I jerked the pan down and covered the cuffs and the mess of the broken pen, standing up and stepping forward. The man's brow creased, and he tried to peer around me. He had a thick neck, sported a buzz cut, with dark glasses perched up top, and an off the rack suit.
"What are you hiding?" the man demanded. He also had a Russian accent. I was noticing a trend.
"Nothing…" I said, wishing that my brain would kick into gear. Why did having a gun pointed at me halt my brain every time I needed to use it? I sounded like a guilty child.
"Step back, against the wall. Let me see," the man said, stepping towards me and gesturing with the gun.
I backed away as he kept the weapon aimed at me. This gave me a full view of the room. The mouse gremlins seemed attracted by the movement and followed me. A couple stopped to inspect the man, but then they formed a crowd around me. After about ten seconds, a few seemed to grow impatient and began to wander about the room. I kept a wary eye on them, not sure what they were up to. Thinking maybe I could make a peace offering, I reached for my last strand of luck, only to grasp spiritual empty air. I risked a glance and felt cold. My core was empty. I was at absolute zero.
My last strand had been used up somehow without me noticing. Visions played in my mind of the last time I’d been at zero. The catastrophe in the school bathroom. I held very still as the man walked into the room to check what I’d hidden. It seemed, my luck had literally run out.
The man knelt, keeping the gun aimed at me. He picked the pan up and tossed it in the corner, and I resigned myself to having to wear the handcuffs. Would they keep me safe from the gremlins? Several more grew bored and wandered away.
“What is this?” Buzz-cut said, sounding annoyed.
I looked up, curious which item under the pan could warrant that question. The cuffs were gone! I stared harder and blinked, but they were still gone. Only the broken pen remained.
“A pen?” I suggested, feeling confused.
The man made a scoffing noise and stood, taking a step back.
“Shit!” he exclaimed, as his foot came down without his shoe, socked foot stepping in the tepid stream from the wall seepage. His shoe was still where he’d knelt, laces untied.
He let out a sting of curses as he lifted his foot and felt how wet the sock was. There was a hole in the tip and his big toe was sticking out. He tried to wipe the water off with his hand, then stamped it on the dry concrete a couple of times.
I stayed against the wall, watching. Where had the cuffs gone? I tried to look around the room, without being obvious, but I didn’t see them. More mouse gremlins seemed to grow bored of clustering around me and began to wander around the room.
The man stepped back into his shoe, glaring at me, like I’d done it. “Don’t move,” he said, “or I’ll make you sorry.”
“Okay,” I said, trying to look non-threatening. I raised my hands up by my chest, just to make sure.
He set the pistol down, glaring at me, and quickly tied his shoe. It was a black dress shoe, and he glanced down when he finished to make sure the bow was straight. I debated trying to rush him, but I’d lost my ability to weaponize luck with the pen. Satisfied with the bow, he glared back up at me and groped for the pistol. After several missed attempts he looked round for the gun. It was gone.
“What the fuck?” he said, getting up and looking around quickly.
The gun was revealed when he stood, sitting behind him. He snatched it up, mumbling curses.
“Come on!” He said to me, gesturing with the gun. “You’re a waste of my time. Miss Caroline doesn’t like to be kept waiting. Let’s go!”
He gestured towards the doorway, indicating for me to proceed him and as he did the magazine fell out of the gun. He uttered a cry and attempted to catch it, but only managed to swat it across the room. It hit the wall and ejected a round, which went spinning across the floor. He tried to snatch up the errant round, only to notice the door to the cell was slowly swinging shut. With a cry of alarm, he made a stumbling leap and got a hand in the door before it shut.
“Fuck!” he shouted as the door bounced off his fingers. He got up and kicked the door open with enough force that it rebounded and he caught it with an elbow. It sounded painful. He got real quiet, standing in the doorway, focused on breathing.
He leveled the gun at me again. I hadn’t moved, instead, I stood mute as I witnessed this all play out.
“Come on,” he said in a low monotone. “I’ve got a round chambered still. We’re leaving now.”
I complied, walking at an even pace, my eyes wide. The mouse gremlins seemed to be playing games with him, but unlike when I took luck, none of them had left. They weren’t doing me any favors. The man looked ready to kill me.
I made it out into the hall and began walking, the swarm of mouse gremlins following in my wake. Behind me, I heard a crashing rumble, that sounded like falling stone. The man jerked back as a cloud of cement dust swirled out of the door. Earth and debris from the wall spilled partially into the hallway. It appeared the seeping wall had collapsed.
Both the man and I stood stunned for a moment, before he visibly came to a decision.
“Nope,” he said. Shaking his head at the room. “We’re going now.”
