CineMagic

  **

  We walked through the darkened theater, a small fire burning in one of the seats from where some shrapnel had gotten hot and into a seat. I didn't see any bodies, so at least it seemed nobody had died... in this theater. All the projectors had been in one big, central location, so when they had, y'know, exploded, pretty much all of the theaters had gotten hit.

  I had no idea how they had gotten such a big blast out of movie projectors. Gremlins are good at that. They can make machines screw up in ways that you wouldn't think about, up until your cellphone electrocutes you.

  I held Connie's little rodent skull out in front of me in my left hand, gun ready in my right. It's eyes were still glowing, and every once in awhile it did twitch a little bit in my hand when I turned it to face a certain direction, so I assumed (or maybe I should have said hoped) that it was working the way she'd described.

  “Connie's boning seems to have been a great success,” Lydia said cheerfully.

  “Don't call it that, Lydia,” I said flatly.

  “Eh? But she...”

  “It does not mean what she thinks it means,” I said very, very firmly. Lydia's deep-seated love of all things scripted entertainment meant that she'd caught up on modern language a lot faster than you'd think, but she still occasionally had problems with what was and was not innuendo. “Keeping company” made her explode in indignant rage, “boning” didn't raise an eyebrow. Something was wrong there, but the key point here was that I occasionally had to stop people from making her look silly.

  Only I'm allowed to make her look silly.

  “Very well. Her magick, then,” Lydia said, not questioning my statement. She's in on the situation, obviously. My girl knows me well.

  “Don't say it with a 'k.'”

  “Wait, how did you know I...?”

  “I can always spot the 'k',” I said firmly. The skull twitched again as I turned slightly to the left, and I started walking that way, climbing over the seats. I couldn't hear anything scratching in the walls, or any obnoxious giggling, so the gremlin was apparently not in this room. I made for the exit, Lydia hovering over my shoulder. Behind us, there was a blue flash and something made that by-now familiar “Squaaaaaaaaaaaarkz” noise.

  “Also,” I said, “after this we're gonna need to get around to shooting Connie's crazy sister at some point. I can't be constantly followed around by easily defeated specters, it will scare away potential clients.”

  “Eric, we cannot kill her. Poor Connie would be heartbroken,” Lydia chided me, flicking her fingers a few times to clear off the blue sparks.

  “Why do you assume I'm going to kill her? There are plenty of places to shoot someone where they won't die,” I said, a tad defensively.

  “Well, she has cursed you with death. That is generally something that sets off your temper,” Lydia said.

  “I'm not a monster. If I killed everyone who wanted me dead every once in awhile, I wouldn't have any friends.”

  “That... is disturbingly sound logic for you,” Lydia admitted. “Very well, I suppose I didn't give you enough credit in assuming that your preferred method of dealing with any situation is to murder it, and I apologize.”

  “Oh, no,” I said, turning right and moving down another hallway that made the skull twitch a bit more than the others. The shattered remains of a toilet that had apparently exploded through a wall convinced me more than anything that I was on the right path. “I actually am a seriously violent person. It was a totally forgivable assumption, and I understand completely.”

  “I suppose that realizing it does make it slightly better?” Lydia said, though her tone made it hard to tell if she was “saying” it or “asking” it in some vague attempt to make herself feel better. She made a lot of those attempts. I wasn't sure why.

  “Oh, hey, look! Someone seems to have used some cellphones as shuriken!” I said cheerfully, spotting some phones embedded in the wall. “I think we're getting close.”

  “I truly need to find a new career,” Lydia muttered.

  “Good luck on that. The job market is just crazy lately, even for people who are alive,” I said cheerfully. “I bet it's even worse for the ones who are non-corporeal. Sorta limits the number of jobs you can do, y'know? Even in the information age, it's a rare career path that involves touching nothing.”

  Lydia sighed. “Despite all my work, the discrimination against undead-Americans continues apace. Despair fills me indeed.”

  “Awwwwww, don't be like that. I'm sure that you'll start making progress eventually, you do have all of eternity,” I said.

