Modern Sorcery: A Jonathan Shade Novel (21 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

By the time I reached street level, a small crowd had gathered around Anselma’s body.
 
Phil and a few men I took to be engineers were trying to keep people back.
 
Cantrell’s body wasn’t there, so I figured it was safe to say Ravenwood was still using it.
 
I saw pieces of Esther’s typewriter scattered about on the concrete.

Poor Esther,
I thought.
 
I knelt and picked up a few keys from the old Underwood.
 
I found an
S
and an
L,
and stupid thoughts popped into my head with the two letters: Savings and Loan then Sore Loser.

I should have been able to do something to save her.

“I’m sorry, Esther,” I said, staring at the broken pieces of the machine.

“You should be,” Esther said from behind me.
 
“I feel totally ossified.”

I jumped to my feet and spun around to see her standing before me.
 
“Esther!
 
You’re okay!”
 
I wanted to hug her, but it’s hard to embrace a ghost.

“Back off,” she said.
 
“People are staring at you.”

I looked around but only one man with glasses met my gaze.
 
Everyone else kept staring at Anselma’s body or at the roof of the building.
 
The man removed his glasses and approached me.
 
“Jonathan Shade?” he asked.

“Who’s asking?”

“I’m Mike Ender, DGI security.”
 
He held himself like an FBI agent and gave an occasional furtive glance this way or that as he spoke to see if anyone was listening.

“Okay.”

He slipped his glasses on again and looked at Esther.
 
“You aren’t Anselma Kaiser,” he said and touched an earpiece that looked like a standard hands-free cell phone device.

“You can see me?” Esther said.
 
“Must be the cheaters.”

“That’s right, ma’am.
 
I came down to see if Ms. Kaiser’s spirit arose.
 
Did you see her?”

“I just played Humpty Dumpty,” Esther said.
 
“I didn’t see anything.”

“Victims of violent crime sometimes arise, though they usually manage to find their way to the Afterlife.”
 
He pulled out a business card and handed it to me.
 
“If you see her, call me.
 
She’ll need to be debriefed.”

“What about the body?” I asked.
 
“The police should be here soon.”

He removed the glasses.
 
“There won’t be any police here, Mr. Shade.”

“Anselma’s body is right there.
 
She was thrown out the window.
 
It’s kinda hard to hide that.”

“No, actually it’s easy to hide that, but that’s not my department.
 
I’m simply here in case her spirit arises.”

I looked around and noticed two men in business suits walking through the crowd.
 
They moved from person to person, placing a hand on a shoulder, which was soon followed by the person turning and walking back inside.
 
I watched a line of men and women moving toward the entrance like zombies in a haze.

One of the men approached me, placed a hand on my shoulder, and looked into my eyes.
 
“There’s nothing to see here, sir.
 
Please return to your office.”

“No,” I said.

He stared deep into my eyes.
 
His piercing gaze held steady and strong.
 
His irises were spinning, and I realized he was trying to hypnotize me.
 
“Please return to your office.
 
Nothing happened here.
 
Everything is normal.”

“Tell that to Anselma.”

“You’re with DGI?”

“No,” I said.

He nodded.
 
“You must be the detective.
 
Phil warned us about you.
 
We’d appreciate it if you let us handle this.”

“No problem,” I said.
 
“Restructure their memories with your Jedi mind tricks all you want, buddy.”
 
I pointed up at the broken window.
 
“You might want to fix the window, though.”

He smiled.
 
“Nobody can see the window.
 
Someone else will handle that.”

I looked up and I could see the broken window, but I realized that it must be hidden by magic so nobody else could see it.

“All right.
 
I’m going to gather up the pieces from the typewriter that are spread out around here.
 
That cool with you?”

“Not my department,” he said.
 
“Knock yourself out.”

While the DGI crew established order and wiped memories, I gathered up the pieces of Esther’s typewriter.

“Esther, what happens if I miss a few of the pieces?”

“I don’t know,” she said.
 
“I still feel like I drank ten gallons of hooch.”

