Magic Time: Angelfire (36 page)

Doc is on his feet, crossbow up and ready. “Perhaps we should take cover.” He gives the building behind him a worried glance. “They have been in there a long time.”

“Only seems like a long time,” I say, pulling myself upright.

The words have barely left my mouth when the metal door behind Doc scrapes open. He’s got the jitters so bad, he leaps off the stoop into the courtyard, pivoting in midair to draw down on the door. Fortunately for Cal, he doesn’t have an itchy trigger finger.

“Come on in,” Cal says. “We found Russo.”

“The horses?” I nod at our snoozing animals.

“Russo says they’ll be fine here. His neighbors, according to him, wouldn’t know how to ride a horse if they
wanted
to steal one.”

“Uh-huh,” I say. “But I’ll betcha they could probably figure out how to cook one.”

“Good point. Maybe you could do something to protect them?”

I fire off my most awesome ball-o’-fire to date and leave it swaddling the horses with a dangerous-looking veil of light. The poor animals are so exhausted, they barely notice.
I
notice that I do it with much less effort than before.

I am beyond surprise when we are ushered into a basement room to meet Howard Russo. “Holy cow, Blindman,” I pun, “your manager is a troll.”

Enid gives me a dark look from under his dreadlocks. “Yeah, tell me about it.”

The troll in question turns to look at us. His big milky eyes get even bigger and milkier when he sees Magritte, the vertical pupils squeezing shut against her glow.

“You got angelfire,” he croaks.

Angelfire. That’s one I haven’t heard before. Given the effect Magritte has on my various synapses, it’s appropriate. “Why’d you bring her here?” Russo asks.

“She’s protecting me from you,” says Enid.

“From me?” He blinks myopically.

“Shit—you are no way that stupid, Howard Russo. It’s my damned
contract
.”

The little grunter’s face goes gray. Oh, all right—it’s already gray; it goes grayer. “Whaddaya mean, your contract?”

“I mean that clause about repercussions. I play my music and weird shit happens. Things get all twisted.
People
get all twisted.”

Russo’s eyes kind of pinball off Enid’s face. Shifty little fellow. “Feedback … The contract … feeds back.” The words sound chewed on. He shakes a finger at Enid. “You shouldn’t play without… you know, without…”

“Permission?” offers Cal.

“Uh-huh. The contract is… it’s—it’s put together to protect the interests of the, uh, the management.”

“What about
my
interests?” Enid snarls. He points at Russo’s diminutive nose. “I can’t believe you’d do something like this to me.”

Russo blinks. “You signed. You were okay with it then.” “In the
real
world, Howard. Not in this damned Twilight Zone we’re living in.”

The grunter picks at a piece of lint on his tweed jacket. “So, don’t play.” He gives Enid a sly look out of his milky bug-eyes.

“Don’t play? That’s like saying ‘don’t breathe.’ Besides, there’s Maggie. I been having to make music to protect her.”

Russo’s eyes sort of snap to Enid’s face. “To what?”

“Yeah, I know it sounds weird, but it protects her from the Storm or the Source or whatever you want to call it.”

Russo looks vaguely puzzled. “You mean that big, black thing that, uh, hoovered up all the angelfire? The Dark?”

Enid nods. “Bottom line, Howard, I want out.”

“Out?”

“Of the contract. I came to tell you it ain’t legal no more. You’re gonna tear it up.”

Russo’s little gray face pales and he blinks rapidly several times. I have the loopy idea that he’s holding back tears. “Can’t do it,” he mumbles.

“You want me to tear
you
up instead?”

The grunter takes a step away from Enid and backs straight into Colleen, who snags the shoulder pads of his overlarge tweeds and holds him still. He cowers a little, but repeats, “Can’t do it. Not
won’t
do it—
can’t
.”

Colleen literally growls. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Cal leans down into Russo’s face. “It’s not as if you have a choice to make, Mr. Russo. This is simple: the contract was voided by the fact that it was altered
after
Enid signed it.”

Russo giggles—a strange, wheezy sound like a car that doesn’t want to turn over. “You talk like a lawyer.”

“I am a lawyer.”

