“So, how about it,” she says. “We use Sebastian. You and me get the Oracle.”
“I get the talking head on weekends and holidays?”
She puts her hand on my arm. “We can work out the details.” I can feel the charm she’s trying to cast, but it won’t do any good. I started getting tattooed protection spells before I left L.A. They cover my left arm, part of my back. There’s more I want to get, but that takes time and the right people.
“I like that,” I say. Better to let her think she’s got me. I feel a prickling sensation in my tats as they push against the spell. “But how?”
“Drug him,” she says. “A celebratory drink right beforehand.” She pushes more of her magic. My arm is getting uncomfortable.
“All right,” I say. “I’m in.” The pressure eases.
“Thank you, Eric. You won’t regret this.”
Oh, but I already do.
* * *
I wake to find Jimmy sitting on the coffee table staring at me. Nicole didn’t stay long after I agreed to kill McCord, and I’d passed out on the couch.
“You know it’s not polite to stare, right?” I say.
“I’m dying,” Jimmy says. It takes me a second to register that. I’m still half asleep and he says it as casually as if he’s offering me a cup of coffee.
“Congratulations?”
“You need to fix it.”
I sit up, rub the sleep out of my eyes. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“This…this thing,” he says waving a hand toward the circle painted on the floor. “Magic. You said there were magic doctors.”
“Jesus, Jimmy. Magic doctors? You make it sound like My Little Ponies. Yeah, there are doctors who use magic, but there aren’t a lot of them, and it’s not that simple.”
He grabs me by the shirt, eyes wide and pupils the size of dinner plates. “I had cancer. It’s back. I can’t stop it. I don’t have money for chemo again. I’m dead in a year so I need you to tell me where the fucking magic doctors are.”
I pull his hands off my shirt. “Okay,” I say slowly. “I get it. What exactly is going on?”
It takes a while, but eventually he gets it out. Testicular cancer. It’s come back and metastasized into his bones. Pelvis, spine, some in his left femur, and who knows where else. Can’t get treatment. Insurance won’t cover it and besides he doesn’t have any. The one doctor he’s seen tells him he’s got no more than a year if it’s left untreated.
I didn’t know any of this because I made a point of not knowing any of it. Jimmy was a useful tool to hide myself. The trouble with useful tools is the moment you see them as real people it gets a whole lot harder to use them.
When it comes down to it, Jimmy cares about staying alive. He doesn’t care how he does it. If he can’t get a doctor, there’s always the spooky, death wizard roommate. Like I said, death is death, but we’re the ones who give it a face. As far as Jimmy’s concerned, that face is mine.
Jimmy’s not looking for a doctor, he’s looking to make a deal with the Grim Reaper.
“What do you think I can do, Jimmy? I can’t cure your cancer. I can’t take your death away. What do you want me to say?”
Jimmy sits back on the floor, deflating. Anger is replaced by thinking.
“What happens when you die?” he says. Jesus, if I had a nickel for every time somebody asked me that.
“Dude, I’m not getting into this without coffee or scotch.” I rummage through the kitchen. No coffee, but there are still a couple of fingers in a bottle of Talisker under the sink. I throw it back straight out of the bottle.
“All right. Here’s the deal. You ready?”
“Yeah.”
“I have no fucking clue.”
“But…”
“I see ghosts. They’re stuck in this sort of limbo state and slowly fade away. Where do they go after that? I hear rumors. I have stories. But that’s it. What I hear is that you go where you think you belong. Heaven, Valhalla, Elysium, whatever. Do I know for sure? No. I’m still learning this shit, man.”
He sits back and his eyes fill with tears. “I’m going to Hell, then. I’ve done things.”
I think about telling him some of the shit I’ve pulled but I know it won’t help. If he believes he’s going to Hell, then yeah, he’s probably going to Hell.
“What if I change religions?”
“I don’t think it works that way.”
He gets up, paces back and forth. “I can’t die. Devil’s gonna get me. It’ll be fire for eternity.”
“You don’t know that,” I say. Empty words, but I can’t think of anything else to say. “Everybody dies, Jimmy. I can’t fix that.”
“What about that thing you made,” he says. “Eats souls, right? But not really?”
