The Curse Servant (The Dark Choir Book 2) (4 page)

Now all I had to do was find the damn thing. But I was already exhausted, and my patience with the hunt had lost all of its charm. I closed up the cabinet and decided to leave that chore for another day. I turned and took a seat at my work table, instead, to review Carmody’s end of the bargain.

I opened Carmody’s envelope and slid out a couple sheets of paper. The information was hand-typed on an old-school typewriter; the letters were embossed into the paper. Carmody was definitely a throw-back. His information was concise. A name: Quinn Gillette. A phone number. A post office box in Portland, Oregon. The second sheet was a paragraph that basically summed up what Carmody had already told me.

Gillette specialized in soul magic. There was no information about her training or affiliations. I was aware the West Coast was far more permissive than the East, the Presidium’s sphere of control still being roughly geographical. The practitioners in the West enjoyed a more liberal environment to ply their trade. I had managed to keep my practice clean, and until recently avoided unwanted attention from the Presidium. Practitioners less interested in playing Russian roulette with the Presidium tended to hang their shingles elsewhere. Thus, I cornered a bit of the market. That was the plan, anyway.

Gillette, it seemed, had seen fit to create a servitor, or a cognizant thoughtform. Thoughtforms were generally short-lived and limited in their abilities. The more intense the focus and intent, the stronger the thoughtform. But nothing so intangibly rendered could last for very long. Gillette’s solution? Soul magic. She had shaved off a shard of her own soul in order to power her servitor. It was old, dark magic. Netherwork. The kind of thing the Presidium black-bagged people for.

Fortunately for Gillette, the Presidium didn’t have the resources to police every slice of Netherwork in the Pacific Northwest. Unfortunately for Gillette, her servitor developed a will of its own and went AWOL. This was where her entire misadventure became relevant to my particular predicament. She managed to locate that little shard of soul and incorporate it back into her own. As a man on the hunt for his own soul, I was keenly interested in how she accomplished this feat.

I stepped upstairs to make the phone call. The combination of underground walls and hermetic wards made phone reception next to impossible in my work space. The phone rang four times until it rolled to one of those generic “‘insert number here’ is not available” voice mail prompts. That was disappointing. I still had no read on her age or personality, so I had no idea how to address her. When the time came to leave a message, I had to think fast.

“Quinn Gillette? My name is Dorian Lake. I was given your name…” I thought twice about implicating Carmody. Volunteering his identity would have been a professional discourtesy. “…regarding soul magic. I have some questions I’d like to ask you when you get a moment.” I left her my number, keeping it brief.

And I was left with the rest of my day.

I made a call to order some sandwiches for Saturday, and when I hung up, my phone rang immediately. Oregon area code.

“Hello?”

A smoke-scratched voice answered, “You’re Dorian Lake?”

“Gillette?”

“What do you want?”

Charming.

“Yes. If you have some time, I’d like to discuss some matters of a hermetic nature with you.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“I’m sorry?”

“You have the wrong person. Goodbye.”

“You’re not a practitioner?”

“I don’t even know what that means.”

“Oh. I apologize. I was lead to believe―”

“And if I were, I wouldn’t discuss such matters on the phone.”

Ah.

“Then… if one were to put down such questions in writing and mail them to Post Office Box 1563, Portland, Oregon?”

After a long silence, she replied, “Because matters of a delicate subject are better put in an easily intercepted envelope?” She sighed loudly into her phone. “I’m between projects right now. If you’re in the area on Monday, I’ll be available for about an hour at midday.”

“I’m afraid I’m nowhere near the area. I’m in Baltimore.”

“Then best of luck.”

“Wait! I mean, Monday? You can meet face-to-face, is what you’re saying?”

“Twelve to one. I’m having lunch at the Green Tree on Columbia. That’s west side. Be there or don’t, your call.”

She hung up.

The entire conversation was unnervingly familiar. Her palpable sense of suspicion, her churlish brevity. It was like talking to Emil.

Two things were clear to me by the time I returned to my work space. The first being that Gillette had made some powerful enemies in her lifetime. Her encompassing paranoia was obviously defensive. She had learned hard lessons in her years of Netherwork, and probably had become increasingly defensive as time progressed.

And the second? I was going to have to book a flight to Portland if I wanted any useful information from Gillette. Last minute plane tickets weren’t cheap, and my bank account wasn’t as flush as I liked. I had traded the feast-or-famine income of a private hex peddler to the steady-yet-meager income from Julian. It kept the coffee flowing in the mornings, but unexpected expenses weren’t as easy to absorb as they once were.

Carmody must have known how uncooperative Gillette would be. Collateral, indeed.

Once again, I was faced with an open day. It was a little late to go to the café. I suspected Ches would still be working, but it would be busy with the lunch rush soon enough, and she wouldn’t be able to chat. By the time I envisioned Edgar sitting on my shoulder with a pitchfork urging me to go anyway, I resolved to find some work.

I pulled up my Hit List for the week, the list of business contacts from voice mail and email which I had to pore through every Monday. Here it was Friday, and I had yet to touch it. One benefit to working on salary for Julian was that I could be more discerning in whom I took on for hexes and charms. After weeding out the bitter divorcees and jilted cheaters, I landed on the name Ari Leibnitz. I gave Mr. Leibnitz a call and made a lunch date.

I drove past the café on my way into downtown, and spotted Ches hauling out a serving tray of salads into the outdoor seating. Her curly chestnut hair was pinned up over her ears, and spilled down the back of her head. That was all I really caught before I had to slam on the brakes to keep from bumping into the Cadillac in front of me. I was immeasurably grateful Edgar wasn’t there to see that.