  “Perhaps, but that does me little good when I spend it trapped in a barbarous career that allows me to not even have a peaceful night at the cinema,” she grumbled.

  “Oh, really now, you need to look on the bright side every so often. I mean, it's not ideal, I'll be the first to acknowledge the flaws, but it is a damn exciting way to pass the time. Look, the bone is twitching in my hand!” I said joyfully, then winced when I realized the words I'd actually used. “Dammit all, she's got me doing it now.”

  “Well, it is twitching. Connie did say that it would do so when we started getting it close to what it wants,” Lydia said brightly.

  I winced again. “Okay. Lydia. When we are done here, we are going to have another discussion on what is and isn't innuendo in modern language. And this time, I want you to pay really close attention, okay? Okay.”

  We continued our little trek, turned the corner into an open area that appeared to house a secondary concession stand, and almost died.

  The wall in front of me exploded in splinters as something unseen shredded it, showering me with wood shards and plaster dust.

  “Heeeeheehehehehehehehehehehehe!” giggled a very, very annoying voice as I leaped backwards out of the line of fire.

  “Dammit all,” I muttered, back in the hall and out of the creature's view. “I was afraid of this. Stupid thing's been luring us into a trap.”

  “Where did it acquire a firearm?” Lydia asked. “Surely nobody but you would be so boorish to bring one to a movie theater.”

  I poked my head around the corner to take a glance, and withdrew it just before the plaster on the opposite wall exploded under sustained fire. “Hehehehehehehehehehehehehehe!”

  “If I had to guess,” I growled, more out of annoyance at that stupid fucking giggle than anger at being shot at, “I would say that our little friend has set up a defensive line at the secondary concession stand, and turned the popcorn machine into some kind of Gatling gun.”

  “Eric... that makes absolutely no sense. A popcorn popper does not have the needed moving parts to form a working Gatling gun. And what would it fire?”

  I ran a finger along one of the holes in the wall, and tasted it. “Salt, fake butter... yup, it's shooting popcorn at us. Makes sense, I guess, since the gun is a popcorn machine.”

  Lydia looked at the ruined wall. “No, that does not 'make sense', Eric! That just raises further questions! How is it able to propel popcorn with sufficient velocity to pierce wood and plaster?”

  “Well, it is movie-theater popcorn.”

  “Well, that answers the question of ammunition durability, but not velocity,” Lydia admitted. “Not velocity at all.”

  “Look. Lyd. I'm not a gremlin, I'm not always gonna understand exactly how it does these things. I don't have gremlin logic. Just remember that there was a reason I wasn't looking forward to fighting the stupid thing, and now you're seeing it. God, I hate them.”

  The wall shattered in plaster dust under another buttery salvo, even as Lydia sighed in annoyance. “I suppose you have a point. What do you suggest we do, then?”

  “Well, I can't win a firefight. Its gun has way more stopping power, and its salted. That means it is both more deadly than my gun and is bad for my blood pressure,” I said. “I need some way to get its attention focused elsewhere w
hile I line up a clean shot without getting creamed.”

  “Buttered,” Lydia corrected me.

  “Oh, right, buttered, sorry,” I said. “Well, terminology aside, my point stands. We're in a situation where I can't just step out and shoot, but if I don't take a shot we're just gonna be here forever. If there were someone I could use as a decoy, maybe, but...”

  “A-hem,” Lydia said, clearing her throat very meaningfully.

  “Oooooh, good idea!” I said, after a second to ponder her meaning. See, that's why I let her come along. She's got a good head on her shoulders, even though she technically doesn't have a head or shoulders.

  Lydia stepped out into the barrage, the projectiles going through her and impacting harmlessly in the wall.

  “Hehehehehehehehehe?” came a still very annoying, but also delightfully confused chuckle, just barely audible over the lethal stream of popcorn.

  ...

  I just actually used the words “lethal stream of popcorn.”

  Yeah, we were definitely not telling people about this case.