“The Ker? Yeah, something like that.” I explain the ritual to him again, what it’s designed to do, how it does it.
“Whoever’s the Oracle, they live forever?”
Cue lightbulb.
“No,” I say. “Not just no, but fuck no.”
“Why not?” he says. “You said immortality. That’s living forever. I’m going to Hell, Eric.”
“Did you hear anything else I said? This isn’t immortality. This is being a head in a fucking box gathering dust until somebody needs winning Lotto numbers. Forever.”
“Will it hurt?”
“Will—? Of course it’ll fucking hurt. You get your head sawed off.”
“I mean after. When it’s done. Will it hurt? Because right now everything fucking hurts. My bones are on fire. I shit blood. I don’t have a year. I’m not sure I have another fucking week.”
“This is worse than dying,” I say.
“How do you know? You just said you don’t know where we go for sure. Is it worse than Hell? Is it worse than walking around in Limbo waiting to drain away? And what do you care, anyway? You don’t have a goddamn thing to lose.”
I don’t know how to answer that. I don’t know if it will be worse. I don’t know what his Hell looks like.
I don’t say anything. I’ve got nothing to say.
“That’s what I fucking thought.”
“You really want to do this?”
“Yeah, I do.”
I feel sick. I should walk away. But I didn’t walk away when the phone rang, and I didn’t walk away when McCord was threatening to shoot him.
“I’ll think about it.”
* * *
I meet McCord in his office at the casino. It feels like decay. Rot settled into the very bones of the place. Given what Nicole was telling me, I suspect that’s exactly what it is.
It’s taken the last couple days to pull everything together. The reagents were easy, but there are details of the spell I’m still having trouble with. I’m pretty sure I’ve got it now.
“Ready when you are,” I say. “Did you get the ritual space?”
“It’s good to go. Do you really need that many leather straps?”
“I’m sawing a guy’s head off while he’s still awake. Yes. We’re really gonna need that many leather straps. Speaking of which, have you found a ‘volunteer?’”
“Yeah, about that,” McCord says. Nicole dropped the first shoe. Now McCord’s dropping the second. Some people are so predictable.
“Problem?”
“Maybe,” he says. “It’s Nicole. I think she might be trying to sabotage this.”
“I thought you two were solid?”
“I did, too,” he says. “But there’s distance. She’s disappearing at night, won’t tell me what she’s doing. Could be nothing, but my gut says it isn’t.”
He might as well be reading from a script. I want to fast forward through this bit so I can just agree to kill her for him and move on. But I play along.
“What do you want to do? Bit late to cut her loose.”
“I was thinking of bringing her in…closer.”
“You want me to cut your girlfriend’s head off,” I say.
&
nbsp; “Jesus, man. Put it that way it sounds horrible.” This whole fucking thing is horrible.
“But that’s what we’re talking about. I’ll be honest, I’m not comfortable with that plan. I like her.”
Which I do. She’s smart. Can hold her own. She’s also backstabbing, manipulative, and not big on ethics. Pretty typical mage, come to think of it.
“Me, either. Really.” McCord’s pouring it on thick. “But I don’t think we can afford not to.”
“You think she’ll shank both of us.” I make a show of thinking about it for a second. “Poison.”
“Poison?”
“Yeah. This is a big deal. Before we start we’ll have a toast. Only her drink’s spiked.”
“That would work. But…can you do it? I don’t think I can.” Oh, McCord, you old softie. Getting somebody else to do your dirty work.
“I understand. I’ll handle it.”
He lets out a breath, puts a fatherly hand on my shoulder. “Thanks,” he says. “I appreciate it.”
I’m sure you do, you lying sack of shit.
* * *
I’m at an under-construction house outside Vegas that McCord has arranged as a ritual space. No water, no power. Nobody for miles.
Nicole wants me to kill McCord. McCord wants me to kill Nicole. Jimmy is scared of dying, so he wants me to cut his head off. One of them is going to get what they want.
When this is over I think I need to take a good long look at my life choices.
The house is mostly framing and sheetrock. Floor’s poured concrete. That’s where it stops looking like a construction project and turns into a horror show.
