The Curse Servant (The Dark Choir Book 2) (33 page)

“Good question. My guess, we have to do it the old fashioned way. Hit the books, do our homework. At least now we know what we’re looking up.”

Edgar glanced at Wren and shrugged. “Can you call Gillette, get more info?”

“I can try, but she’s… I don’t know. Grumpy. What we really need is someone who knows both Carmody and Gillette.”

Edgar shrugged and held onto Wren.

That’s when it occurred to me.

I sucked in a breath.

“Damn it.”

Edgar followed my expression. “No way.”

“How much you want to bet he knows both of them?”

“Probably, but he came into my house once. I don’t feel like dealing with him again, man.”

“Edgar, Zeno’s the best connected man on the East Coast outside of the Presidium. How could it hurt just to call him?”

“You can call him, then.”

“Deal. Also, I’ll check Emil’s Library. I found a book last week about servitors. Might help.”

“What should we be doing?” asked Wren.

“Best thing you can do is keep Elle safe. Wouldn’t hurt if you hold off on the doctor come Monday.”

I could tell by her pinched expression she was struggling with it. After a deep sigh, she nodded.

Good, that was one less thing.

I peeked in on Elle before I left. I watched her from her bedroom door as she lay on her bed, staring at the ceiling. She slowly turned her head to me and muttered something incomprehensible.

“You really are trapped inside that girl, aren’t you?”

Elle’s eyes hardened.

“Not really your fault. Your master either knew and didn’t warn you, or wasn’t fully aware of the danger.” I took a step inside the room. “And I know you don’t really hate me. At least, you don’t have any reason to hate me. It’s just the way you were created. You know, it kind of helps to know you’re just a sliver of someone’s soul wrapped inside a thought. You’re man-made; you’re not part of the Dark Choir. You don’t have a clue where my soul is, and never did.”

She pulled back dry lips and replied, “I suppose that gives you hope.”

“Not really, but it does give me a little satisfaction.”

She went back to staring at the ceiling, and I left the thing alone to dwell on its fate. It was slowly devouring Elle from the inside out, and even though Wren had relented on the deadline she had imposed on me, the truth was that I still had a countdown which I couldn’t avoid, and didn’t know how much time was left on the bomb.

I drove back to Baltimore, now thoroughly sick of the scenery on that particular stretch of I-70. Finally alone at home, I took a seat at my roll top desk and relaxed for a moment. I found my hand resting on McHenry’s envelope. Despite everything in my being desperate to shove that offer directly up McHenry’s ass, I still felt the raw and savage tug of the money he was prepared to throw at me. I’m a pretty decent guy, I like to think. But that was a lot of money and a lot of headache I could forestall.

Still, McHenry hired this hitman. I had to secure proof it was Carmody, but ultimately the chain of responsibility stopped with McHenry. I mused at my meeting with Carmody in which he “let slip” the existence of a practitioner working Sooner’s camp. That was precisely the kind of half-intelligent play I expected from the man. Still, Carmody had made a lot of headway with only a minimum of effort. He wasn’t particularly good at lying, but he had a knack for making friends. Chums, he might have said. One might even say he was charmed. A man like Carmody survived by slipping between the railroad tracks, not by standing in front of the train. He had to have some angle. I just couldn’t figure it out.

With those thoughts rattling through my brain, I called Frater Zeno.

The phone rang its requisite rings, and rolled to voice mail. I was running short of patience with Zeno, so I left a curt message.

“It’s Dorian Lake. Call me now.”

He was good for it.

My phone rang in a minute, and I answered, “Zeno?”

“Your phone etiquette leaves something to be desired.”

“I need information.”

“Don’t we all?” he grumbled.

“What can you tell me about Del Carmody and Quinn Gillette?”

After a pause, Zeno replied, “More than we have time for.”

“Can you make some time, then?”

“I seem to recall not wanting to ever speak to you again after our last meeting. Why am I even talking to you?”

“I can pay you.”

“Again, not really an enticement.”

“I know why you failed, Zeno. That alone must be worth at least ten minutes.”

Another pause. “If I failed, it was because I wasn’t given full possession of the facts.”

“No shit. Look, there’s still an entity to bottle up, if you can use it. And I still want it out of that girl.”

“Fine, Lake. Carmody is a charm broker from Leicester, relocated to the states in the mid-eighties.”

“Is he any good?”

“Not particularly.”

“What about soul magic?”

“Sorry?”

“Is he a known practitioner of soul magic?”

“Not to my knowledge. Gillette, on the other hand, is what I would call an authority of soul magic. And I don’t use the word ‘authority’ with any kind of informality.”

“I knew that much. But do you know why Gillette is hell-bent on mounting Carmody’s head over her fireplace?”

Zeno chuckled. “It would be easier to find a reason for Gillette not to be.”

“How’d it start?”