  Act like you're hurt, or he'll stop shooting! I told Lydia in my mind as she continued to walk along. She could get about twenty feet from the pebble in my pocket before she disappeared, so she could actually divert his aim by quite a bit, but only if he actually kept aiming at her.

  “Oh! Ouch, I am struck by the cruel whims of fate! Oh dear! Oh pain! Noooo, the agony of it all!” she declared, throwing her head back in what I assumed was supposed to be agony and placing a palm across her chest to enhance the drama of the declaration.

  My jaw dropped. You watch like, twelve hours of television a day and that is the best acting you can do?

  Unlike you, Eric, I am not by nature a horrid liar, Lydia snapped in reply. Now please stop distracting me, you are ruining my performance!

  Out loud, she said, “Curse the day that destiny sent me forth into yon deadly crossfire! I can do nothing save wallow in the agony that is this moment, cut down by lethal projectiles!”

  She fell to her knees, throwing a hand across her forehead, seemingly ignoring the fact that anyone who was legitimately being hit by that many bullets would have been probably in several pieces by then.

  “Skree?” the gremlin said. It wasn't giggling anymore, so it clearly didn't know what was going on, and that meant I had my window. I hadn't gotten a clear sight of it, but I'd seen the stream of fire it had launched, and that meant I had a general location. Enough, at least, to aim quickly.

  I leaned into the clearing, weapon leveled, and finally saw the gremlin. It looked like they all did, of course. Basically humanoid appearance, two arms and two legs, but with a general body type closer to a lemur or something than a person, with long spindly limbs and slender, dextrous fingers. Despite the general form of a monkey, it did not, however, have anything like monkey-level cuteness. Scaly green skin, reptilian golden eyes, and no hair other than a big tuft of spiky yellow-white fur around its head. Nasty thing. It was crouched in the middle of a mass of glass and metal that had 'Popcorn' written on the side in big, red letters and which... somehow... was releasing a steady stream of lethal kernels.

  Somehow.

  I didn't have time for much but the most basic line-of-sight aiming, and so that's all I took. A bare second of aim, and three shots off before ducking back out of the line of fire. I didn't hit the thing... it was tiny. But I did hear the bullets sparking off metal as they slammed home into its makeshift artillery.

  And herein came the greatest weakness of gremlins. They are amazingly good with machines, yes, but their primary expertise lies not in making them work better, but in making them explode. And so, like most most machines that gremlins mess around with, even that highly effective and totally absurd cannon reacted to sudden outside pressure by going into its default state of 'kaboom.'

  I was able to cover my ears in time, but it was still loud—both the machine going ballistic, and its occupant being sent on an impromptu flying lesson. Have you ever heard the sound of a twenty-pound creature being hurled into a wall at two-hundred miles an hour? It is not a pretty sound, and yet it was somehow still music to my ears, baby. Sounded like vengeance.

  I peeked around the corner, once the debris stopped shifting. The concession stand was basically gone, a nightmarish mess of shattered glass and scattered junk food. Popcorn was embedded in the ceiling, chocolate and gremlin-gook coated the walls, the soda fountain gushed cola.

  “Dammit...” I muttered, looking at the tragic scene. So much candy, just... gone. Forever. It was a sobering sight. Also, the air was just full of the remains of the popcorn gun. I was gonna smell like fake butter for weeks.

  “Ah. As usual, you have solved the problem with an explosion. I wish I could say this surprised me, but honestly I have come to anticipate it by this point,” Lydia said.

  “We did what we had to do,” I said softly, kneeling to pick up the remains of a packet of Junior Mints. They would never be eaten, contaminated as they were by explosion and gremlin juice. The poor things. “But the losses were steep.”

  “There is something deeply wrong with your mind,” Lydia informed me.

  “Yeah,” I said, wiping away a tear. “I forgot that the concession stand in the front lobby is totally intact, and abandoned! Let's go get a snack.”

  “Eric, you have eaten roughly a pound of pure sugar this evening. How do you even have an appetite?”

  “I have a second stomach for sweets!” I said. “C'mon, let's go grab Connie and something cream-filled, and head out.”

