The Curse Servant (The Dark Choir Book 2) (12 page)

The skateboarder lingered across the shop from the elderly man still thumbing through his paperback. He was my life vest. As long as he was here, I suspected they wouldn’t jump me.

“Friend of yours?” I whispered.

“No, and neither is grandpa.”

The skateboarder cracked his knuckles.

The old man looked up just in time to see him hoist his skateboard into the air and swing it in a swift, savage arc into his face. His nose crunched and a spray of blood misted the nearby bookshelves. His body tumbled backward in her chair as the skateboarder pulled a silver blade from his baggy shorts. Two stabs and he was done.

The barista sighed and swept around his bar with a handful of towels.

“Dammit, Gillette,” he grumbled as he moved to mop up the pool of blood forming on the hardwood.

The skateboarder dead bolted the front door and twisted the front blinds closed.

I clenched my jaw and finally released the breath I hadn’t realized I was holding, glancing over to Gillette who hadn’t looked away from me once.

“Christ,” I spat.

“You’re never going to be rid of them,” she stated matter-of-factly.

“Who?”

The skateboarder approached with something in his hand. He dropped it onto the table directly in front of Gillette, who poked at it with a folded napkin. It was a charm on a gold chain. The Eye of Providence.

“He was Presidium?” I muttered, rubbing my eyes.

“They’re willing to follow you all the way to Portland. Imagine how far up your asshole they’ve already crawled when you’re in Baltimore.”

“You had to kill him?”

“The Presidium doesn’t have the muscle to police us out here. They want you to think so, but they don’t. And we’ve been enjoying a kind of Cold War since the late 1860’s. Things were actually fairly quiet for the last couple decades. Then you show up.”

“You can’t blame me for this.”

She folded the charm into her napkin and pocketed it. “I wanted to you to see how things are, Lake. How they really are, in a world that isn’t insulated and artificial. This is what we live. This is how we survive. When people like you and Carmody run and hide under the Presidium’s skirt, it doesn’t exactly impress us.”

“I’m not going to curse Carmody, Gillette.”

She blinked rapidly, then sighed. “So, if that’s a deal-breaker for you, and it looks like it is, then I guess we’re done here.”

I stood up. The skateboarder didn’t flinch. Nothing about me seemed to register as a threat to him or Gillette. I hadn’t felt that small in a long time.

Gillette shrugged and picked up her reader again.

By the time I reached the front door, the barista had expended all of his towels, and the blood was still spreading. He gave me a miserable look before returning to the back for more. The skateboarder trotted up beside me and unbolted the door.

Gillette called over her shoulder, “When the shadows start coming for you, you have my number. Try not to hold out too long.”

I stepped out into the fresh air of the street. The door closed and bolted behind me. The tiny bookstore seemed to simply melt into the other innocuous stoops along Columbia Street.

So there it was. I had come to the brink of finding my soul, and all I had to do was one more curse. One curse without consequence, without damning my soul. If Gillette were to be believed, it seemed that Carmody had made this bed.

As I called a cab, I had serious doubts that I would be the one to lay him in it.

spent most of the week thinking about Carmody, despite my best efforts otherwise. My brain continued to wander down the path of justification Gillette had provided for me. I had no soul at the moment. Whatever my body did while it was away was effectively karma-free. Or was it? There was no guarantee the Cosmos didn’t hold my chips regardless of my soul’s disposition, and what few texts in Emil’s Library dedicated to soul magic offered me little clarity on the subject.

But even if I could curse a man with impunity, would I? Had Carmody actually deserved it? Did that even matter at this point? I had certainly appointed myself judge, jury, and executioner for Osterhaus. Why would this circumstance be any different? Granted it would be a moot decision unless I could acquire a piece of Carmody. Until that point, I had little to act upon. Still, the struggle proved to be an ongoing distraction.

The next day, I delivered a few gallons of interior latex paint for my property manager, Abraham Carter, when I passed a new sign staked up by the corner of Fayette and Carrollton.
Another urban revitalization project from McHenry Construction
. The sign displayed a series of modern mixed use structures resembling glass and steel townhomes. There were restaurants and a large fountain surrounded by cobblestones. The words
The Manor at Carrollton
swished across the top of the sign in labored cursive.

I found Abe sitting on his porch, staring across the street blandly. He hopped to his feet when I pulled up to my rental properties, and he made it to the Audi before I could even try to carry the paint up to his porch for him.

“Afternoon, Mr. Lake,” he whistled through his false teeth. “Mighty nice of you to bring me this paint.”

“Don’t sweat it.”

It was a poor choice of words. The sun was high and oppressive, and Abe’s skin glistened with countless bubbles of sweat breaking into one another.

He hobbled up the front walk to his porch and sat the gallons of paint on the old boards.

“You want some lemonade?”

“Nah.”

“Aw, come on now. It’s hotter’n shit out here today.”

