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Authors: Laura Resnick

Unsympathetic Magic (8 page)

BOOK: Unsympathetic Magic
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“Look, detective, we . . . um . . .”
“Call it in,” Lopez snapped. “And you can thank your lucky stars that Miss Diamond isn’t going to make your precinct’s mess any bigger by filing a complaint about tonight.”
“I’m not?” I said against his shoulder.
He goosed me to make me shut up. “I’m taking her back to Lexington to find a cab.”
I lifted my head. “I can’t take a cab. I don’t have any money.”
Thompson said, “We can call another squad car to take her home.”
The chubby cop said, “So do we need to search the area
again
for the dead guy? Um, the injured guy, I mean?”
“Everyone
shut up,
” Lopez said.
We all felt silent. Pressed up against his body, I felt him take a deep breath as he struggled to control his temper.
“You’re not looking for an injured man,” Lopez said with forced patience.
“We’re not?”
“Take a good look at that hand. It wasn’t recently attached to anyone
living
.”
“Oh?” Thompson said.
I looked up to see the young cop bending over the hand, studying it curiously as he trained his flashlight on it.
His partner stood a few feet away and squinted at the appendage, clearly reluctant to get any closer to it. I suspected that squeamishness was a bit of a handicap in his profession.
Lopez continued, “And if a hand
had
been torn off someone’s arm here, there would be blood. Plenty of it.”
“Oh. Right,” said the chubby cop. “I knew that.”
Thompson squatted down to get an even better look at the hand. “So you’re saying this came off a corpse?”
“Yes,” Lopez said.
“Hmm. Any idea how old?”
“Probably a few days. Less than a few weeks.”
“How can you tell?” Thompson asked curiously. “Especially now that it’s partly eaten?”
The other cop made a sound.
“No decomposition,” Lopez said. “It looks fresh, and it doesn’t stink.”
I swallowed my revulsion.
Still absorbed in his study of the mangled body part, Thompson said, “But what if—”
“Call it in,” Lopez ordered again. “I’m going to put Miss Diamond in a cab, and then I’ll be back.” He added, “
Right
back.”
The chubby cop said, “But we might need her statement.”
“You’ve
got
her statement,” Lopez said tersely, turning me away from the scene. “Let’s go.”
As soon as we were out of earshot, I said to him, “So I
did
see . . . see . . . Uh,
what
did I see?”
With his arm around me as he hustled me toward Lexington Avenue, he said, “You saw exactly what we talked about. Only whoever pulled this stunt went way too far.”
“Well,
yeah,
” I said. “They stole my purse!”
“They also desecrated a corpse.”
“Desecrated . . . Oh!” I realized what he was saying. “That hand! It was real. And it was from . . . from . . .”
“From someone’s body.” His voice was tense.
“Oh,
yuck,
” I said with feeling.
“So where the hell is the rest of that person?” He sounded as if he was thinking aloud. “And who is it?”
“
Was,
you mean?”
“Was,” he agreed.
“Do you think some jerk raided the morgue to add a disgusting touch of reality to this whole thing?”
“That’s one of the possibilities.”
“You really think some cops did this?” I asked, appalled now.
He shook his head. “I sure hope not. Scaring a woman alone in the dark and then stealing her purse was bad enough. But snatching body parts? And leaving a severed hand lying around on the sidewalk where any neighborhood kid might have found it in the morning, if you hadn’t insisted on searching the area now?” He said grimly, “There had better
not
be any cops involved.”
But now it bothered him, and he had to know for sure. So he was going to go back to where we’d found the severed hand and work the crime scene, whether or not the local cops wanted him there.
Given the late (or very early) hour, we had to wait a couple of minutes on the corner of Lexington before we saw a cab. I was exhausted, and Lopez was preoccupied, so we didn’t talk. Then, in response to Lopez’s wave, a cab pulled up to take me home. The driver smirked when he saw Lopez hand me twenty dollars, which made me realize once again how I was dressed.
