Dead to Rites (26 page)

Tsura was tappin’ that foot again. I’d hoped she might leave that particular fidget behind at my office.

“Still, do you suppose maybe we ought to take this somewhere else? All three of us, I mean?
We
found him here, so it’s possible someone else—”

“I will not leave this place, Tsura Sava,” Nessumontu insisted. “I have protections here beyond my own, means of hiding myself to which I would have no access elsewhere.”

That
was a tidy segue into the question I’d been wantin’ to ask if ever there was one.

“Let’s talk about that, pal. How’d you even wind up here? Ain’t exactly the sorta place I’d expect to attract a wanderin’ mummy. How’d you know about it? Pay for it? Why’d you pick it? Why’d somebody in the back office order the desk clerk to admit you?”

Just once, while he was ponderin’ on how much to tell me, Nessumontu drummed his fingers on his knee. It was the most human thing I’d seen him do, and it reminded me how little any of us—mortal or Fae—ever really changed.

“As I was departing the museum,” he said, “I encountered one of your city’s sorcerers.”

What?

“What?” Tsura asked, startled.

“Yes. I cannot say how he located me, but perhaps it is to do with his particular practices. He demonstrated for me some of his magics, and they are quite dissimilar from the
heka
I know. He recognized me for what I am, and after convincing me that he intended me no malice, he arranged this place for me. Here, he suggested, I might stay safely until we could determine a way to prevent any in this city from obtaining the spells I carry. Just as you do, he fears such a possibility.” The mummy scowled, then—and yeah, this time it definitely
was
a scowl. You ever see a dead guy scowl? It ain’t attractive. “The rivalries between sorcerers and beings of the Otherworld here must be severe indeed.”

“They can be,” I muttered. I had a sinkin’ feeling in my gut over all this. I mean “The
Lusitania
shakin’ hands with the
Titanic
”-levels of sinkin’. “How’d he persuade you to trust him?”

“Primarily by making it very clear that, had he wished me harm—or to claim me for himself—he might have done so immediately. He was well warded against mystical attack, and he had with him a great many heavily armed men. I am not intimately familiar with the weapons of your world, nor—as I have told you—with his form of magic. Neither do I know precisely how readily I might be harmed as one newly returned to the world of the living. For all that, I must say, had he intended me any ill, I was as vulnerable to it then as ever I would be.”

Funny, that didn’t sound real convincing to
me
.

“Don’t suppose you’d care to share this Good Samaritan sorcerer’s name with me?”

“I do not believe so.”

Figured. “Anythin’ you can tell me about his mojo, at least?”

“Mojo?”

“His magic. Tradition. Practices.”

“Only that I recognized many of its precepts as rooted in numerology.”

Yep. That sinkin’ feeling? Now good’n truly sunk.

See, for him to recognize even that much, he hadda be familiar with the base language behind the symbology and incantations of the practice. I already knew it wasn’t Egyptian, since he’d said it wasn’t a
heka
-based practice. So what other languages would a dead guy from his era know in passing?

Sanskrit? Ancient Greek? Sure, yeah, possible, but I didn’t know too many guys in Chicago who made use of those, for the occult or otherwise.

Hebrew, though…

“Kabbalah,” I said.

Tsura sucked in a breath. “That’s bad.”

“Yeah. I mean, sure, there’s any number of Kabbalists who’re perfectly good eggs, but we only know one who’s already stuck his schnozz into Nessumontu’s business. And he
ain’t
a perfectly good egg.”

I
still
couldn’t work out
why
, though. Nessumontu’s spells were about useless to a pure Kabbalist. The traditions weren’t at all compatible. That was the same reason I hadn’t wanted to put Fleischer at the top of my suspect list earlier. Still, I’d have to puzzle out “why” later on, since it was pretty clear now that he was, indeed, my “who.”

“That’s why they sent him to stay at this hotel, instead of someplace he’d stand out less!” Maybe Tsura was no Second City native, but she was no bunny, either. She knew how the Mob boys liked to handle things. “He’s probably part owner, or has something on the owners.”

Yep. Wasn’t as if a guy like Fleischer woulda had much interest in any place much crummier than this one. Hell, just ’cause the place wasn’t real swanky meant we were already on the low end of the sorta hotel he’d…

Oh. Fuck me.

