The Curse Servant (The Dark Choir Book 2) (11 page)

“I’m not saying this whole arrangement was a mistake, yet.”

“Okay?”

“But you’re not giving me a lot of reasons to think otherwise.”

I balled a fist trying to figure out how to save face without losing patience here. “I know it.”

“Is this about finding your soul, or whatever you’re doing?”

I didn’t want to confirm nor deny. So I just shut my mouth.

“Dorian, I need you with me, or I need to get you out of my peripheral vision. You’re distracting me more than you’re helping me.”

“Someone died yesterday, Julian.”

“What?”

“A whole family. A couple and their two kids. It looked like an accident, but I know it wasn’t. It was damage control. Our damage. You and me.”

“The photos?”

“That’s just part of it. I want to help you, but you need to take a moment and get some perspective. You’re focused on the mayor race. That’s great. I’m on board. There’s some specific bastardy McHenry is whipping out of his pants right now that I wouldn’t mind shoving back up his ass. But there are people in higher places than City Hall who have me under a really big microscope. Now, I’m going to say ‘I’m sorry’ exactly one more time for missing this meeting. And then, you know what? I’m going to see you again this week. Hell, I’ll pound some yard signs into the ground if you want. And if you feel like we can’t continue this arrangement, no hard feelings. But right now, right this very minute, I just have bigger problems.”

Julian simmered on that for a good while, but I didn’t give him anything else.

“How does your Thursday look?”

“I have a meeting with Julian Bright, but after that…”

“Alright, smartass. Gordon’s. Nine a.m.?”

“I’ll be there.”

“You promise this time?”

“Barring an act of God or people in scary high places, yes.”

I hung up in time for the cab to roll onto Columbia Street. A row of trees lined the one-way two-lane cutting through the middle of Westside Portland. I oriented myself as I stepped out onto the brisk bustle of morning pedestrians. I spotted a canvas awning sporting the words,
Green Tree,
in what could be generously described as twig-letters. My watch read eleven-fifty. I was early, but only just.

A young man skateboarded directly in front of me as I tried to cross with the light, and nearly knocked me over. No one seemed to notice or care. In Baltimore, that kid probably wouldn’t have made it a half-block without something unnatural in his thorax. Taking a moment, I continued across the street and on to the Green Tree.

The old birch door creaked as I opened it, and one pathetic brass bell jingled as I stepped inside. Warped hardwood slats groaned as I took the first few steps, their surfaces worn from years of snow-tread and street salt. The room swam with the scents of cedar and old books. The walls of the narrow retail slot were lined with bookcases. Near the front all I could find were dog-eared paperbacks, mostly recent. But as I ventured deeper toward a clutch of wrought-iron tables and a coffee bar, I spotted more and more leather bound spines peeking at me through the dim halogen lights.

I ordered an Americano and took a seat at the rear-most table, watching the front of the room. There was only the one goateed barista working, and an elderly man near the front windows, his face buried in a faded paperback. I sipped the coffee as quickly as the heat would allow. Something about the claustrophobia of this joint made me edgy. The cedar was fairly strong, perhaps more than the bookcases merited, even if they were hewn from solid cedar planks. No, this was an essential oil, probably burning in a censer somewhere behind the coffee bar.

And as cedar was a powerful warding reagent, I made sure to keep my energy wound tight around my mainline.

At ten after noon, the door opened with its creek and jingle, and a woman stepped inside. She was tall, remarkably so. Her broad shoulders were draped with a dark trench coat. The coat was clearly more of a fashion statement in the middle of summer, but somehow it seemed to work for her. The rest of her clothes were tidy, but bland. The sides of her head were shaved bald, with the middle swath of close-clipped copper-red hair settling into a rat tail. Her nose and eyebrow were pierced, and her ears sported a half-dozen shiny dark stones. Probably hematite.

But it was her eyes that put the hook in me. They were clear blue, and burned with a kind of nameless anger that I had come to recognize in the few people Emil called “friend.” Despite her youth, this woman was clearly Old School, and I wished I was more prepared for her.