Bolted to the concrete is a surgical table with leather straps. Plastic tarps cover the floor, ceiling, hang from the walls. Couple of oil pans at the head of the table. They’ll catch whatever blood doesn’t spray all over everything else.
Next is a surgical tray holding the reagents and an 8-inch-long bone-saw.
The three of us wear disposable haz-mat “bunny suits” with face shields. I’ve got a barbeque apron over it that says “Kiss The Cook.” It’s hiding a couple surprises.
In the next room is a table with champagne already poured. McCord picks one of the glasses up as Nicole comes in and I give him a barely noticeable nod. I hand one to Nicole, give her her own little nod.
Neither one of them has said anything about us not having a subject already on the table. I’ve told them both that I’ve got somebody ready and prepped, each of them assuming I’m talking about the other.
“To a brave new world,” I say, and toss my glass back. They do the same, eyeing each other warily. Within seconds they’re grimacing and looking a little woozy.
“What the hell did you do to me,” McCord says, grabbing Nicole.
“Me? I didn’t—” They both turn. I pour some more champagne, toss it back. Puffs of steam are coming up through my collar.
One of my tattoos makes me more or less immune to a lot of poisons. A wave of dizziness passes over me and disappears. It’s not perfect.
Nicole gets it first, panic showing in her already-drooping face. “Take him,” she says, voice slurred. “We had a deal.” Knees sag and she falls to the floor.
“What do you think, McCord,” I say. “Want to be a head in a box?” He reaches for me and I can feel the prickling of a spell, but it fizzles.
“Yeah, one of the side-effects. No magic.” McCord lets out a grunt and falls to the floor.
I drag them into the other room and prop them up against a wall. They’re not unconscious, just paralyzed. I picked up this recipe from a Bocor in St. Kitts a while back. If I got the dose right they should come out of it at the same time.
“Goddamn, you two are easy.” I say. “In case you hadn’t guessed, you tried to sell each other out.” I pull a straight razor from the apron pocket and nick my thumb. Blood wells up from the cut. I use it to draw a rune on McCord’s forehead. I repeat the spell on Nicole.
If I use either of them to make the Oracle, whoever’s still alive will try to take me down. If I don’t do the ritual, the Ker eats my soul. It’s not what you call a win-win.
“The obvious solution would be to kill you both, make the Oracle, go on my happy way. Only I don’t want one. And much as I don’t like you two, I don’t see any reason to kill you, either.” I pull two tiny Sig-Sauer P-238s out of the pockets inside the apron, and chamber a round into each.
“That doesn’t mean you won’t kill each other.” I put the pistols in their hands, fingers on the triggers, wrap them in duct tape so they don’t fall out.
“You sure you want to do this?” I yell over my shoulder. “Last chance.”
Jimmy pushes aside a plastic sheet and comes in from another room. He’s wearing his best t-shirt, his cleanest jeans. If you’re gonna die and be resurrected as a talking head, go in style, I guess.
“I’ll be alive, right?” he says.
“Not in any way you know it,” I say. But we’ve already had this argument.
There are times I’m not sure what the dividing line is between living and dying. A corpse is meat, but a soul goes on. Look at it that way, things get blurry.
Death happens. It’s supposed to. I don’t understand why. Don’t think I ever will.
But it doesn’t mean we have to be at its mercy. If this is what Jimmy wants, knowing everything I’ve told him, who am I to say no?
“I’m ready,” Jimmy says. He gets up on the operating table. I turn back to McCord and Nicole, vision blurry. I wipe stinging eyes with the back of my hand.
“Here’s how it’s gonna go,” I say. I put down the face shield, pull on gloves. “Option one is I make your Oracle and you figure out who gets it. Or there’s option two.” I lift the duct taped guns so they can see them. “One of you walks out of here with Jimmy’s head.
“The rune’s a minor geas. If you think of coming after me, it will remind you that I’m the one who gave you what you wanted and didn’t kill you. Loudly. Repeatedly. Until you stop. It won’t kill you, but you’ll wish it had.
“Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go cut my roommate’s head off.”
I strap Jimmy down tight. If I’d known him, really known him, not just for his usefulness to me, but as a person, would we have been friends?
Probably not. I’m not good at friends.
