Undead Chaos (16 page)

“She operates a small kiosk off of Cameron Alley. Sells cheap trinkets to gullible tourists.”

“You just described every vendor there.”

He smiled. “Trust me, you’ll know which one is her. Normally you’d have to buy something to get her to talk, but just tell her I sent you and that I said to be patient. The seller will eventually take twenty percent less for the Picasso if she can hold out.”

“Secret passcode, eh?” I asked.

“Kinda’.”

“She owe you one?”

“She owes me about twenty,” he said. “My ability sometimes has its advantages.”

“Speaking of which, I don’t suppose anything new has developed regarding my friends?”

Jones took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and muttered for a few moments.

“I see the color red. Lots of it too. I also see flames and death.” He winced. “Nothing about Simeon, though. His path is still shrouded. It could be that his future is still unwritten or simply that there are too many factors blocking the way for me to see the likely outcome.”

He opened his eyes. “Visiting with Agatha feels like the right path for you, however. I can’t see any additional details just yet. Sorry.”

The Oracle seemed genuinely dejected.

“It’s okay,” I said. “You’re still sobering up, and I’m sure once your head clears, it’ll be easier to decipher the future.”

“Hopefully.” Jones fell into silence and his gaze drifted to the book in my lap. He made a face and blanched. “That’s an uninviting cover.”

“The rest of it is no different.” I showed him the image Pip had noted, and he turned a little green.

“Gross.”

“Any idea what this is?” I asked.

“No, but talk to Agatha about it as well.”

“Good idea.”

I set the books aside, stood, and stretched. My muscles ached from slouching in the chair and my shoulder was still sore, but everything hurt less than earlier.

“What happened?” Jones asked, looking at the bandage on my wrist.

“Got into a scrape. Thankfully Millie fixed me up and the pain meds are working wonders.” I rotated my wrist several times and felt only a hint of tenderness. I threw my sword on my back and clipped the pistol to my thigh.

“Thanks for Agatha’s name,” I said. “All this reading was getting boring. Now I have an excuse to get some fresh air. Are you going to be okay by yourself?”

Jones nodded. “I think I’ll be fine.”

I opened the door to leave and found the same waitress from before with a plate of warm muffins. I took one, thanked her, then added, “Can you make sure he doesn’t touch any booze?” She nodded and I left her to be ogled by Jones.

Chapter Thirteen

Don’t Care Much about History

The afternoon sun was a dark orange as I wandered through the Underground, and it stretched my shadow far ahead of me. I stared at it, wondering how in the world a person could manipulate it enough to hide in plain sight. Then again, Peter Pan’s shadow had been alive, so perhaps Shadow Dancing wasn’t such a farfetched concept.

Granted Peter was fictional, but a lot of stories were based on real events. Maybe J. M. Barrie knew more than just how to tell a children’s fable.

Much to my surprise, I arrived at my destination without incident. The wide boulevard was completely dedicated to being part bazaar, part farmer’s market. The few beings stupid or brave enough to visit the DC Underground often found their way to Cameron Alley in the hopes of buying unique souvenirs or bobbles.

More often than not, a pickpocket removed their purse long before they found their treasure.

Despite the threat of sticky fingers, the level of trade seemed unaffected. As I entered the throng, I was blown away by the hustle and bustle. Unlike the desolation of Deek Street the night prior, Cameron Alley was a happening place. Merchants shouted over the din of the crowd while customers squeezed past one another. Smoke rose from various food carts, filling the afternoon breeze with the scent of roasting mutton and warm bread.

I gritted my teeth as I squeezed through the crowd, keeping my eyes open for thieves. Merchants shoved their wares in my face and screamed about the great deals they were offering. I politely refused the first dozen, then simply ignored the rest.

Three quarters of the way down Cameron Alley I found Agatha’s kiosk. A pull cart with huge bicycle wheels and a pair of handles on one end, the thing was painted bright neon pink and covered with multicolored ribbons. There were thousands of trinkets packed onto the shelves—all of which had a combined worth of two dollars.

But the kiosk was beige when compared to Agatha herself. She was large in every direction and dressed in a bright, tie-dye muumuu. Her long white hair was braided with colorful beads and her wrists were covered with sparkling bracelets. She wore several rings on her fingers that stood out against her ebony skin.

“Now here be a new customer!” she said loudly as I approached. “You needin’ to check out Agatha’s treasures.”

“Hello,” I replied, “and thank you, but I’m not interested in anything at the moment.”

“People always interested in sometin’,” she responded jovially. “It may not be tangible, but ‘dey always have de want. What you wantin’?”

“Information.”

Agatha let out a booming laugh that startled several passersby. “Agatha no library. Go see that ‘dere old book-keep named Strange. He a wealth o’ crusty knowledge.”

“I have,” I said evenly, “but I need more. I need information about something from long ago.”

