Despite his trembling hands, Grandpa threw the spell together in fifteen minutes. When he was done, he handed me a small juice glass, empty except for the two caps. He had covered the top of the glass with plastic wrap and put a rubber band around it to hold the plastic in place.
Inside the glass, the rubber caps jittered and crawled up and down the glass like a pair of trapped insects.
“They want to get back to their owner,” Grandpa said. “Follow where they want to go, and you’ll find your goblin.”
“Nice,” I said. “And a little weird.”
I thanked him and promised to call him with an update on how it went. I could still sense the excitement from him, though the spell (however “small”) had worn him out a little. His hands shook more, and he kept his eyes pinched as if struggling to hide pain.
I drove back toward Detroit with the glass on the passenger seat. The caps clinked around inside, apparently wanting to break out and fly back to Fleischhacker. I had watched Grandpa work the spell—the mumbled incantation, the burning sage, the pulse of his magic as he enchanted the caps—but I didn’t understand it, even when he tried to explain it to me. Subtle magic, he’d said, requires a subtle hand, a light touch. That lack of subtlety is the only thing holding you back. You can’t spend the rest of your life casting fire and wind.
I could do more than that. With the help of potions and trinkets anyway. I had to admit, it bothered me a little that I couldn’t get small magic to work. I knew the moves, knew the words, knew the mechanics.
In other words, there was something wrong with me, not the spells.
It took me a while to get the hang of following the caps’ lead while driving. But when I found myself circling a block in another suburb not far from where Fleischhacker had been making his deliveries, I knew I was close enough to continue on foot.
This neighborhood looked newer than the last—the houses larger, the yards smaller, and the space between homes a whole lot narrower.
With the glass in hand, I strolled down the sidewalk, keeping an eye on which direction the caps fidgeted. Eventually, they led me to a two-story house with a brick facade and vinyl siding. The lawn was neatly mowed, the shrubs recently trimmed. While the color of bricks was an earthy brown, the front door was painted bright yellow. An odd choice, but it did give the place a cheery highlight.
I stood there a moment. The caps knocked frantically against the glass right toward the house’s front door. The place looked way too…normal…for a goblin’s home.
I pulled the plastic wrap off the top of the glass and tipped the opening toward the house. The caps shot out like a pair of angry bees. They moved so quickly, I lost sight of them until I heard them tick against the yellow door. From the sidewalk they really did look like a couple of black bugs. They futilely twisted and jigged to get through the barrier between them and their owner.
What an awesome trick, Grandpa.
Maybe someday I’d pick it up.
The yards here weren’t fenced off, probably because that would reveal how small the lots really were. One yard blended into the next, the most distinguishing feature among them the size and shape of their back decks. And every deck seemed to have a gas grill the size of a compact car.
The stairs up to Fleischhacker’s back deck creaked under my feet. A sliding glass door led directly into a dining room. Peering in, I could make out a small, round table with four matching shellacked chairs, and a bowl of fruit in the center. Judging from the brown spots on the bananas, the fruit was real instead of that weird wax stuff. A marble counter sectioned off the kitchen from the dining room.
The whole setup looked terribly mundane. Not at all like where I imagined a goblin would live. Maybe the caps had it wrong. Or maybe this was another customer’s house—though I hadn’t seen his bike out front.
I decided to trust Grandpa’s magic. Just had to figure out a way to get at Fleischhacker before he could touch his damn nose.
I tested the glass door. It slid open a few inches when I pressed at the handle. It rolled easily on its tracks, barely making a sound.
I was about to push the door open wide enough to slip through when a woman entered the kitchen. Not just any woman. A pregnant one. Her belly stuck out with at least nine months worth of baby inside, making her white, sleeveless summer dress drape wide from her porcelain legs. She had long black hair and a heart-shaped face only a little puffy from baby weight. She was damn pretty, too.
I jerked back, pressing against the wall beside the cracked door. If she glanced over, she would likely notice the door open. She might come over to investigate, then catch me standing there like an amateur cat burglar (instead of an amateur demon hunter).
Time to split?
This couldn’t be the right place. Not with a pregnant woman in there.
Then I heard her laugh, a hearty one with a musical lilt. She said something I couldn’t make out. Another voice answered, low and growly. A weird impossibility struck me. I had to take a peek, no matter the risk of getting caught. I eased forward and titled my head just far enough to see inside.
I almost shit myself.
The woman was down on her knees, bringing her eyes level to Fleischhacker’s, who stood before her, hooked nose, pointy-toothed grin, and all. But this didn’t stop her from softly kissing him on his grayish lips, the passion between them unmistakable.
Had I stepped into the Twilight Zone or something? All the weirdness of the paranormal world shrank to a mere oddity compared to what I saw going on in that kitchen.
Another crazy thought hit me.
Was the baby his?
I had heard about human and supernatural relationships. Of course. But I pictured shifters or even vampires—things that could look human under normal circumstances. Not…goblins.
My shock had made me forget about stealth. I had unconsciously moved further out from the wall to openly stare at them. When they finished their kiss, Fleischhacker spotted me from the corner of his eye and whirled to face me. After seeing the tender moment he had shared with the pregnant woman, the fear in his eyes made me feel a little guilty.
But I couldn’t let my emotions get in the way of my job. He was still responsible for the deaths of three mortals. I had to stay professional. Had to push out any thoughts about what the woman would think when I immolated the father of her child. Or how that child would always wonder about what happened to their father because her mother couldn’t bear tell them the truth.
Get that shit out of your head, Sebastian.
Fleischhacker’s surprise melted quicker than my moral haggling. He brought his finger up to his nose. I had only a second to wonder what hex he might throw my way. I didn’t waste that second wondering, though. I twisted away from the glass door just in time.
The glass exploded outward with a sound like crashing cymbals. Shards sprayed across the deck like spilled diamonds. One small piece cut my cheek.
I should have jagged away from the wall and thrown a fireball in through the smashed slider. But I kept seeing the woman on her knees, the kiss, the way her pregnant belly pressed against her squat lover. And he had hugged that belly, hadn’t he? Had run his hands along the sides with a loving touch. A proud father-to-be.
I couldn’t make myself do it. I just couldn’t.
Instead of marching in on the attack, I held my hands out so they could see them. “Wait,” I shouted. “Truce.”
A moment of silence followed. A couple of robins bickered on the branch of a nearby maple. A lawn mower growled in the distance. Twilight had started to fade in. I could smell the flowers in a hanging basket a couple feet away from my head.
“Frazier, don’t,” I heard the woman say.
He responded with a gurgled sigh. “Go away,” Fleischhacker said. “Then I won’t have to hurt you.”
The next words came out of my mouth all on their own without any thought on my part. “There will be others hunting you,” I said. “If I can find you, so can they.”
“So what?”
Yeah, Mr. Light. So what?
I gritted my teeth. I could not believe what I was thinking. It went against every oath I had sworn to get my license. I had yet to collect on a bounty, and here I was, contemplating not only letting my first contract go, but…
“I can help you.”