Uncanny Collateral

Chapter 4

A woman buying a secondhand soul might not sound like much to most people, but Zeke had given me enough information to get a serious start on this thing. First, I knew that she was a businesswoman working out of Cleveland. Second, I knew that she’d sold her soul at some point in the last two decades. If that was the case, I could track her down.

I called the office as I left Akron, waiting patiently until a woman’s voice answered.

“Valkyrie Collections, this is Nadine. How may I help you?”

“Nadine, it’s Alek.”

“Oh, hey, hun! I saw you were here already this morning. I tell you, Alek, you don’t have to make that shitty coffee. I’ll bring you something good when I come in.”

“I needed an early pick-me-up,” I told her. Nadine is the reaper secretary. She’s a heavyset black woman in her early fifties who hasn’t missed a day of work for thirty years – other than the two weeks she takes off every December to go to the Caribbean. She prefers her nails long, her hair dyed, her designer clothes discounted, her shoes expensive, and her men confident. She’s also the only person at Valkyrie who knows my true relationship with Ada, so she goes out of her way to make my life a little less miserable. She is, needless to say, one of my favorite people in the world.

“Well, you’ve got a chai latte sitting in the fridge with your name on it when you get back to the office, and I swear, if Karen tries to drink it, I will cut her.”

“I appreciate it.”

“Not a problem. Now, what can I do for you?”

“Did Ada tell you about the meeting with Ferryman this morning?”

Nadine snorted. “Yes, she did. That greasy old asshole left the whole office reeking of cigarettes. I’ve got a cleaning crew coming tomorrow to get the smell out before Ada gets back from Paris.”

“Thanks for taking care of that. Ada has me working on Ferryman’s job solo until it’s finished, but I could use a little support help.” Ferryman’s request for discretion meant I couldn’t depend on any of our normal skip tracers, but Nadine knew where all the bodies were buried in the company. I could trust her implicitly.

“Say the word.”

“I need you to start calling all the minor soul collecting companies – our clients and anyone else you can think of – and tell them we’re looking for a woman working out of downtown Cleveland who purchased wealth and power. The transaction was probably in the 2000s, but they should widen their search by a decade in each direction just in case.”

“Mmmhmm. You do know the Lords of Hell don’t like being asked questions about their clients, right?”

“Tell them the request comes straight from Ferryman and they can follow up with him if they aren’t happy. We need the name of this woman.”

“I’ll give it a go,” she promised. “This might take a couple of days. Half those pricks don’t answer their phones.”

“Whatever it takes. I’ll start with our big seven right now, so don’t worry about them.”

“Understood. Good luck.”

I stopped at the next Starbucks and charged a cappuccino to the company credit card before claiming a corner table and setting my phone on the table in front of me.

You think they’ll actually answer your questions? Maggie asked. Nadine was right – they hate talking about their clients.

They will if they want to find their missing souls, I told her, and started my first call.

I spent the next several hours talking to what felt like every secretary in Hell. Lucy was in meetings all day. Satan’s people told me they didn’t have any Cleveland execs in their records. Modius claimed they didn’t do business in Midwest, though I knew for a fact that they did. ViaTech, Leviathan Industries, and BeelzMart all came up with nothing. Mammon hadn’t been in the soul business for centuries, so I didn’t bother calling him. And – no surprise – Belphagor wouldn’t answer his goddamn phone.

I finally hung up after trying to get through to somebody at LuciCorp who could give me a straight answer and rubbed the gums below my bottom canines. I had no word from Nadine, which meant she hadn’t gotten any further than I had.

Any idea what you’ll do if this is a dud? Maggie asked. She’d been quiet since I’d started my calls – probably reading a book or something.

I shook my head. It was something I hadn’t had time to consider. I’ll start hitting the rest of my contacts and see what I can drum up. I’d begun with Zeke because he came through the most often with me, and despite his mercenary behavior, he wouldn’t say a word about my investigation to anyone once he’d been paid. I couldn’t say the same thing about most of the other snitches in town. If we can’t come up with a solid lead, I’ll go back to Ferryman and press him for more information. He held back something. If I need to, I’ll make sure he tells me what.

Maggie laughed. You’ve got balls; I’ll give you that. If I ever meet Death, it’s gonna be all, “yes, sir,” and “no, sir,” for me.

You did meet him, I pointed out. He just didn’t know you were there.

I got up and ordered another cappuccino, then returned to my seat and watched as the last of the lunchtime stragglers finished their coffees and headed back to their offices or gyms or homes or wherever people go during the middle of the day. I spun my phone on the table with one finger and tried not to think about how long this week would be if I couldn’t track down Ferryman’s thieves quickly. It wasn’t just that I wanted to finish the job – I wanted to get free of Ada for a few days so that Maggie could enjoy her anniversary. And I damn well needed a break too.

