The Curse Mandate (The Dark Choir Book 3) Read online

  I waved my free hand in a circle around the toilet, palpating the ambient energy. Nothing specific… just the usual insanity filling this entire building.

  Ches whispered, “You know, in any other context, this would look really stupid.”

  “Well, you know what they say about context. It’s always the―”

  A loud SNAP jarred me as my hand trembled. Something pelted the side of my face.

  Ches gasped and stumbled backward, taking her penlight with her.

  The chain dropped limp against my palm. I fished out my penlight to inspect the pendulum, or what was left of it. The quartz had completely shattered. More accurately, it had exploded.

  Damn it.

  That was my pendulum! I made that thing ten years ago, and had used it ever since. I’d developed a solid working relationship with that little hunk of rock, and the wild-ass energy in this joint just blew it the fuck up. Not good. Not good at all.

  I turned back to the hallway to find Ches cradling the side of her face.

  “You okay?” I asked, jumping to my feet.

  “Something in my eye.”

  “Come on, let’s get you to the car. We are so done here.”

  I guided Ches back through the front room, stepping gingerly over the toy spiral which had corrected itself from our earlier intrusions.

  Outside, Deirdre spotted us from inside her car. She rushed out as I eased Ches against my hood and aimed my penlight into her face.

  “What happened?” Deirdre asked. “Are you hurt?”

  I inspected Ches’s eye as it teared up. It was bloodshot, and I found a few crimson drops welling up along her cheekbone.

  “We need to get you to urgent care,” I whispered.

  “Bad?” Ches gasped.

  “Doesn’t look bad, but I’m not a doctor.”

  I helped Ches around to the passenger seat, and closed the door before turning to Deirdre.

  “Well, I think we both know what we’re dealing with in there,” I grumbled.

  Her eyes dropped, and she half shrugged. “I was hoping it was something else.”

  “Was it you, Deirdre? Did you screw something up, uncork a little pocket of chaos by accident?”

  “No,” she spat. “None of my practices would have caused this.”

  “Any enemies who might want to embarrass you?”

  She squinted a single eye at me. “I’m a Geomantic consultant, Mister Lake. I don’t make enemies.”

  “Look, I have to go. But I think it’s time you put some thought into that statement.” I pointed at the building. “And this daycare remains closed!”

  She huddled up her arms and nodded.

  I navigated back to the highway, taking the more direct route, as Ches kept checking her eye in the sun visor’s mirror, swearing under her breath.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  “Just stings.”

  “For what it’s worth, I think you’d rock an eyepatch.”

  Her lips lifted into a faint grin.

  I prodded, “Well, all said, how was my first field trip as your official mentor?”

  She slapped the sun visor back up and leaned back. “Painful.” We continued in silence a while before she added, “Does this mean I’ll get to start crafting soon?”

  I gritted my teeth. “Not yet.”

  “I’m not a novice, Dorian.”

  “No, but you’re still dangerous.”

  “I’ve practiced the Arts for years.”

  “And how did that turn out?”

  She glowered in silence for most of the way back to Maryland. I knew she had trained under one of the most organized yet vicious cabals in North America. She had chops, and she had plenty of background knowledge. This allowed me to skip a good deal of the basic education I’d slogged through under Emil Desiderio. However, quickly into our tidy little shotgun-marriage tutelage, I’d discovered enormous holes in her instruction. Quinn Gillette had armed her people with just enough information to wage war. Safety wasn’t exactly a priority, it seemed. As capable a practitioner as Gillette was, I had serious doubts her heart was into the pedagogic side of the mentor-disciple relationship.

  I could say the same for me, if I wanted to be brutally honest about it.

  meant to wake up extra early the following day to put in some much-needed face time at the Light Street Tavern. My alarm hand, however, had other plans, and I ended up hammering the snooze button a couple dozen times. I was going to catch hell from Julian, for certain. He’d poured a staggering amount of his own cash money and credit into our little joint venture. I’d done my best to chime in with opinions, mostly to have them countermanded by Big Ben, our bartender. When it came to bar management, Ben was the seasoned veteran. My experience with taverns and clubs was strictly from the stool side of the equal sign.

