Tomorrow Wendell (White Dragon Black) (19 page)

Finally, Jonathan took up the last item, a brown egg from a farmer outside town who only raised black chickens in his small flock.

Jonathan brought the egg to Wendell who, for the first time during the process, looked confused.

“Just stay still a moment,” Jonathan told him, and looking at the blood stained cloth, he said, “And get ready to pass that back to me.”

Jonathan then took the egg and rolled it gently down Wendell’s chest, speaking one of the last parts of the ritual.

He set the egg carefully in the chalice and when he reached out behind his back, Wendell placed the cloth in his hands.

Jonathan draped the cloth over the vessel with the bloodiest part centered over the egg.

With a deep breath, he shouted a single word as he brought his hand down on the cloth. His voice rang through the room as though projected from the walls themselves. The egg broke just as the sound of his voice died.

Jonathan nodded to himself and, pressing his hand down into the wet contents of the chalice, waited for it to thoroughly soak into the cloth. Closing his hand around the mixture, he grabbed a small amount within the cloth.

“Take off your shirt,” Jonathan ordered.

Wendell looked at the long white cloth and, heaving a resigned sigh, stripped to his waist.

Jonathan couldn’t help but notice how pale the exposed flesh was. How tight the skin rode over Wendell’s ribs. Yet, he saw muscle there as well, ropey lines that spoke of hidden strength.

“Okay, stand up.”

Wendell did as instructed. Jonathan reached around the man and tied the cloth firmly at his back, plastering the egg mixture to his corrugated chest.

Walking behind Wendell, he made sure the cloth was tightly tied, told him to remain standing.

A search of his desk drawers finally revealed the little package made for quick sewing emergencies. Using the needle and thread, he did a quick but sturdy whipstitch on the cloth, making sure it would not come off for at least a day.

“Wear a shirt to bed that’s tight enough to help keep that in place. Now, go home. Rest. But be back here by ten tomorrow.”

“Ten,” Wendell nodded.

He looked like he wanted to say something more, perhaps ask Jonathan a question. If Wendell did, he decided not to at the last second. Instead, he said goodbye and left.

Jonathan sunk into his chair and shook there in solitude for several minutes as he wrangled the White Dragon back into submission. He wrestled with angels and demons until, once more, the well source of his being was capped.

No sooner had he done so, then he faced devils and gods, as the DT’s started even as he rode a tremendous high. The Dragon Black circled.

His mind floated in pleasure, awash with the chemicals he had created by using, and yet drowning in acid as those very same ebbed away.

He gulped back what remained in his glass and filled it with trembling hands. It took until the third try before he steadied enough to manage to light a cigarette. When he did, he sucked on it like an oxygen mask on a crashing plane.

Jonathan closed his eyes. He had no fear of falling asleep. He would not be able to rest now for hours, despite his exhaustion.

The phone woke him and a blurry look at the clock over his office door told him he hadn’t been asleep for more than an hour.

He tried to figure who could be calling him at that hour of the morning and belatedly realized the best way to find out.

He grabbed up the receiver and, sticking it between his chin and shoulder, coughed out, “What?” as he flipped open his cigarette case.

“You bastard, don’t tell me you were sleeping? I can’t get a moment’s peace after that reading and you’re napping in your damn office!”

“Isn’t yoga supposed to be all about peace and enlightenment?” Jonathan said, hoping to disarm Mary.

“I’m quite certain the Brahmins never had to deal with you, Alvey.”

“Yeah, I’m one of a kind,” he grumbled and lit the smoke.

“Don’t give me attitude, mister, not after you made me do such a horrid reading.”

“I’m sorry, Mary, but I had to know,” Jonathan sighed.

“Fine. You had to know, and now what?”

“Now? Now, I do whatever it takes to protect him.”

“You’re a P.I., not a bodyguard.”

“Fine line. The only difference is I get paid less and don’t wear dorky shades.”

“And I suppose you’re going to use magic to protect him?”

Jonathan sighed. He would have known it would turn into this fight if he’d been more awake. He dug out the bourbon and sloshed his glass full. “Yeah, that was the plan. Sometimes you have to fight fire with fire.”

He didn’t bother mentioning he’d only managed to fall asleep because he’d already been hard at it to protect his client.

“Sometimes? So, why does it seem that’s the only way you fight, Jonathan?”

“Why didn’t you lie on the reading?” he countered, and took a gulp of the amber liquid.

He heard her sniff and felt like a shit, but though an addict he may be, he was not a liar.

“It’s not the same using the cards and you know it,” she hissed through the line—Medusa with a cold. “It doesn’t eat me up, Jonathan. It doesn’t empty me out and kill me. I can’t watch that happen to you, too.”

“I’m not your aunt, but I am what I am. I can’t leave it, Mary. You know I can’t.”

“Why? Because you think he still holds it against you? ’Cause this will set it right somehow? Would your father be proud of you now, Jonathan? Would he?”

Jonathan was silent.

He didn’t have an answer for her and she knew it. Of course she knew it, that’s why she’d mentioned him. Raised his spirit from the dead, as it were.

Finally, he said, “I can’t let that happen to anyone else—not when I have the power to stop it.”

“At what cost, Jonathan? For the love of the gods, I’m sitting here with the deck in front of me and all I can see is that damn spread—and I want to hate you for bringing that to me, through me.”

