The Curse Servant (The Dark Choir Book 2) (47 page)

“Is this Dorian Lake?”

“Yes it is, Mister Jacobs. Thank you for returning my call.”

“What do you need, Mister Lake?”

“I understand you have extra free time on your hands these days.”

A long pause. “What do you want?”

“I have information for you, Mister Jacobs. Information regarding your recent spate of bad luck.”

“I don’t have time for this.”

“You’ve been hexed, Jacobs. Trouble sleeping? Even worse trouble down below? Sound familiar? Listen, you can choose to blow me off, or you can listen to me and learn how to lift this hex. The choice is yours.”

After an even longer pause, he answered, “What does that even mean?”

“It means you can get your life back. Your job. Your good name. Well, as good as it ever was. I mean, there’s a reason the Cosmos has been giving you a good beating. You’ve been naughty.”

“Who are you, Mister Lake? What is this about?”

“I’m the one who hexed you, Jacobs. And there’s a way out. All I need from you is a little information.”

“What kind of information?”

“I understand your firm represents a certain Joey McHenry, Sr.?”

cHenry shot me a smug grin as he stepped into the flimsy paneled construction trailer parked beside the recently demolished stamp factory on the far end of the Carrollton Manor site. A neatly dressed young woman accompanied him, lugging a fat valise. She set the case on the table and immediately began pulling out documents. Meanwhile, McHenry had taken position across the table from me.

I stood up and offered him a hand. To his credit, he shook it.

“Mister Lake.”

I nodded, and we both took a seat. His assistant was already sliding papers in front of us. This was a well-oiled machine.

“And how have you been?” he added, pulling a pen from his jacket.

“Keeping busy, you know.”

“That I do.”

I bobbed my head at the assistant. “Mind if he and I speak privately?”

McHenry looked up at me and blinked. After a quick moment of consideration, he nodded to her. She hovered over her papers with an annoyed scowl, and finally left us alone in the trailer.

“So,” McHenry began with a pluck of joviality, “you’re about to become a very wealthy man. How does that feel?”

“I’d feel happier if I could get a decent single-malt for less than eighty dollars.”

“Your perspective may change on that point very shortly.”

I pulled out a thick brown clasped envelope. It was the same envelope McHenry had presented to me several weeks ago. “I doubt that, but I appreciate the sentiment.”

“Tell me something, as I’m curious. What precisely changed your mind?”

“About?”

“Selling.”

“I suppose I just decided to get over myself and do the right thing.”

He chuckled. “That’s good to hear. I’ll have to admit something to you, Mister Lake. I’ve always admired your tenacity. Your dogged, sometimes insufferable vanity. I like that. I value that.”

“What, vanity?”

“Absolutely. Here’s a secret I’d like to tell you. It’s a nugget of business wisdom I learned a long time ago, and if I had learned it earlier, I’d be a far more successful man.”

I shrugged. “Go ahead.”

“They say humility is a virtue. Well, my secret it this. Humility is for the weak and the worthless. There’s no benefit to convincing yourself you don’t matter. You believe that, then you’ll never rise above.”

“Interesting. I suppose not everyone is interested in rising above, though.”

“This is true. Thankfully people like you and me have higher ambitions.”

“Such as City Hall?”

He smiled and shrugged. “Politics isn’t so different from construction. Both take planning and patience.”

I pulled out the documents from the envelope and gave McHenry a grin. “I can’t sell you my properties, McHenry.”

His face froze, then he chuckled. “What’s that now?”

“I’ve sold them to other interested parties.”

“You’ve sold?”

“The interested parties being the tenants.”

His grin finally melted. “You sold your properties to your tenants? Are you insane?”

“An argument could be made.”

“How could they even―”

“Special program courtesy of Mayor Sullivan. Oh, and Congress. But it was his initiative, meant to keep this exact transaction from screwing people out of their homes.”

McHenry sneered, then gathered up the papers in front of us, balling some of them up and shoving them back into his assistant’s valise.

“For a moment,” he grunted, “I thought you had finally snapped out of it. You just threw away a fortune.”

“Why are you acting so pissed? I saved you money by doing this.”

He paused and sighed. “We’re done here.”

McHenry grabbed the valise and turned for the door.

“We’re not, actually. And you’re going to want to sit down.” He pretended not to hear me, so I added, “Five hundred and sixty-six thousand dollars’ worth of unpaid taxes, Joey?”

He froze.

“Well, unpaid because you dodged them. There’s a good way to do that, and then there’s the way you actually did it, which, it turns out, is pretty damn illegal.”

McHenry turned slowly to me, murder alive all over his face.

I gestured for the chair. “Sit. Let’s talk.”

He glared at me for a minute, then finally set the valise down and took a seat. This time it was my turn to pass papers over to McHenry.

“Improperly reported market values on properties, Joey? You’re looking at Federal time for that.”

