Magie Noire
By Rurouni Star
Chapter Eight
I was not in the right mood to deal with Johnny Marcone.
I knew it even as I drove back into the city. Anger still sat like a stone in my gut, so strong it made me nauseous. I couldn't take that anger out on Victor Sells, so it went searching for another equally-deserving victim. Maybe another overly-controlling man who terrorized the people around him and liked to threaten violence when he didn't get his way.
All the painkillers had taken the edge off my headache, but I could feel it just beneath the surface, thudding at my skull. Worse — I was starting to see things. There were faint shadows crawling at the corners of my eyes. Every time I moved my gaze from my car's mirrors, I felt like the darkness behind me was shifting, sliding just out of view. Those shadows did not like me, and I sure as hell didn't like being in a car with them. It took a whole lot of willpower for me to ignore them as the subtle hallucination I knew they were.
"Meddling bitch."
The hissed words made me jerk the steering wheel in surprise. Someone honked their horn. I swerved to the side of the road and hit the brakes, my knuckles white on the wheel.
I stared into the car mirror. One of those shadows had come more fully into view now. It looked like a dark man sitting in my back seat. I couldn't make out his features — I wasn't even sure that he had any. He was a silhouette in 3D, dribbling shadows like a blurry photograph. I knew he hadn't been in the car when I first pulled out of Monica's driveway.
I pulled my gun from my shoulder holster, and turned to train it carefully on the figure in my car.
The shadow man laughed. "Meddling, but incompetent," he said. "Tell me: what are you going to do with that toy?"
Most people, when faced with a gun, show at least a little bit of wariness. The shadow man's voice dripped with contempt, though. And why should he have been afraid? He was a walking, talking shadow. My eyes were pretty clear on that point, as insane as it was. You can't shoot shadows.
"Who are you?" I asked. I kept my gun pointed at him, though some part of me knew it was useless.
"Someone beyond your power," he said. "I am a force of nature. I am the earth beneath your feet, the storm overhead. I am the darkness in every corner. You should be careful chasing shadows, Detective. You won't like what happens if you catch one."
Up until that moment, I'd been convinced I was going crazy. But weirdly, it was the gleeful, overly-poetic speech that made me discard that idea. It was so arrogant and cheesy that it had to be real. It was a carefully-rehearsed claptrap, but it still fell flat, because the speaker behind it had zero charisma and no sense of dramatic timing.
Shit, I thought. I'm trapped in my car with a dorky B-list villain.
It didn't mean he was any less dangerous. Self-important, overly-dramatic assholes drive a surprising amount of our crime rate. The movies have really given criminals a glammed-up reputation that they don't particularly deserve.
"You're behind Tommy and Jennifer's murders," I said. I might have asked a more open-ended question, but I had a feeling if I said something like what do you want, he'd just devolve into more corny speeches.
"People who play with things they don't understand deserve to get hurt," the shadow man hissed. "This is your only warning. You should learn from their mistakes."
I stared down the shadow in my back seat. I didn't know what he was capable of doing to me, right then and there. Maybe he could reach into my chest and explode my heart. Much as it injured my pride, I had to tell him at least a little of what he wanted to hear.
"Warning received," I said. Then, because I don't know when to stop, I added: "I guess I should stay away from Three-Eye, too? Will you get pissed off at me if I investigate the drugs?"
Another hiss came from the back seat, and I wondered for a second if I'd gone too far prodding him for information. But shadow man or not, this guy wasn't necessarily the sharpest tool in the shed.
"Leave the Three-Eye alone," he said. "If you get in my way, I will tear your heart from your chest."
That confirmed a bunch of my assumptions. The shadow man had killed Tommy and Jennifer. He was also behind Three-Eye. I didn't know how he was talking to me right now, but he'd put himself in a bind without realizing it. Now that I could talk to him, I could get information out of him. That made this an interrogation — a dangerous interrogation, but an interrogation nonetheless.
I knew how to run an interrogation.
"I'm terrified of you," I told him. "Why isn't Marcone scared, too?" I tried to amp up the fear in my voice. There was definitely a pounding in my heart, though I could feel myself taking control of the situation.
"Because he is a fool," the shadow man spat. "I will crush him soon enough."
The shadow man knew who Marcone was. Check. He was gunning for the mob boss. Check.
I had to phrase my next bit very carefully. This was the part of the interrogation where I had to sympathize with the suspect, make myself into a kind of ally. You had your reasons, anyone would do what you did, was the usual script.
"So Tommy Tomm was a message," I said. "And Marcone is refusing to listen. I gotta say, I don't think anyone will miss him if he dies next. You'd be doing the city a favor."
"He will die when the time is right," the shadow man said coldly. He seemed mollified by my little bit of kowtowing. Ego-stroking was going to take me far, as long as I didn't overdo it.
"Could the right time be tonight?" I joked. "I'll get a good night's sleep that way." That was a dangerous one — but I had a suspicion, and I needed it confirmed. I felt myself start to sweat, and hoped I hadn't just casually encouraged premeditated murder.
The shadow man didn't respond. I thought I felt a split-second's hesitation from him…
...and then he was gone.
I let out my breath.
"Not tonight, then," I muttered.
The smart thing to do after Marcone had started killing Three-Eye dealers would have been to kill the mobster directly. Absolutely nothing would have sent a stronger message than ending the man at the top of the food chain. But the shadow man hadn't done that — instead, he'd gone after Tommy Tomm, a man perpendicular to Marcone. His heart-exploding trick, whatever it was, had limitations. There was some reason he couldn't use it on Marcone before now, and another reason — maybe the same reason — why he couldn't kill Marcone tonight.