She stopped directly in front of my table. I stood out of a sense of respect and etiquette, but couldn’t find anything intelligent to say.

She reached into her coat and pulled out an e-reader, setting it onto my table without ceremony. The barista steamed some milk without order.

Finally, as she pulled a chair to take a seat, and I found myself following suit, she spoke.

“So, you’re Lake?”

“Quinn Gillette?”

She cocked her head in a half-shrug and reached for her reader. She clicked it blandly, eyes moving in sharp jerks. The barista brought her coffee and withdrew without a word. I sat in silence, watching her sip and read, never once looking up at me or further acknowledging my presence.

It was horribly awkward.

“Ms. Gillette, I wanted to speak to you about, well, sensitive matters. Matters relating to our chosen Craft.”

She cleared her throat and clicked her reader.

“Soul magic, to be specific.”

“So you said.”

“I’m lead to believe you’re practiced in creating servitors.”

Her eyes finally lifted to meet mine. “That a fact?”

“And that you powered these servitors with shards of your own soul.”

She returned her attention to her reader. “Not an unusual practice.”

“Unusual in my particular corner of the nation.”

“Where did you say you were from?”

“Baltimore.”

Her eyes lifted again, this time in genuine surprise. My phone call had made precisely zero impact on her.

“You live in the lap of the Presidium, you dolt. Of course you’re not going to practice soul magic.”

“I realize that.”

“Then what are you talking to me for?”

“I have a problem.”

The door creaked open, and Gillette jerked around in her seat. A trio of college age women whispered with each other and started scanning the book racks. Gillette exhaled and turned back to me.

“I don’t want to know about your problems, Mister Lake.”

This conversation was getting tiresome. “Well, you know what? You gave me little option but to fly out here on a short notice, so maybe you could spare me fifteen God damn minutes of your attention?”

She glared at me for a long moment before laying her reader down gently on the table. She cradled her mug and repositioned herself to face me full-on.

“Didn’t mean to get your tampon in a twist,” she grunted before taking a long sip of coffee. “Go ahead. Bore me.”

“As I said, I have a particular problem. I signed my soul into a contract with a soul monger.”

“Stupid.”

“I had reasons.”

“Your reasons were stupid.”

“Anyway, before I could buy it back, he destroyed the contract.”

“How do you know he destroyed it?”

“He burned it in front of me. Out of spite.”

Gillette smirked. “Sounds like a real son of a bitch.”

“I’ve known more than a few. So, here I am. My soul’s been released into the ether, and I’m starting to see things. Moving shadows. Things haunting me in the corner of my vision. Same thing happened to my mentor, just before the shadows tore him limb from literal limb.”

“Was that recent? I hadn’t heard about that.”

“No. It was more than a decade ago.” I didn’t want to drop Emil’s name in front of this woman. There was a better than average chance she had heard about Emil at some point. “But the point is you lost a part of your soul once. And you found it again. At least that’s what I hear.”

The door creek-jingled again. Gillette turned to watch as the college girls exited in a fit of conversation.

“So you think you can apply my method to finding your soul? That’s what this is about?”

“That’s right.”

“Well, you would be correct.”

I sat stunned for a moment. The confirmation came so quickly and matter-of-factly that I almost missed it.

“I would?”

“The laws of conservation are still in play at the interstitial plane.”

“Interstitial?”

“The void where ancient malevolence, daydreams and nightmares, and yes even misplaced souls abide. Your soul should be intact as long as it hasn’t been re-captured or consumed by something on the other side.”

“Funny you should mention that.”

“I figured as much.” She set down her now empty coffee cup and leaned back in her chair. “So what are you proposing?”

“I’m sorry?”

“I know what you want. You want my method. My notes, perhaps. A deeply personal, but still not entirely un-embarrassing view into my struggles with soul magic. What are you offering in exchange?”

I wilted in my chair. For whatever reason, I hadn’t thought to prepare to negotiate. I was expecting a more or less cooperative conversation. Instead, I was met with this mercenary frontier mentality, and I really should have known better.

“I’m a hex and charm crafter by trade.”

