Maggie for Hire (8 page)

Killian shrugged, “It really was a terribly good breakfast.”

I looked back at Pipistrelle, “Thanks for the food.  Keep looking for my uncle.”

Pipistrelle’s face broke into a grin, “Indeed!  Nothing would please me more!”

His little head disappeared from view and I saw the door open and shut.

“You don’t think he’s dragging his feet so that he can hang out with us longer?” I asked.

Killian shook his head, bemused.

I turned on the car and started backing out of the driveway, “Well, time to head to the graveyard and pick up whatever pieces of that ghoul are left so that I can collect my bounty and pay my rent.  Hope it’s safe to return.”

“It is broad daylight,” Killian reassured.

“I hope that’s still enough to protect us.”

We pulled up next to the church.  The backhoe was just where the undertaker had left it.  The bodies of the vampires had “magically” disappeared, though.

I parked my car and we walked through the crunching leaves to the graveside.  The ghoul’s empty clothes lay spread eagle on the coffin and green slime dripped from where his body should have been.

I dunno.  I’ve stared at a million corpses and you get kind of used to it.  Other Siders are creatures of ether and usually, when they die on Earth, their bodies poof out and they return to the dimension from whence they came.

But ghouls are gross.  Being as they attain their shape through eating dead flesh, when they die you get a lingering smell that can only be described as foul.  Rotting flesh squared.  I pulled out a facemask and rubber gloves that I had learned to start carrying in my bag and put them on.

“Keep a lookout for me,” I said to Killian and leapt into the grave.

I pulled out a plastic Ziploc bag and started folding up the clothes when something in the ghoul’s jean’s pocket fell out.

“Well, what do we have here?”

It was a tarnished silver bracelet with a number of lovely little charms featuring unholy artifacts hanging from its chain.  I dropped it into a secondary bag.

“What did you find?” asked Killian.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“That bracelet you just dropped into the baggie.”

“Well, Killian, there is no bracelet and there is no second baggie.  But if such a thing existed, I would have to say it was a talisman of some sort.”

I threw the baggie up at Killian, which he caught midair and held up to the sun to get a better look.

“This one charm looks like a coat of arms...”  He suddenly got very still.

“What?”

“I believe it is your family’s coat of arms.”

I didn’t even know we had a family coat of arms, much less what it looked like.  I’m pretty sure that maybe once we had gone into one of those genealogy t-shirt shops you find at the mall, but I seem to remember coming up empty handed.  Sucked that the first time I was going to see my family crest was when it was removed from the body of the undead, “Great.  Think I could get it printed on a mug?”

Killian gave me a look.

“It would make the holidays easy,” I explained.

Killian shook his head.

I sighed and dropped the last of the ghoul’s slimy clothes in the bag.  Killian lent me a hand and I climbed up the side of the grave and out. 

I wandered over to my car, pulled out a briefcase, and went back to the gravesite.  I opened up the briefcase and grabbed a sports bottle from inside.  I popped the sippy top and sprinkled the water on the grave in the sign of a cross.

“What...?” Killian asked.

“Have to re-consecrate the ground.  I’ve got a priest I know who can come give us a hand, but it’s better to get this party started before word gets out to the nasties that there is an open church for rent.  Could you fire up that backhoe for me?”

Killian flipped the keys to “on” as I sprinkled more water on the fill dirt.  I climbed up into the machine and began finishing the job of laying the poor schmoe’s empty coffin to rest.

“I like a woman who knows how to handle heavy machinery.”

“Don’t make me bury you alive.”

“Just in case you were keeping tally.”

I wiped my dirty hands on my pants, “What do you say we take a stroll over to the church there so that I can wash up?”

Killian nodded and followed me over, opening up the door.

The church inside was eerily quiet.  Not peaceful quiet.  Church quiet should make you want to rest and just be.  This was the kind of quiet that makes you check your locks.

There was a summoning circle set up by the altar and the whole place smelled like rotten eggs.  I kept my hand upon my stake and walked in, “Yah, the priest was definitely the first to go.”

I popped open my cell phone and scrolled through my contacts until I came to the one I was looking for.  The phone rang a couple times before a familiar voice growled at me from the other side.

