Maggie Get Your Gun (6 page)

“I was in my washroom, powdering my nose…”

“What kind of powder?” I asked, pulling out my pen.  There
are so many substances that can attract a genie, many of them powder-like.

She looked at me like I was an idiot, “Let me rephrase that
in a way that someone vulgar like you might understand.  I was '
taking a
piss'
.”

“Well why didn't you just say so?” I replied.

“Are you sure you’re here to help?” she asked.

“I promise I’m really good at this.”

“I'm afraid my confidence in your abilities is flagging,”
she said, her face looking like she had smelled something unpleasant.  I
sniffed my pits.

She got up and walked over to her bedroom door to re-enact
the moment for me, I think just in case I was too dumb to follow the narrative,
“I heard a noise and came out of my room.  I looked over at the safe and there
was this… it was a man... except he was almost stone like… except like a cloud…
well, you know what genies look like.”

And I do.  They look exactly as she described.

“So,” she said, “I threw my shoe at him and he disappeared
before it hit.”

“Shoe?” I asked, making sure I heard that right.

She took off a feathered mule, “They’re made of silver and
the heel can be used as a stake.  If you press this jewel, it ejects a stream
of either holy water or salt.  Despite the judgment I see in your eyes, I am a
witch.  I’m not completely helpless.”

I gave a low whistle, “You totally just won points in my
book.  Let me see that.  I’m thinking mama might need a brand new pair when she
gets this case wrapped.”

She held the shoe away, “You couldn’t afford them.”

So much for points.

“Right," I replied drily, "so he grabbed the
necklace and was gone?”

“The end.”

“Was there anything special about this necklace?”

“No, it was just a bunch of rocks that my grandmother
brought with her from Earth.  I don’t even know why my family thought I should
be the guardian of her necklace, but they said it was important and that I
would be cut off if anything ever happened to it,” she waved her hands at her
penthouse, “I need you to find that necklace.  I need you to get it back for me
before I am turned into a homeless beggar on the streets.”

“Well, if you ever decide to pawn those to make rent,” I
said, pointing at her fancy footwear, "I wear a size nine, too.”

Chapter 9

A gremlin in a newsy cap was hawking the headline from his
stack of papers.  A trolley car rumbled by filled with devils in zoot suits.  A
pair of cthulhu were holding tentacles and gazing into one another’s eyes, not
paying any attention to their chocolate éclairs.  It had to be true love.  I’d
been to that café and they make a fucking awesome éclair.

Distracted by dessert and dreams of creamy injected
goodness, I didn't notice the gorilla until he had knocked me over and grabbed
the file out of my hand.

Yes, a gorilla.  I mean, not a real gorilla.  It looked
like one, but my tracker senses were a-tingle, because that ape was no ape.  It
was some sort of shape-shifter in a monkey suit.  I watched him lope down the
street from my sideways view on the concrete.  People were staring.  There was
no way I could let him go without a fight, not if Dad and I expected to make
rent next month.  Other Siders look for weakness.  They will fucking eat you up
if they figure out they can do it.  And the gremlin newsboy was actually
starting to drool.  Guess if there weren’t enough stories in his paper, he
wasn’t above setting the gears in motion to get the next day’s scoop.

I rolled off of the sidewalk and took off in a full
sprint.  I passed an alleyway and caught a glimpse out of the corner of my eye
of someone ripping out the pages of my file and dumping them on the ground.

The gorilla wasn’t a gorilla anymore.

In non-camouflage form, I’d bet cash money it was the genie
I was trying to track down.  This guy… well, it wasn’t really a guy.  Genies
don’t have dingle berries so it was more of an “it” with masculine features.  It
was smooth and deep, dark blue as midnight, other than its knife-like pearly
whites and beady little red eyes.  Instead of legs, it floated on a cloud of
smoke.  And it was pissed.

I turned to the side and pulled my stake out of the top of
my boot.

“Ripping up the pages won’t help,” I said.  “We totally
made copies.”

The genie hissed and its fingers morphed into claws.

“Where is it?” it breathed, shaking the file at me.

“Where is what?”

Porcupine spikes sprouted out of its shoulders.

“I know a great esthetician that can wax that for you,” I
offered.

“I asked you, Maggie MacKay, where is it?”

“I’m so overjoyed I don’t have to go tracking you down to
hell’s half-acre, I’m not going to bother asking how you know my name...”

“Your name is not important!”

“...but I will take the time to mention, you crazy, shape
shifting, genie dude, that I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

It gave me a growl and I crouched into a defensive posture,
waiting for that fucker to spring.

“I should kill you now,” it stated.

“You do that, and I won’t be able to tell you where
whatever-it-is you’re looking for is.”

It hissed in frustration. 

This was definitely not one of the brighter bulbs on the
tree.

“The necklace, you stupid human.  Where is the necklace?”

That took me off guard, “Necklace?  They told me YOU had
it.”

“I DO NOT HAVE IT!  TELL ME WHERE IT IS!”

“I have no idea!  That’s why I’m trying to track you down!”

“YOU LIE!”

"Your mom lies."

"Do not trifle with me!"

“Do you see my nose growing?  I'm telling you the truth.”

“TELL ME WHERE IT IS!”

“I don’t know, you dumb demon.  I do know that shouting at
me isn’t going to help me find it any faster.  If you would just shut up for a
second, maybe we can figure out what’s going on.”

It roared in anger, but clapped its trap and resorted to
just glaring at me.

I held up my hands, “I was told by a witch that you stole
the necklace…”

“It was not there when I opened the safe,” it hissed.

