Sorcerer's Luck (26 page)

“My god!” I looked up. “If that's true—”

“Then he's a murderer, not just a dangerous asshole.” Tor spoke quietly, calmly, but in
his voice I heard rage.

“If it's true, it's no wonder he won't talk things out with you.”

“Yeah, you bet. There's no way we're going to compromise like good little boys. I wonder
if we'll ever know if he killed Dad or not. Not that I need to know.” He picked
up his beer, drank, set the bottle back down. “To deal with him, I mean.”

His smile chilled my blood. I looked down at the rest of the email.

“I have not told Mama all of this,” Liv went on to say. “She is upset enough by what she
does know. If she writes you, please guard what you say. She has been having
her spells again.”

“Spells?” I said. “Is your mother ill?”

“That's not the kind of spells Liv means.”

“Sorry. What does she do, what kind of magic, I mean?”

Tor hesitated, considered, finally gave one his shrugs. “She sees visions. When
she's on a roll, she can summon a few of the creatures out of them. Just the
smaller ones, like the nisse. Or foxes. I don't know why, but she has an
affinity with foxes.”

“Wait a minute! The nisse here—”

“Was her housewarming present to me, yeah. Right before they left for Iceland.”

I sighed and gave him back the letter. What do you say to a revelation like that? I
could think of nothing. Tor sailed the paper back onto the coffee table and sat
back on the couch with his bottle of beer in hand.

“What was the runecast like?” I said.

“Interesting. Your theory about Nils wanting the gold is dead-on. Or not the gold itself, but
the artifact.”

“You think the writing's some kind of spell, right?”

“Practically every example of the elder runes that survives is a spell. They weren't used
like the Latin alphabet, y'know, for everyday things.”

“So it's the spell he wants? Not just the gold?”

“That's what I'm thinking, yeah. Too bad the runes aren't an illusion. You could
probably read them if they were.”

I heard a challenge in his voice. I ignored it.

“I need to call Cynthia and Brittany,” I said, “to tell them you're back.”

Tor froze with the beer bottle half-way to his mouth. “They know?” he said.

“Yeah, and Brittany even believes it. I bet Cyn doesn't, and I bet she hasn't told Jim.”

“I hope not.” Tor paused for a long swallow of beer. “And I hope no one's told your
brother, either. He's got enough shit to deal with as it is.”

That night I dreamed about the shutters again. This time I walked through my parents'
apartment, the nice one in San Francisco's Richmond district that we had before
they divorced. I went into my bedroom to look outside, but the shutters covered
the window. I woke up fast and lay shivering next to Tor while sunlight
brightened on the drapes.

I got up and started the coffee in the kitchen. I'd just poured myself a cup when Roman
called me. Even though he stumbled politely around, asking me how I was and how
Tor was doing, the shake in his voice told me that he was in trouble. I figured
he'd relapsed and gotten himself drugged out. The truth was worse.

“It's my old dealer,” he told me. “I owe him a lot of money. He's gonna get violent if I
don't pay up.”

I made a sound half-way between a sigh and a grunt of disgust. “How much do you owe him?”

“Way too much for me to cover. Look, Sis, I'm sorry. I didn't want to hit you up. I know
Thorlaksson's got money, but shit, that should be off the table. Begging my
sister's boyfriend for money—I mean, sometimes I see just how fucking low I've
sunk.”

“Yeah? Then maybe the money's worth it. How much, Ro?”

“He's threatened Brit. I told him I'd kill him if he touched her. He just laughed.”

My stomach knotted around a lump of ice. “Ro, please, how much do you need?”

A long silence, followed by a little boy's voice, “Three hundred bucks.”

“I can cover that. You don't need to ask Tor.”

It took me a minute to identify the peculiar sound I heard over the phone. Tears. My
brother had started to cry, then choked it back. He sniffled. I waited.

“Thanks.” He cleared his throat. “Jesus fucking god, thanks! How soon can you give it to
me?”

“Today. But look, I've got to tell Tor if I'm going to meet you in the city. I don't want
to go in alone. It's because of his crazy uncle. And I want to meet you while
it's still light out. Like, right away.”

