Shukra found me sitting on my office floor, leaning back against the wall, surrounded by scattered papers and splintered remains of my desk and all its contents. I’d taken Alysdair to everything before thrusting the sword into the wall, where it had stubbornly stuck.
Magic whipped around me, dark and deadly. I didn’t hide it. Didn’t care.
It hurt, everywhere and nowhere. I wanted to tear out my heart and make the horrible, consuming emptiness go away or fill it with drink, or death, or something—anything. Just make it stop. I’d tried drowning the ache in vodka. Broken bits of the vodka bottle glistened on the floor around me.
Godkiller.
I pressed the back of my hand to my mouth, and curled my hand into a fist. Grief swelled inside like an incoming tide. I couldn’t escape it. Through every barrier I erected, and every time I tried to sidestep it, the weight plowed inside, filling me up and hollowing me out all at once.
Shu was watching me, considering her words. I hadn’t looked up, but I knew she was there, careful to skirt the fringes of my power.
“What do you need?” she asked after minutes or hours.
It was a good question. I needed the curse gone. I needed to kill Osiris and make Isis watch. I needed to be better—to be someone who saved people and didn’t kill them. I needed to be the man Bast had believed—had hoped I could be.
“I need you to wipe my memories.”
Shu stalled again, treading on ice. “Which ones?”
Through the fog and the pain, I lifted my head and found Shu’s face set in a grim mask. “Anything relating to Chuck and…and Bast. She didn’t walk into my office. She didn’t hire me. She was never here.”
She blinked slowly and evaluated the destruction I’d wrought. “That will be difficult.”
“Not for you,” I drawled.
“Can I ask what happened?”
“No.” I yanked off my wedding band, pulled my knees up to my chest, and rested my arms there. Light flowed over the ring, turning it to liquid gold in my hand. “Take this. Put it somewhere safe. Somewhere I won’t find it. But…” My throat tried to close off the next words, so I cleared it. “But don’t throw it away.”
She didn’t move. Her eyes darted to the sword sticking out of the wall and back to me, sitting on the floor. Her eyes, her stance, it all said no, but fear stopped her from denying me. It said a lot when the most proficient sorceress the underworld had ever produced was afraid of me.
With a reluctant sigh, she ventured closer. “I’m going to regret this.”
I wouldn’t. I couldn’t regret what I didn’t remember.
* * *
The snow was melting fast, trickling into gutters and gurgling down the drains, as I pushed through the stained-glass door into the store Curiosities. The heat hit me first, like it always did when I stepped off New York’s winter streets into Maf’s store. Evocative smells of cinnamon and thyme tickled my memory. Old scents from an old world.
An electronic bell buzzed, its modern sound at odds with the rows of shelves stacked to the ceiling with artifacts, tourist junk, and witchcraft paraphernalia. Glass skulls sat next to dozens of papyri, their potency hidden among the trinkets.
The ancient and infallible Mafdet—Slayer of Serpents—was tucked behind the counter. Her ample bosom rested on the countertop, threatening to spill out of her flower-print top. She threaded a string of colorful beads through her fingers, drawing my eye to the valley between her generous assets. It had once been widely known that no god or beast could outrun her. Her fortunes had changed since then, but she’d adapted—adapt or slumber. There was no other way for the ancient ones.
“Back so soon, Ace?” she asked. Her voice was cracked with age, or so it would seem to those who believed she was the kind, but slightly unhinged old lady who ran a store full of superstitious nonsense. “Business or pleasure?”
“Business.”
“Ah.” She picked up a pair of wire-framed glasses and planted them on her nose. “You get more handsome every time I see you. Almost as dashing as the Lord of Silence.”
My lips twitched. The Lord of Silence was yet another name for Osiris—Lord of Death didn’t have the same poetic ring to it. “Flattery might work for Shukra, but not for me, Maf.”
She tsked. “So serious for one so young.”
I stopped at the counter. We weren’t alone in the store—a tourist couple was browsing the aisle—so I couldn’t very well press Alysdair against Maf’s neck and terrify the answers out of her, but that might change the moment those window shoppers left. Maf knew it too, hence the beads of sweat glistening on her brow.
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
“The kid I spoke to in here a few weeks ago, I warned him off, remember?”
She pursed her lips. “Something happen to him?”
“Now why would you ask that? Unless you sold him those canopic jars after I advised you to send them back to wherever you got them from.”
“We all gotta eat.” She winced at that and blinked quickly, remembering to whom she was talking. “It’s not my fault the people with money are idiots. What did he do?”
“Summoned two demons.”
She spluttered. “Not with those jars he didn’t. They were inactive. Made sure of it myself. No magic in them.”
“Are you sure about that?” I leaned against the counter. Her red-rimmed, watery blue eyes flicked to where Alysdair was peeking over my shoulder.
“I was assured.”
“So you didn’t check yourself?”
“Look at this place. It’s full of hungry, needful little trinkets. They all chitter and tease. No, I didn’t check myself. I just put them on the shelves, like everything in here.” She puffed and huffed, apparently offended.
“Did you sell him anything else? Anything like a potent summoning spell?”
“N-no,” she stammered. “No, I wouldn’t. Never. Ace, we have an agreement. I help you, and you don’t shut me down. I wouldn’t risk that by touching anything with power. I wouldn’t.”
