Emerald City Blues

 

EMERALD CITY BLUES

By Peter A. Smalley

 

Published by Kindling Press

Copyright 2013 -
Peter A. Smalley

 

Discover other titles by Peter A. Smalley:

Full Fathom Five

20,001: A Steampunk Odyssey

The Burning Times

Grimme

Disbelief

 

Ebook
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I
n the heart of every cold and common stone

Lies magic waiting to be unleashed

Kneel down and grasp it close, wherever it is thrown

The secret
lies within your reach

The Author wishes to thank his editor, Bev Gelfand, who regularly performs the true magic of turning coarse manuscripts into novels. Any remaining mistakes not corrected by her are entirely my doing, and are, therefore, completely intentional.

The author would also like to thank

Doc Harvard, Kaarin Spier,
Ren Cummins, Todd Nagle, Jennifer Nagle & Bonnie Mosley

T
heir critical insights made this book a safer place for readers. I am in their debt.

DEDICATION

To Arwyn,
for always knowing

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Writing a work of fiction like this takes much more than just time, creativity and dedication.  It also requires substantial amounts of encouragement, support, hand-holding, motivation-boosting, shoulder-crying-upon, gesticulating, prognosticating, nail-biting, author-nagging, cheerleading, breast-beating, salty-tear-weeping, teeth-gnashing, hair-pulling, inebriating, sobering, direst-predictions-of-doom-ignoring, and an uncommon degree of patience with The Author.

For all this, and much more, The Author would like to express his sincere and humble appreciation.  You know who you were, are, and aren’t.

Peter A. Smalley

Seattle
, Washington 

April
11, 2013

Every now and then, a mirror must be smashed.

Tonight was one of the nows. I stumbled across the room to look through the cupboard for a dustpan, then belatedly remembered it was still in my father's house with the rest of the things I'd left behind after he died. Sharp, Maddie, real sharp. Some investigator I was. And some daughter. Rather than pick up the jagged shards by hand, I half-sat, half-fell back down on the davenport, raised the glass again in my off hand and took a somewhat unsteady sip.

Cognac, for Meister Gerhardt. He would have liked that. The liquor carved a smoky, glowing trac
k down my throat. It was thoroughly unlike the rough fire of the whiskey I had drunk for Samuel Givens. Or the bathtub gin I raised for Markus Collins. Or the pint to remember Seamus bloody MacInnes.
So much for Prohibition.
They had begun to blur, names and faces slippery with too much alcohol, too many cigarettes. But even if I could not name them all, I knew exactly how many empty chairs there were to drink for at this table. I just couldn't recall, at this precise moment, how many of them I'd already toasted.

It was that night again. The night I knew they were gone forever.

The cognac throbbed in my throat like a sullen sunset over Elliott Bay: always obscured by the clouds but never quite willing to give up. A bit like me, I suppose. Ten years. Christ, to put it like that. It was ten years since I'd seen them alive, the Meister and his Circle. Ten years since they'd gone to a war-torn Europe to do what must be done, and perished in a muddy field somewhere in France. Ten years since the Great War had swallowed them with barely a trace, down that hungry black maw along with so many other pieces of my life I would never get back. Ten years ago.

It was not even as if I had known Meister Gerhardt - Gerd, as he preferred to be called
when not teaching us - for all that long when he left. I was the oh-so talented but desperately clumsy apprentice, too strong to be left untaught but too young for the lessons he had to give. I was bright with power and stupid with youth. He should have turned me away, but he didn't. Was that my father's doing? I wondered. He knew his daughter, knew I'd get into more trouble learning on my own than I ever could making a wreckage of Gerd's Teutonic tranquility along with his sanctum. Which I did, on more than one occasion. The first year as an apprentice is often called the Year of Wonder. The real wonder was that he kept me on at all.

I'd studied under the Meister's exacting tutelage for not quite two years when he left for
war-torn France. He was no soldier, at least not the kind one normally pictured, huddled yet heroic, in the frigid trenches of Europe. He was more like a college professor, old and wizened and more comfortable in his tweed suit than in ritual robes. But his role in the conflict was one no doughboy could have performed: he had taken his Circle into the hell of the Great War in order to oppose his estranged former brethren, the occult masters of
die Orden
. And so they had gone, and served. And died.

Two years.
Not so very long to be an apprentice, and yet his impact on my life could not have been more profound. The shards of the mirror on my living room floor were testament to that, if anyone could hear their sharp-edged, reflective whispers. I might have been capable of it, once. Not tonight. Tonight was for breaking mirrors, not enchanting them. Even though it had been years since I’d used the Art, I had already had enough of that to last me a lifetime.