“You expect me to believe someone came along and stole it
just moments before poor little powerless you showed up?  Tell me another.  What
did you do with it?”

The genie hung its head, it seemed almost in shame.  You
know, if evil had shame.  Usually, they’re pretty unapologetic jerks.

“I came to take the necklace to my dimension…” it said.

“Dude, that’s a long way for a bunch of rocks on a string.”

The genie started laughing, which, trust me, is not a sound
you need to hear.

“Is that what they told you?” the genie drew closer.  It
started circling me, “Each bead contains the power to control one soul. 
Thirty-three souls held in thrall by thirty-three brimstone beads.”

What was it with people feeling I shouldn't be privy to
vital information like... oh say... that the thing I was tracking down had freakin'
scary powers?  First the comb.  Now the necklace.  Mr. Smith I could
understand.  The man was clearly a psychopath.  But my own father?  He said
that according to Frank, this was just a piece of bad costume jewelry.  Unless
the police weren't aware that the necklace was anything special.  Which would
mean the witch lied... or that she wasn't aware of what she had...  but this
genie knew what it was and what it did...

I started circling him back, “Brimstone?  You mean sulfur? 
That is one stinky necklace…”

“Brimstone does not ‘stink’,” corrected the genie.

“That’s like wrapping thirty-three rotten eggs around your
neck.  Who would do that to themselves?  For thirty-three souls?  Totally not
worth it.”

“How many souls do you possess, Tracker Maggie?”

I stopped, “Um… one.”

“Then do not look down upon the means for such control.”

I started circling again, “Seriously, you can keep the necklace.”

“DO NOT JEST!” the genie roared.

“Okay, okay, don’t get your magic exhaust cloud in a
bunch.  Let's recap.  There is a stinky necklace…”

“It is not ‘stinky’…”

“Which was stolen…”

“…I do not know how…”

“By someone.”

“That is correct.”

“Before you could get there.”

“Yes.”

“Except we have a witness,” I pointed out.  "The lady
of the house caught you red-handed.  You broke in and were standing in front of
her empty safe.”

“She discovered me at the precise moment I discovered the
necklace was not in the vault.  I have been tracking this necklace for over a
century and someone---”

“---got to it before you did,” we said in unison.

You know you’ve got an issue when you’re sharing the same
brain with a genie.

I looked that genie dead in the eyes and said, “I don’t
believe you, but I don’t not believe you, either.”

“You will soon see that what I say is true,” it snarled.

“What do you
exactly
want this necklace for?”

“The necklace was created to bind an army of my kind to the
wearer,” it growled.

My brain started rattling through the damage that
thirty-three genies could do, “That would suck.”

“The three wish rule does not protect us.  We are forced to
stay, enslaved to the stones, doing their bidding with no hope of freedom until
the necklace is removed.  But no longer!  I have followed its trail for over a
century!  The necklace must be returned to The Dark Dimension and destroyed!”

I twirled my stake in my hand as I thought.  I didn’t trust
this genie as far as I could throw him.  And he was big and heavy and I could
not have thrown him very far.  But he
was
an enemy of my enemy…

I pointed my stake at him, “Okay, here’s the deal.  I’ll
look for your necklace.  But if I find it, I destroy it.  Meanwhile, you broke
into someone’s house, so you have to turn yourself in.  And pony up some
restitution to that stuck up witch.”

“Never!” it hissed.

“Come on, don’t choose the hard way...”

I hated when they choose the hard way.

“I shall walk to the ends of the earth, scorching the
ground and destroying all that stands in my way until I find the necklace!” it
bellowed with the fury of a Category 5 hurricane.

I rolled my eyes, “No, you won’t.”

“NO ONE CAN STOP ME!” it screamed.

“About that...” I pointed down at the ground, “While we
were circling one another, I decided to drop a salt circle on your ass.  Sorry
about that.”

The genie looked down and roared.  I pulled out a plastic bag
of Morton’s Kosher from my waistband and pulled the rubber tube out of my
pants.

“Yah, I just ran it down my leg.  When I figured out you
were going to be a jerk about all this, I unclipped the clothespin and, voila! 
No hands!”

“YOU CAN’T DO THIS TO ME!”

“Sorry, you’re having a rough day.  What can I say?  When
it rains, it pours.”

He beat on the boundary of the salt circle with both fists,
crying, “NOOO!!!”

“Come on, you big baby.  It’s not that bad,” I pulled out a
bottle from my jacket pocket.  It was standard Other Side issue, designed
specifically by the Other Side police authority for detaining genies.  I broke
the seal and unscrewed the lid, “This, however,
is
gonna suck.  By the
authority invoked upon me by the Magical State of The Other Side, get inside
the bottle, you dumb lug.”

Chapter 10

I dropped the bottle off at the police station.  My friend
Lacy, the blue gal who works in intake, was unfortunately off.  She and I have
a streamlined system worked out for when I have a "person of interest"
who needs processing.

Instead, there was an eager new guy covering the desk,
which meant by the time I had gotten through dotting all the "i"s in
the genie’s paperwork, it was mid-afternoon.  The cops weren't too happy that I
didn't have the necklace, but grudgingly thanked me for at least hauling in their
man.  I pinkie swore I'd locate the necklace the first chance I got.

But I wasn't going to track down jack shit for anyone until
I got some food in my belly.  My stomach was growling like I had a bunch of cave
trolls living in there.  I opened up the office door, subs in hand, and
shouted, “Dad!  I’m back.”

His desk was just as he left it.  Guess his job was taking
longer than he figured.  I threw one sandwich on his side and flung myself into
my chair, opening up the wrapper and sinking my teeth into all that goodness.