The browsing couple brushed by me, eyeing Alysdair.
“Cosplay,” I muttered.
They smiled, chuckled nervously, and moved on to admire a simplistic painting of Isis’s profile.
Maf wiped a hand across her forehead. Dark patches had spread under her arms and the fingers caressing her beads trembled. “I swear by Isis—”
“Swear by someone worth something.”
She recoiled as though me bad-mouthing Isis would somehow cause my curse to rub off on her. I grinned back at her.
“I swear it. By Amun-Ra, I swear it.”
Damn. I was hoping she’d sold the kid the papyrus spell so I could follow a paper trail to the source. My only lead had just gone cold.
“I believe you.” Nobody swore on Amun-Ra’s name and lied.
Her shoulders drooped, her relief almost tangible.
“But if anyone tries to sell you anything potent, I want to know about it—immediately. Not in a few days. You pick up your phone and you call me there and then.”
She nodded frantically. “Of course.”
“Good. Now tell me what this is?” I planted Ammit’s box on the countertop and watched Maf’s eyes widen and her plump lips form an O.
“May I?” she asked, reaching for it.
I gestured for her to go right ahead and watched her plant the box in her palm like it was made of glass.
“My, my. Such power.”
I didn’t reply and certainly didn’t tell her I couldn’t feel any power coming from that box. Someone had warded it against me personally, and that was information enough.
“Can you open it?”
She gave it a twist, but the lid didn’t budge. “There may be a way, but it’s sealed by expert hands. It will take time. Why don’t you ask Shukra?”
“No, this is…” I wasn’t sure why I didn’t want Shu to know about the box. It seemed important that nobody know, and Maf was almost nobody. She could keep secrets. “This is private.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
“Tell me about Shukra’s most recent visit.”
Maf tucked the box away behind the counter and relayed Shu’s visit to me, like she did every month. Shu didn’t know Maf reported to me, and Shu also didn’t know I was keeping a close eye on her magical practices. She thought she was slipping her on-the-side spells by me. So far, she’d sold a few spells here and there for a few hundred bucks. Love potions, prosperity spells, and the occasional minor curse—little things. But she’d get greedy. Greed was a sin we both shared in.
When Maf finished, she added, “She bought those ingredients in the last few days.”
The ingredients, including a goat’s heart, were potentially dangerous in Shu’s hands, but a mundane household ornament could also be turned into a wicked charm in her hands. Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling I was missing something, something vital. It would come to me.
“Looks like she’s preparing a blocking spell,” Maf supplied carefully, watching my reaction.
“Yes, it does.” A blocking spell boxed up thoughts, dreams, and memories and tucked them far away inside the subject’s mind. It was a difficult spell to master. I couldn’t cast it, but Shu could. “Thank you, Maf.”
When I reached the door, she called out, “Rumor has it there’s a price on your head.”
I’d heard the same rumor.
Godkiller, those same whispers said.
Anubis believed I’d killed Amy. He wouldn’t come after me himself, but he’d send others until someone or something caught me with my back turned.
“There always is, Maf.” I shoved through the door into the shock of winter air and said again, to myself, “There always is.”
* * *
Shu was participating in a loud and colorful conversation on the phone in her office when I returned. Someone was getting an earful, and for once, it wasn’t me. Whoever it was should be grateful. Shu’s silence was far more dangerous.
I opened my office door and froze.
There, sitting on my desk like it had every right to park its rump on my day planner, was an all-black house cat. Not an alley cat. This one was well fed and groomed.
The tip of its tail twitched across its front paws.
“Shukra?” I called out, keeping my gaze leveled on the cat. “Shu!”
“What?” she snapped back.
“There’s a cat on my desk.”
“I didn’t put it there.”
“A real cat.” The cat blinked its green eyes at me.
“What do you want me to do, call animal control? The NSA?” She slammed her door closed.
“I hate cats,” I grumbled at the feline and stalked closer. It didn’t have a collar, but someone somewhere was missing a pet. Its tail twitched again, and it looked back at me, daring me to shoo it off my desk. The second I did, it would probably turn into a spitting ball of claws and fangs.
“Cat, that’s my desk.”
It lifted a paw and started grating its pink tongue across its pad.
“Leave, cat, or I’ll—” I reached for Alysdair. The cat’s eyes flickered with knowledge, like the little feline was urging me to brandish the blade.
With a small laugh, I dropped my hand. “Fine. I’m going out. You better not be here when I get back.”
But it was there when I got back, curled asleep in my chair. I would normally kick it out, but as I went to scoop up the creature, I hesitated. It wasn’t so bad. Asleep, it was harmless.
“Yah know, the death sentence for killing cats was abolished long ago. I can make it so you meet your little four-legged friends in the afterlife sooner rather than later.”
It didn’t stir. Clearly this cat didn’t have a shred of self-preservation.
I shoved the sleeping cat and chair aside and parked the guest chair behind my desk. The cat didn’t wake, and now it owned my chair.
“I hope you like vodka,” I told it while checking my planner.
Shu had stuck a note on today’s date: Mr. Cooper called. There’s a talking alligator eating his thousand-dollar koi. Be there – 2:00 p.m.
A job—exactly what I needed. “No rest for the wicked.”
* * *
Ace’s story continues in Witches’ Bane, Soul Eater #2…