Trickster (20 page)

I stood up, looked around. The bathrooms were behind us, through a swinging door. Perfect. I nudged Claire, delighting in this illicit, uninvited touch. “Let’s go.”

She waited a second, giving me a flat stare. I remembered the cop car fishtailing, crashing, Claire popping out with a fucking nightstick in one hand. Then she stood up, gave Mags a pat on the shoulder, and followed me through the swinging doors. I tried both the men’s and women’s rooms. Both empty, so I pushed the men’s room door open and gestured.

“In here.”

She looked at the bathroom, then at me. We stayed like that for a moment. Then she stepped inside and I followed, locking the door behind me.

It was the tiniest bathroom in the universe, and
might have been impossible to actually use as a bathroom. We were pushed up against each other, her lean and warm, me gritty and sucking my gut in like some nervous middle schooler. I rolled up my sleeve.

“How’d you find this Gottschalk guy?”

I pushed my sleeve up past my elbow. She looked down at the pink rivers of scars and left her eyes there. “I told you. He was Hiram’s
gasam
. Long ago.”

“I thought you fellows mated for life.”

“You can be released. Usually when the
gasam
feels they have nothing more to teach you.”

“But Hiram wouldn’t release you because you wouldn’t do like he wanted.”

I nodded, pulling out my switchblade. The room was filled with Claire. She was young and pretty enough and I hadn’t slept with a woman, or had a soft conversation in the dark with a girl, or generally been in the company of a female, in a long time. The years felt heavy on me.

She watched me examine the blade and then my forearm, looking for a good, healed area to cut. “Why are we so fucking
scared,
Chief? That guy Amir—okay, kind of scary. But, shit, if I’d been paying more attention I would have beaten his brains in, no problem.”

I paused with the knife hovering right over the meaty part of my arm and looked up at her. “First, Amir was sloppy. He brought Bleeders but he wasn’t expecting trouble. He figured he’d make a show of force and we’d fall on our knees to suck his cock and beg forgiveness.” I smiled. “He didn’t expect
Hiram
fucking
Bosch
to show up hurling fireballs. When he caught up with us after—after, he was on his own and didn’t have much gas to work with.” I winked. “Trust me, dearie, Amir shows up loaded for bear with a dozen Bleeders in his retinue, knowing he can’t trust a fucking Trickster further than he can throw him—a lesson we fucking taught him right good, didn’t we?—then you’ll find out how fast a fucking
saganustari
of his caliber—an Archmage in the making—can
fuck you up
.”

It was a long speech.

She looked at me, biting her lip. “Is he really dead? Hiram?”

I nodded, thinking of Hiram standing in his study, sleeves rolled up, mixing drinks. I swallowed thickly and nodded. “You sucker punch
saganustari,
you better fucking kill them.”

I slashed the blade down precisely, and blood, thick and dark, welled out of the wound. I began reciting my Charm. Claire stared back at me, swallowing hard, but said nothing more. In the mirror behind her, the glyphs on her skin glowed softly.

•   •   •

“Yeah, I see him,” Mags said, studying the hayseed’s reflection in the napkin dispenser. “Fucking hick.”

He took a deep breath. Spreading his hand palm up on the table, he took his little penknife, the blade now thin and worn down, its edge still sharp as a razor, and dragged it across his palm, shutting his eyes and reciting.

“Wow,” Claire whispered. “He looks like he’s taking a dump right there in his seat.”

I smiled, feeling my arm throb with the familiar old burning. Claire had the whole room’s attention. Old men who hadn’t had a hard-on in decades were staring at her. The waitresses struggled against simultaneous urges to slap her and stroke her hair, call her
honey
. Claire was bearing it pretty well. I had a feeling Claire bore most things pretty well. Or maybe was used to entire roomfuls of people wanting to get it on with her.

Thirty seconds, he was done. His wound was dry, the universe’s sole gift to us. Grimacing a little, he took a napkin and wiped down his blade.

