The Curse of Jacob Tracy: A Novel (15 page)

Trace put his hands over his ears and gabbled the first bit of Latin that came to mind: “Sancte Michael Archangele, defende nos in proelio, contra nequitiam et insidias diaboli esto praesidium!”

The sly writhing thing in the cell with him sniggered, pawed at him with its clammy hands, but Trace thrust it away, summoned up his shield, and pushed it into place. The pounding in his head cut off so abruptly that he gasped. He heard the suckling stop, and sensed the intruder swarming away from him, surrounding the other man in the cell, settling into him.

The dope fiend shuddered and slumped, hitched his shoulders and wiped a grimy fist across his mouth. He raised his eyes and looked balefully at Trace. “Yer a pitiful sight,” the addict said.

“You should talk,” Trace said. “Looks like you’ve about used up that vessel.”

The thing in the addict bared rotting teeth. “There’s always another. Your kind are always lookin’ for a way to ease the pain. Just like you, always runnin’ away.” The demon held out the bottle, waggled it invitingly. “You useta
love
yer medicine, din’t you, altar-boy?”

“I never loved it,” Trace said. “I hated the stuff. I hated bein out of my head and pukin like a dog, but the pain was worse, and then the visions were worse. The morphine made them stop.”

“But now they started up again,” the demon said slyly. “Cuz of
her.
An’ you let her do it, cuz the
power
is what you really crave. Well, I got news for you, altar-boy. She means to feed you to somethin’ much worse than lil ol’ me. Better to snuff that power out, make it useless to her.”

Knowing what he was talking to, Trace could hardly take such a warning seriously. It was no news that Miss Fairweather wanted to use his power. And at least she had told him
how
to use it. The words were coming back to him, welling up alongside the power, where they had been stored down there all this time. “Exorcisamos te, omnis immunde spiritus, omnis satanic potestas, omnis infernalis adversarii—”

“Aw, c’mon!” the addict jeered. “Issat all you got, altar-boy? Mumblin’ prayers and shakin’ gimcracks. All you shamans is the same.”

But Trace could feel something building in himself, a spark of brightness, of
rightness
that had always been there, banked and waiting, and now was flaring in reaction to this threat. He felt a shiver of excitement and looked down to see all the hairs on his arms were standing up.

A shield, hell. This was a battering ram. A thunderhead. A hurricane.

He felt, rather than saw, the addict recoil. But then it sneered at him. “Big deal. You got a bit of glimmer. You don’t know what to do with it.”

“I don’t think it takes much smarts,” Trace said, rocking to his feet. “I been wrestlin with the likes of
you
for sixteen years.”

The demon’s eyes widened. “You don’t have the bollocks.”

Trace laughed. “Maybe not, but I got a notion to find out.”

*   *   *

T
HE BLUE TWINKLE
of dawn was lighting the sky when the cell door’s lock turned over with a loud clank. Trace raised his head as the door swung inward, with the faintest of squeaks on its well-oiled hinges.

There was some muttered conversation in the corridor outside, and then Whistler stepped through the doorway, a tin cup in his hand. He surveyed the room with polite interest, as if visiting a neighbor’s parlor.

The addict slept, bruised but still breathing, in the far corner. There were a couple spots of dried blood on the floor, and the puddle of spilled laudanum, which Trace had kicked some straw over.

Whistler glanced an order at the guards in the doorway. They came in, shook the addict awake, and ushered him out of the cell. “C’mon, boyo,” one of them said. “Time to go.”

Trace sat up on the edge of the bunk. Whistler drank from his tin cup. The smell of coffee wafted across the room.

“Rough night?” Whistler asked.

“Had worse,” Trace said.

Whistler nodded. “The guards reported some kind of hullaballoo in here around midnight. Screaming and fighting and ‘Holy rollin’,’ he described it. He also claimed there were flashes of lightning and some black smoke, but I don’t see how that’s possible.”

“Doesn’t sound likely,” Trace agreed.

“You don’t seem to be damaged.”

“Not more than passing.” Mostly he felt as though part of his brain had wrenched itself loose, and was looking back on the past thirty-eight years of his life with blatant incredulity. Something had
awoken
in him last night, and that detached part of him was clanging to take it out and let it run.