He sneezes away the giggles and sobers a little. “S’more than business,” he mutters, then pulls away from Colleen and shuffles over to the table, where he picks up the cigar butt and sticks it between his sharp, nasty little teeth.

Such panache.

He’s silent for a moment, chewing on his cigar butt. Then he stops and looks straight at Enid, suddenly seeming utterly human. “Look, Enid, I’m not the one you gotta deal with.”

“What do you mean, you’re not the one?” Enid asks. “Primal.”

“Primal,” Enid repeats.

“Third party to the contract, remember? Primal got a say.” “Shit, Howard, there’s no Primal Records anymore. The Storm put paid to that. There’s just you and me.”

The cigar butt hangs loosely in Russo’s mouth for a moment while his eyes move from Cal to Enid to Magritte. “You protect her, huh?”

And I thought
my
noodle produced non sequiturs.

“I could,” Enid said, “except for the fact that the damn contract makes my music feed back all over the place. I’m sick, Howard. And I’ve twisted the shit out of I don’t know how many innocent folks.”

Russo is startled. “Sick? How—sick?”

“Sick. As in dying. I play and it sucks the life out of me.

I don’t play and it shrivels up my soul. Rock and a hard place, Howie. And you put me there.”

Russo shakes his head hard enough to make it rattle. “Not me. Not me,” he mumbles. “Primal. There
is
a Primal. It— It’s Primal you gotta deal with.”

“Do you have the original contract?” Cal asks.

“Me? No. Primal got it. I only got a copy.”

“A copy you can’t get rid of?”

Russo’s eyes bug out even more than they are naturally inclined to do. “What?”

“You do, don’t you?” Enid presses. “You try to destroy it, but you can’t. You try to lose it; it won’t stay lost.”

Russo’s about chewed his cigar in two by now. He looks up at Enid and blinks. “Why d’you think I’m still in Chicago? Far as I can go. Right
here
.” He yanks the soggy butt out of his mouth and stabs it at the floor. Then he drops it and crushes it into the concrete with a bare foot.

Enid and Cal exchange glances, then Cal says, “And you’ve never tried to void it?”

“How?”

“Well, gee,” I say, “I’ll bet you’d want to go to the Ruby City with us, Mr. Cowardly Lion, sir, and see if we can’t get the Wizard to give you some ba—”

“Goldie…” Cal gives me a sideways glance (not completely devoid of humor) and shakes his head. “It does look as if you could benefit from a visit to Primal Records.”

Russo shakes his head. His eyes crinkle at the corners and get a little milkier. “No. Not goin’ into that place. Not goin’ downtown.”

Russo clearly has some serious angst about the Bubble. I gotta admit, it weirds me out no end, because I can’t tell what’s inside it. I figure maybe Howie knows, so I ask. “What’s downtown, Howie? Is it … is the Dark downtown? Is that what makes the Bubble?”

He gapes at me. “The Dark? Here?” He’s laughing, sort of, but his eyes are darting around as if the Dark might just jump right out and bite him. “What kind of crazy question is 
that? Nobody knows where the Dark comes from. Nobody’d want to know.”

Except us. I slant a glance at Cal.
Your turn
.

Cal says, “You’re stuck here. You said it yourself. If you want to get unstuck, you need to void that contract. And given how things change, we may need a guide. You help us, we help you.”

“You help me?”

Cal nods.

Russo seems to consider that for a moment, then develops a profound case of Gumby shoulders. “Why get unstuck? No place to go.”

Cal leans down into his face. “We know a place you can go.”

“Cal’s right,” Enid chips in. “Maggie and I just came from there. It’s called the Preserve. It was a safe place for us, Howard. Until I got so damn sick. If I can get free of this contract, it’ll be safe for us again.”

“Just show us where we can find Primal Records,” says Cal.

“Now?” Russo squeaks.

“We’re in a bit of a hurry,” I say.

Russo blanches. Except for the tips of his pointy little ears, which turn a darker shade of blue. “Oh, no, no. Not now. S’after hours.”

That’s a chuckle. “They still keep business hours?” I ask. “Old habits,” says Russo, fidgeting.