He was right. Also, he made monster lemonade.

We took a seat on his porch rockers and sipped as we rocked. There was a bizarre calm to the moment, and I realized how a man like Abe could live his entire life without a plan. All he had to do was sit and drink lemonade. A clutch of shirtless men huddled on a stoop across the street. Every now and then they would shoot us a dirty look, and one of them even circled my car.

“They out of work,” Abe commented without really looking at me.

“Not surprised.”

“Nothin’ better to do but sweat and talk, I suppose.”

I spotted Lakeisha, Abe’s next-door neighbor and one of my more vocal tenants, dancing up the street to something on her ear buds. She paused long enough to spot my car, and then me sitting on Abe’s porch.

“Hey, what’s up D-Lake?”

“Just catching up on all of the nothing I was planning to do this week.”

“Hey,” she shouted as she turned up Abe’s walk. “You gonna sell or what?”

“Sell what?”

“Yeah.”

“Huh?”

“You gonna sell?” she spat with a kick of her hip.

“What am I selling, Lakeisha?”

“Our homes. You ain’t selling them, are you?”

I blinked and shook my head. “Wasn’t planning on it.”

I caught a glimpse of Abe releasing a held breath beside me.

“That’s good ‘cause I was gonna come slash your tires or something if you did.”

“Oh, thanks.”

“But you ain’t, so we’re all good.”

The Dumont brothers, the tenants living next to Lakeisha, poked their heads out from their tiny fenced yard.

“Hey, Lakeisha,” Tyrel bellowed. “That Lake over there?”

“Yeah, hon!”

The two men trotted around the hurricane fencing and up Abe’s front walk, and I suddenly had an impromptu tenant meeting on my hands. Tyrel and Jamal Dumont were huge men. I was pretty sure they lifted weights, but I had never really had more than three sentences’ worth of conversation with them.

Tyrel threw his massive hands on his hips. “Yo, Lake. What’s this shit about selling these houses?”

“Where the hell is this coming from? Who said I was going to sell?”

Abe shifted in his rocker as he set down his glass. “Men came from the big retail project, knockin’ on doors. One of them left this.” He pulled a folded envelope from his shirt pocket.

I thumbed it open and gave it a quick read.

McHenry Construction letterhead.

“Why did they give this to you? This was supposed to get mailed to me directly. They shouldn’t be bothering you with this.”

I realized my tone was a touch stronger than I had intended. Both Abe and Lakeisha looked away as the Dumonts bristled.

“Sorry,” I muttered. “Guess Joey McHenry’s too cheap to bother with fucking stamps.” I looked over to Abe. “Why didn’t you call me about this?”

“Figured they called you already.”

“They hadn’t. First I’m hearing about it.”

Lakeisha squirmed a little. “So, you still not selling, right?”

“No. I’m not selling the properties. Especially to this dick-whistle.” I finished my lemonade quickly and stood up. The Dumonts didn’t seem inclined to move out of the way. “Seriously, guys. I intend on being your shitty landlord for another ten years, minimum.”

Tyrel gave me the tiniest of grins and stepped aside.

As I approached my car, the crew from across the street stood up together and started moving toward it. I fished my keys out of my pants quickly, but there wasn’t enough time to keep this from turning into a scene. The first shirtless gentleman stood in front of my car, setting his foot onto the front bumper.

I shrugged at them. “Guys, really?”

“Nice car,” his friend offered.

“Thanks. I’m going now.”

“Sure about that?”

I never carried weapons. I didn’t believe in them. My personal wardings were generally enough to scoop my ass out of danger when I needed them. Though I had to admit in a situation like this one, gnostic hermeticism wasn’t as useful as a bodyguard.

“Look, I own these properties across the street. I’m just meeting with my tenants.”

“Oh, we know who you are, Money.” He smirked at the others. “See, if we owned shit like that, we figured we’d have plenty carrying-around cash, know what I’m saying?”

Fuck. This was going to turn into a mugging right in front of my tenants. Not what I needed.

A voice boomed from the front of the hurricane fence. “Yo, what’s up?”

The thugs turned to find Tyrel and Jamal trotting up to my car. They gathered back into a line as the Dumonts eased up next to me.

“Problem here, Mister Lake?” Tyrel declared.

“No. Just chatting with your neighbors, T.”

The second thug clicked his teeth and postured. “Best step away.”

Jamal lifted his t-shirt to reveal a handgun tucked into his shorts.

The thugs backed away several steps.

I took advantage of the pause to jump into the Audi, but not before mouthing a “thank you” to Tyrel and Jamal. I watched as the clutch of thugs moved back across the street in my rearview mirror.

On the way around the block to my house, I wondered if McHenry even knew who all of the property owners were. Perhaps one of his employees had a list of names. It was possible he had no idea I was in his way.

And oh sweet Jesus, was I about to be a pain in his ass!