“I know, and if there had been any other way . . .”

“Please stop using, Jonathan. Please. Walk away from it. You know how to do so much that doesn’t need you to actually use. I can help you through it.”

“And what about Wendell, Mary? What do I say to him? ‘Sorry, but this isn’t good for my health, but I hope it all works out for you.’”

“I—you could . . .”

“Stop after this one? And what about the next client? What do I say to them, ‘Sorry about the nightmares hiding behind your mind that have started eating at your soul?’ Do I ignore their needs, their missing children, their possessed spouse, or cursed parent?”

“You can’t save them all,” Mary said sorrowfully into his ear.

Jonathan took a long drag and with smoke rolling from between his lips answered, “But I can try.”

J
onathan managed to get two hours of sleep. After Mary had disturbed his first bout, his mind had been too full of ghosts to grip hold of sleep’s slippery cloak, so he worked some more.

He reread the list of possible reasons and suspects behind the threat to Wendell’s life and organized them into three separate columns: possible, plausible, and probably not.

In his gut, he thought, really, all of them belonged in another column completely. A column labeled ‘not bloody likely.’

As he had nothing else to go on, he couldn’t do what he really wanted, to crumble the yellow paper into a ball and throw it violently across the room.

The sky had still been dark when he’d finally put his feet up on his desk, his hands behind his head, and leaned back in the chair with hopes that Morpheus would swing by once more to steal his consciousness.

The sky remained just as dark when he awoke seventy minutes later.

Jonathan grumbled and bitched to himself about the vulgarities of the season.

He didn’t like the cold and he hated the extended night hours. It wasn’t that he had anything against night, but when it got so the number of daylight hours could be counted on two hands, without the use of thumbs, it was disorientating and depressing.

Worst of all, it meant the things that feared the light—the ones who shunned the sun and the shadow dwellers both—had more time to run rampant, wreak havoc, and became cocky, brazen bastards.

Jonathan had thought, on more than one occasion, of moving to a more southern climate, but he never seemed able to act on the notion.

The closest he’d come had been a weekend trip to the mountains of Kentucky to help a fellow practitioner exterminate a nest of creatures called Tatzelwurms. Nasty fucks with the head and forepaws of a lynx and the hind-end of a serpent.

The problem with moving south was that the further you went, the weirder the things you had to deal with.

In New Mexico, they actually had Chupacabra to contend with, and those things weren’t called goat suckers because they drank from goats.

The Rougarou, looking like the demented breeding experiment of a rabid dog with a dwarf, had become so out of control in the Southeast that packs of the things could be found throughout the alleys of Miami.

Jonathan grabbed the container of half-eaten Singapore noodles and began to finish it off as he perused the wrinkled legal pad.

The only thing on the list Jonathan really thought might be worth checking out was a co-worker of Wendell’s who had been put on suspension for mismanagement of funds.

Money had been ‘mislaid’ for nearly a week before reappearing in the account. The one suspended, a man named Orville Kingston, had been in charge of the funds. Kingston had also mentioned that he had taken a few vacation days to go to Atlantic City.

The trip coincidently had been right in the middle of the time in which the money had been ‘misplaced.’

Jonathan’s client had been one of only two people who had been in the room when Orville had mentioned the proposed trip to Atlantic City.

Wendell had overheard a conversation between Orville and his friend, another possible suspect, named Gerald Cooper.

If one of them turned out to be a practitioner, and thought Wendell had ratted them out, then Jonathan might be able to negate their spell.

Jonathan thought Orville worth checking out for sure. If he was a practitioner, Orville might have also put his skills to work to make sure he could recoup the money that had ‘disappeared’ from the account.

Casinos, of course, had their own practitioners on staff. Usually top-notch people since they had to make sure the very thing Jonathan was thinking about didn’t happen amid a throng of guests.

Jonathan could probably snag a gig in one of the major casinos, but it just wasn’t his cup of tea at all. Watching cheating husbands was less tedious as far as he was concerned. Plus, he liked to deal out his version of justice, not one dictated by megalomaniac billionaires or mob bosses.

Magic used on the casino floor got dealt with swiftly and brutally.

All the trappings of gambling got subtly marked against magic: the one armed bandits, the roulette wheels, the card decks, even the dice.

To try and cheat the system by use of magic was a fool’s game, like playing poker against a devil with x-ray vision, and wearing a man’s face for a mask.

A practitioner hoping to use magic to sway any of the games their way would have to be subtle, crafty, and not draw any attention to themselves.

Most importantly, if this Orville Kingston hoped to win using magic in an Atlantic City casino, it meant he would be extremely efficient in the arts. And therein lay the one reason Jonathan remained interested, because whoever was coming after Wendell had to be extremely efficient.

Gerald, according to Wendell, continued to go to work every day, as punctual as always, always arriving at work at seven-thirty sharp.

Jonathan glanced at the clock and, even with the Lincoln’s issues with starting, he had an hour to kill. He thought about having a drink but decided coffee would be the better choice at this point.

He got up with a groan and a curse.

Sleeping at his desk had not done wonders for his battered stomach.

Gingerly, he lifted his shirt and looked at the black and purple blotch that covered everything from the bottom of his ribs to the top of his pants. It looked like a storm about to unleash hell and hailstones onto the unrepentant. At the edges, pallid yellow blended with his normal blanched skin.