“Shit,” Claire hissed. “He’s
looking
at me.”

I leaned in, put a hand on her shoulder. “Take it easy. He’s under control, don’t forget that.”

She shook her head, her eyes hard. “Ain’t no such thing, Boss.”

“He’ll be a puppy dog. He’ll do whatever you tell him, so tell him hands off, tell him to be polite. Okay?”

It was the first time I’d ever seen her nervous. She nodded, staring at the guy across the room. “Okay. Oh,
shit
.”

Our hayseed was crossing over to our table, eyes locked on Claire. I could understand her worry; his expression was . . . focused. If I saw him coming toward me and didn’t know he’d been gassed up by a couple of starving Tricksters, I’d have been alarmed, too.

When he got to us, he just stood there awkwardly.
He looked at me. He looked at Mags a little longer. Then he looked at Claire. And kept looking. Behind him, a pair of old codgers in denim overalls sat chewing on toothpicks with wet, obscene lips, also staring at Claire. Behind them, the big front window looked out on Main Street, people passing by in small groups. Inside, all I could smell was sour coffee and grease. The floor sucked at our guy’s boots as he shifted his weight, making small sticky tearing noises.

“Hi,” he said in a strangled voice.

After a moment, I nudged Claire. She shot a look at me, then looked back down at her hands on the table. “Uh, hi.”

“You’re beautiful.”

“Uh, thanks.”

I swiveled in my chair and pushed the empty one at our table out toward him with one foot. “Hiya. I’m Lem, this is Mags, and this, this is
Claire
. Have a seat. Claire needs a favor.”

Mags waved at him. “Hi!”

Our hayseed smiled around at us, dopey. It was bright, with this clear blue light pouring in from the front and making him into a shadow. He nodded and dropped into the chair easily, graceful. Football, undoubtedly, and he was young enough that daily practices were still fresh in his memory. He settled his smile on Claire and looked happy to just sit and smile at her for the rest of his life.

I snapped my fingers in front of his face until he looked at me. “What’s your name, Boss?”

“Daryl,” he said without taking his eyes off Claire. “Daryl Houy.” He pronounced it
Hoo-eee
.

“Make him stop staring at me.”

I smiled at Daryl, our hero. “Claire requests you not stare at her, Boss.”

He blinked and finally turned his head to look at me. “Why not?”

I leaned forward. “Doesn’t matter. Listen, Claire needs someone to buy her breakfast. Three breakfasts, actually.”

His face lit up. We were not good people. “Hell, yeah! What can I get for y’all?”

Y’all.
We were in Texas.

D
aryl drove a shitbox Ford pickup that had undoubtedly been his father’s or uncle’s shitbox pickup before him. It had the polished feel of something well-worn. It smelled like beer and stale sex and had an empty gun rack mounted in the back.

I was mashed behind the driver’s seat on the world’s most uncomfortable bench. It made a mockery of the words
extended cab
. Mags was next to me, practically in my lap. He had pushed himself forward so he was between Daryl and Claire as we bounced along what the state of Texas had the balls to call
roads
. What Texas needed, I thought, was some fucking Jewish mayors and a load of mobbed-up goodfellas to get something done.

“What y’all want out at the Gottschalk place, anyway?” Daryl shouted over his shoulder, his eyes locked on Claire. She was pushed as far against the passenger door as she could manage. “It’s hard as heck to get out here.”

“Eyes on the road, Daryl. Claire needs to ask Mr. Gottschalk to do something for her,” I said.

“What? Maybe I can help?”

I shook my head. “Sorry, Boss. Claire needs Gottschalk.”

“He’s a weird one, I warn ya,” Daryl said cheerfully.

I was beginning to have a grudging affection for Daryl. He was just a kid, lanky and easy in his movements, and cheerful. It was like he hadn’t yet figured out that high school was over and he’d be working his highway job for the rest of his fucking life. And part of me hoped he never realized it, up until the day he died.

