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I stared across the table at Araceli and Caleb. They filled out the diner booth awkwardly, her sitting prep school straight and him hunched over the table like he’d had the first hangover of his adult life.
We’d cleared out the Break Fast diner when we walked in. The normal crowd of locals in their sweat-stained ball caps and button down shirts had taken one look at the black criminal alongside his Ren Faire accomplice and had cut their late afternoon shit shootin’ short. Araceli at least fit in with her sooty arms and a pair of overalls which would be the envy of the farm league.
I wished I could get Caleb uninvolved with this mess. He’d been dragged far from his gangster life of getting carded at the library and going to war in documentaries from the comfort of his couch. My guilt wasn’t so much I hadn’t been willing to burn up his phone plan minutes to lay down some truth for Kitterling.
“Cheerio, Kitterling’s Curiosities, how may I assist you?” Mr. Kitterling asked, his chipper act immediately trying my patience.
“Hop off, Mister Kitterling,” I said. “You got me out here in Westbumbafuck getting tossed in lock-up. And these aren’t good police, Mister Kitterling. They’re under the sway of demons. Legit, mortals-are-finger-licking-good demons, Mister fucking Kitterling.”
Atofo’s body-snatching of Caleb had pissed me off, but I’d been as much to blame. I’d learned enough to know better, no thanks to my five hundred-year-old tutor. He’d mentioned demons existed, and while I’d never encountered one, I knew from his stories they were very real and very dangerous. Kittlering had been at this game much longer than I had. And I found it impossible to believe he hadn’t known they’d be here.
“Eustace—” he started.
“That’s right,” I said, “you go ahead and call me by my full name. I’m sure as hell not your Ace and never was.”
“There may have been—” he sounded regretful, but I wasn’t having it.
“May? May have been what!? Details you missed? Or is this part of the ones you chose not to share? I’ve been locked up before working for you, had guns in my face, been chased by yokels, necromancers, and even had to put down some freaky feral horror shows. Remember werewolves, Edward? Remember the damn werewolves?” I hissed into the phone, not doing a very good job of keeping my voice quiet.
Caleb, who’d been glancing toward the counter where Becky nervously clattered plates, shifted to gape in amazement at the mention of werewolves. Might as well speak some truth. Church Boy would need a wakeup call soon enough.
I turned to face the wall and tried to lower my voice. “But never have I been trapped in a room with the guy who probably ate Hannibal Lecter and me in magic dampening irons, you feel me?”
The tense buzz of a silent connection told me he hadn’t hung up. My eyes flicked toward Araceli. Far from Caleb’s disbelief, she listened with a face which could both earn out at a poker table and provide a pleasant distraction.
This time she had on a tight t-shirt under her overalls which strained against her shoulders. Beside Caleb’s slender frame, I realized just how buff all that hammer swinging had made her. Not the veiny cut of a bodybuilder, just a solid, rigorous gymnast’s strength flowing into her rounded jaw and steely eyes.
I could see how it was she’d convinced the Deputy to let me go. After my visitation ended, she’d spent the next four hours ruthlessly chipping away at his ethical predicament. According to Caleb, she’d threatened to call not just a lawyer, but the local paper, a senator, and the regional ACLU office. She’d even gone on about writs of habeas corpus — the good Lady Araceli here knew her way around legal jargon.
Her intense Spanish eyes warned me that as soon as this phone call finished, she’d set that same relentlessness on me.
“Are you quite finished?” Kitterling finally replied.
Nowhere near. Had we been face to face, I’d have pinned his arrogant ass against a wall, AARP member or not. I got it; I did the dirty work like Deputy Do-Right did for his demon enthralled boss. That was in the job description. That didn’t mean I appreciated being blindsided into a murder charge.
“For now. Talk,” I said.
I could hear the hesitation in Kittlering’s words. “There are reasons I can’t disclose my clientele, as you are most acutely aware. There are also reasons I don’t provide every stray bit of information which I might stumble upon. Much is worthless fairy tales and rantings originating from a rather high concentration of conspiracy theorists and clinically paranoid individuals who lurk, as they say, on these world wide web forums. Regrettably, the information regarding the sword came to me anonymously. That I did not mislead you about. Had I known this to be their intent, I would’ve told you. Obviously.”