Heads up, came a whisper from Maggie.

Huh?

Something’s not right.

I raised my head and looked around the Starbucks. Other than me and one lady in the opposite corner, the place was empty. Two workers cleaned equipment behind the glass case of snacks.

The black Caddie that just pulled in to the parking lot, Maggie said.

I leaned back to get a good look out the window. A black Cadillac had, indeed, just pulled into the parking lot. Three people got out. One of them did a circuit around my truck, then all three headed toward the front door of the Starbucks.

Two of them looked like identical twins. They were tall – easily six foot six – and gaunt, wearing sunglasses, baseball caps, hoodies, and jeans. The third was maybe five foot eight, wearing a black sports jacket over a black T-shirt with black slacks and slicked-back black hair. He was clean-shaven and baby faced, and he wore a scowl that gave me the impression that he wanted to look tough.

I think that Zeke’s amateur necromancer just found us, I told Maggie. How the hell did he figure out where I was?

Beats me. Keep your guard up. That kid looks like a piece of shit, but he’s got some serious raw power. And I can’t read his two spooks at all.

I pushed my chair back from the table and slid my notes into the bag beneath my seat, adopting a casual pose as I sipped my drink. The trio entered, looked around once, and headed straight for me. The amateur necromancer slid into the chair across the table from me, while his companions took up positions to block my escape route to the door.

I ignored the kid for a moment and gave the big guys a quick up and down. This close, I could see cracked, sallow skin and fingernails blackened with age. They stood unnaturally, stiff and unresponsive like the model of a skeleton in the corner of a doctor’s office. No wonder you can’t get a read on them, I told Maggie. They’re fucking draugr. Undead are always a little tricky to detect with sorcery. They occupy a place between our world and the next in a way that gives them a sort of false sorcerous aura.

What kind of prick brings draugr out in broad daylight? Maggie demanded.

Hold on; I’ll ask.

I turned my attention to kid sitting across from me and fixed him with my best annoyed stare. “What kind of a prick brings two draugr out in broad daylight?” I asked.

The kid opened his mouth, closed it again, and scowled. “Give me the location of your jinn, and this doesn’t have to get unpleasant.”

Give him what? Maggie asked.

“Give you what?” I said aloud at the same time. My mind suddenly kicked into overdrive, and I felt myself tense involuntarily. Not a soul in the world knew that I had a jinn ring on my finger. Maggie might have been trapped in there, but she still had access to no small amount of power, which she used to keep herself hidden. She wanted to keep from falling into the wrong hands almost as much as I wanted to keep people from knowing I had an ace up my sleeve.

“The jinn,” the kid repeated. “Don’t play coy. I know that you have the vessel containing Margarete Abaroa. It is not your property, and I’ve been tasked with returning it to the proper owner.” His scowl disappeared into a businesslike look of disdain.

He certainly knows how to play it cool, I told Maggie.

He’s an asshole, Maggie snarled. My ring is no one’s property but my own.

I was taken aback at the anger in her voice. Maggie was not prone to hysterics, so for her to become genuinely furious about something took some doing. Of course, I don’t like it when people upset my friends.

I gave the two draugr a sidelong glance. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. A jinn? Where would I even keep such a thing?”

The kid seemed to take my question literally. “Traditionally in a lamp, but other vessels have been known. Rings are popular.” His gaze flicked to Maggie’s ring, but nothing about his posture told me he knew that I had her with me right now. “You can hand it over,” he continued, “or tell me where it is. Otherwise, I’ll be forced to kill you and reanimate your corpse so it can tell me where to find the jinn. I would prefer you make your decision quickly. I don’t have all day.”

I opened my mouth to respond, but he cut me off.

“Don’t try to run. You seem to already know what the gentlemen beside you are, so…”

I cut him off in turn. “Yeah, I know what a draugr is, buddy. And look, I’m crazy amounts of impressed that you’ve managed to raise and keep control of them. In broad daylight, no less. But this is a Starbucks in a crowded city. It’s the worst possible place to kill a dude.”

A hint of uncertainty crossed the kid’s face. “If you choose to be difficult, you will forfeit the lives of everyone in this shop. I will not leave witnesses.”

Okay, I told Maggie, he’s getting on my nerves.

I need answers, she responded sharply.

It was the closest to a command that I’d ever gotten from Maggie, and it kind of annoyed me. “We should establish something really quick,” I said, holding up a finger at the kid.

The necromancer licked his lips. He had a nervous glint in his eye, like he’d finally realized that if I knew what a draugr was and wasn’t reacting with fear, he might be in trouble. “What?” he demanded.