The food carts down Baltimore Avenue were belching out the savory fumes of barbeque and Thai and whatever else the brilliant bastards inside those trucks were concocting. Men and women in business suits spilled out of the skyscrapers, rushing into vicious lines for their thirty minute fix, each peeling away with a take-out box of pure guilt and eyeing one another in their secret pact of culinary misgiving. Ari Leibnitz found me as I took a place in the barbeque line. He was a portly fellow, about five-five, with very thick glasses and about the most laughable comb-over I’d seen since London.

“Mister Lake?”

“The one and only. Mr. Leibnitz, I presume?”

He nodded bashfully.

“How did you spot me?” I asked, more than half-interested as I hadn’t described myself to him.

“We’ve met. I didn’t say anything on the phone, but we spoke once at an event. In March?”

I vaguely remembered attending a fund-raiser in March for Sullivan to placate Julian. But I was reasonably certain he wasn’t high enough on anyone’s food chain to merit notice from the Presidium.

“I see. So you need a hex?”

Leibnitz ducked his head and looked side-to-side. “Should we…?”

“Don’t sweat it, Mr. Leibnitz. We’re not selling state secrets, here.” He stood stiffly next to me as I advanced in line. “Lunch is on me. You like pulled pork?”

He gave me an uncomfortable look, and I took the hint. Stepping out of line, I ushered him aside to a shaded ledge of a concrete planter well away from the lunch rush.

“Listen, you need to understand a few things,” I began as he dusted off the concrete and took a seat beside me. “What I do is perfectly legal. Most people don’t even believe in what I do. Ask the average pencil-pusher in one of these buildings, and they’d tell you you’re throwing your money down a rat hole. Snake oil, they’d say. There’s no such thing as magic.”

“But is there?”

“That’s the question, isn’t it? You obviously believe in magic. Enough to call me, at least.”

“I talked to someone. They mentioned your name.”

“Sounds about right. I don’t advertise. Everything I do is on referral. Who dropped my name, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“I… wouldn’t be comfortable with that.”

“Fair enough. But you’re nervous, and I wanted you to know there’s nothing illegal or even unethical in the services I offer.”

“How can you say that?”

“Hmm?”

“You hex people.”

“Right. I don’t suppose you’re fully aware of what, exactly, a hex is?”

“A curse?”

“Wrong. That’s something totally different. Curses are damage. Pure and simple, they’re hatred turned into lasting, permanent damage. And they’re powered by dark forces. A hex, on the other hand, is an engineered consequence. You may or may not believe in karma, but I power all of my workings on it. See, I believe there’s a Cosmos, and maybe not so much an intelligence, but a sheer force of Nature that governs it. A set of principles. A person lives a life that’s selfless and beneficial to the Cosmos, that person gains upon himself a certain… let’s call it gravity. A person goes the other way? Let’s just say the Cosmos has something in store for that person. So what I do is tap into karmic gravity. If someone does you wrong, I coax the Cosmos into delivering their karma ahead of schedule.”

“Do you sell curses as well?”

I squinted. “No.”

That was technically accurate. I had never actually sold a Nether Curse. In fact, I had only ever fired one curse in my entire life, and I was damn lucky the Presidium hadn’t dropped my body into the Chesapeake Bay for it.

“How do we proceed with this hex, then?” he asked.

“Right. Well, there are ways of doing this. A hex is a consequence. He does A, then B happens in response. And there’s an exit strategy. When this person decides to stop hurting you, the hex goes away. It’s clean. It’s fair. It’s legal. And you’re not compelled to believe me at all. All you have to do is pay the fee. I do the rest.”

Leibnitz released a tense breath and rubbed the folds on the back of his neck.

“That’s actually a relief.”

“So who’s the particular thorn in your side?”

“His name is Jacobs.” He left it at that.

“And?”

“He just made partner.”

“Lawyer?”

He looked up at the skyscraper behind us. A large bronze plaque spelled “Grey & Lisle” just above the rows of glass doors at street level. I had heard the name before, mostly on sponsor banners at local events. They were one of the big tower firms on the East Coast, but beyond that I knew very little.

“And you were in line to be partner?”

“Oh no. No, I’m just… no.”

“Okay?”

“I’m a certified accountant. And as such, I was made privy to certain inaccuracies.”

“Inaccuracies? I’m thinking in the whirlwind world of accounting and corporate law those aren’t exactly business builders?”

“You’d be surprised. No, these were internal errors. Only, they weren’t errors. They were quite intentional, and my purpose is to report these.”

“To Mr. Jacobs?”

“No. To the senior partners. It was Jacobs who created the parallel ledger.”

“Okay, you lost me.”

He waved his hands in front of his face. “Don’t worry about the details. If you don’t need them, you won’t want them.”

“Fair enough.”

“The point is he defended himself, and won.”

“You lost your job?”

“Heavens no. But he made partner shortly after.”

“And?”

“And that’s it.”

Holy crap, this guy was actually gunning for justice. “You just want it brought to light?”

“He’s a bad man, Mister Lake. Just trust me. He shouldn’t win. He just shouldn’t win.”

I gave Leibnitz a long look and felt humble. “Sounds like we can do business, Ari.”

“Good. What’s your price?”

“Five thousand.”

“Done. What do you need?”

“Well, I need a piece of Jacobs.” He blanched a little. “Don’t worry. I mean a piece of his energy. His person. Hair is good. Blood is better.” I didn’t mention that my typical marital infidelity clients tended to provide semen.

“I think I can do that.”

“Great. Call me when you have whatever you have, and I’ll arrange a pickup. Something like this can be a one-day turnaround.”

Leibnitz seemed almost excited by the time we parted company. The meeting was good for me. I had grown considerably more jaded within my own practice in the past six months. I’d almost forgotten there were people out there who needed real help. And even then, this particular accountant wasn’t looking for help or revenge as much as a real sense of justice. It felt like a good hot shower.