Lopez kissed me absently on the cheek and told me to go home and go to bed. “I’ll take care of this. And I’ll let you know if I find your purse. Okay?”
“Okay.”
I got into the cab. And he returned to the scene of the crime. Which is how he got involved.
So if I hadn’t called Lopez to come get me out of jail, then Baron Samedi, the Lord of Death, wouldn’t have come looking for him on the dark, windswept night of thunder, terror, and angry spirits that would soon follow.
5
 
I
awoke to the pain of a stiff neck, the irritation of light in my eyes, and the revulsion of a huge canine tongue washing my face.
I opened my mouth to protest against all of these sensations—and immediately had to spit out Nelli’s tongue, which was still sweeping across my face.
“Ugh!
Blegh!
” I sat bolt upright, wiping my face in disgust and shoving at the dog. “Stop that!”
Nelli panted cheerfully, happy to see me awake. Her long, thick, bony tail wagged back and forth with reckless abandon. Given its size, density, and current speed, it could probably bring down a sapling. Or kill a gargoyle.
“Is she awake, Nelli?” Max called from the back of bookshop.
Nelli gave a little crooning bark, then swiped her paw at me affectionately.
“Ow!” I looked down at the broad red marks she had just made on my forearm. “Your nails need cutting.”
Nelli was Max’s mystical familiar. She had emerged from another dimension in response to his summons for assistance in fighting Evil. Max had been in dire need of help, since (brace yourself for a shock) New York City was proving to be a busy battleground between the forces of light and darkness; and Max’s previous assistant, the apprentice Hieronymus, hadn’t really worked out so well—what with being the maniacal, murderous summoner of a virgin-raping, people-eating demon and all.
I wondered if the daunting size of her mission accounted for Nelli’s own daunting size; because apart from whatever advantage her physique might give her in combating mystical forces, she was an inconveniently
large
animal to keep in Manhattan. Easily as big as a Shetland pony, Nelli was well-muscled beneath her short, smooth, tan fur. Her massive head was long and square-jawed, and her teeth were so big they might look terrifying if the immense size of her floppy ears wasn’t such a distraction from them. Her paws—which, like her face, were darker in color than the rest of her—were each nearly the size and density of a baseball bat, and the skin of her feet was as rough as coarse sandpaper.
Nelli’s long, pink tongue hung out of her mouth as she gazed at me with uncomplicated good cheer.
“Max?” I croaked sleepily.
“Coming!”
It was morning. I was in Max’s establishment, Zadok’s Rare and Used Books, which was in a townhouse on a side street in Greenwich Village. After coming here in the wee hours, I had fallen asleep in one of the prettily-upholstered chairs in the reading area near the fireplace.
The shop had well-worn hardwood floors, a broad-beamed ceiling, dusky-rose walls, and rows and rows of tall bookcases overflowing with volumes about all aspects of the occult. Some of the books were modern paperbacks, many were old hardback volumes that smelled musty, a few were rare leather-bound books of considerable value, and they were all printed in a wide variety of languages.
The bookstore had a small customer base and got some foot traffic from curious passersby, but it was basically just a modest beard for Max’s real work—protecting New York and its inhabitants from Evil—so he didn’t concentrate on increasing its revenue. Meanwhile, I didn’t know whether he had invested wisely over his long (
very
long) life or whether the Magnum Collegium, which had sent him here, paid him well. Either way, Max always seemed to have a healthy cash flow.
He thoughtfully kept a small refreshments station in the bookstore, stocked with coffee, tea, cookies, and snuff (yes, snuff) for his customers. It sat near a large, careworn walnut table with books, papers, an abacus, writing implements, and other paraphernalia on it. I was about to haul myself out of that chair—which was comfortable for sitting and reading, but which had not been designed for sleeping—and make a pot of coffee when Max ambled around the corner of a bookcase and greeted me. He was carrying a breakfast tray.