  We walked down the halls, occasionally whistling cheerfully. “Hey, Connie! I'm back, and I blew that little bastard up real good...” I shouted, turning into the main lobby.

  Three uniformed officers met me, their guns aimed very firmly at my face and Connie on the floor handcuffed at their feet. Outside, through the swinging glass doors, I could see the lights of their parked cars, a firetruck, and an ambulance pulling into the parking lot.

  I dropped my gun without being prompted, raised my hands, and said, “And in retrospect, that last sentence I said sounded really bad out of context, didn't it.”

  “Drop the weapon and put your hands up!” one of them, a slender, and distressingly young man with olive skin shouted.

  “He already did that, Sanchez,” said the oldest of the three with the guns on me. He was a big (big as in muscles, not as in fat, which is not something you see too often in beat cops once they hit a certain age) black guy with a salt-and-pepper mustache and close-cut hair in the same shade, and unlike Sanchez, he actually seemed pretty chill considering the implications of domestic terrorism. “Forgive Sanchez. He's new at this.”

  “It's cool. Nice to see some enthusiasm, if we're being honest.”

  “Well, I...” the big guy began, before narrowing his eyes at me. “Wait. Do I know you?”

  I blinked. “Do you?”

  “Yeah... yeah. Manhattan. Five years back...” he said, his voice drifting off, “Rob? Rob Price?”

  I blinked again. That was one of my aliases, but I had about thirty so I couldn't exactly remember who met me under which one. But... Manhattan? Five years ago. That did ring some bells.

  “Oh! Ooooooh! I remember you!” I said, my face breaking into a smile. “Vince McGregor! You were on the task force for that case with the disappearing cab drivers! You caught me then, too!”

  Vince chuckled. “See you're still mixed up in weird stuff. And still not great at being subtle.”

  “It's a personality flaw,” I admitted. “I like to think I make up for it with my rapier wit.”

  “You know this guy, Griz?” said the third cop with her gun out, a thirty-something redheaded woman. Not my type, looked too much like she could bench-press me. I like my girls girly. Which made me wonder if I should give Laurie a call? She'd made it clear our dalliance was a one-time thing brought on by werewolf hormones
more than genuine interest, but I wasn't sure if you were supposed to keep in touch with your one-night stands or not. There probably is an etiquette to these things.

  Ah, well, this probably wasn't the time to worry about it. Instead, I just said, “'Griz'?”

  Vince smiled, showing off big white teeth. “Short for 'Grizzly.' Always good to remind the little fish out in the sticks that you can bite their heads off it you want.”

  “HA! I like it,” I said, my own smile widening. “But whatcha doin' up here, man? Last time I saw you, you were walking the beat in NYC!”

  “Eh... after that whole mess with you, it got harder and harder to get any joy outta city life. Wanted some fresh air. Small-town cop suits me just fine,” Vince said.

  “It wasn't that much of a mess. And I did get the thing before it ate the seventh victim,” I protested. “Given how many people live in a city, the odds of one ever coming for you were slim to none, I'm sure!”

  Even Sanchez seemed to take notice of that one. “What is he talking about, Griz?”

  “Five years ago. Got put onto a task force dealing with a string of disappearances. Abandoned cabs were being found all over the town, the drivers nowhere to be found, usually not even any sign of a struggle. We couldn't find shit,” Vince said. “Until finally, the detective on the case gets an anonymous tip that of the nine people taken, two were still alive, and they were holed up in a condemned apartment building on the west side. Stuff that only the killer could have known...”

  “Not only the killer. Someone very smart who knew what to look for could have figured it out,” I said modestly. It had been a siren. They feed by luring men to their side with a hypnotic song, then imprisoning and draining the life from them... 'life' in this case being 'bone marrow', which is why the old legends involved sailors so often. Shipwrecks do a good job of cracking people open for them. This one had been getting into cabs, mesmerizing the drivers, and taking them to her little hidey-hole. But cabbies have family too, and sometimes that family knows old stories, and people who know old stories and know they're true have a way of finding out how to hire me. This was before I had Lydia to keep my mind clear of things like that, so I'd needed to make sure the Siren couldn't focus enough to sing when I went after her. Dropping a bunch of cops on her lair had been the best distraction I could come up with, albeit not the smartest one. I was young.