The large woman raised an eyebrow. “Ah. You needin’ Agatha to look back.”

“If necessary.”

“Too bad you don’t want to buy nothin’. It makes it
much
easier for Agatha to see da past.”

“Normally I would,” I said, “however Forlorn Jones said to tell you that the Picasso will eventually sell for twenty percent less, but you have to be patient.”

Agatha’s smile vanished. She leaned forward and peered at me.

“What did you say?” she asked in a surprisingly quiet voice. Her accent disappeared along with her toothy grin.

“Jones said—”

The woman raised her hand to cut me off.

“Listen,” she hissed, glancing to the left and right, “don’t use that name around here, okay?”

“Oookaay. Our ‘friend’ said you owed him. I’m here to collect.” I actually made the quotation marks with my hands because, honestly, doesn’t everyone?

Agatha humphed. “Guess I’m done for the day.” She stood and pulled a canvas cover over her kiosk. “If
he
sent you, then we’ll need to talk somewhere private.”

She finished closing up her cart and sealed it with an impressive defensive spell. Then she moved to the front to heft the handles.

I stepped between the handles. “Let me get that.”

She paused, then beamed. “Chivalry. Now there’s an outdated concept that I like. This way.”

We pushed our way through Cameron Alley to a small, dingy building at the far end. There were several large windows, but otherwise it was wholly unremarkable. Agatha unlocked the wide wooden door and I followed her inside with the cart.

I stopped and stared in awe.

White marble floor were polished to a shine, and a huge chandelier doused the entryway with soft white light. Impressive works of art hung on the walls while golden sconces filled with candles flickered warmly. Several vases of ancient descent were scattered around on pedestals, which complimented the Grecian statues on display.

“Just leave that there,” Agatha said, nodding to the cart.

I set the cart down in the entrance and gazed at the interior. “Wow,”

Agatha chuckled. “I only sell junk to tourists. The real money is in fine art. Sherry?”

“Sure.”

She poured two snifters of dark liquid, handed me one, then waved me into a small side room by the foyer. It was packed with quality art and had a small wood-burning fireplace. The couch we sat upon was plush and comfortable.

“So the street vendor thing is just a sham?” I asked, sweeping my gaze over the room.

“Not really. It’s how I got into the business.”

“Selling art?”

“Brokering. I spend my weekdays peddling trinkets and my weekends as a bidding agent for wealthy clients.”

“Have you ever been to Sotheby’s or Christie’s?”

Agatha nodded. “More times than I can count. I also hit the RM auto auctions from time to time. Whatever my clients want, I help them find. For a fee, of course.”

“None of your customers care that you spend your days in Cameron Alley ripping off tourists?”

She laughed. “The people I represent are so obsessive about their anonymity that they respect my privacy. Considering how much they are willing to spend, they’d be foolish to screw with me. And vice versa.”

“What about the Underground locals? Surely they’ve figured you out.”

“Some may have,” she said, “but the Underground shares a lot of qualities with the elite rich. Pretending you don’t know information increases your life expectancy.”

“So is the money really that good in art sales?”

She waved her hand around the small room. “Yup.”

“Then why bother with Cameron Alley?”

She sipped her sherry. “I like it. Plus, I’ve become somewhat of a fixture in the marketplace.”

“Trinket lady by day, art broker by night.”

“That about sums it up, although things have slowed down a lot in Cameron Alley recently.”

“So I noticed,” I said sarcastically, thinking of the thick afternoon crowd.

“Believe me, today is nothing compared to what the Alley was like a few months ago.”

“Yeah, rumor has it that vagrants are disappearing at night and showing up dead days later, if at all.”

Agatha leaned forward, a grim expression on her face. “I’ve heard it’s not just vagrants, and it’s not always at night.”

I tried not to shudder. “What the hell is doing this?” I asked.

She leaned back “No one seems to know, but more and more people are staying indoors. Good thing I have a second job,” she added. She finished her sherry and set the glass down on an elegant coffee table. “Anyway, Jones sent you, huh?”

“Yes.”

“He’s a good man. A complete drunk and almost always half-mad, but his insides are decent. If he sent you, then you’re safe in my book.”

“You two have a history, I take it.”

She grinned. “You could say that. He’s given me advice in the past that has benefited my clients. Speaking of which,” she said, pulling a small notepad and pen from the folds of her muumuu. “Twenty percent less, you say?”

I blinked in confusion at her. “What?”

“The Picasso.”

“Oh yeah. Jones said the seller will eventually take twenty percent less, but that you have to be patient.”

Agatha scribbled furiously, then snapped the book closed. “Wonderful.” She beamed.

No wonder she didn’t want people to overhear that she knew Jones. If the Oracle was providing her tips for the selling price of items at auctions, it would ruffle the feathers of a lot of competitors.