Maybe obvious for him, but I couldn’t be so sure. “But you knew about the sword.” Araceli and I exchanged a glance. Her poker face failed. She’d come all the way here not just at Caleb’s request but because of the sword too. “You knew it was the real deal.”
“Yes,” he said heavily into the phone. “I had a very high degree of certainty.”
“Which also means, you knew the kind of heat waiting out here?”
“That’s not necessarily true,” he protested, weakly. He was still holding out on me. “I hoped the sword was more than a lesser artifact, but I suspect the forces you encountered have other designs. For example, it could be a mere thorn in their paw, so to speak. You might even be able to simply agree to help and remove it—”
“Agree to help? You did not just tell me to sign a contract with a demon to get your sword.” Araceli couldn’t hide her surprise either. Caleb had given up being nervous about the empty diner and hung on every word of my one-sided conversation.
“It would stand to reason if they are the ones who sent the email, they truly wanted your help. But demons,” he said, spiteful, “can’t ever be direct in their business dealings.”
“Business?” I practically shouted and had to settle back into the booth. The waitress, Becky, froze in front of the sink behind the counter and stole a cautious peek. “Business?” I repeated, quiet and strained. “This is a murder charge. This wasn’t a want ad. It’s entrapment for the goddamn mind, body, and soul!”
“Thus my reasons for your employ,” Kitterling said sharply. “You manage the complexities of the field work, and I manage the business.”
“Maybe that arrangement is no longer good enough.”
I could sense a schooling from Kitterling’s view of reality where the natural order of things included people like me working to the bone in the fields while people like him read the paper on their gilded toilets, their worst day a blip in the stock market.
“Perhaps a...a partnership is in order,” he said. My mouth jammed open on a misfired round. I couldn’t believe what I’d heard. “Yes,” Kitterling said as if he had surprised himself. “A partnership. We can discuss this, but you must retrieve that sword.”
I couldn’t speak. I’d long ago written off any kind of fair relationship at Kitterling’s Curiosities. His name decorated the door and the vintage swinging sign on the porch. I’d never truly wanted his job. Being in the field put me closer to my own leads. But I could damn well do with some respect.
“Eustace? Ace? Do we have a deal?”
A deal? Why was I still seeing contracts signed in blood even when he said it?
“We’ll talk,” I managed to say.
“Jolly good. Yes. Best of luck to you.”
The line clicked and I handed the stunned Caleb his phone. “Werewolves? Demons?” he whispered, full of terrified awe. “Is that what happened to me?”
I looked from him to Araceli. Before I could answer, she said plainly, “Yes, Caleb.”
He went limp in the booth. “I mean growing up Baptist you always get the earful of fire and brimstone. But real demons? Seriously?”
I scratched my head and nodded silently, not wanting to look him in the eye.
“You’re in over your head,” Araceli told me.
“Oh, okay. So I’m in over my head.” I shut down a laugh I knew would’ve sounded unstable. The sudden tickle in my throat had me coughing. Araceli pushed her glass of water toward me. Becky had yet to get one for me. I took a drink and she waited patiently for me to continue. “And who the hell are you, exactly?”
Caleb checked us both. “Araceli,” he said tentatively. “You two met the other day at the park, remember?”
I let him talk to the hand and shook my head. “I know who she says she is, what I want to know is what she is. Why she’s here.” I pointed in warning as Caleb’s mouth opened. “And not because you asked her to be here. The sword. Her contact with the Above. Her magic. Everything.”
“Magic?” Reality once more hurled itself at Caleb too fast, too hard for him to buy a fare.
“Maybe we should discuss this privately?” Araceli suggested.
“Maybe you two need to get back to opening weekend or whatever,” I offered.
Caleb’s youthful face reminded me of a kid trying to figure out why Mommy and Daddy were fighting. My guess, he’d never see the kind of domestic disputes I’d been around as a cop and otherwise. The cluelessness started to grate.
“I’m not ready to go,” he said. “I can’t remember why, or how, I came, but I’m here. I want to help you out, bro.”