It stings, but it’s what he wants. And if I want to survive this, it’s what I have to do.
I start the spell. Light candles and incense, deposit reagents in a circle around the table, chant in Latin. The room fills with the stink of the incense, Jimmy’s panic sweat, my own fear and guilt.
A thick, black void forms over Jimmy. Faces shift in and out of the roiling sludge. I place the bone saw against the hollow of Jimmy’s throat.
“I end Adjournment,” I say, my voice almost cracking. I nod down at Jimmy. “This is your due.”
The Ker reaches out with grasping hands, tongues, wrapping itself around Jimmy. It sinks into him like a ship slipping beneath the waves.
“I am satisfied,” the Ker says.
I start to cut. Jimmy screams. A moment later so does the Ker.
* * *
I sit on a stool I pulled in from another room. It’s the only thing in here that isn’t covered in gore.
Jimmy’s headless body lies strapped to the table, blood still dripping from the severed neck. His head sits nailed to a wooden base with a dowel up the back to keep it from flopping over. I’ve placed it in front of the two paralyzed mages. Whoever survives this gets the trophy.
“You want to kill them.” The voice is sort of Jimmy’s, a reverberation that makes my teeth ache. “Don’t.”
I turn the head around. Jimmy blinks at me, only it’s not Jimmy. It’s his face, his eyes, but Jimmy’s not in there. Not like he was.
“How come?”
“I need one of them.” Jimmy’s face twists into what I think is supposed to be a smile. “One day, so will you.”
Will I now? I
wonder how much of him is still there, how much is the Ker. Maybe it’s neither one. Both dying to create something new. One thing’s for certain, whatever the hell I’ve made isn’t answering to anybody.
I look over at the two paralyzed mages, guns in their hands, mine twitching for my own gun. “Got a preference?”
“I already know who’s walking out of here,” the oracle says.
“How you feeling?”
The smile shifts, the eyes clear, and it’s pure Jimmy. “Nothin’ hurts, man.”
“Glad to hear it.”
“Thanks for this,” he says, and then his eyes go flat and whatever bits of Jimmy were floating on the surface have gone back under.
I stand up, head for the next room so I can get these blood-covered overalls off.
“Hey, man,” the Oracle says, just the way Jimmy would, but when I look back I see the hungry eyes of the Ker glaring at me. “Want to know your future?”
“I already do,” I say. “I die just like everybody else.”
DELAYED EXCHANGE DEFERRED
Kiya Nicoll
There is a trick to playing chess with Death.
Not any set will do. Many a well-meaning gambler would set up the board by the bedside of a dying child, waiting to catch Death at work, to make the challenge. Sometimes the child would recover, and sometimes not, but the player never saw Death come or go, and never played the game. Knowing this, some would set up morbid boards, with pieces carved from finger bones, hoping to catch Death’s attention. Death did not show for them either. Others would try pieces of gold and silver with ruby eyes, as if Death had ever cared about riches, or found his presence compelled by wealth.
Not any set will bring Death to play, but the sets that do have very little in common. Some are stone and some are wood and some are made of other things. There have been sets that could bring Death to play passed down through generations that have forgotten their power, and there are new ones made, for a special purpose.
This one is made of odds and ends, and barely seems to cohere as a set. The board is scratched into an old table, lines drawn against the side of a book and gouged out with a pocketknife, the pattern of the squares marked out with scars from hundreds of stubbed-out cigarettes. The white’s king’s rook is a shot glass, the queen’s side is a brass cylinder, the knights a pair of erasers shaped like bumblebees, the bishops an orange and white pill bottle and a tiny upright crucifix, the king and queen a pair of chipped porcelain figurines with golden rings glued, a bit crookedly, to their heads. Black’s side is just as motley: the rooks are flat metal discs—one oval, one circular—the knights a pair of misshapen lumps of charcoal, one bishop a syringe tube packed full of hair, the other a tuning key for a guitar, with the royals a pair of small dollar-store dolls, each with half a rainbow of colored rings settled on its head. White’s pawns are bottle caps—well, seven bottle caps and a cork—each of them different, and black’s are a steady progression of folded paper cranes, monotonically progressing from poorly made to roughly competent.