“Do you know who I am? Not, like, in a pretentious way. I’m just curious if you know who I am or what I do for a living.”

“I don’t care. All I know is that you carry the jinn. That’s all I need to know.”

Is he powerful enough to be this arrogant? I asked Maggie.

Powerful enough? Sure. But he can’t be more than nineteen, so he probably doesn’t have the chops to use his power.

Him first, then.

“Let’s start with names,” I said. “I’m Alek.” Reaching across the table, I snatched him by the hair and slammed his face into the tabletop.

The draugr moved fast enough that one snatched me by the arm the moment its master’s head hit the table. With a quick motion, it planted its feet, grabbed me by the shoulder, and yanked. Draugr are strong, and if I were fully human, it would have ripped my arm off entirely. As it was, I let out an undignified gasp as I felt my arm get pulled out of its socket.

My bottom canines transformed almost instantly, turning into thumb-sized tusks that ripped painfully through my gums and jutted from my lower jaw. The troll berserker in me took over, and I was out of the chair in the blink of an eye. The tattoo of Mjolnir flared to life on my right fist, glowing like the embers of a fire, and I slammed it into the draugr’s stomach hard enough to rip through the desiccated, sorcery-strengthened skin and out the other side.

I took a punch from the other draugr, which sent me staggering into a chair and going down in a heap with the fellow I was now wearing as a bracelet. Someone in the building screamed. I landed hard, rolled on top of the undead, and pulled out its willowy spine. The creature dissolved into dust beneath me.

The second draugr grabbed me by the shoulders and squeezed. I could feel its powerful fingers begin to push through my skin, and I groaned at the pain. I got to one knee, grappling the creature around the middle and lifting it off the ground. I took us both across the middle of the Starbucks. Draugr first, we went through the glass snack case and tumbled into the prep area.

The draugr’s sunglasses were knocked off, and I stared into empty pits that had once housed eyes. It howled at me angrily, thrashing, and wrapped one bony hand around my left wrist. I punched the creature in the head, my Mjolnir tattoo giving off tiny sparks of sorcery. Its neck snapped back, and it howled at it me again. Reaching up, I grabbed an espresso machine and pulled it down onto the creature’s chest.

The damn thing finally let go of my wrist. It struggled, trying to push the machine off it, and I got to my feet and brought a boot down on the creature’s forehead – again and again. Bone crunched under my heel, and the body finally dissolved in the same way the first one had.

I staggered back, wiped my forehead, and noticed that the employees were cowering in the back room, watching me with eyes wide. “Give me a minute, then call 911,” I told them.

I stepped through the shattered snack case and walked over to the necromancer. The blow I’d given him had put him out cold, but he was beginning to come around. I lifted him by the back of the neck and put him on the ground, rubbing his face in the dust of his draugr, then flipped him over so I could see his eyes.

Tell me if he tries anything, I said to Maggie.

I slapped him until he began to sputter. “What’s your name?” I asked.

“It’s Nick, damn it! Stop hitting me!”

“Nick the Necromancer. That’s adorable.” I slapped him again, then grasped him by the chin. My tusks were still out, and I didn’t bother to force them to retract. His eyes widened at the sight of them. “Look, Nick, you asshole, you don’t bring draugr into a Starbucks on a Saturday afternoon. Demigods don’t pull that kind of shit! There are Rules. Who the hell do you think you are?”

“I’ll show you who I am,” he growled.

He’s going to try and cast some kind of decaying spell on you, Maggie warned.

I broke two fingers on his right hand. That should keep him distracted. I let him scream for a few seconds. “All right, Nick, tell me who sent you after me.”

“Go to hell,” he gasped.

I rolled my eyes. “I’m not gonna sit here and torture you all day, Nick. I work for a living. Tell me who you are, or I call OtherOps.”

He just stared at me balefully, so I got up and shouted to the employees. “Call 911. Tell them a necromancer and two draugr just jumped a reaper agent. They’ll patch you through to the right place.”

“You’re a reaper?”

I looked back down at Nick. The cold, calculating necromancer was gone, and in his place was a nineteen-year-old kid who knew he’d just fucked up – big time. “Yup. I deal with shit like this all the time. Whoever hired you either had no idea who I am or threw you straight to the wolves. Gonna tell me a name?”

He frowned, and I could see in his eyes that he considered it a moment before shaking his head.

“At least tell me how you found me,” I said. “Do you have a tracker on my car?”

He hesitated for a moment before speaking. “Zeke called me when you arrived at his place this morning. I followed you from the pawnshop, and I’ve been watching you for the last couple of hours.”

“Zeke, you greedy piece of shit,” I muttered to myself.