At the moment, however, his years of self-control were serving him in good stead.

Whistler sipped his coffee. “Your lawyer’s here. He paid your fine. So you’re free to go.”

“Much obliged.” Trace rolled to his feet, trying not to look too jaunty. His heel nudged the whiskey bottle on the floor, and it made a soft clink against the bench leg. He bent and swept it up.

“What’s that there?” Whistler asked.

Trace tilted the bottle, which appeared to be full of liquid soot, or maybe ink that had spoiled. “Specimen,” he said. “Thought my employer might be interested.”

*   *   *

T
RACE RECLAIMED HIS
personal effects, including the embarrassing sheaf of letters, and then a guard led him out of the jail and into the receiving area between the jail and the courthouse, where a distinguished, silver-haired man in a fine suit was waiting for him.

“Marlin Clifford,” he said, offering Trace his hand. “Miss Fairweather hired me to take your case. There was a small fine incurred on the drunk and disorderly, which has been paid, and you are free to go. Miss Fairweather asked me to give you this.”

The lawyer handed over one of the familiar sealed missives. “You may also be interested to know I am taking Miss Herschel’s case, at Miss Fairweather’s behest. I shall do everything in my power to prevent the case from going to trial, but if it does, you may be assured Miss Herschel will have a vigorous and thorough defense.”

Trace thanked the man, shook his hand, and thanked him again. Then they parted ways—Marlin Clifford heading inside, and Trace exiting to the street. He blinked at the bright sunlight, gulped a dizzying lungful of fresh air. He was amazed to find the world still turning.

He’d let the power out, and it had not destroyed him. It had not destroyed the man in the cell, either. He’d been able to control it, more or less, and he had wrestled a demon to a standstill. Not a puny pale shade of a ghost—a
demon.

He was pretty sure none of his priests or seminary teachers had ever done that.

He looked at the bottle in his hand, and Miss Fairweather’s letter.

She
had known he could do it.

He broke the seal of the letter.

Mr. Tracy—

As Mr. Clifford has no doubt informed you, he will take the Anna Herschel case. You need now to concentrate on locating the Perpetrator of which we spoke. It may interest you to know that a reporter employed by the
Carondelet Citizen
hanged himself in that office some months ago. The reporter’s name was Isaac Levy and prior to his death he shared a room with his brother, Daniel Levy, who is now employed by that same news office under an assumed name. Daniel Levy was previously enrolled at the B’nai El school for Torah studies on Cherry Street. I suggest you look into the Levy brothers’ involvement with these events.

S.F.

Trace stared at the page for a moment. He looked at the back of it. Foolish; of course there was nothing else. He felt strangely let down. She’d said he was hard to miss in the spirit world. She clearly was keeping an eye on him. She
must
have noticed what he’d done last night.

But what did he want, a pat on the head? She was
hiding
from something—he couldn’t put his finger on what gave him that idea, but he was certain of it. She probably had better things to do than monitor his personal epiphanies.

And maybe—the thought came to him slowly, as common sense overruled the high of victory—no matter how tempting it was to pour his news into her interested ear, perhaps it was best if he didn’t. After all, he knew nothing about the woman, except she wanted to use him.

But he hardly knew what to do with himself this morning. He’d let the power out, and God had not smitten him. The world was not as he had known it for thirty-eight years. Because
he
was different.

He didn’t know yet if it was good or bad, but he was different.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

“… So I went to the lawyer Jameson said,” Boz explained, “but the shyster didn’t let me say, ‘My partner’s a white man,’ he just shut the door in my face.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Trace said, lathering soap on his shaving brush. “No sense you spendin our money on a lawyer. Was just a fine, anyway.”

“And she paid it?”

“Yup.” Trace glanced at Boz’s sour expression. “Why not? Was workin her job got me arrested.”

“And you’re still workin her job, I take it?”

Trace met his eyes in the mirror. “I wanna find this thing, Boz. When it killed Herschel it got my dander up. When it tries to shoot my partner and gets me a night in jail, I tend to take it personal.”

“You’re awful chirked for somebody spent the night in jail.”

Trace was spared the necessity of answering right away by the brush swirling over his jaw and neck. “You ever have a big worry on your shoulders, somethin you dreaded doin, and then when time came to do it, turned out it was no big thing? Maybe you even liked it?”