Dunno what she saw on my face, but she saw
somethin’
.

“Mick, what’s wrong?”

“If this is Fleischer’s place, he’s got eyes and ears on staff. We—”

“
They’re here!
”

To me, the teensy
clank
of a key in the lock sounded louder’n any gong—but these guys were good, and I’d been tightly wrapped up in tryin’ to piece everything together. Without Tsura’s warning giving me an extra half-heartbeat to move…

I yanked the L&G from my coat as the door flew open with a bang, rebounding off the wall. I got a quick glimpse of three or more thug-shaped heaps of flesh and suit, all of ’em carrying even uglier masses of wood and steel, barrels rising.

I fired first, siphoning huge swathes of luck from the lot of ’em, though I didn’t have time to aim as precisely as I woulda preferred. Only one of the choppers failed completely, trigger clicking and hammer thumping without effect. The other two opened up, squirting a hailstorm of lead that chewed through walls and furniture until the whole room was obscured in a cloud of smoke, wood dust, and splinters. The goons shootin’ at us managed to get in each other’s way, though, thanks to their sudden lack of fortune, jostlin’ elbows and missing anything that woulda felt the impact.

Whole buncha those slugs woulda been in my back and ribs without Tsura’s premonition. Right. No more trying to ditch the oracle.

If we both lived through this, anyway.

I was already movin’—well,
still
movin’ really—before the gunmen could fire a second volley. Nessumontu was gonna have to look out for himself. I came outta the spin snaggin’ Tsura’s hand, yanked her to me for a better grip around her waist, and lunged. A stream of slugs followed us as we bounced over the bed, sending up geysers of fabric, feathers, the occasional spring. Even as we tumbled off the edge and onto the floor on the opposite side, I was weavin’ the luck I’d just stolen into a quilt all around us. Then, lyin’ on top of Tsura—I may not care much for bein’ shot, but it ain’t as bad for me as it’d be for her—I reached out and dragged the already perforated mattress over so it provided a little extra cover while still leavin’ me room to pop up and squeeze off a few blasts of my own, if I had the chance.

“You havin’ fun yet?” I asked her, quietly as I could while still bein’ heard over the thunder of the Chicago typewriters. “Ain’t this so much better’n the carnival?”

She didn’t answer with anything more’n frightened panting. Shocking, I know.

Wouldn’t be true to say there was no pause in the barrage of the Tommy guns; not even those monsters, with their hundred-round drums, can keep their rate of fire up indefinitely. These guys were good, though. They traded off bursts, never lettin’ either their sprays or their breaks between ’em fall into predictable patterns. Woulda been a roll of the dice for me to poke my head out’n shoot back, and with the way those dice’d been loaded against me lately, I didn’t wanna chance it. Sure, I coulda burned up some of the good luck I’d gathered to do it, but right now I was more concerned with usin’ it to keep Tsura from gettin’ fulla holes.

Thing is, I ain’t addle-pated. The shootin’ they were doin’ now? They weren’t tryin’ to hit anything in particular. I mighta quit the business of war before you lot invented automatic weapons, but I understand the basics of battle and I keep my ears open. So yeah, I recognize suppressive fire when I’m under it.

They coulda chewed through the bedframe and the mattress to get to us if they’d meant to kill, but that woulda forced me to respond, shoot back no matter the risk. This? This was about keepin’ us pinned, so we couldn’t interfere.

But interfere in what?

Ain’t easy to tune out an a cappella trio of Tommies, especially when you got hearing sensitive as mine, but I buckled down and worked at it. Sure enough, there it was, just audible in the tiny gasps for air between slugs. Two voices, raised in competing chants.

One of ’em was a tongue I’d never heard, but even if I hadn’t recognized Nessumontu’s raspy pipes, I’da pegged it as Ancient Egyptian.

The other was Hebrew. And yep, I knew that voice, too, even though I’d only heard it the once.

A few bits of translation started to filter through the cacophony in my noggin. An Egyptian god here, an Old Testament angel there, a whole heap of words of power.

And I could tell without question, by the bitter tang of mojo in every syllable, the weight and flavor of the building magics, who was gonna come out ahead.