That gave me a little room to maneuver. Not a lot of room, especially since I didn't know what those limitations were. But it meant the shadow man was far from all-powerful, no matter what he wanted me to think.
You just interrogated a shadow, my rational brain informed me belatedly.
I groaned, and pressed my forehead to the top of my steering wheel. I'd been hoping to avoid grappling with that revelation for at least a little bit longer.
I wanted to deny it, put it all down to my headache, my previous brush with hallucinogens, the fact that I was still running on a few hours of sleep and a lot of caffeine. But I knew what I'd seen. I'd gotten real answers, though they were still vague in places. I had a voice and a personality to put to my murderer.
Marcone knows about this, I thought. All of this. He hadn't been talking in metaphors yesterday at all.
I was badly lacking in information. But Marcone had that information, and I knew the shadow man was having trouble getting at him. That meant the meeting I had with him tonight was even more important than before.
0-0-0-0
I had a few hours left before I had to be at the Varsity. I needed to use that time to calm down. Hell, I could probably do with smelling less awful, while I was at it. I decided to head home and grab a shower and a change of clothing to clear my head.
After Dad's death, Grandma Murphy had moved into our house to help take care of things. The old woman was famous for her various fantastic vices, so I'd actually be hard-pressed to tell you which one actually killed her, in the end. What I can tell you is that she died drunk, with a fresh cigarette between her lips, and probably with a dirty story on her mind. As a result, while I'd now moved back into the house in which I'd grown up, a lot of the leftover stuff was… well, outdated is a generous word. The curtains were a special kind of hellish yellow that matched the slowly withering wallpaper. I kept meaning to wash down the walls to see if half of that color was just the nicotine coating, but somehow I'd never quite found the time.
Walking into my own house after around thirty-six hours away from it did at least a little bit to ease my mind. I wanted to take a long shower, to let the heat and relaxation jog my brain, but being naked and without my gun left me feeling too exposed. I hurried up the process instead, and strapped my holster back on as soon as I could.
The shower left me feeling clean and strangely focused. I wasn't sure that was a good thing — it was the high just before a crash. I felt like I was up in the clouds, like my brain was hovering a foot above where it should have been.
The mirror was fogged up, but I saw a flash of red in it that shouldn't have been there. As I reached out to wipe at it with a towel, I saw that red rope twisted around my wrist. I stopped. My pulse jumped into my throat.
The headache I'd had all day had given way, opening up into an airy, floating sensation. I heard laughter in the walls. I saw the blurry figures of the past moving past me. My father stood behind me, staring into the mirror with a haunted expression. My mother's voice called for me from down the hall. "Karrie!" she said. "Come on upstairs, it's time!"
I stumbled out of the bathroom. The rope on my wrists chafed in more ways than one. Now that I was aware of it again, it felt like a weight on my soul. I wanted it gone, but the more I tugged at it, the tighter it seemed to get.
My mother's figure stood near the attic door. I barely remembered what she looked like without the help of old photos, but for some reason this phantom of her was clear as day, as real as if she were standing next to me. Her blond hair was longer than mine, just past her shoulders. Her eyes were an airy blue, sparkling with love and humor. She was wearing a tie-dye blouse — her favorite, I think — and bell-bottom jeans. "Let's go say hello," she said with a smile. She offered me her hand.
I blinked, and she was gone — swept away by the other memories of the house. That's what they were, I thought. Memories. Impressions left by the past.
I pulled down the attic stairs. It was a bit of a struggle against the ropes that bound my wrists, but eventually the wood creaked and the ladder descended.
The attic was dusty. I hadn't been up here since I'd first moved in. Even then, it had only been long enough to store some of my grandmother's things. I sneezed a few times as the dust swirled around me. But over in the corner, an old trunk glowed with electric energy from beneath a pile of family history. I headed toward it, feeling a strange sense of déjà vu.
I dug away the old papers and albums that currently lay atop it. Something was trying to surface. I felt it scratching at the bottom of my conscious mind.
I'd seen the trunk before. It wasn't anything special — or at least, it hadn't been anything special before. Now, though, I could smell sharp, tangy ozone coming off of it. I could see tiny sparks of electricity slithering over it in some sort of pattern.
I reached out to open it. It probably wasn't the best idea. And to be honest, if I had been in my right mind, I might not have done it. But that scratch, scratch at the bottom of my mind was insistent, and I felt like I was on the verge of understanding something of life-altering importance.
The little electrical sparks gathered warningly near my hand as I touched the trunk… but they slid off my skin like water, pacified by some unknown force. I flipped the lid to reveal the inside. It was full of old, yellowed packing peanuts. I could see a number of objects buried beneath them, wrapped in cloth.
I pulled out the first bundle. It was small and light, tied up in a black silk handkerchief. As I undid the knot, I felt another spark against my skin. The thick bracelet inside was actually made of multiple strands of silver — a careful celtic weave. It crawled with the memory of protective power. I wasn't sure how I knew that, but I did. It was a protective charm… or at least, it had been. Now it was more like an empty vessel, or a run-down battery.
I'd seen my mother wear that bracelet.
A gust of air blew through the packing peanuts as though the trunk had sneezed. I stumbled back, blinking against the shower of foam. As I moved forward to see what had caused it, I saw one of the other silk bundles, its knot half-undone. Soft blue light filtered through the fabric.
I set the bracelet aside on top of an old copy of Monopoly, and picked the other bundle, to finish undoing the knot. The black silk fell away to reveal a polished white skull. It glowed in my hand with a gentle blue light.
"What the hell?" I mumbled.
The skull's eye sockets lit up.
"Oh man, finally!" said the skull. "Hey there, kid! Long time, no see!"