Boz sighed. “I’m not gonna like this story, am I?”

“There was a demon in the drunk tank,” Trace said, with as much nonchalance as he could muster. “It had hold of this poor bastard in there, and I pulled it out of him and stuck it in that bottle there. Just like Miss Fairweather said.”

Boz eyed the dirty corked bottle with its smudged label. “There’s a demon in there.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You
put
it in there.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And you wanna go try it again with that thing at the newspaper office.”

Trace looked him in the eye. Nodded.

“You told that rich witch yet? That you bottled her a demon?”

“Nope. Came straight here. Figured it was none of her business.”

“Well that’s somethin.” Boz was quiet for a moment, while Trace whisked away the stubble from his neck. He could see Boz struggling with himself, trying to come to grips with this new knowledge of the world. Trace knew how he felt.

“You see the paper this morning?” Boz said at last.

“No. Which one?”

“Any of ’em. Most of the big ones are supposin you and Miss Anna were in it together, but the
Times
is sayin you were brought in for secret consults with the chief of police. Jameson gave it to me for you, along with a whole stack of letters that stink like a French whorehouse. Said there were at least five marriage proposals in there.”

“Any of ’em rich?”

“Oh, and there’s another piece in the
Times
says the Herschels were maybe
not
Jewish, they were good Protestant German folk, and sorta suggested the Jew undertakers came and took the bodies away to use ’em in some unholy ritual.”

“Jesus Christ,” Trace said, fervently if inapplicably. “That oughtta start a riot.”

“You think maybe that’s the idea?”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, this thing’s been killin people one or two at a time, right? By gettin into ’em and turnin ’em on each other.”

Trace wiped the soap off his face, looking at Boz curiously.

“It started out small and sneaky. A babe in its cradle, an old man in his house. Then a whole family at once.”

“Yeah.”

“And from what you said, all those folks who was killed was down in the German quarter. I had Jameson look up the names in his city directory. All of ’em Jews, or workin for Jewish businesses.”

Trace turned away from the mirror to hide his smile. However much Boz was discomfited by this demon business, his natural inclination to
fix
things wouldn’t allow him to let the puzzle alone. “Miss Fairweather said demons tend to keep to familiar ground.”

“An’ the Jewish folks in this town are a tight-knit bunch. There ain’t very many of ’em, so they take care of each other. Same as the Irish and the blacks, but you don’t hear so much about the Jews stealin, or loiterin, or gettin hauled in drunk. Or hackin up their kids with axes, for that matter.”

“So you’re thinkin such lofty and do-gooder behavior might stick in a demon’s craw?”

“Or maybe they’re easy pickin’s. Like a snapping turtle in a barrel full o’ minnows. An’ maybe, the barrel ain’t big enough to satisfy it anymore.”

Trace chewed that over for a minute. “You think it’s gettin stronger.”

“Ayup.”

“So where’s Danny Levy fit in?”

“I ast myself the same question last night. Cuz clearly that kid wasn’t sayin everything he knew, and a man with a dead brother and a pretend name has somethin to hide. So, while you were sleepin it off in the drunk tank, I went round to the Roth Funeral Home and had a chat with their parlormaid.”

“Huh,” Trace said. “And was she young, pretty, and colored?”

Boz grinned. “I’d say that was a fair description of Miss Deirdre.”

“And what did Miss Deirdre have to say, that can be repeated in polite company?”

“That young Mr. Roth at the funeral home is good friends with Mr. Levy, and ever since Mr. Levy’s brother died the two of them have been up to some mighty bad juju.”

*   *   *

T
HE
R
OTHS’ PARLORMAID
had told Boz that Mr. Levy liked to come by and study with Mr. Roth after supper, them being of the same age and attending the same school, before Mr. Levy dropped out to support himself after the death of his brother. It was only the past few months, Miss Deirdre said, that their after-supper meetings had turned sinister. The parlormaid had heard strange chanting, seen them packing and unpacking bits of clay, hair, feathers, gunpowder, and iron filings—all ingredients well known, to a girl from Mississippi, as ingredients in Black Magic. Once she had cleaned up blood off the floor. Very little, as if from a cut finger, but blood all the same.