“Father Killarney!  It’s Maggie... You got a second?  Seems like St. Bartholomew’s is in need of a little holy help... Yes, I will buy you dinner.”

I snapped my phone shut, “He’s on his way over.  We should probably check to make sure there isn’t anything hiding in the baptismal font.”

The font was filled with leaves and dirt and sludge.

“Great,” I said as I grabbed one of those long, brass thingies they use to light candles and poked the handle around the bottom of the font, "Someone has been using it as a bathtub.”

Nothing leapt out to eat my face, so I called it good and moved on to the next spot ghoulies like to linger.

The sacristy had been cracked open and the wafers left out, eaten like crackers next to a goblet filled with something I didn’t even want to consider.

“Looks like the vampires made themselves at home.”

Killian looked repulsed, which was appropriate if you hadn’t seen anything like this before.  I don’t know what it said about me that I was unfazed.

“This priest you know, he can set this wrongness right?” he asked.

“Yah, he’s got a regular Sunshine Cleaning crew.  They’ll get this place spic and span in a jiffy.”

We hung around straightening up the mess that we could until the door opened and a short, grey-haired priest interrupted our fun.  He lugged a duffel bag over his shoulder.  Behind him came a middle aged nun in a blue habit, rolling a roadies case.

“Well, if it isn’t my dear Maggie MacKay.  Haven’t been seeing you in church lately,” the priest said in his sweet Irish lilt.

“You know how it goes jumping between worlds, Father Killarney,” I said, giving him a hug.

“The Lord only asks one hour of our time a week, my child.”

I waved at the nun behind him, a slender lady with dirty blonde bangs and a wide grin.  She gave me a wry glance.

“Sister Magdalena.  How come you always get stuck with the heavier bag?”

“I’m just lucky.”

I turned to Killian, “Killian, this is Father Killarney and Sister Magdalena.  They’re our cleanup crew.”

Handshakes were given all around before we broke off to give them the tour.

Father Killarney put on rubber gloves and crouched down next to a circle in the floor.  He brushed aside the black sand, “Well, nothing too complicated.”

He then stopped and smelled his fingers, “Well, this is unfortunate.”

I bent down beside him, and then shifted as I felt Killian’s eyes gazing adoringly at my backside.

Elves.

“What?” I asked Father Killarney.

“Brimstone.”

“Excuse me?”

“Sulfur, but burned in the Other Side in order to transport things here.”

“Meaning?”

“They built their own portal.”

“Fuck.”

Father Killarney gave me a chiding look.

“Sorry.  Crap.”

He gave me another look.

“I am very upset about this, okay?”

“Perhaps if you weren’t so noticeably absent from Sunday services, you would find other ways to express your dismay.”

“Sister Magdalena, do I really have to put up with this?”

She pulled the last pieces of an industrial strength, evil sucking vacuum out of the case and plugged it into the wall.

“Don’t look at me.  I have to put up with him every day,” she said as she snapped a black dust mask over her mouth in punctuation.

“Would you expound on the meaning of the circle?” asked Killian, deflecting the heat for me and getting this party back on track.

Father Killarney nodded, getting out of the way for Sister Magdalena to suck up the runes that had been poured out on the floor.

“Killian, the ability to jump between worlds is a valuable gift and most are not as fortunate as your girlfriend Maggie here.”

“I’m not his girlfriend.”

“It would do you some good, child.”

Killian nodded his head gravely in agreement, “He is a man of God, Maggie...”

“Shut up.”

Father Killarney cleared his throat, “As I was saying, you can jump to this world with various runes and spells.  This particular spell was put together with black magic on the Other Side using brimstone to hold the portal open.  Once lit, it burns in both dimensions.  The trouble, as you know, is that once you are here, it is very difficult to go back.”

I completed his thought, “So if there are vampires jumping over here under the radar, they are permanent guests.”

Father Killarney put a finger to his nose and pointed at me.  While I normally would have hoped that this was the universal sign for “we’d make great charade partners”, I knew he meant I was dead on.

“So how long ago do you think they were here working the original spell?”