“Okay, sure. Tell Tor whatever you want. Least I can do is face up to it, huh? The
fuck ugly mess I got myself into, I mean.” He took a deep rasping breath. “I'll
call The Man and tell him I'll have it for him tonight.”

“You do that.”

It was some while after we clicked off that I realized how much things had changed. Two
months previously I never could have scraped together three hundred dollars to
give him. Thirty would have been a big stretch. The amount Ro needed would put
a huge dent in my checking account, but I could give it to him and still eat.

Since I refused to let Roman know where Tor's expensive antiques lived, having him come
to the house was out of the question. I also didn't want him carrying three
hundred dollars in cash back to San Francisco on public transportation. So I
arranged to meet him at a place we remembered from our childhood, a dim sum
place way out on Geary Street, a long drive in from Oakland. I chose this
respectable neighborhood because low buildings lined the wide streets. In
daylight we could see any threats coming from a decent distance away. What with
the Russian Orthodox cathedral nearby, and lots of little shops and delis to
attract customers, we'd have plenty of people around us at all times. I figured
we'd be safe there from Nils or from anyone who saw me hand Roman a wad of
cash. I didn't worry about Roman's dealer. He'd get his money, and that was all
his kind ever wanted.

Before we left, though, Tor cast the rune staves. He disliked what he saw.

“We're not staying long,” he told me. “Roman damn well better be on time. I want to meet
him, give him the money, and get the hell out of there again.”

“Okay.” I took a deep breath. “You should take a jacket.”

“This time of year?”

“It'll be cold out there. The fog.”

“I'll put on a flannel shirt.”

I drove Gretel in so Tor could “keep watch” as he called it while we travelled. He sat
straight, unmoving, a grim presence in the passenger seat. I concentrated on
driving. Travel moved fast on the bridge in the middle of the day, but San Francisco traffic was its usual snarled self. By the time I finally reached Geary and
started driving west on the boulevard, Tor had relaxed enough to talk to me.

“I'm not seeing Nils anywhere near the place,” he said. “Good. But stay alert, anyway.”

I did, for all the good it did us. We drove under a chilly gray canopy of fog before we
reached the meeting place. Despite the slow-moving snarls of traffic on Geary,
Tor's parking luck held. We found a spot right around the corner from the
restaurant. We got out, and he put wards on the car before we walked back. As
we turned the corner onto Geary, I saw Roman, standing in front of the
restaurant's pink stucco front. He waved and hurried over to meet us half-way.
He and Tor shook hands.

“I can't thank you enough,” he said to me.

“It's okay.” I reached into my bra and took out the fold of hundred-dollar bills. “Just
don't get into this mess again, will you?”

“You bet.” Roman took the money and shoved it into his jeans pocket without looking at it.
“I may be stupid as a fucking mule, but I learn eventually. I—”

Tor yelled and spun toward the street. “Down!” He flung up his hands with a flash of
silver light.

Roman grabbed me and followed orders just as I heard the gunshots. We fell together
onto the sidewalk with his body covering mine. A nearby woman screamed. Men
cursed. Roman jerked and twisted, then swore in agony. I heard more screaming
and the sound of shattering glass. Tor knelt down beside me. I could just see
him over Roman's shoulder. I could not understand why Tor would be pulling off his
flannel shirt and wadding it up. A trickle of blood ran down Roman's arm and
dripped onto mine. I understood.

“Get free, Maya,” Tor hissed. “Call 911.”

I squirmed out from under my brother's limp body. Tor was pressing his shirt hard onto the
wound on Roman's back to try to stop the bleeding. Ro had turned a ghastly sort
of pale under his olive complexion. He lay so still that I thought him dead. I
grabbed my phone from my pocket.

“I've already called.” A gray-haired man with tattoos up both arms stepped into my
field of vision. “Take off your jacket and put it under his head. He's in
shock. Hypothermia's next.”

I slipped out of my denim jacket and folded it into a pillow. When I slid it between
Roman's head and the concrete, I could see that he while he'd passed out, he
was still breathing. I laid my hand on his cheek. His skin felt cold and
clammy. I pushed his sweaty hair away from his eyes. When I looked up, the
gray-haired man had stepped back into the crowd of onlookers.

