just wanted to help.” I put up my hands, in surrender. He knows he’s ploughed, so he stops to think about it; he can’t decide if I’m telling the truth, and I’d guess it wouldn’t be the first time he drunkenly punched an innocent man, so he lets go of my collar.
Without my collar to steady him, he falls most of the way into his cab. He’s drunker than I thought. And even if I call the cops, they’d never get here before he was gone. I grab hold of his shoulders, to steady him, “You don’t look so good. Maybe you should sleep it off.” He grunts, and I know I’m not so lucky. I don’t quite remember which Greek or Latin root I need to finish off a drowsiness spell. I don’t dare guess, lest I Sleeping Beauty him- because I really don’t want to have to deep tongue kiss a man tonight- especially not this man.
I slam him hard against the steering wheel. “Whoa,” I yell, for the sake of a homeless man, half-asleep in a doorway with a clear line of sight. “You okay, buddy?”
He’s got a small cut in his forehead, and it’s drooling blood around his brow. “Maybe, I, maybe I should sleep it off.” He’s not unconscious, but he’s almost passed out from drink. I fold his legs into the cab and shut the door.
“Got plans?” Female voice. Haughty. Not authoritative enough to be a cop- but it’s nobody I recognize.
“Excuse me?” I ask as I turn around.
“You know, if you’ve got a long night of date-rape planned, I can always come back in the morning. I’d hate to intrude on your evening.” I realize then it’s Rook.
“You’re late.”
“You must be Knight; Sister Magdalene said you were grumpy. I’m-” I grab her wrist and squeeze. If she isn’t who I think she is, this is the point I get maced, or maybe a fireball cast in my underpants.
“Don’t.” I give her a second to react, and when she doesn’t I let her go. “Never use your name with anyone if you can avoid it. Names have power.” Magic draws on connection. A name gives someone a piece of you, and a stronger connection, one they can use to burn you from a distance. “Besides which, when the Salem Circle finally sets up its government, you’re going to be their castle, so you’ve already got a title. You’re Rook.”
“But don’t titles also have power?”
“Some. But less – for the same reason that saying goddamn the President isn’t nearly as effective as casting a diarrhea spell on Barrack Obama. Specificity is your friend- and your enemy.” I pick up the coffee, and push it out to her. “It’s cold.”
“As in ice, or you didn’t grab one of those sleeve things?”
“As in whichever extreme I ordered it at wasn’t enough to overcome your extreme tardiness.”
“I’d retort with a witticism about your tardedness if I‘d had my coffee already.” She grabs the cup and drinks it like a shot. There’s a sigil on the bottom of it. Not a spell in its own right, just an activator; the sugar in her coffee is transubstantiated. The spell turns it back into an artificial sweetener, one that in significant quantities acts as a laxative. She doesn’t notice the mark- didn’t even check for one- which almost makes me want to activate the spell.
But I don’t. Because I’m trying to be diplomatic, and there are probably gentler ways to teach her caution. “I’m still not 100% on why you’re riding along with me. Our Castle is friendly enough, loves to talk tradecraft, and actually has experience relevant to your new responsibilities.”
“I’m supposed to be Rook eventually. But right now I’m just another sister. Magdalene asked me to come and learn what I could about your gambit, so we could design our equivalent from a position of knowledge.”
“Magdalene? What is she, a first century prostitute?”
Her eyes flash with a memory, and I realize she knows Magdalene’s real name and wants to tell it to me, then she says “Names have power.” I know it, too; Magdalene and I have a history, but Rook doesn’t need to know that. History has power, too.
She takes another sip from her coffee, then asks, “So is this what a magical dick does? Sit around drinking old coffee? And why couldn’t you just wait for me to get here, then let me order for myself?”
“One, because this is the only block in Portland without a Starbucks on the corner, and two, because we have a case. The moment we're inside we're on the clock.”
“So that’s why you had me meet you outside the Cauldron. You didn’t strike me as a dance club kind of guy.”
“Am I that obvious?” I kneel in front of my homeless witness from before. It takes a moment for him to recognize me, and he worries for an instant that I mean to shut him up, until he sees the green of a bill in my hand. “Guy in the truck hit his head pretty hard. You want to keep an eye on him, for me?” He mumbles something that sounds like ‘sure’ and palms the twenty; we both wish it was more.