She snickered and shook her head. “Fuck me. You’re really going to try and impress me with charms and hexes? If I need to make a pretzel out of my own karma, I’m qualified to do it myself. So thank you, but what else you got?”

I balked. The cedar fumes were getting to me. Either that, or I was so close to a real way to find my soul that I was getting desperate. I didn’t want to beg.

“What did you have in mind?”

She shook her finger at me. “You’re presenting yourself as weak. Bad idea. It would have been wiser to start with Curses, but if you want to bury your lead―”

“Curses?”

“You are a Curse Merchant, aren’t you?”

“I―”

“You took out Osterhaus with a simple and particularly nasty curse. A sly bit of Netherwork that pancaked him in so many tons of iron and cement. Not entirely uncalled for, considering he torched your soul contract, but still.”

“I never told you his name.”

“Who, Osterhaus?”

“That’s right. How do you know about―”

“Just like you never mentioned Emil Desiderio by name. Or the fact that you lived with him in London for the better part of ten years? Or the fact that Del Carmody skittered all the way to Baltimore with my name in a hot little envelope ready to drop into your hands without so much as a dislocated pinky?”

My stomach was in free-fall, so keeping my mouth shut seemed to be the best choice at the moment.

She continued, “I understand the Presidium has you East Coast practitioners thumbscrewed and pissing your pants, but out here on the West Coast we actually do our homework.”

“Just wanted to watch me wiggle on the hook?”

“Welcome to real life. You want my method? Tough shit. I’m not inclined to share knowledge with a shit-kicker like you. But I need a curse, so I’m willing to do the work for you.”

“A curse?”

“That’s what I said.”

“What else can we work out?”

“You’re pretty squeamish for a man who’s killed with magic.”

“That’s mostly why I’m squeamish.”

“Well, that’s my price. I want you to curse a man. Not a hex, not some clever-shit way to needle my mark into wishing he was a better man. I want him to meet his end. I want it done quickly, and I want it clean. You do that, and I’ll find your soul for you. Hell, I’ll even put it back in your body.”

This sounded too familiar.

“What, you’re trying to teach me a lesson or something? I’ve been around that particular racetrack already.”

“I honestly don’t care what you know or feel or think, Lake. This man has been a pain in my ass for far too long, and I am beyond whatever point of compassion I pretend to have with the people who don’t actively screw me.”

“Who’s your mark?”

“Del Carmody.”

Of course. “He’s a handful, I’ll grant you, but―”

“He’s made a career out of poaching and selling grimoires and personal dealings among the West Coast practitioners. He knows we’re all ready to shove a pentacle up his ass sideways, so he took precautions.”

“Why would he give me your name, then? He’d have to know I’d contact you. Doesn’t really follow.”

“It does if you’re the kind of man who will side with someone out of a misplaced sense of Judeo-Christian morality. Are you?”

“I’m not a murderer, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Alright. If labels are important to you, then fine. You’re not a murderer. But you are a Netherworker. Like it or don’t. You’ve tainted your soul with infernal magic.” She leaned forward slowly. “Only, you haven’t, have you?”

“Sorry?”

“Your soul? Was it on your person when you cursed Osterhaus?”

“No.”

Gillette grinned. It was unnerving as hell.

“You’re in a unique position, Lake. Your soul is elsewhere. What your body does until you locate it? Well, one doesn’t often get the opportunity to indulge in Netherwork without consequences.”

“There really has to be another way. I can get money together.”

“Carmody came to you. Specifically you. He’s slippery, and the one thing I want is for him to know he failed. That means you have to do it.”

“I’m not sure if I can even find Carmody.”

She leaned back and checked the door again. “That’s your problem.”

“Gillette. This is my soul we’re talking about here. I don’t mean for you to go fetch it for me. All I’m looking for is information.”

“I know.”

“Is this really necessary?”

The door opened with its creak and jingle. Gillette didn’t bother to turn and look, but I did. A long-haired young man stepped inside carrying a skateboard. I recognized him. It was the kid who nearly ran me over on the street.

There are moments when you realize that shit’s about to go down, and you’re utterly powerless to stop it. I was getting really damn tired of those moments.