  In my defense, I’d been distracted. Getting a grip on my new relationship with Ches had turned out to be somewhat more ball-breaking than I’d counted on. I had no idea how to teach someone the hermetic arts. Plus, I still had my soul to locate. That’s a few too many plates to spin, and if I had to make a choice, I was going to save my soul first and sort the rest out when I had the opportunity.

  But I didn’t have my weekly rap session with Father Mark until Monday morning, and Ches was taking a day off to have her eye looked at by her regular doctor, so there really was no excuse not to put in some work hours at the tavern. Besides, Julian was holding one of his side-room meetings, and knowing the people he invited to these little court sessions, I figured it would be fun to bust his chops if given the opportunity.

  I parked around the back of the building, squeezing into a terrifyingly tight space between the dumpster and the new brick-and-glass hotel next to us. I’d learned the hard way never to park next to the dumpster on Wednesdays. Trash trucks, it seemed, weren’t instruments of exacting precision. I almost felt a sense of mirth as I locked my car and moved for the rear entrance. This was typically the moment when I’d spot some shadow slipping out of view in the corner of my eye, reminding me that the Dark Choir was hungry for my soul, wherever the damned thing was. But on this morning, shadows didn’t catch my attention. Instead, it was three men in suits stepping from around the dumpster to cut me off.

  Fantastic.

  I froze by the car and sized up my options. These guys were big. I’d probably get my ass handed to me if I tried anything physical. They were well-dressed, including the center goon who wore a sports coat over a turtleneck and jeans. This wasn’t the Presidium’s style, necessarily, or I’d never have seen them coming. And as they weren’t rushing at me with pipes in hand, I figured this wasn’t a mugging.

  No, this smelled more like a shakedown.

  They came to a halt at a comfortable distance, and turtleneck man cracked a broad, tobacco-stained smile.

  “You Dorian Lake?”

  “Occasionally.”

  “Yeah, I heard you was a smart mouth.”

  “How can I help you gentlemen?”

  Turtleneck gave his partners a get a load of this guy smirk before answering, “I’m Nick Polo. Maybe you figured I was coming already?”

  I shook my head slowly, though I had this Nick Polo fellow figured out well enough, already. After McHenry’s embarrassing failure to purchase City Hall and his subsequent departure from the public eye… thanks in no small amount to a sum of undeclared capital gains my new accountant kept in several computer hard drives… the power vacuum left in his wake had flushed out a slurry of would-be gangsters. Seemed I chose one hell of an atmosphere to open a bar.

  Polo nodded at me thoughtfully.

  “This your bar, here?”

  “It is, in part.”

  “Nice location.”

  “I like to think so.”

  Polo took a step around to my side to survey the surrounding buildings… the hotel, the two-story office beside me, and the back of a public parking garage beyond our lot’s fence. “Not a lot of lighting, though. Could cause a problem for you
, what with crime in the city the way it is.”

  “Let me just take a quick stab, here,” I offered with an outstretched hand. “You’re in the security business?”

  Polo’s eyes eased as his smile broadened. “Yeah, that’s right. Security. I got men on this block who can keep an eye on things for you. Keep things from turning ugly. We want to keep our new neighbors safe and sound, you know?”

  I gave all three a good, measured look before nodding. “I think I understand you, Mister Polo.”

  “Call me Nicky.”

  “So, the last thing I want is trouble on my property. What are your rates?”

  “Tell you what. Since you’re new, and you could probably use a helping hand getting started and all… I’ll cut you a break for your first year. Two thousand. That’s monthly.”

  I stifled a sneer. “Very generous of you, Nicky.”

  “I thought so.”

  “Don’t suppose you take checks?”

  He lifted a brow and guffawed with considerable volume.

  “Right,” I grumbled, moving around him. “Well, the safe’s inside. Follow me.”

  Polo snapped a finger to one of his goons and said “stay here” to the second.