The Investigation
Rook follows me to the entrance of the Cauldron. I can already feel the oppressive bass pounding from inside, and the heavy stink of sweat and smoke on the air. I hand our cover fee to a woman in her mid-thirties trying too hard to cling to her late twenties. “Hand stamp?” she asks, and I shake my head. “You’re supposed to get a hand stamp,” she says, bored but annoyed.
I peel a Hamilton and set it on top of the cover. She shrugs and waves us in.
Rook gives me a look. “You don’t trust the ink?” Her tone is skeptical. Exactly how green are the witches out of Salem these days?
“Psychography- spirit writers.” I’m having to talk louder than I like to overcome the music, but the crowd in the Cauldron is 60% mage; it takes more than a dry discussion of magic to turn heads in here.
“I thought that was mostly the ideomotor effect-” she yells back, “like dowsing, or using a Ouija board.”
“Adepts can transcribe otherworldly communication- but that’s only half the craft. They use apothecary inks- magic distilled in liquid form.” Generally, the covens like their magic fresh- fresh ingredients, fresh rituals- some bullshit about it being closer to the natural way of things, and more pure. Elixirs like apothecary inks never really caught on with them, especially in an isolated Circle like hers. “You ever been spirit-written? I don’t recommend it.”
I pull out my phone to send a text, tell Pawn that we’re here. “It helps if you claim to have OCD? Like how vampires tell people they have porphyria. Helps explain away the little eccentricities- keeps people from getting too curious about things they wouldn’t understand.”
Pawn sticks out as he pushes his way through the crowd. He’s in his late forties, early fifties, buzzed, thinning hair, short, stocky build. And he only sticks out more because he doesn’t recognize he’s at least fifteen years too old for this crowd. “Body’s in the champagne room,” he says, and spends a moment too long looking at Rook.
“Body?” she asks, pretending as a courtesy not to notice him leering.
Pawn leads us past a bouncer, into the backroom. There’s a corpse in the middle of the floor. The body’s charred, and mangled, in an unnatural pose. I’ve seen similar, from falls- particularly somebody who fell without trying to catch themselves.
Pawn stalks around Rook, seeing if she’ll respond to his assertion of dominance. When she doesn’t he figures she’s just a piece of meat. “So this is the rookie, huh? Gotta say, she’s a sight prettier than you when I trained you.”
“Yet you just keep getting uglier and fatter, as the years pack on,” I say. He grunts; from her look, I can tell Rook feels bad for him, but only because she doesn’t know him. “It’s burnt to hell. You have a vamp sniff it out?”
“Was a vamp that brought it to me, one of my CIs.”
“And I had my money on you pocketing the informant stipend.”
There’s a hint of pain in his expression before he buries it- he doesn’t appreciate being shamed in front of the new girl, but plays it off. “I take my cut, but the informant’s good. Never had a problem with him before.”
“Bring him in. I’ll want to know what he does. Witnesses?”
&n
bsp; “Just the vamp.”
“The bouncer?”
“Tim. He was outside. Heard a crack, then the thump. Presumably the port, then the landing. Room was empty at the time. But he got the vamp to check it out.”
“You like the bouncer for it?”
“Nah. He’s a solid citizen. Worked here for better of a decade. Never thrown me out on my ass- which is something. Always pays his taxes. Besides which, bartender corroborates him being outside when she heard the sounds, then him fetching my CI.”
I’m not so sure. “Still, grabbing the vamp-”
“Cauldron’s been a hangout for most of his tenure. This ain’t his first dog and pony.”
Pawn’s being uncharacteristically thorough, tonight, but for some reason that puts me more on edge. “Get him in here anyway.”
The bouncer is a few inches north of six foot, and with his shaved head looks like Mr. Clean. He has a sternness to him, like he’d prefer to crack your skull to talking, but there’s a childlike glee in his eyes- he enjoys playing the heavy, but play is all it is.
“Did you touch anything in the room?” I ask it flat- not quite mean, just cold. I haven’t figured out what kind of witness he’s going to be just yet.
“No.” He’s incredulous, almost laughing at the implication he’s involved.
“Not even the victim? Not to check for a pulse?”
He slows up, recognizes someone sizing him up, and levels his eyes at me- not menacing, but fixing me