I tried to warn you about him, Maggie said.

Oddly enough, I couldn’t summon any real anger. This kind of shit was in Zeke’s nature. It would be like getting mad at a dog for eating the bagel you dropped on the floor. Eh, he did warn me, I told Maggie. And he knew I would be able to handle the kid. “See, that wasn’t too hard, was it?” I said to Nick. “You can make this easier and tell me the name of whoever hired you. I might even forget to press charges.”

Nick remained silent.

Let me at him, Maggie whispered in the back of my head.

No.

What do you mean, “no”?

I mean no. I can feel how pissed you are right now. If I touch him with your ring, you’ll kill him.

Maggie muttered to herself angrily. I ignored her, put my boot on Nick’s chest, and waited for OtherOps to arrive.

“And you’re sure you’ve never seen him before in your life?”

“Never,” I assured the OtherOps agent who stood beside me in front of the Starbucks. I watched over his shoulder as Nick was loaded into the back of an OtherOps paddy wagon. The OtherOps agent was a middle-aged bureaucratic type, yawning at the destruction caused by the draugr, pen poised above his notepad.

“He claims you have some sort of property of his,” the agent said, “but he wouldn’t elaborate further. Do you want to comment on that?”

So Nick hadn’t told OtherOps what he was after. That shouldn’t surprise me. If this was a legit recovery, I would have been confronted by the cops and not some punk necromancer mercenary. I let my eyes wander back to the agent, then down to his name tag. “Agent Lindberg, I have absolutely no idea what that asshole is talking about. I’ve dealt with a lot of nutters in my job, and he’s just about as crazy as they come.”

“He seems pretty sane to me.”

“Draugr in a Starbucks, Lindberg. That’s all I have to say.”

The average person might have an inkling that the Other existed, but nobody actually wanted to think about how closely our two worlds overlapped. For centuries, the Rules have kept most of this sort of stuff out of the public eye. Nick was going to find himself in trouble with both the humans and the Other. It wasn’t going to go well for him.

Agent Lindberg gave a snort and flipped his notebook shut. “All right, you’re free to go. If you think of any reason at all why this man would attack you, give me a call.” He handed me his card, which I pocketed. The agent headed inside, where a team worked on cleaning the draugr dust from the crime scene. Some lady in a suit stood nearby, yapping into a cell phone – probably someone from Starbucks corporate talking to their insurance. A couple of plainclothes OtherOps agents spoke quietly with the Starbucks employees. They’d probably get a small payout and pro bono counseling for their proximity to the incident.

I rubbed my torn-up gums. I heal a little faster than normal humans, but they would hurt for days. My tusks were gone and my tattoos had stopped glowing, but I had a good ache in my jaw and shoulders from the fight. I’d managed to pop my arm back into its socket before OtherOps arrived, but that hurt too.

Maggie? I said tentatively, getting into my truck.

No response. I could feel her presence in the ring.

Come on.

Hmph, she responded.

I wasn’t gonna let you kill that kid.

He would have told me who he worked for.

Maybe, maybe not. I’ve got friends at OtherOps. Once he’s stewed in a cell for a few days, we’ll see if he wants to talk. No killing needed.

She scoffed. He tried to kill you first. Why are you sticking up for him?

Because he’s still a teenager. I can’t even imagine being a hormonal prick and having the powers of a necromancer. If he were some grizzled old vet, sure. But he’s still a kid.

He’ll come after you when he gets out.

If he does, you can say you told me so as one of his draugr chokes the life out of me. Maggie didn’t respond, and I could sense that something was different about her brooding. What is it? I asked.

This isn’t a joke, Alek. Someone knows I’m alive. They know I’m trapped in here. And they know you carry my ring. I’m not sure how to stress to you how big a deal that is.

I mulled over the thought for a moment. She’d been trapped in there for over five hundred years, and she’d only spent about ten years of that with me. There was a lot of background that I had no context for, but I had no reason to disbelieve her. Look, I know you don’t like to talk about your past, but since I’m the one facing whoever decides to come after you, I really need to know who or what that might be. So if you have anything you’re holding back…

I’m not. I’d expected her to sound indignant at my accusation, but she seemed more frustrated than anything else. I’ve been wracking my mind for who I might have pissed off that’s still hanging around, and I can’t think of anyone. I haven’t walked the Earth as free jinn for a really long time. And that narrows down the list to immortals and very long-lived Others.

Okay. Let’s let the kid stew for a couple days, then we’ll work him over. We’ll find out who hired him and go after that person once we’re finished with Ferryman’s job.

Promise?

Promise. Hell, maybe we can spend your anniversary tracking down an old enemy of yours.