I proceeded without comment, down the hall, the man following. He now looked more worried than angry. I had to hustle to keep ahead of him. The mouse gremlins followed, some running ahead, only to abruptly change direction and come charging back, like an excited puppy.
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I focused on every step, treading careful, feeling nervous about the gremlins and the armed man both. We made it all the way to the stairs without incident. I hesitated at the bottom step, remembering a statistic that over one million people have accidents on stairs each year in the US. Were all accidents caused by gremlins?
The man caught up quickly and prodded me in the back with the gun.
“Keep moving,” he said, “I hate being down here.”
I began the climb, being as methodical as I could about placing my feet and holding the handrail. I made it three steps up before the man lost patience.
“Jesus on the cross,” the man said from the bottom, “you climb stairs like an old lady. I’m not marching you to your execution; go!”
I turned and looked at him, the mouse gremlins pooling at my feet when I stopped. I hesitated a moment longer, then tried climbing a little faster. No sense in antagonizing the man with the gun.
I made it to the landing. The stairs were the type in most big buildings. Wide, with landings before a switchback, designed to climb multiple stories vertically. There was a metal stair nose on the end of each tread for traction.
The man started to trot up as I turned to go up the next set. He’d been looking back down the hall like he’d seen a ghost. Three steps up his shoe slipped on the corner of a step, the metal coming lose from the concrete and his legs went out from under him. He fell hard on knees and elbows and slid back down to the bottom. The metal got hung up on his suit as he went and I heard it tear.
He popped to his feet, looking down at the ruined suit-coat and undershirt incredulously. The undershirt had come partially untucked, and there were vertical rips in both garments. He plucked at one of the rips, exposing a hairy chest and stomach. He let the fabric fall with a sigh and touched his elbow with a grimace. The dark glasses fell off his head and broke on the ground in front of him.
His face transformed into a thunderhead, and he began muttering as he stomped up the steps. His gaze set resolutely forward.
“Big opportunity, he says. Come and work with me, he says. Great pay if you don’t mind a little weirdness, he says.” He made it to the landing and gestured for me to go.
“He forgets to mention the work is for a ved’ma. He forgets to mention the volkodlaki. A little weirdness—” He spat, “Pah! Oh, and he forgets to mention living in a haunted facility built in the cold war and never maintained. Fucking pendos building.”
I made it to the top without the gremlins doing anything to me. I glanced back, and the man was still grumbling, not seeming to see me.
“The money is not that good to put up with—“
I reached for the doorknob and he quit mumbling like flipping a switch. I stepped into the weird hallway, where everything was oversized, and waited for the gun gesture of where to go next. He gestured, and we went further down the hallway, in the direction Gregor had gone to fetch Caroline.
We passed the room the smell of gingerbread was wafting from and turned down another hall. There was crown moulding along the ceiling and the trim on the doors looked handcrafted. It had an old money feel. Like the house had been moved down here from somewhere exotic.
There was a set of double doors at the end of the hall, ornamentation carved into the doors’ faces. They had crystal handles that sparkled in the dim lighting. When I got closer I saw the scrollwork in the wood depicted a fairytale scene, with wolves chasing children and dancing satyrs.
“Don’t touch the door,” Buzz-cut said as I reached for the handle.
I stepped aside and he reached past me. He turned the handle and gestured me in. The room I stepped into deserved an old word title like “The Arboretum” or something equally pretentious like “The Librarium”. The room was two stories, with a domed glass ceiling. An ancient tree grew from the center, custom scrolling woodwork adorning a railing circling the base. The walls and floors were wood, with bookshelves lining every wall, a brass mezzanine providing access to the second story of shelves. The books all looked old and expensive, some likely the only edition in print, leather and cloth custom covers on most of them. There were jeweled creations hanging from every high branch of the tree, appearing to be recreations of galaxies and star constellations made from precious stones. They caught the light filtering through the glass and leafy canopy, casting multihued phantoms across every surface. Gold and brass decorated the wood throughout the room, tastefully inlaid. Beyond the tree, an oversized custom writing desk sat in a nook, Caroline seated at it, missing the apron from earlier.
I heard a loud thump and a curse in Russian behind me and turned to look. Buzz-cut was starting at one of the crystal handles laying on the floor, a look of horror on his face. The knob had come off the door. He bent and retrieved it.
“Go sit in the chair,” he growled.
I approached the desk, the only empty chair in the room positioned before it. It was a contrast to everything else, looking like a sturdy, but simple piece of furniture, more at home in a barn than whatever place this was. I sat, noting the wood was stained and worn.
Caroline was busy with something on the desk, and it was a minute before she looked up. Enough time that the mouse gremlins got bored with me and began to explore the room.