“Sorry,” says Cal. “I don’t buy that. You don’t know how to get in, do you?”

Russo leans toward Cal, his eyes shifting to the shadows. “I know how to get in, couns’ler. But you don’t wanna go out at night around here.
Trust
me.”

About as far as I could throw you
, I think.

“Fine. I’d rather do this fully rested anyway.” Cal lays a hand on Russo’s tweedy shoulder. “But tomorrow morning you’re taking us to see the Wizard.”

Russo looks at the hand, then back at Cal, and giggles again. “Yeah. T’morrow. See the Wizard.”

We are to spend an uneasy night in Russo’s third-floor suite of rooms. There is a large, rather ostentatious office with its own minimally working bathroom, a wet bar, and what amounts to a parlor tucked into a corner beside the front doors. Through a second set of doors a small but fully furnished living room with a fireplace, and a large bedroom with a second bath, line up along the front of the building. A pocket kitchen opens up kitty-corner to the bedroom door. Only a close look at the accouterments in the living room reveal that the marble hearth and parquet floors are faux. It’s been slightly “grunterfied.” Every window is covered with thick curtains, none of which seem to match. They are velvet, linen, brocade. One is a quilt.

There is no moon visible tonight, but the faerie Bubble illuminates the darkness much as Chicago’s bowl of light pollution must have done once. When I pull the quilt aside from a living room window, I can see it shining dully above the rooftops about two or three blocks to the east. I try to touch it, figuratively speaking—try to lay psychic hands on it, to feel its texture. It resists me. After pulling me here, its silence is unnerving and annoying. I’m pretty sure this is what it feels like to be a cat toy.

It clearly makes Russo
ferklempt
. He doesn’t go near the window; he doesn’t look at the window. This strikes me as odd, because the Bubble’s just not that bright. It puts out a lot less light than Magritte does, and he doesn’t seem at all reluctant to look at her, even though she makes his eyes water. In fact, he can’t seem to take his eyes off her, which makes
me
nervous.

“Close that,” he whines at last, as if he can’t stand the pale wash of ruddy light that seeps in.

I oblige, letting the quilt fall. “What’s the matter, Howie? Don’t like the view?”

He just grunts. Typical.

Cal has been watching Russo as closely as I have. “What can you tell me about that?” he asks, nodding toward the window.

“What?” Russo asks, then fills his mouth so full of jerky that he couldn’t answer if he wanted to.

Cal’s mouth quirks wryly. I’m sure he’s seen similar delaying tactics in the courtroom. “The bubble of power over the Loop. What do you know about it?”

Russo chews noisily and methodically and stares at Cal for a minute without answering. Then he swallows, licks his lips, also noisily, and shakes his bald head. “Nothing.”

“You don’t know how it’s generated? Where it came from? How it’s maintained?”

A shrug.

“I think you do know,” suggests Cal. “And you don’t like it. Why?”

Russo’s eyes glaze over a little then roll back over to Magritte, where they come into sharp focus.

I snap to immediate attention and move to stand so that Maggie and I are nearly touching. I don’t know if it’s her or me or both of us, but I feel as if slugs are crawling all over me. I glance at her face; she is clearly creeped out by Russo’s interest.

He stops chewing and points a gnarled finger at her. “D’I know you? Sure I know you.”

She shakes her head. “I don’t think so. I heard Enid talk about you, is all.”

“Watch’er name—Maggie, is it?”

“Magritte,” says Enid. He’s perched on the arm of Russo’s couch, tucking into a can of hash. “Her name’s Magritte. We go way back. Further than you and me. You never met that I know of.”

The grunter’s eyes gleam with what I take as recognition, and his wide mouth curves into a grin. “Magritte? Shit,
yeah
, we met! You’re Choir Girl, right? Worked the Rainbow Club. Had a room upstairs.” He snaps his fingers and points again. “Green velvet. Green velvet and a—a crystal unicorn in the window. Little colored sparkles all over 
everything
.” He giggles hideously. “No surprise you don’t ’member me. Didn’t stand out in a crowd back then. But I remember you.” He looks right at me, still grinning. “She’s
good
.”