Father Killarney scratched his beard, “Well, the runes were still fairly fresh.  Wind and dust hadn’t blown them too hard, which is fortunate enough.  Tracking down sulfur in the cracks and crevasses of a stone floor is one of my least favorite things to do.”

Sister Magdalena lifted her mask, “As if he’s ever the one tracking it down.  Father, you can work while you talk.”

He made the sign of the cross, “Forgive her, Father, for she knows not what she does.”

She shook her head and continued to vacuum.

“My professional guess is that they have been squatting in this unholy place no more than a few days,” he said.

I gave a low whistle, “Just a few days, huh?”

“Time is the enemy when you do not wish for people to find out what you are doing.”

“There were a lot of vampires for a couple 24 hour shifts.”

“Perhaps they were here before,” offered Sister Magdalena.

And that’s when I got the heebie-jeebies.  I thought to the silver bracelet sitting in the baggie, “And my uncle is tied up in this mess somehow.  Why can’t my family just be quiet, law abiding citizens?”

Father Killarney sighed, “To every light there must be a dark.  To every yin, a yang.  Your uncle’s wicked ways are only a balance to the good of your father.”

“Sibling rivalry must’ve been a bitch.”

He laughed, “Indeed, it was.”

I looked at Father Killarney, “Wait.  You knew my uncle?”

“Indeed, I did.  I knew him until the day that he turned away from us.”

“What do you think he is up to?” I asked, gazing around at the death and mayhem of a place that should have been filled with light and life.

“I assume he is looking for you.”

“What?” I asked him sharply.  “Why would he be looking for me?”

“I assume because you are the only one who can put a stop to this.”

“That’s a random statement to lay on a girl.”

Father Killarney and Killian shared an unspoken, pointed moment and I kind of didn’t want to find out what they were so rudely not telling me. 

Killian finally turned to me, “Maggie, I was sent to you to find out why the barrier was weakening.  I was told it was because you were the only one who could fix it.”  He waved at the mess in the church, “But now, if your uncle is at the root of this matter...  Perhaps it is because your blood runs thicker than water.”

“Great,” I said, pressing my palms into my increasingly throbbing temples.  “I’m supposed to magically know something about a man that I’d never heard of before a couple days ago and save the world with said information.”

“That’s about the color of things,” said Father Killarney, completely unhelpfully.

“You can fill me in on the guy anytime now,” I pointedly requested.

He gently guided me and Killian to the door, “I will.  I promise, child.  But this abomination upon holy ground must be sorted out before sundown.  Go.  Get lunch.  Watch some afternoon talk shows.  I shall tell you everything this evening.”

Father Killarney was an expert in cleaning up bad magic.  He’d seen far worse than what mine eyes had gazed upon, and that was saying something.  If he was subtly suggesting that he had to get down to brass tacks, then he needed to get started.  I grudgingly decided that I could let him worry about the end of the world for a couple hours.

I hugged him warmly.  Father Killarney used to eat at our Sunday night dinners back before all hell had broken loose and we had to move across the boundary.  He was one of the good guys.  I waved at Sister Magdalena who saluted me farewell with her hose.

Killian and I walked back to the car, picking our way through the dead grass and headstones.  Fall didn’t really come to Los Angeles, but every now and again, you’d find a misplaced maple amidst the eucalyptus and palm trees.  For some reason, this church featured some stunted oaks to help tell the change between the seasons.

I stood at my car, staring back at the church.  Doing nothing for the afternoon just didn’t sit right.  I couldn’t let it go.

“Killian?  We found out about the funeral from an obituary in the paper.  Maybe it’s time to pay a visit to the funeral director...”

Killian gave me a smile.

“Besides,” I said, unlocking the door, “there’s nothing on since they staked Jerry Springer.”

Chapter 18

The funeral home was a white clapboard sided thing with black shutters and a curved driveway.  Sort of a grim Georgian rancher left over from the prefab homes of the 1950s.  It had a utilitarian, matter-of-factness to it that fit in well with the blue-collar neighborhood.

We walked in the front door.  Inside, the industrial carpet was a delightful shade of turquoise green and the place smelled of floral deodorizer.