  I led him through the kitchen entrance, side-stepping around two plastic-wrapped fryers Ben had ordered last month but had never made it out of its wrapping. I pushed through the kitchen door into the space between Julian’s office and the restrooms. I didn’t keep an office here. Even my ego didn’t permit quite that much hypocrisy.

  Rounding the corner past the restroom, we stepped out into the seating area. We usually didn’t get customers until early evening, what with us not having a working menu quite yet. So there was no one but Big Ben Setleigh to watch the embarrassing turn of events about to transpire. Ben gave me a nod and a two-finger salute. His face was leaner than I’d seen it in years, with a good color. Either the change in profession since he ditched the Druid Hill Club to work for me had agreed with him, or he was starving to death under my employ. Ben wasn’t the type to suffer in silence, so I just assumed he was happier here at Light Street.

  “You okay, son?” Ben called out as he spotted Polo and his goon following tight behind me.

  I waved him off casually. “Great. Had a good night last night, feeling ready to put in some hours.”

  “Good,” he chuckled, eyes still planted hard on Polo. “I got some inventory for you to tackle.”

  I gave Polo a smirk. “The glamorous life of a bar owner, am I right?”

  Polo grinned awkwardly, but he was locked onto getting his grift and moving on.

  I gestured toward the oak door that fit almost seamlessly into the wall paneling just beyond the four-tops. “I keep the safe in my event room. Follow me, and I’ll get you taken care of.”

  “It’s good to do business with a smart man,” Polo sniggered.

  I paused at the paneled door and gave Ben one more look, and a wink. When I opened the door, I practically brushed Polo and his thug in with my arm, closing the door behind us.

  Inside the room, a group of about ten people sat with papers and tablets spread across several tables. Their conversations immediately ceased, and in unison they raised their faces to us. Julian seemed particularly alarmed at my sudden appearance. He was flanked by several faces I’d recognized from his “private court sessions” he held in the event room most Thursdays. Of these faces, most notably, was Police Commissioner Bettis.

  I side-stepped with as much intentional clumsiness as I could muster, slipping past the closest of Julian’s political companions.

  “I’m sorry about this, folks. I won’t be just a minute. Mister Polo, that was two-thousand, you said? Per month?”

  I finally stole a glance at Polo, who stood rigid, his face stony but his eyes wide.

  “For protection, I believe was the concept you vaguely outlined in the parking lot?”

  He cleared his throat. “Well…”

  “I want to be sure we’re solid, Mister Polo. Sorry, I mean Nicky.” I added with deliberate gravity, “Like I said, I don’t want trouble on my property.”

  I gave him a smile. In that moment, he realized he was done, and I was the one who did him in.

  A sneer crept into the corner of his mouth, and he turned for the door.

  Chief Bettis stood slowly and growled, “Have a seat, Nicky.”

  Polo froze, then turned painfully slow and dropped into a nearby chair. He urged his goon to do the same with a thrust of his finger.

  I turned to the others in the room with a smirk. “Again, I apologize for this. Please continue. I’ll get out of your hair.”

  Julian flashed me a grin brimming with amusement as I climbed back around his guests to take my exit. Polo didn’t make eye contact with me. Good call. I wasn’t feeling particularly charitable at that moment, and it would have been simple to snatch a hair on my way back into the bar. Oh, what I could do with just a single hair or a drop of blood!

  Ben had rounded the end of the bar, his hand tucked behind the rail, probably clutching his baseball bat.

  I waved him down. “We’re good, Ben.”

  “Who was that?”

  “Some jerkoff trying to air out a protection racket.”

  Ben snickered. “Picked the wrong goddamn day to shake us down.”

  “With luck, word will spread that we’re a cop bar, and things’ll quiet down.”

  “About that,” Ben added as his smile dropped. “We really have to get that kitchen up and running, you know.”

  “We will.”

  He fished a handful of paper from the side of the bar and waved them at me. “This is Maryland, Dorian. We have rules about percentages of sales. We’re nowhere close to selling the amount of food we are required by law to sell.”

