“Dotes on his daughter,” Amanda said.
“Yes, he talks about her all the time.”
“The Eleventh Planet is run by two college kids,” Amanda said. “They host card games and have a tip jar on the counter. I’d be surprised if they have two nickels to rub together.”
“The thing I don’t understand is why,” Cole said. “The building’s kind of old and the location is great for us, but it’s not exactly Central Market Lane.”
“Have you noticed anything unusual?” I asked. “Strange behavior from the other owners, odd magic?”
“Unusual?” Amanda shook her head. “Well, Vasil isn’t here today. I suppose that’s unusual. He’s usually here like clockwork. A very nice man.”
“Do you think they’ll come after us?” Cole asked.
“It’s a possibility,” Jim said.
Amanda sighed. Her shoulders drooped. “God, if it’s not one thing, it’s the other. You know, even with all of the things that go on, I never worried about magic. I mostly worry about traffic accidents.”
Cole put his arm around his wife again.
I handed him a card with my name and phone number. “If something strange does happen, please call me.”
• • •
STEVEN Graham turned out to be a spare man in his forties. He looked like a bicycle enthusiast, his body toned, his frame narrow, and his movements economical, as he stood behind a counter, the wall behind him lined with sample box sizes and price stickers. The lone courier remaining in the office, on other hand, looked more like a doorman in some nightclub. Big, broad shoulders, chest slabbed with muscle. He gave Jim an I’m-a-bigger-man stare. Jim looked at him for a moment. The courier crossed his arms on his chest. Ha-ha.
When we were young, we could hide behind tables and chairs when threatened. But once we reached five, that behavior wasn’t acceptable anymore, so we folded our arms on our chest, forming a barrier and protecting vital organs. Judging by the courier’s clenched teeth and fists, he was building one hell of a barrier between himself and Jim. That’s right. My Jim is scary. It won’t help you, anyway.
“Shipping or notice?” Steven Graham asked.
“Neither,” I said, while the courier and Jim looked at each other. The place smelled like packing supplies: cardboard and glue. Plastic tape had become too expensive a while ago and now the boxes were sealed with homemade paper tape dipped in glue made by blending cornstarch with boiling water. That’s exactly what I smelled, and tons of it.
“I’m a relative of Ida Indrayani, who owns the salon in this building. She was magically attacked, and we’re looking into who might be responsible.”
Steve took a step back. “Is she okay?”
“She’s fine for now,” Jim said.
“What the hell is this world coming to?” Steve shook his head. “Was it a sexual assault?”
What? “No,” I said. “It was a magical assault.”
“I keep telling my daughter, you have got to carry Mace. There are perverts and murderers in this world, but what are you going to do? You can’t send children to school in a tank. What happened to basic human kindness? You know, the good things.” Steve waved at the courier. “You can stop scowling, Robbie. Excuse him. We got robbed a year ago. He’s my security. He’s here to look scary.”
“And if things get serious?” Jim asked.
Robbie flexed his chest at him. Oh you silly, silly man.
“Stop that.” Steve waved at him.
“We’re were wondering if you received any offers to sell this property,” I said.
“As a matter of fact, I have. Some lunatic offered me a lot of money for it.” Steve shrugged. “I would’ve taken it, too. My kid wants to go to TCU. Forty grand per year. For-ty. I wrote them back, but I never got a reply. I think it was a bogus offer. The amount of money was outrageous for these premises.”
“If you received a notice, you may be a target as well,” Jim said.
“Well, that’s just great. Fantastic.” Steve shook his head. “Because it’s not enough my people get assaulted on the street, now this, too. One of my guys was riding by a fence last month and it sprouted teeth and tried to eat him. Ruined his back wheel.”
“Do you have any idea who might be wanting this building or why?”
Steve shrugged. “Who knows? Sicko idiots are everywhere. This is what happens when people stop living right. You know, you’ve got to be eating clean. You’ve got to take care of your body. It’s about your carbon and magical footprint. I’ve been here eight years. I’m the oldest business in the building and I’ve got to tell you, it’s nothing special.”
“Thank you for your time.”
“Sure, sure.” Steve pulled a card from the holder and offered it to us. “Think of us if you need to ship something.”
We went outside. “Sexual assault?” I raised my eyebrows.
“He has a daughter. He’s probably constantly worried she’ll get assaulted,” Jim said.
We strolled down to Eleventh Planet.
“You’ve made a weird face,” Jim said.
“I was picturing that guy inside the shop on a bicycle. I can’t do it. But I can picture him with a club in his hand just fine.”
“Imagine that,” Jim said.
“Speaking of weird faces, you smiled in the chiropractor’s office!”
Jim shook his head. “I don’t remember that.”
“I saw it! I was there. It happened, Jim.”
His eyebrows furrowed. His face turned so grim, that if he attempted to smile, it would probably crack and shatter into pieces. “You must be mistaken.”
“Jim!”
He smiled at me. It was a brilliant, dazzling smile. It almost knocked me off my feet. Usually when Jim showed his teeth to people, he did it because he was about to kill them.