“Good,” Tor said to me. “Now get out of the way. Here comes help.”

 I stood up and walked a few steps away from the street. Sirens came screaming toward us
from a great distance away, or so it seemed. I heard people talking, but I
couldn't understand a word of it, because they were speaking Chinese. Men came
running, swearing, calling out words that I did understand, “What happened?
That's blood! Is he all right?”

I wanted to scream at them and say,
no, you stupid bastards! He's been shot!
Instead
I leaned up against the wall of a shop and trembled. Out on Geary a man in a
long black cassock and an odd cubical hat darted through the six lanes of
traffic and fetched up near us. I thought I was imagining him or seeing a
figure from the spirit world, until he knelt down next to Tor and began praying
in Russian. He was a priest from the nearby cathedral.

With a skid of tires and a blast on an airhorn a fire truck pulled up out in the street.
One of the men in the front seat jumped down and ran over to Tor and Roman. “Good
job,” he said to Tor, “I'll take over. The ambulance is on its way.”

The priest continuing praying. Shivering in his T-shirt, Tor got up and joined me at the
shop's wall.

“Okay,” he said. “I should have worn a jacket.”

I slipped my arm around his waist and leaned against him. He put his arm around my
shoulders and squeezed.

“Are you okay?” I said.

“Oh yeah. I deflected his second shot, the one at me. The fucker!”

I watched the firemen hovering over Roman. One kept up the pressure on the wound. A
second man was giving Ro oxygen.
That means he's still alive
. My heart
began to ease off its pounding.

Around Tor and me the onlookers were talking in a murmur of quiet outrage. “Couldn't be a
drive-by, traffic's too slow, but he had to come from somewhere, I saw
something, a guy, an older guy, but it was so fast, where did he go, I didn't
see that, jeez we should get inside somewhere, doesn't matter now, here are the
cops.”

“Nils?” I said to Tor.

“Has to be. I didn't realize he could leap. Y'know, travel like I can. Bam. Gone. The times
he attacked us before, he was in a car. That's what I was watching for.”

More sirens, more flashing lights and vehicles screeching to a stop—paramedics came
rushing over with a stretcher. Tor released me with a gentle pat on the back.

“Go with the ambulance,” he said. “I'll stay here and deal with the police.”

The paramedics, a tall blond woman and an Asian man, had taken over from the
fireman. I knelt down beside them. “I'm his sister,” I said.

The woman looked at my face. “You sure are,” she said. “We're taking him to the closest
ER. We've got to get him there fast. You can ride along.”

They got Ro onto the stretcher, face down, and loaded him into the ambulance. The Asian guy
hurried around and got into the driver's seat. As I climbed into the back, I
looked over to the sidewalk and saw Tor talking with a uniformed police
officer. The crowd around them began to break up. The blonde paramedic shut the
doors. The siren started up, the ambulance jerked forward, picked up speed,
went tearing through the traffic with blasts of the horn.

“He have any allergies?” the blonde said.

“No.”

She snapped a paper bracelet around his left wrist, then brought out a cuff and dial and
took Roman's blood pressure. I noticed that the blood from his wound had
stopped running, though a red stain still spread through the cloth of his heavy
khaki shirt. Capillary action, I thought. My mind had become a jumble of
disconnected words. I took Ro's right hand in both of mine. His eyelids moved
but didn't open.

“Your brother a vet?” the paramedic said.

“Yeah. Marines.”

“They're tough. He'll pull through. The guy with you, your boyfriend. Must be another
vet.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Um.” She nodded and kept her eyes on the dial of the blood pressure unit. “Pretty low.”

I felt no élan misting from my brother. What little he had left must have pulled back inside
him, wrapped around his vital organs in a desperate measure to keep him alive.
I could take élan, but I had no idea of how to give it. I could only keep
rubbing his hand and silently begging him not to die.

 “Here we are,” the paramedic said.

The ambulance jerked into a turn and shrieked to a stop. The jumble in my mind grew
worse. The blonde flung open the doors and hopped down. We'd stopped under a
carport next to a tall gray concrete building. Glass double doors slid open. Two
men came running and unloaded Roman on the stretcher. When I clambered down,
the blonde followed. She handed me a clipboard and a pen.