  “I thought you were hiring a kitchen manager?”

  “We hired two.”

  “What happened to them?”

  “One quit after two days. The other I caught shooting up in the back.”

  I shook my head. “All right, I’ll post another ad.”

  He dropped the paperwork in front of me. “Inventory’s here.”

  “And I do… what, now?”

  His face settled into something professional yet sadistic. “Count and measure, son. Count and measure.”

  I spent the next hour eyeballing levels in bottles and counting glassware. Mostly. As my mind drifted into a zen state, I found myself fidgeting with the bar tools. Ben snapped me back to task once or twice, but my thoughts were elsewhere. I toyed with the inventory as I considered last night’s scene. A jinx, of all things. Over ten years of private practice in hexes and charms, and I hadn’t once run into a chaos magician.

  I had a tiny ziggurat of toothpick boxes constructed on the front bar by the time Julian’s meeting let out. I curtailed my plans to reenact tiny pimento sacrifices with the martini olives. Commissioner Bettis marched Polo and his goon out the back door with the aid of who I assumed were a pair of plainclothes cops.

  Julian lingered by the event room, deep in conversation with a dark-skinned woman in a snappy business suit. They exchanged several notes on their tablets and finally concluded their business with some whispered confidence from the woman, and Julian’s lending her a literal hand on her shoulder. She took her leave, exiting through the front, as Julian noticed me dismantling the toothpick boxes.

  “Quite a show you put on, Dorian,” Julian announced.

  “Guy pissed me off. What can I tell you?”

  Julian chucked my arm and moved for his office. “Ben’s got you thumb-nailing bottles again?”

  “I don’t know what that means, but it sounds horrible.”

  I followed Julian into his office, alarmingly tidy with stacks of folders in those tiny wire racks only manically organized super genius types use. He dropped his tablet onto his desk and ran hands over his face. Unlike Ben, the last couple of months have taken an enormous toll on Julian.

  “Here,” he mumbled as he t
ossed a hand at the corner of his desk. “This came for you.”

  I spotted a tall brown paper-wrapped package jutting from between a stack of what I really hoped weren’t bills, and one of his wire racks of folders. I lifted it, checking my fingers against its surprising weight.

  “What is it?”

  Julian shrugged as he dropped into his chair. He’d certainly carved a tiny nest in this office already. This was his turf, to be sure.

  “Booze, I’m assuming.”

  “So, good meeting?”

  “It had a better closing act than anything,” he quipped.

  “These meetings have you tapped out every Thursday. Getting lots of calls from that woman, too. I mean, I’m just noticing.”

  Julian scowled. “You’re using your preachy tone again, Dorian. I don’t like Preachy Dorian.”

  “You look tired, is all.”

  “I’m okay.”

  “You need to unplug and unwind.” I snapped my fingers. “Hey, why don’t you bring whats-his-name over one night? I’ll make cassoulet.”

  “His name is Cleve. Think I’ll pass.”

  “Come on. You and him are a thing, right? I’m not crazy.”

  His eyes narrowed ever so briefly. “Well, we’re nothing at the moment.”

  “Oh, crap. What happened?”

  Julian waved his hands frantically between us. “I’m not discussing my love life with my business partner. And your cassoulet is straight poison. Sorry, but it is.”

  “Oh, hell. I liked him. He was funny.”

  “It’s nothing. I’m too busy, anyway.”

  “Julian?”

  He took a breath. “Yes, Dorian?”

  “You quit City Hall.”

  He stared at his hands folded in front of him on his desk. “I know.”

  “You’re here, now. Listen, I’m going to make an effort to be here more often. After what that turtle-necked palooka pulled on us just now, I’m kind of interested in taking over this town.”

  Julian snickered. “Did you really just say ‘palooka’?”

  “I’m expanding my vocabulary.”

  Julian dropped a flat hand on the nearest stack of notes on his desk. “Well, you can stop belly-aching about me surrounding myself with the Old Main. I’ve made an arrangement for the Tavern that’ll probably drum up some nice exposure.”