The woman finally looked up, the gravitas of the gesture ruined when she took in the Buzz-cut’s appearance. It turned into an incredulous slack jawed stare, bypassing me completely.
She closed her mouth and raised an eyebrow. Buzz-cut stepped forward and placed the crystal doorknob on the edge of the desk. Caroline glanced at it, her mouth firming into a hard line. Buzz-cut then stepped back and attempted to salvage his dignity, hands clasped at his waist several paces to the side. Caroline didn’t let him off so easy.
“Ivan? Why have you brought me my two-o’clock looking like you paused to wrestle a tiger on the way?”
Ivan muttered something under his breath before taking a calming breath and answering in a flat tone, “The stairs in the basement are… in need of repair. I slipped.”
“And you couldn’t leave my client in his room and make yourself presentable, before bringing him?”
It was my turn to quirk an eyebrow at her use of “client”.
“The room he was in…” he paused, seeming to struggle with what to say, “is also in need of repair. It collapsed shortly after we stepped out.”
“Did it now?” She turned her attention to me. Her gaze was piercing, for a moment, then it seemed to slide past me. She blinked, looking confused, then refocused on me. Her gaze again attempted to pin me to the chair, only to falter, and slide off again. She blinked and turned back to Ivan. She opened her mouth, then seemed to remember something and turned back to me. Her look held more question than dagger now.
“I see now why Mr Black dumped you on me,” she said, unable to focus on me. Looking frustrated, she settled for looking at a point over my shoulder. “What kind of magic are you doing to make yourself difficult to focus on?”
I wanted to know the same. This was new. I shrugged. When she didn’t respond, I said, “A magician never reveals his secrets.”
She didn’t look amused. “Don’t play games with me, I have ways of making you talk.”
I nearly snorted out a laugh, didn’t she know that line was dated and overused? If I’d still been in the loop, the temptation to mess with her would have won out. As it was, I didn’t want to find out what she would do to me if I was withholding. And since I couldn’t give her something I didn’t have, I said, “I don’t know.”
“Magic that strong, and you expect me to believe, you don’t know…”
“Ivan,” she said, “help the little magician remember.”
Ivan started toward me, and fell flat on his face. Cursing, he spun and looked at his feet. His shoelaces were tied together. He plucked at the knot with a furious gesture, only for the knot to hold firm. After a moment of struggle, he growled and whipped out a wicked looking knife and freed the laces. He then stood and stormed toward me, knife in hand. Halfway to me, the blade fell from the handle, sticking into the wooden floor. He looked at the empty handle with disgust and snatched at the blade. He jerked his hand back from it looking at his hand in shock. Two of his fingers began to bleed freely and the blade remained stuck where it was.
“That’s it,” Ivan said, reaching for the pistol in his shoulder holster.
“Ivan!” Caroline said in a warning tone, but Ivan ignored her.
He tugged at the weapon, but it failed to come free. Muttering, he began to yank at it, each pull more violent than the last. The gun went off, the sound loud in the room. He yelled, and pawed at his side, pulling the shoulder holster away from his torso. A growing patch of red on his shirt drew an angry line across his side. He looked behind himself, where the slug had impacted one of the shelves. Right underneath a line of books.
Ivan let out a long, world weary sigh and turned to the woman behind the desk. “Miss Caroline, with respect, this is donkey shit. I quit. I’m going back to the old country.”
He turned to leave, and tripped again, just managing not to fall flat. His shoelaces were tied together again, the severed lace knotted anew to the old mess. He kicked the knot free, the lace giving way to the force. He then limped out, back the way he had come, keeping an odd gait to manage a shoe that his heel kept sliding free from.
After he was gone, Caroline turned to me, a puzzled look on her face. The shelf that had been shot, creaked, then broke, books cascading to the floor in a fluttering papery crash.
Once the noise settled, Caroline and I looked at each other, making brief eye contact before her gaze again slid off of me.
Caroline looked down at a paper on the desk in front of her. “Timothy…” she said, scanning the paper. “Timothy Thompson, luck vampire?” She looked back up and made a valiant attempt to meet my eyes. “We need to have a long talk, you and I.”
She pressed a button on her desk, “Valerie, cancel my appointments for the rest of the day, and send in Vasi and Anton. And get me George, tell him I have another job for him.”
A voice from the desk asked a question I couldn’t make out, “No,” said Caroline, “I’m afraid Ivan is no longer with us. He’s going to have an accident.”
She released the button, and returned her gaze to over my shoulder. “I don’t know what you did to Ivan, Timothy, but you’d be wise not to try it on me. You’d find the consequences, unpleasant.”
Two men stepped in the room from the open door, stepping up and flanking me at a healthy distance. They could have won a look-alike contest with Ivan.
“Now,” said Caroline, “let’s try this again, shall we?”
***