Mighta been different if the royal stiff had been at the top of his game, insteada comin’ off a long stretch of being dead. If he’d been prepared and ready for this contest. If Fleischer hadn’t been studyin’ for this particular exam since before the pair of ’em ever met, hadn’t arrived bustin’ at the seams with protective wards already active.

If he hadn’t been sharp enough to order his thugs to keep me from steppin’ in to lend a hand or a bit of luck.

If, if, friggin’ if.

A final torrent of lead from all three Tommies to keep us cowerin’, and a sudden surge of pure mystical power combined to ring my skull like a church bell. Even when the guns and the chanting fell silent and nothin’ remained but the fading sound of beating feet, it took me long seconds before I pulled it together enough to carefully peek up over the shredded mattress.

Sure enough, nothin’ but an empty room and the sounds of screaming phone calls to the police from up’n down the hall. Fleischer and his boys were gone—and Nessumontu with ’em.

“Heya, fellas. Nice evening, ain’t it?”

The two ginks in question, both of ’em loitering around Baskin’s front porch, gave me a couple half-nods—one whole nod between ’em, I guess?—and heavy-lidded glowers. Other’n the colors of their coats and slouch caps, they more or less looked identical.

They were also both cops. I’d hung around with Pete’n his fellows enough to recognize the look. Off-duty, but definitely bulls.

Made sense, though. Where else was my favorite ASA gonna go for hirin’ some extra security? And I’d known well before I showed up that he
would
have extra security. It musta been one of the first things he’d done after my visit of… Lessee, I guess three nights ago, now.

Since they didn’t appear inclined to say anythin’ in response, I went on.

“You don’t mind if I just wander up and knock on the door, do ya?”

“’Fraid we do,” the one on the left said.

“Move on,” the other one added, openin’ his coat just enough for me to see he was packin’.

Great.

“Look,” I said, closing by a single step and keepin’ my mitts well out to my sides, “I just wanna—”

They both moved, not toward as I mighta expected, and not back as though to clear themselves room to skin leather and start shootin’, but to the side. Away from each other.

And somehow, even though I coulda come up with half a dozen different reasons for it, I just knew why.

They were makin’ sure I couldn’t look one of ’em straight in the eyes without turnin’ my back to the other.

I couldn’t guess just how much Baskin had told them, or what they’d believed of it, but they were takin’ his instructions serious enough. I was gonna hafta add “keepin’ other people’s secrets” to the list of topics I wanted to jaw with him about.

I watched both of ’em, the stubble on their chins and the whites of their blinkers bathed in waves of light from passing flivvers on the street behind me. Their shadows danced over the front of the house, walkin’ patrol even while the guys themselves stood still.

“I’m not here to cause any trouble, dammit. I just need to talk to Ramona Webb. She’s a… friend of Mr. Baskin’s. She may be here, and if she ain’t, he’ll know where I can reach her. That’s it.”

“Leave now,” the second one growled at me, “or trouble’s what you’re gonna have, want it or not.”

Another car passed, slightly out-of-tune engine rattling our teeth as it passed, and this time the light lingered on the two bulls a little longer. Guess the driver slowed, wantin’ to see what was goin’ on with we three ginks standin’ around on the lawn.

And that right there was my answer.

I grinned, makin’ real sure it was broad enough they could see my pearly whites in the glint of the house lights.

“All right. Say we got trouble. What then?”

Thankfully, they didn’t blink
quite
in unison. That woulda been too much. Definitely wasn’t the response they’d been expectin’ though.

“We got ourselves three possibilities.” I raised three fingers on one paw, started tickin’ ’em off with the other. “First—and by far the most likely, even though you’re gonna be too proud to believe it—is I put you both down and go knock on the damn door anyway.”

They both puffed up at that, but I went on before they could interrupt.

“Second, and
least
likely, is you put me down and arrest me, but not without a long scuffle that’s gonna leave the both of you black’n blue for a good long while—and that’s gonna be a loud enough to pull every one of Baskin’s neighbors to the window.

“And third is that, after a while of what looks like option one or option two, one of you pulls a gat and shoots me. At which point you’re gonna have a lot more of the neighbors running to either the window or the horn, and you’n Mr. Baskin are gonna be up to your neck in questions.”

It was the first cop who responded.