“Good morning! When Nelli and I came downstairs and found you here, sound asleep, I thought perhaps you would like some breakfast when you awoke. You looked rather, er . . .” His gaze moved briefly to the generous amount of cleavage exposed by my tight leopard-print top, shifted awkwardly to my short red skirt, and then moved to my hair—which was probably a rat’s nest by now. He frowned with concern. “Are you all right, Esther?”
“Coffee,” I said in a gravelly voice.
“Of course!” He set down the tray on the end table, within my reach. I saw that he had brought me mini-bagels, cream cheese, and orange juice as well as coffee.
“Thank you,” I said gratefully.
“Delighted!”
Dr. Maximillian Zadok (Oxford University, class of 1678) beamed at me as he sat in the chair near mine. He was a short, slightly chubby, white man with innocent blue eyes, longish white hair, and a tidy beard. Fluent in multiple languages, he spoke English with the faint trace of an accent, reflecting his origins in Eastern Europe centuries ago. Although he didn’t look a day over seventy, Max’s age was closer to three hundred fifty years. In his youth, while apprenticing to a master of alchemy, he had unwittingly drunk a potion that substantially slowed his aging process—a potion which neither he nor his colleagues had ever been able to reproduce. He wasn’t immortal, but he’d be around for a few more generations—unless the Big Apple finished him off sooner than that.
I used the little milk pitcher on the breakfast tray to pour some milk into the large mug of coffee, then lifted the mug gratefully to my lips and took a long, deep swallow. Luckily, it wasn’t too hot.
“I was working last night,” I began, aware of Max’s concerned and curious gaze, “and—”
“Working at . . . ?” He lifted his brows inquisitively, evidently realizing I wouldn’t have worn this outfit to wait tables at Bella Stella in Little Italy.
“The Dirty Thirty
.
”
“Ah!” His expression cleared as my physical appearance this morning began to make more sense. “This is the costume of the unfortunate woman whom you’re playing in the television drama?”
I nodded. “And I got, er, mugged.”
“Esther!”
“Purse gone, wallet gone, phone gone . . .” I sighed and ran a hand over my matted hair. “Hairbrush gone.” I took another swallow of coffee, hoping I would soon start feeling human. “Anyhow, after a pretty eventful evening”—including two gargoyles, a prison cell, my ex-would-be-boyfriend, and a
severed hand,
thanks—“I was in a cab on my way home, it was the middle of the night, and I realized that I couldn’t get into my apartment.
Keys
gone.” And, genius that I was, I kept my spare set of keys
inside
the apartment. “So I told the cab driver to bring me here.” He had smirked (again) at me when I paid him with Lopez’s twenty dollar bill. “And I let myself in. I hope that’s all right.”
Since Max couldn’t keep track of his keys, he locked the front door by using a spell that kept out strangers when the shop was closed but allowed him access at all times. Since I was a regular visitor, Max had modified the spell so that I, too, could enter the shop at will.
“Of
course
you came here, my dear,” Max said soothingly. “You should have woken me!”
I shook my head. “It was so late. And all I wanted to do by then was close my eyes.”
“But you could have come upstairs.” Max lived one floor above the bookshop. “Nelli doesn’t mind giving up her bed for a friend.”
Nelli’s bed, which was the couch in Max’s sparsely furnished living room, smelled heavily of Nelli and was liberally coated with her hair.
“I didn’t want to disturb Nelli,” I said tactfully. “Or you.”
“Nonsense! Anyhow, I was barely asleep, I assure you.” He added, “There is also Hieronymus’ bed, in his old quarters on the top floor.”
“No!” I said more sharply than I had intended. Max blinked. I said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you. It’s just that . . . Well, after what we did to him—even though he deserved it . . . I mean, since Hieronymus
left
. . .” Although we had, in fact, killed him, this was the phrase I had asked Max to agree to use whenever we referred to what had happened to the young sorcerer. It seemed safer than carelessly voicing the facts. Especially since we numbered a police detective among our acquaintances. “I just wouldn’t feel comfortable sleeping in his bed,” I concluded. All things considered, even the idea of
touching
anything that had belonged to Hieronymus repelled me.
BOOK: Unsympathetic Magic
13.58Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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