  “We're rushing the place,” Vince continued. “And we kick down the last door to find five mangled corpses, what looks like a skinned chicken the size of a person, and this guy. He was covered in some kinda green slime, and he and one of the missing persons, they were carrying out another guy who was so ripped up he couldn't even walk.”

  I smiled nostalgically. “Yeah, that was a messy one. Got bird-woman gook all over me when I went in there, but whatcha gonna do? Only way to make them not regenerate is with a bronze dagger, and it has to be a dagger. No idea why. Tried bullets and they just don't work.”

  Vince shuddered. “I heard you disappeared before you could be questioned.”

  “I'm shy.”

  “But... the two guys who got out. They kept raving about monsters. Crazy stuff. But they swore you saved them.”

  “Mostly because I did,” I said. Still modestly, of course. Because I'm modest. I'm the most modest. So I win.

  “Is this some kinda joke, Griz? This guy tried to blow up a movie theater. We have to arrest him,” Rose said.

  “Hey, I didn't do anything. I blew up something that was a lot smaller than that theater and much more annoying,” I said.

  Vince sighed. “We really should at least bring you in for questioning, man, but... I won't lie. I don't really want to. Not because I like you, but... I mean... the last case I worked with you freaked me out so much I ended up moving precincts to not think about it anymore. Is that gonna happen again?”

  “Well, I am kind of in the middle of—”

  “Eric Margrave! I am the harbinger of your doom!” screamed a creature that looked vaguely like a bull made of glistening black slime; but rather than a mouth it had strange, shapeless flaps of black flesh, and its gleaming red eyes were on the tips of its horns rather than on the face. “Now, you shall suffer for your sSQUAAAAAAAARKZ.”

  As before, Lydia had dispelled the curse without much effort. But since she had been invisible before, she had to appear in order to get the job done.

  These two events combined had some... marked effects on the fine police officers of Queensbury.

  Vince, eyes wide and skin visibly paling, fired two rounds at the spot where the insubstantial curse had been before his mind processed that it was gone.

  “OHGODOHGODOHGODOHGOD...” Rose screamed, falling to her knees.

  Sanchez fainted.

  “—a thing,” I finished. Just for appearances sake.

  It was honestly a pretty normal reaction. People don't do well with stuff they don't understand, and a gun in your hand only helps so much when Hell is breaking loose right next to you in ways that your brain doesn't quite process correctly. Curses are hard to interpret with only your five senses, bluntly. I'm used to this shit, so by this point my brain knows better than to try thinking too hard about it. But for someone seeing it for the first time? I'm surprised that Sanchez was the only one who passed out.

  “What the fuck was that?” Vince snarled.

  “Would... you believe that it was the magic of cinema?” I asked.

  “You,” Vince said, pointing at my face. Which was rude, but he was doing it with his gun so I didn't want to question it. Especially since he seemed to be trembling.

  “Um, yes?”

  “I am not moving again. My family likes it here. My wife says the fresh air helps her headaches,” he informed me.

  “Good... for her?” I said a bit doubtfully.

  “You get the fuck out of here. You take her, and all your other freak things. And I never want to see you again,” he said, his tone making it perfectly clear he would brook no arguments on this subject, even if anyone had been mentally capable of offering them.

  “Okee-dokee!” I said, knowing better than to look a gift horse in the mouth. “Oh, by the way, there's a hallway down there that's full of projectile popcorn and what looks like it might be the goo from something small and alive with green blood exploding...”

  “Just get out!”

  I picked up my gun, grabbed Connie by the ear, and left. Not because I was scared of him or anything. I was just being socially responsible, helping the police out. Yes, that is the truth.

  God, I wasn't gonna be able to tell anyone about this stupid case.