“Before I became Chief of Security, I worked for Wendelin. You remember her?”
I did. Wendelin wasn’t someone you’d forget. When she joined the Pack, she decided to call herself Wendelin Fuchs, which stood for Wendelin Fox, just like I chose to call myself Harimau. With my eyesight and aversion for blood, I knew I would be in for a rough road, so I chose my last name because every time I said it, it reminded me that I was a tiger. Wendelin chose hers because she wanted to mislead people. She turned into a wolf, ruthless, cunning, and so scary, even Mahon, the alpha of Clan Heavy who turned into a giant Kodiak, made the effort to avoid her. I had no idea Jim had worked for her. When I met him, he was beta of Clan Cat and as far as I knew, that was all he did. When Curran made him the Chief of Security after Wendelin retired, everyone, including me, was surprised.
“For the first three years with her all I did was covert work,” Jim said. “Pretend to be someone you’re not. Go to the right place at the right time, listen, talk to people, be likeable and be convincing. It wasn’t my favorite part of the job, but I’ve learned to be what people expect me to be. People expect the Chief of Security to be a scary hardass, so I give them that. Werecats expect their alpha to show teeth every time someone steps out of line, so I give them that, too.”
My heart sank. “Does this mean that if I expect caring boyfriend Jim, you’ll give me that?”
“No,” he said. “You just get me the way I am, which means you’re screwed. I’m mostly an asshole.”
I put my hand on the door handle of Eleventh Planet. “Can you do a comic geek?”
“What will I get if I do it?”
“What do you want?”
“Make me dinner tonight,” he said.
Dinner. Offering food was a special thing to the shapeshifters. Our animal counterparts showed affection with food. It said so many things without words. I care about you. I will share what I have with you. I will protect you. And sometimes it said I love you. I’d made him dinner before, but the way he said it now sent li
ttle shivers down my back. I forced my voice to sound casual. “You’ve got a deal.”
• • •
THE owners of the comic shop were college kids. We only met one, Brune Wayne, a short blond guy in his early twenties, who spent way too much time at the gym, waved his arms when he talked and immediately explained to us that he was named after his grandfather and lamented that he was only one letter away from being Batman. His partner in crime, Christian Leander, was helping his parents with some furniture today. The comic book shop was just like all the other comic book shops in Atlanta. With computers gone, paper books and comics once again became a viable form of entertainment, and the shop was doing good business.
Jim knew way more about comics than I had expected. He and Brune had clicked and Brune showed us around, talking nonstop. It was too bad about the nice old lady, and they did get a letter but they thought it was a prank, because nobody would pay crazy money like that, so they threw it in the trash. And these are hand-painted miniatures. A local guy makes them. Look, they are magic. The dragon’s eyes glow. Isn’t that like the coolest thing?
By the time we got out of there, my ears were ringing and I had so many comic book titles and superhero names stuck in my hair, I’d need to shampoo twice to get it all out. But one thing was clear. Brune didn’t have a mean bone in his body.
Frustration nagged at me. Anyone who could summon a whole swarm of jenglots was dangerous and wasn’t afraid to kill. So far all we had were possible victims. Pulling off that kind of magic took dedication and years of practice. None of them felt that powerful, magically, and none of them seemed to have the kind of money hiring someone of that power would require, not to mention dropping a million on buying up this property.
We had to make progress and soon, because he or she would try to finish what they started. I couldn’t face going back to the Indrayani family and telling them, “So sorry your beloved grandma is dead because I was too stupid to figure out who was responsible.”
“Look,” Jim said.
A car pulled up to Vasil’s Deli. A man got out. He was in his fifties, with salt-and-pepper hair. He walked up to the deli’s door, keys in hand. His fingers were shaking. His face was pale, his eyes bloodshot. He dropped the keys, crouched to pick them up, finally managing to get one in the lock, opened the door, and stepped inside.
Jim and I walked toward the deli. The CLOSED sign had been flipped to OPEN. The man was sitting in a chair, slumped over the counter, nodding off. Jim opened the door and I saw it, the dark furry cloud of magic, wrapped around the man, hanging off his back like a revolting liquid sack bristling with boar quills. Thin, slimy strands crossed his neck, garroting his throat, and stretched across his face, trying to worm their way to his nose and his eyes.
I jumped onto the counter and grabbed his hands. The magic hissed at me. The liquid sack on the man’s back broke and a nest of black furry snakes erupted, wriggling toward me, each armed with a dark beak where the mouth should’ve been. Jim cleared the counter and sliced through the phantom snakes with his knife. His blade passed through them. They didn’t even notice.
I pushed with my magic. The beaks struck at me, gouging bloody wounds in my arms. I pushed harder, trying to purge the awful darkness. It persisted, tightening around the man. I strained. The magic slithered back, retreating from his face but clenching to his back.
The man opened his blue eyes and looked at me.
“Mr. Vasil?” I asked.
“It’s Mr. Dobrev,” he said quietly. “Vasil is my given name.” He looked at my hands holding his. “Don’t let go.”