“You need to fill this out,” she said. “About payment.”

I did, as fast as I could. By the time I got into the ER, Roman had disappeared. I saw a
warren of hallways, all painted dull yellow, and a sign saying to follow the
green line on the floor. I did and reached an open space labeled Admissions. At
the front desk a middle-aged white woman with a mouthful of chewing gum looked
me over. I realized that dirt smudged my clothes from my fall onto the
sidewalk. She moved her gum to the other side of her mouth with her tongue,
then handed me another clipboard, festooned with more forms.

“We need payment information,” she said and returned to chewing her cud.

I handed over Tor's credit card, which improved her mood. After I signed a final form
that promised them I'd pick up the bill, she pointed me in the direction I
needed to go. I wandered down a brightly-lit hall, found a pale-haired nurse in
green scrubs, and told her that I was the shooting victim's sister.

“He's being prepped for surgery,” she said and pointed. “Wait here.”

“Here” was a bleak little room with a TV blaring in one corner. On uncomfortable plastic
chairs a dark-haired man sat slumped over with his head in his hands. An
African-American woman sat a few chairs away and tried to keep a crying toddler
quiet. I took a chair and watched the TV because I didn't know what else to do.
Later I had no memory of the show at all. The nurse returned with another
clipboard. I filled out more forms, and in return she gave me the credit card
back.

“The VA will pick up the bill,” she told me, “if you're lucky.”

She stomped out as if I'd insulted her. The man raised his head.

“She's a bitch,” he said. “The others are better.”

“Thanks,” I said.

He slumped back in his chair and studied the ceiling.

Tor arrived in the doorway to the waiting area about fifteen minutes later. I got up and ran
to his open arms. When I told him what had happened so far, his jaw tightened,
and his eyes narrowed.

“Come on,” he said. “Let's go straighten things out.”

Tor raised hell at the admission desk. I don't know what else to call it. He snarled,
barked, threatened legal action for the way I'd been treated, and bullied the
woman behind the desk until she handed him all the forms I'd signed. He tore
those up, tossed them into a nearby trash can, and told her he'd fill out a new
set. She handed him a clipboard by shrinking back in her chair and stretching
her arm out as far as it would go, as if she were offering meat to a tiger. Tor
signed the forms and handed it back.

“Get that nurse out here,” he said. “The one with the pale hair.”

“I can't do that,” she snapped. “She's with a patient.”

Their eyes met. She snorted and turned away to her computer terminal. In a few minutes
another nurse appeared, a woman of Indian descent, I figured from her
reddish-brown skin and straight black hair. She told us immediately that her
name was Devi.

“I'm so sorry you had to wait,” she said to me. “Caroline worked a double shift today.
Stress, you know. She's off duty now.”

“Not with a patient?” Tor snapped. “Whatever.”

“It's okay,” I said. “My brother—”

“In surgery now. They'll retrieve the bullet and assess the damage. Here, come with me, and
you can wait near the recovery room.”

Tor turned to the admissions clerk, who was cowering behind her computer terminal. “If the
police arrive, tell them where I am. My name is Tor Thorlaksson. Can you
remember that?”

“Of course I can.” She cracked her gum in his direction. “No need to be so nasty!”

“Yeah?” Tor considered her for a long moment. “I'd say there was plenty of need. It's funny
how things turned around when a white guy walked in here.”

The woman winced and pretended to ignore him. Devi arranged a poker face and beckoned us
to follow her. As we did, I realized that I'd never called Brittany. With Tor
beside me I could calm down enough to think. We had the next waiting room, a
quiet pale green space with comfortable brown padded chairs, to ourselves. A TV
murmured in the corner, but Tor was tall enough to reach the thing and shut it
off. I took out my phone, which I'd turned off. I turned it back on and tapped Brittany's
number on speed dial. When she answered, she sounded frantic.

“Maya, I've been trying to reach you! Is something wrong with Roman?”

“Yeah, he's been shot, he's still alive, and he's in surgery. Are you home? We're not far
from you if you are.”

“Yeah, I am. Oh god, I knew it was something awful.” She took a deep breath. “I know
what now. So okay. Give me directions, and I'll be right there.”