“I’m not informed on the particulars. West Coast magic tends to bore me with its needlessly human drama. Carmody had some kind of close call with a poorly anchored hex and decided to move away from active practice. So, he cultivated his puerile interest in gossip into a career in information brokerage. He and Gillette played in the same sandbox for several years before Carmody managed to stumble into a turf war between Gillette and the Seattle people. Carmody got paid, lives were lost, and Gillette knew whom to blame.”

“His information got people killed?”

“When I said turf war, I meant it.”

“So Carmody hauls ass to the East Coast figuring Gillette won’t chase him so close to the Presidium?”

“That follows.”

“And now it looks like Carmody’s trying to get back into the Practice, trades me Gillette for a book of curses, and here we are. Only he’s grossly misjudging the Presidium’s patience for penny-ante Netherwork. Jesus, at least Osterhaus was discreet.”

“Does that satisfy your need for information?”

“Almost. In your opinion, would Carmody have the means or the skill to create a servitor?”

Zeno responded with a very long pause.

“Zeno?”

“Of course. Human powered thoughtform. My traps weren’t crafted to attract or retain a human soul, regardless of how small.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Lake, if someone sent a servitor into that girl’s body, that girl is probably doomed.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Servitors are short-lived creatures by nature. Even a soul shard loses its potency as a source of power over time. I can’t say I’ve ever heard of a servitor possessing a human. That would be bold as a servitor would likely consume most of its original soul shard attempting the crossover.”

“So it would have to feed on the new host’s energy?”

“And so on and so forth. This creature may not have been warned about the quagmire of a child’s psyche. If it’s trapped, it will starve unless it finds a new energy source. Which means it’ll start eating her soul to survive. This isn’t just a physical condition, Lake. If that girl dies at the hand of this construct, any hope she has for a meaningful afterlife will die with her.”

I rubbed my eyes.

“Any idea how I’d yank it out before it comes to that?”

“Sorry. I work in demons, not humans. I couldn’t use the thing, regardless. It’s a tangled mélange of hostile energies at this point, probably unaware of its own nature. That kind of chaos is more than even I’m willing to work with.”

“Understood. Thank you, Frater.”

“Lake?”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t call me again.”

He hung up.

Carmody probably wasn’t my man. Oh, he was definitely playing me against Gillette, that much was clear. But I wasn’t convinced Carmody had the ability to create a servitor. Which left me with a very real and pressing conundrum. I had an unidentified practitioner out there responsible for the imminent demise of Elle Swain’s soul.

And I had no clue how I was going to find him.

spent two hours in my working space downstairs boning up on thoughtforms, courtesy of Asok the Sharqui. The information was patchy. I was basically aware of thoughtform theory. That much wasn’t Netherwork. One generally worked with thoughtforms for Ego Magics, attempts to re-write one’s personal psychological makeup. This was particularly useful in treating personal psychological issues like eating disorders, addictions, and social anxiety disorders. I mused on whether Ches would be interested in any of this information.

When it came to powering a thoughtform with a soul shard, that dropped the entire practice squarely into the sphere of Netherwork. It was a forbidden act of creation, playing God with a thought. Servitors were unpredictable, chaotic, and often destructive. The only saving grace was that they were most often very short-lived. Zeno was right on that account.

But I found nothing about a servitor possessing a human body. What I did find, however, was that a servitor presented itself as a version of the one who crafted it. That meant it possessed a portion of its creator’s knowledge, personality, and even its gender. My thoughts strayed back to one nagging question.

Why was this thing only possessing women? Perhaps it could only possess women?

That would make its creator a woman. Which made Gillette a suspect. She was the only person I knew who was familiar with how servitors were made, how they break, and how to dispatch them when they wander off reservation. Could Gillette have been the one to create the servitor?

No, that wouldn’t make sense. She was too far removed from the East Coast and its peculiar esoteric dramas to want to be involved. More pertinently, she was a master of soul magics, and had already proven she knew how to locate and liberate a servitor when it strayed. She wouldn’t have gotten a thoughtform stuck inside a child. Not unless she wanted the child to die, in which case I was convinced she knew several cleaner methods toward that end. No, she wasn’t McHenry’s hitman, but she could end up being Elle’s savior, if not mine.

I dialed Gillette’s number and remained standing, pacing into and out of my kitchen.

“Yes?” she answered with that familiar gruff tone.

“Gillette? It’s Dorian Lake.”

“Who?”

“Dorian Lake? Of Baltimore? The one you want to curse Del Carmody?”

“Oh right,” she grumbled. “You. What do you want? Is it done?”

“Not yet.”

“Then you can call me when it is.”

“Wait,” I grunted before she could hang up. “I’ve decided to do it.”

“You want me to throw you a parade, or something?”

“I want to negotiate a change in your service. In exchange for cursing Carmody.”

“I thought this was all ironed out, Lake.”

I had to be careful. Old school Netherworkers weren’t fond of contract negotiation. “It was. But I want something else, now.”