“I won’t,” I promised.
“Dali, talk to me,” Jim said, his face grim.
“You see the magic?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Right now I’m holding it back, but this is all I can do. If I let go, it will swallow him again.”
“Why is this happening to me?” Mr. Dobrev asked.
“We don’t know,” I said. “When did it start?”
“Two nights ago. At first it was just a heaviness, then a headache. I went to bed early. I thought I had caught the flu. Then she came.”
“Who is she?” I asked.
He leaned to me. His voice shook. “The hag.”
“Tell me more,” I said. “Tell me about the hag.”
His face went slack. He had big, rough hands, the kind strong men who work with their hands a lot get, and his calloused fingers were trembling. He was terrified. “I opened my eyes. The bedroom was dark. I felt this oppressive weight on my chest, so heavy. Like a car. My bones should’ve cracked and I don’t know why they didn’t. And then I saw her. She was sitting on my chest. She was . . .” He gulped the air. “Thin . . . like a skeleton. Long, matted grey hair, black fur on her arms, and fingers with talons, like a bird. Long talons, just like in the painting.”
“What painting?”
“A painting I saw . . . long ago. She sat on top of me and stared. I couldn’t call out to my son. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t even wriggle my toes. We stayed like this for hours. I finally fell asleep and woke up tired. So tired. Last night she came again. I could barely move this morning. I think she’s trying to kill me.”
Jim looked at me.
“The old hag syndrome,” I said. Most of my magical expertise was tied to what Westerners considered Far East, but I had some education about European myths. You can’t live in the U.S. and not be exposed to it. “Before the Shift, people thought it had to do with deep sleep paralysis, which occurs when the brain transitions from rapid eye movement phase to wakefulness. Sometimes mental wires get crossed and the brain partially wakes up but the body remains paralyzed, as if we are still asleep. It feels like a great weight is pinning you down and you are frozen. Before the scientific age, people thought it happened because of demons, incubi and succubi, or sometimes, old hags. If the legends are true, she’ll feed on him until he is dead and I don’t have the power to purge her like this.”
“We’re going to have to kill the hag,” Jim guessed.
That’s why I loved him. He was smart and quick.
“Mr. Dobrev,” I said. “I need you to fall asleep.”
He shuddered like a leaf. “No.”
“It’s the only way. We will be right here. When she comes, we’ll take care of her.”
“No.”
“You will wake up, Mr. Dobrev. You don’t know me, but trust me, you will wake up. Go to sleep now, while you still have some strength left.”
He looked into my eyes and let go of my fingers.
“Take a deep breath,” I told him, trying to sound confident. “It will be okay. It will be fine.”
The dark magic rolled over him. Mr. Dobrev took a long shuddering breath. He looked like he was drowning.
“It’s okay,” I murmured. “It’s okay. I’m here. I won’t go anywhere.”
“Please,” he said. “Why me? Why . . .”
I felt so terrible for him. He was so scared. But it was the only way. “Let it happen,” I murmured.
Gradually his eyes lost their light and turned glassy. He blinked, then blinked again, leaned back in his chair, and closed his eyes.
“If the myths are true, she has to become corporeal to kill him,” I said. “When that happens, we have to get her first.”
Jim pulled a second knife from the sheath on his hip.
We waited. The shop was quiet around us.
“I don’t get it,” I said. “It has to be connected to Eyang Ida. That’s just too big of a coincidence. But jenglots and the old hag are literally from opposite sides of the planet. No magic user should be able to summon both.”
“We need to look into that law firm,” Jim said.
“He did say he saw the hag in a painting before?” I asked.
“Yes.”
It meant something. We sat an
d waited.
• • •
I had no idea how much time had passed. It had to be close to an hour. Jim brought my cursing kit to me and I sat with it, my ink, brush, and papers ready, staring at the deli meat cuts behind the glass under the counter. I was hungry. The rest of the shop was filled with shelves crowded with canned goods, Slavic-themed snacks and every fruit and vegetable that could be pickled. I really wanted to try some, but taking without permission was stealing.
A few minutes after Mr. Dobrev’s breathing had evened out, the furry magic began to crawl ever so slowly, shifting from his back onto his chest, and finally now it sat right under his neck, a big ugly blob that took up all of him all the way to the waist.
The roar of a water engine came from the outside. I glanced through the glass storefront. A yellow school bus rolled down the street.
The sack on Mr. Dobrev’s chest trembled.
I leaned forward.
A ripple shifted the fur. Another. It looked like a tennis ball rolling under some revolting blanket.
I pulled a paper out and began writing a curse. The curse had to be fresh, so I would finish it the second before I actually slapped it on her. I paused with my brush in the air. One stroke left.
Outside a boy, about ten or eleven, turned the corner and walked toward the building. Must be Cole and Amanda’s son.
A thin black talon broke the surface of the fur. Something was about to come out.
The air in the middle of the street wavered, as if suddenly a cloud of vapor had escaped from underground and got caught in a dust devil. What in the world . . .