“Been out on that ranch as long as I been alive. Never comes to town. Sends some of his little devotees in for supplies, sometimes. Bald freaks in white robes. Robes!” He glanced sidelong at Claire and frowned a little. “I ain’t proud of it, but when we was kids back in school, we used to have a little fun with those freaks. There’s the place.”

I followed his tanned, toned arm and saw it in the distance: a big house, or a small ranch, whatever you wanted to call it. Out in the middle of fucking nowhere, just yellow dirt and rocky outcroppings and scrub grass everywhere. The house was made from the same yellowish stone you saw everywhere else and looked solid and eternal, like it might take the world a few thousand years to wear it down and wipe it clean.

Inside the fence, which was a tall but flimsy-looking
chain-link job topped with nasty barbed wire, a dozen or so people were working. Six of them were tending to a large garden off to the left, doing the hard work of weeding and tilling and the judicious use of chemical warfare on insects of all kinds. The rest were engaged in what looked like repair work on various pieces of equipment, including a beaten-down old truck that predated Daryl’s shitbox racer by at least two decades.

The gate was open, and we drove through unchallenged.

It took about thirty seconds to go from the front gate to the driveway that circled in front of the door. Up close, the house was falling apart. The siding was falling off. The roof looked rotted and had a sag to it that didn’t look good. The windows were old and out of plum. The paint, where there
was
paint, was peeling, and the sills were all rotted. By the time we opened the truck’s doors and started out of the cab, three men had emerged from the house and stood facing us from the sun-faded wood of the porch.

They looked alike: shaved heads, white robes, and no shoes. They were what an unimaginative man would come up with if asked to describe a cult member. The one in the middle was a little taller, and he smiled down at us.

I didn’t like his smile.

“Welcome,” he said. “You are welcome here. Can we be of assistance?”

I stepped around to be in front of everyone. “We’d like to see Mr. Gottschalk.”

The rest of the freaks had stopped what they were doing and stood in silence, staring at us. I looked around, feeling squirrelly.

“Do you have an invitation? Master only sees people by appointment.”

I shook my head, slowly reorienting on the Head Freak. “No,” I said. “Tell him Hiram Bosch sent me.”

Without any further objection, the Head Freak bowed slightly, turned, and disappeared back into the house. I moved up to the porch stairs. One of the other freaks who’d come outside stepped down to me and held out his hand, palm up. In it was a small pebble.

“Master Gottschalk gave this to me,” he said quietly, staring at me with an unblinking half smile on his face. “Isn’t it wonderful?”

I looked at the pebble, then at the kid. He was maybe twenty. He had razor burn on his neck and smelled like baby powder.

I turned away and walked back to where Mags, Claire, and Daryl stood uncertainly by the truck.

“Charmed,” Mags said.

“A heavy Charm, too,” I agreed, standing with my back to the house. “All these bastards, gassed to the gills, all the time. That’s a shit ton of blood.”

“Are all of you this creepy?” Claire whispered, hugging herself tightly.

“Most.”

“How do people like this just . . . exist? How come no one does anything?”

“We’re good at staying just under the radar. Even the Archmages know better than to make too much noise. Besides, what do you think would happen? We get back to town, call the cops. Explain to them what you think’s happening. See what it gets you.”

I turned suddenly. Another of the shaved-head freaks had crept up to my elbow. She was as young as the rest, and ugly, a fat, short girl with an acne-scarred face. A nice smile, though, dopey and turned on me like a low-watt bulb. She was holding her palm up to me like the first one had.

“Master gave me this,” she said shyly.

In her palm was an old, slightly bent bottle cap.

I looked away, nodding. “That’s nice.”

I’d never seen so many people Charmed so hard. All of them, I had no doubt, under a spell, thinking they were happy, thinking they had an amazing gift from their
Master
. Thinking it was fine to bleed for him—several times a week, probably—so he could cast the same fucking spell on them over and over again, keeping the Charm fresh.

We were not good people.