His eyes skimmed over the documents Jacobs had copied for me. “Where did you get this?”

“From someone who needed a booster shot to their karma.”

I gave him a few minutes to review the documents to be sure I wasn’t bluffing him. When he leaned back in his chair and rubbed his eyes, I recognized that he knew I wasn’t.

“What is this going to cost me?”

“Believe it or not, I don’t want your money. I don’t want to have to declare it on my W-2, and failing to do that would be wrong.”

“You little prick! You think you’re going to muscle me with some bullshit accounting? Do you have any idea what Hell I can make your life?”

“I’m actually very familiar with the Hell you can make my life, McHenry. But I don’t think you fully understand the Hell I can visit on your head. Remember what I am.”

McHenry smirked. “Two can play that game.”

“You’re referring to Miss Baker?”

His smirk vanished.

“You think you did your research, don’t you? You think Del Carmody was the kind of person who looks to rise above? You trusted he would put you together with someone who could keep me occupied? Francesca Baker was a novice. In the end, she came to me to fix what she had broken. Want to know where Carmody is right now? If he isn’t dead already, he’s in the hands of people who will make him pray for death. So, you say vanity is a virtue? I’m the last one standing, McHenry. Maybe you should try a little humility for a change?”

His face paled. “What do you want?”

“You’re going to pull your endorsement of Sooner. We only have a few weeks left until the election, but I suspect that without your support and your machine, Sullivan is going to kick Sooner’s ass from here to Dundalk.”

McHenry shook his head. “That’s it?”

“It’s enough.”

He stared at the table. “Done.”

I stood up and tossed the empty envelope onto the stack of papers in front of McHenry. “You can keep those copies for your personal records.”

“That’s twice in one conversation you refused my money, Lake.”

“I suppose that’s true.”

“Don’t you care?”

“A man once told me if I make the desires of the flesh my focus, then I’ll succumb to them. I’m trying to focus on the things that are a little more permanent.”

McHenry stared at me, and I realized there was simply nothing left to say. I took my leave of the trailer and stepped carefully past the bricks strewn across the muddy landscape that used to be a city block of Baltimore. When I reached the curb, I found a long black limo sitting across the street. A large man exited the driver’s door and crossed to my sidewalk.

It was Reginald, Wexler’s thug.

I stopped mid-step and watched as the rear window rolled down revealing Wexler’s tight grin. Reginald stood at my elbow, and instead of causing a scene, I decided to approach the limo.

“Meeting with McHenry, Lake?” Wexler purred.

“Tying up old business.”

“You were warned, Lake. You were warned not to involve yourself with this election.”

“And I haven’t lifted a finger to campaign for Sullivan.”

“There’s campaigning, and then there’s campaigning.”

I shook my head. “I didn’t use magic.”

“Is that a fact?”

“If this man was stupid enough to let someone like me stumble over his cowboy accounting, then he deserves what he gets.”

“Now, Mister Lake, we both know you didn’t precisely ‘stumble upon’ anything. More accurately, you used a hex to leverage a key individual into unseating this information. So, let’s be honest. You did use magic to interfere with this election.”

“I suppose that depends on how you look at it.”

She laughed and looked forward thoughtfully. “This affair with Quinn Gillette has concluded?”

“It has.”

“I need not tell you how awkward the
verum inviolata
was for my associates. A great deal of inconvenience, all around.”

“I suppose I should thank you people for not finding a way to side-step it.”

Wexler’s brows lifted in amusement. “There were ample opportunities.”

“So why did you play ball, then?”

“It was suggested that you were poised to eliminate a particularly noisome entity, and in doing so would show your quality to our organization.”

“Gillette did the heavy lifting.”

“That’s not how I understand it.”

I nodded. It was profoundly unsettling to receive a compliment from the Presidium, no matter how back-handed.

“At any rate,” Wexler continued, “it would behoove you not to attempt such manipulations in the future. They may not be viewed with quite the same indulgence.”

“Understood.”

Wexler rolled up her window, and Reginald gave me a curt nod before disappearing back into the limo. The car pulled away, leaving me on the side of the street looking over the demolished city block.

I pulled my phone and dialed a number.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Ches. It’s Dorian.”

“Hey.” After a long pause, she added, “How’s Elle?”

“Better. Listen, I have something I need to tell you.”

“Here it comes,” she mumbled.

“Here what comes?”

She exhaled into the phone. “The whole ‘we never talked about our emotions’ speech that you’ve probably rehearsed for a week now. I only say that because I’ve been rehearsing, too.”

A grin crept onto my face. “Oh, really?”

“How long is yours? I got mine down to a minute-twenty.”

I chuckled. “Actually, I wanted to talk about Gillette.”

Long silence. I had her attention.

“You’re safe, Ches. And your family.”

“Okay?”

“She’s willing to forgive. Maybe not forget. But there’s a condition.”

“Oh, God,” she sighed. “Alright, what’s her pound of flesh?”