“I thought I’d lost you.”

“As you’ve been so happy to point out, I’m already dead, so getting the ultimate bum’s rush from a building isn’t going to be the end of me.”

“When Ravenwood destroyed the typewriter, you broke into a million pieces too.”

She shuddered.
 
“Don’t remind me.
 
Just thinking about it gives me the heebie-jeebies.”

I collected as many pieces as I could find and piled them all in one place.
 
There was no way I could carry all of the pieces to the car.
 
I needed a box.

Phil stood off to the side of the building entrance, guiding the last few engineers inside.
 
I approached him.
 
When he saw me, his face drooped.

“Don’t worry, Phil.
 
I just need a box or a bag.”

“Give me a minute.”

While I waited, I tried to call Naomi.
 
I hadn’t seen her since I pushed her out of the office upstairs.
 
She didn’t answer her phone, so I wondered if she even had it with her.
 
Anselma may have taken it from her.
 
I wasn’t sure if she was still in the building or if she’d tried to get farther away for safety.
 
She knew my number, so I figured she’d call sooner or later.

Phil hooked me up with a plastic tote from a janitor’s closet.
 
When I returned to the pile of typewriter parts, two men were loading Anselma’s corpse into a black body bag.
 
A third man cast a spell to eradicate the blood that had seeped into the concrete.

I loaded the bits and pieces of the typewriter into the tote and started toward my car with Esther in tow.
 
“If I missed any pieces, you might feel a tug toward them as we go.”

“I’ll keep you posted,” Esther said.

We hadn’t walked ten feet before she felt a pull.

“Oh!” she said and suddenly popped out of sight and reappeared fifteen feet away.
 
I had taken a few extra steps by then, so she was actually twenty feet from the bulk of the typewriter.
 
She disappeared from the one piece and reappeared right next to me.

“Oh!” she said again.
 
She blinked several times and smiled.
 
“That was the cat’s pajamas.
 
Not quite as good as being in a struggle buggy with a bell bottom but close.”

“Can you say that again in English?” I asked.

“Set the tote down,” she said.
 
“I want to try something.”

“Okay.”
 
I set the tote on the ground.

“Throw a piece of the Underwood over there,” she said pointing toward the parking lot.

“You sure?”

She nodded.

I took a spring from the tote and tossed it about thirty feet.

“Watch,” Esther said.

She disappeared then reappeared a moment later by the spring thirty feet away.
 
“Isn’t that the berries?” she said.

She popped from there back to the piece I’d left behind then popped back to where I stood.

“Can you move more than fifteen feet from any given piece?”

“Let’s find out.”

She walked toward the building.
 
Fifteen feet away, she hit the end of her leash.
 
She cussed then walked back.

“So you have to be within fifteen feet of a
piece
of the typewriter, but you can basically teleport yourself to wherever any given piece happens to be?”

“Isn’t that the cat’s meow?”

“It’s pretty cool.”
 
And I knew it could prove useful too.
 
“Shall we find the pieces I missed?”

“Absolutely,” she said and popped out of sight.
 
I spun around to see her waving at me a short distance away.
 
She pointed to the piece she’d found.
 
“Come and get it!”

Back at the office, I used bolt cutters and a drill to make a necklace for Kelly using the K from the typewriter and another for Naomi using the N.
 
I also slipped a piece onto my keychain.

“You just want me to always be able to find your keys for you,” Esther said.

“Gotta take advantage of those fringe benefits.”

I made plans to distribute pieces of the typewriter to various locations so Esther could easily get there by focusing on that particular part.
 
I placed a big piece of the typewriter in the file cabinet of my office, then carried the tote down to my car.
 
As I closed the car door, my cell phone rang.
 
I pulled it from my pocket but didn’t recognize the number.

I flipped the phone open.
 
“Shade Investigations.”

“Jonathan?” Naomi said.
 
“Thank God you’re alive.”

“God didn’t have anything to do with it,” I said.

“I was so worried.”

“Where are you?
 
I’ll come pick you up.”