I raised my left hand and stared at the traces of liquor remaining
on the inside of the glass like the raindrops clinging to my apartment window. My father would have had stern words for me, seeing me like this. He was no teetotaler, no Prohibitionist. Michael Sheehan liked to raise a pint on a warm summer evening, so he did, but unlike many of his fellow Irish cops I never once saw him staggering drunk, nor even hung over. I was certain he drank more often than I knew, but he never showed a trace of it. Iron Mike, his fellow police officers called him. His only daughter called him that too. She was a weaker alloy than he, but she loved him regardless of her own brittle imperfections. I pictured his expression across the room, on the other side of the fireplace, his black eyebrows lowered in a scowl of disapproval and concern.
Maddie,
he'd say in that coppery brogue he'd learned at Grandmother Sheehan's knee.
Maddie, you shouldn't do this to yourself.

True. It would have been different if he were here now, instead of buried up at Lake View. He'd have set me straight, or held me close and made it all better. Somehow. He'd have made me believe it even though I knew it was just the kind of thing
a father tells his daughter when the liquor makes her clumsy and honest. Honest enough not to ignore the truths we all know but don't like to stare in the face on dark, rainy nights when the clouds hang low over the city and try to wash away what won't ever come clean. The truth was, it would never get better. Gerd was gone. Police captains who die heroic deaths are still dead. Brilliant apprentices without a master to teach them don’t get any better on their own. Women who try to be private investigators have a hard time making rent and staying fed. Some mirrors would always remain in pieces.

The knock on the door interrupted both my brooding
and my drink. I didn't want any company. Not tonight. I let the silence drag out, hoping whoever it was would go back into the rainy darkness of a cold Seattle night. Instead, there was another rap. "Miss Sheehan? Madison, are you at home? It's Thomas Cooke. I need your help.
Please.
"

I set down the shot glass and
got to my feet, grimacing as my right hand bumped the floor. Tommy. It would have to be him, of all people, on a night like this. I wanted more than anything to stumble towards my bed and let this day be a blurry memory of pain and loss, but I couldn't say no. Not to another Circle orphan. I wondered if Tommy drank on this night, the way I did. Probably not. I'd heard he was a doctor nowadays, with a steady practice downtown and a fancy house his father had left him up on Capitol Hill. I walked over to the door with exaggerated care and made myself look steadier than I felt. Then I opened the door with my left hand and looked out at him. "Tommy. What is it?"

"May I come in?" His awkward smile tore at my heart. I knew he liked me
, had done for years. Ever since I had been Gerd’s apprentice, really. Just as he knew I'd never like him, not the way he wanted. It was uncomfortable for both of us, but there it was. "It's important. I don't want to talk about it on your doorstep. Please?"

I relented. He walked
through the door, still sodden from the rain. I saw him do a double-take when he saw what was left of the mirror that had once hung over the mantle. He said nothing about it, pretended it wasn't there as he took off his hat and mashed it nervously between his hands. Smart man. "What's this about, Tommy?" Was I slurring my words? I couldn’t be sure, so I let him do the talking while I reminded my tongue who was in charge around here.

He swallowed and cleared his throat. He looked nervous, now that he was in the light. More than nervous. Sleepless. Terrified, even. "I think someone might be trying to kill me." His voice trembled. So did his hands.
His eyes were hollow, sunken. He looked the way I felt: like hell. “That probably sounds difficult to believe, but I’m telling you the honest truth. I’m afraid, and I don’t know who else I can turn to with something like this. The police wouldn’t believe me, and of all my father’s colleagues you’re the only one who-” I saw him stumble, not wanting to say it. Even if he’d forgotten what night it was, he knew I was all that was left of the Circle. “You’re the only one who might understand. I’m in fear for my life, Madison.”

"What? That's ridiculous. Tommy, you’re imagining things." I sounded more confident than I felt. The only thing I was confident of was the need to fall down and sleep somewhere until this night was over and I could go back to being grouchy about havi
ng to work while still suffering from tonight's one-woman wake. "Why would anyone want to kill you?"

"I don't know." He mashed his hat a bit more, hands jerking and tense. "I've had this feeling of being watched for the last month, especially in the last week or two. Since the end of October, it’s felt like almost every minute. Then, this morning, I found this slipped under my door." He pulled aside his
overcoat, reached into a vest pocket, and fished out an envelope. He swallowed again, then handed it to me uncertainly.