I couldn’t take this guy seriously right now. “I’m not your brother. You need to go home, geek out with your re-enactment crew, and keep pretending the history you read is true ‘cause you’ve been played your entire life.”
I might as well have punched him square in the nose. “Well, history, is, you know, open to interpretation.”
Araceli dug into the front pocket of her overalls and got out a twenty. “Go to the counter and get us something to eat. Three specials.” She smiled a sweet but fleeting smile.
Caleb eagerly shook his head. “Yeah, sure. Sorry, I’d been waiting for the waitress. I’ll get you whatever you want.” He left the booth and she had to call him back and force him to reluctantly take the money. I watched him approach the counter under Becky’s wary eye.
I hissed out a breath. “He thinks you’re here on a date or something.”
“Stop being such an ass. He’s a sweet guy.” With her accent, the reprimand sounded casual. “Now your friend, Atofo on the other hand.” She raised an eyebrow and took back her glass, taking a long swig through the straw.
“I didn’t even know he could do that,” I said.
“I nearly exorcised him. Lucky for you, I wanted to see where this all led.”
“Exorcise? That’s a thing?”
“Banishing evil spirits?” She said, crowding closer across the table. “Yes, that is a thing.”
“Evil? He’s harmless.” Not even I believed what I’d just said.
“He’s a low-grade demon. You can’t trust him. But here you are, Warlock, following his every word. Bleeding for him. Granting him more power.”
“You should hear what he says about the Spaniards,” I said.
“I spent four hours with him in a car, I am well aware,” she said, flatly. I let go a whistle of sympathy. “How long have you been his apprentice?”
I set my jaw and shook my head. “Naw, I ask the questions. That was no coincidence you showed up at the park the day I headed off to find a magic sword. What’s your game here? Daddy lose your inheritance and you crossed the Atlantic to take it back home?”
Her eyes became the forge fire she lost herself in so often. “My father is dead. A demon ate his heart. I came to this incestuous magical hell to serve justice.”
“Shit. Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean anything. It’s been a rough week.”
We sat in silence until I could feel her burning stare cool down. Caleb had broken the ice with the waitress while she worked the grill. The town gossip couldn’t help herself, even when she thought a murderer was sitting in her diner. Caleb though, could anybody be more harmless? He spoke, animated, while he pointed to various parts of his theme park outfit. I couldn’t help but smile.
“What’s so funny?” Araceli demanded.
“No, not...it’s just Caleb,” I said. Araceli craned her neck to watch him. “Dude could spout history at a drug deal and get somebody to listen.”
We both watched him go on for a while. “He’s going to be okay,” she told me. “The possession doesn’t seem to have left any lasting damage.”
I knew that wasn’t the truth. Spiritually, physically, sure. Mentally, though, he’d been awakened to a world which had been myth and legend less than twenty four hours ago. Once you saw it for real, the armor of normalcy people protected themselves with began to stress and crack.
“Who are you?”
She twisted her full lips and dug at the ice in her cup with the straw. “You have a poor teacher. There is an entire well-organized and structured world of magic outside these colonies.”
“States,” I corrected.
She dismissed it with a flick of her wrist. “History on a magical scale doesn’t move like geopolitical history. You’re still in the days of early exploration by comparison to my home. Yours is a country where mongrel spellcasters fight over scraps of true power; a lawless backwater in need of regulation.”
Now that we were talking, I could see she had a sophisticated air about her which wasn’t all sweat and charcoal. What Kitterling tried to imitate, she put off effortlessly.
“Regulation?” I asked. “You’re part of some kind of magical law enforcement?”
“You could say that.” I think she almost blushed. Staring at her hands, her expression turned wistful. “My father believed in keeping magic in check. As long as it existed, it needed to be taught responsibly, and not affect the lives of everyday people.”
“Why not remove the restraints and magic up a better world?” I asked.
She looked up, her brow creased in sympathy. “Because that isn’t how magic works. You know that, in your heart. What we do, it’s wrong.”
“So you came to find this sword and what? Lock it up somewhere?”
She shook her head. “No, I came to here to lay claim to it and wield it against Armageddon.”
Well, I’ll be damned. Literally.