmody.”

Carmody squinted up at me and thrust out a hand.

“Dorian Lake? A pleasure, sir.” His spoke with a peppery British accent lurking beneath a husky tobacco-ravaged throat warble. “Gone these years, and never met you face-to-face.”

“Hi.”

“So, you’re Emil Desiderio’s magnum opus?”

Christ. I always loathed when complete strangers recognized me as a student of Emil Desiderio. It rarely went well for me. Either they fell on the roster of Emil’s enemies and counted me an enemy by association, or they were old industry pals of Emil and blamed me for being the reason he effectively dropped off the face of the Earth. At the end of his life, I was Emil’s only friend. Admittedly, not a good one.

“You knew Emil?” I tried to keep my tone friendly.

“I did. Complete nipple, that one.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Head completely up his arse. Loved him for it, but he was utterly clueless.”

“He was pretty focused. I’ll give you that.”

“Focused? Christ. He was living in fuckin’ fairyland. No idea where he was or what he was doing, but the bastard could hex the shit out of a cat’s arsehole if he thought it wasn’t translating Greek properly. Brilliant suffering bloke.”

“You’ll probably be disappointed to hear he lost his love for hating things late in life.”

“Oh, I know it. Thanks in no small part to yourself, I assume?”

“I have no idea how to answer that.”

“Well, I do. And he did. And you are, so pleasure to meet you, mate.”

I shook Carmody’s hand with a grin. “So what’s the business of the day? Are you a Collector, too?”

Edgar sniffled over a bite of falafel. “No, man. Del’s pretty much an anything anywhere man. Been in the business a long time.”

Del added with a wiggle of his red-and-white brow, “I know where the bodies are buried, one could say.”

“Netherwork?” I asked.

“On occasion, though lately there’s more money to be had in information. Which brings me to the point of our present acquaintanceship.” He spoke the word like a child trying on his father’s clothes.

Edgar nudged my arm. “You’re gonna love this.”

“I’m listening.”

Carmody drew me in closer with a jerk of his head. “I hear you have a minor soul problem, vis a vis, it’s backstroking somewhere in the Nether.”

“You heard that, have you?”

“I hear things, Mister Lake. That’s what keeps me in business these days. It’s what keeps me alive, and more importantly, drinking. Yeah, I heard all about your little skirmish with Osterhaus. So has any pisser with half an ear to the bedrock.”

“What’s your point?”

“I know someone.”

“You know someone.”

Carmody pulled a manila envelope from his jacket and dangled it by his ear. “That’s what I said. I know someone with some experience in these matters. Experience you may well find useful.”