“So, what else can I help you with?” she asked.

“Ever heard of a practice called Shadow Dancing?”

Agatha frowned slightly. “There’s not much I can tell you. It’s barely more than an urban legend.”

“Jones said you would know better than anyone.”

“I’m not saying I don’t. The problem is very little detail survived through the years. What I do know is from secondhand stories that have filtered through the generations. How familiar are you with Skilled history?”

“Just the legends that were passed down from the family as well as the basics that I slept through in school.”

“Well, to fully understand the implications of Shadow Dancing you have to understand the environment within which it was developed. Back before the creation of the Delwinn Council, the Skilled were separated into families and ruled by a royal caste. Although the latter was a minority, they were brutal and selfish, following a set of laws that changed based on whatever benefited them the most.”

“How is that different than today?” I asked.

“Cute,” she said, her eyes sparkling with humor. “Anyway, for generations the royal caste ruled without question, but eventually the Skilled community began to fracture. Many families wanted to continue teaching the science of magic, but an increasing number of the royals were turning toward fanatical, cultish tendencies. We’re talking things like believing they were gods and demanding the peasantry worship them.”

“Holy cow.”

“Yeah, crazy stuff. The friction between the royals was palpable, and the leadership feared their subjects would use the weakened state to revolt. In an effort to maintain their control, they began outlawing practices they felt threatened the sanctity of the caste. Shadow Dancing was one of those.

“Before you ask,” she said, “I don’t know the details on how the spell was performed. What little I’ve heard mentions practitioners manipulating actual shadows to form a layer between them and the outside world. It didn’t so much hide the person as it muddled the senses of people around them. Some say it was specifically designed to defeat Hunters who, at the time, were little more than the personal hit men of the royal caste. Since the Skilled leaders were paranoid enough as it was, anything that made it harder for Hunters to track down their enemies was deemed dark. There were a few decades of purging before the peasantry realized just how twisted the leadership had become. The Great War that ensued was bloody for both sides.”

Of all the dark points in the history of the Skilled, the war between our ranks was the most ghastly. The battles were horrific and thinned our community to a fraction of its former glory. The death toll was so devastating that hundreds of years later our population still hadn’t recovered.

“I remember reading that even though the Skilled tried to wage the war away from Normals, the destruction and collateral damage was so great, it spilled over into their world.”

“Exactly,” Agatha said. “One of the worst bleed-overs from the Great War was the Black Plague of the mid-1300s.”

“I thought the disease existed long before that.”

Agatha nodded. “Forms of it had, but the truly nasty stuff emerged from the aftershocks of the magic used during the War. Maybe the Plague mutated or maybe it learned to resist Normal immune systems because of exposure to our violent spells. Whatever the reason, the virulence rocketed to epic proportions. It wiped out so much of the known world at the time that Normals declared all Skilled persons as outlaws.

“Granted, the purging that came afterward lasted for hundreds of years under the banner of the Inquisition and witch hunts, but the motives were the same—destroy those responsible for the Black Death. What’s sad is that for every Skilled person that was executed, a thousand innocent Normals were put to the sword as well. It was as if the planet was consumed by paranoia and fear.”

“So Shadow Dancing was determined to be dark magic because it started the Great War?” I asked.

“Not exactly,” Agatha replied, “but it was one of the many elements that led to it. Each time the leadership brought the hammer down, it nudged us closer and closer to civil war. Everyone has their breaking point, and eventually the royal caste pushed the families to theirs. The irony is that in their effort to quell unrest, the royal caste created the revolt they so greatly feared.”

“Sounds like a story I read once,” I muttered.

“It’s a process that tends to repeat itself time and again. The good news is that, in the aftermath of the war, the caste system was replaced by the Delwinn Council, which, in theory, has checks and balances with power. Anyway,” she said, leaning back, “Shadow Dancing was one of the many practices that simply vanished in the wake of the war.”

“I still don’t understand why it was deemed dark magic.”

Agatha shrugged. “My guess is power and paranoia. Maybe the royal caste used it as an excuse to take out their rivals since only the powerful Skilled could perform it. Or maybe they were terrified that someone capable enough to use the spell could use it to challenge their authority. Whatever the reason, something about Shadow Dancing drove the royals nuts because they went after it with a vengeance.”

I shook my head. Humans—and especially the Skilled—had a weakness for power and greed, but there were periods in history where we really excelled.

“Is there any possibility that someone could practice it today?”

“I suppose,” Agatha replied, “but only if the knowledge was passed down from one generation to the next without tipping off the authorities. Not an easy task.”

“No kidding,” I said, thinking about how quickly the Council had punished Simeon twenty years ago. Then again, he’d kept his practices secret for a long time before anyone caught wind of them. If Fawkes was any example, his family line conceivably could have passed along a lot of banned practices without anyone’s knowledge.