"We all have our demons," he shrugged. "If that's what you're trying to tell me. I get it. I'm not going to absolve you of any action you might take, but I understand it."
"No, I'm not sure this action-this need-is mine." The Chorus tugged at my spine, unease drifting through their rank like dank smoke. "There's something else." I shook my head, trying to shake something that clung. "Uh, maybe. Yes."
"Yes what?"
"Another perspective. I need a second opinion."
"Now?"
"Why not? I don't like the idea of running, but I suddenly don't trust my own motives for staying. I need another opinion. From someone who can more objectively see through me. I need someone who can read the Weave. I need a fortune teller."
XI
Cities, when you can see the ley energies, are generally structured the same: grids oriented to the north-south meridians; flow patterns that move east to east; hot spots surrounding the popular nightclubs; and one or two hubs of concentrated power, bubbling over like artesian wells. Each metropolis, however, has its own character-its own idiosyncrasies and quirks-and the trick to navigating the urban flow was knowing how to acquire a decent map. It's just a matter of commodities trading. As in any modern civilization, the most natural rhythm of all is the ebb and flow of capitalism.
Cab drivers instinctively navigate the flow patterns of the ley whether they are adepts or not; bus drivers sense the knots and whirlpools of radiant energy, their network shifting and adapting to the changing influences. The seemingly random spray of graffiti is actually the hidden key to understanding how the city is carved up, and the midnight taggers are always hungry, eager to share in return for a secret or two. Fortune tellers-the real ones, at any rate-know the local illuminati. They know the covens, the packs, the temples, and the societies; they know which shape and affect the local flow, and which are full of noise and flash.
My local contact was a Georgian fortune teller named Piotr Grieavik. I had met him on my third night in Seattle, and my ability to provide proper remuneration was matched by Piotr's knowledge of the city.
Piotr's shop was a twenty-two-foot Airstream trailer. After nightfall, it would appear in the corner of a parking lot near one of the white energy rivers. Its silver shell would pick up an unnatural gleam under the sodium lights of the parking lot, while the curved front windows would be lit by a warm glow as if the inside of the trailer was coated with amber. In the back window, there would be a curled piece of neon. An intricately woven pair of rings, the red and blue neon light was Piotr's calling card. Lit, he was receiving visitors; dark, he was occupied with a client.
In the early hours of this Wednesday morning, we found Piotr's trailer down near the Fisherman's Terminal in Interbay. The trailer smelled of incense, a bouquet of jasmine and pine that lay heavily on the tongue and helped to mask the smell of the nearby fishing boats. Ornately carved dragons sat in the corners of the central room, their bellies filled with incense cones. Thin strands of smoke drifted lazily from their flared nostrils.
A plush half-moon of a booth took up most of the room. Comfortable seats arced out from the curved walls like a welcoming matronly embrace. Piotr sat on one side of the dark table, playing solitaire with a normal deck of cards.
He was bald and his remaining hair-eyebrows and forearms-was white, stark contrast to the burnished copper of his skin. His teeth were smooth and even, and when he smiled, the wealth of lines creasing his face and hairless head melted away. He talked of a history that went back eighty years-stories of life at sea on a succession of Merchant Marine assignments-but the buoyant lilt of his affected English left you with an impression of youthful naivete.
"Hello, wolf," he smiled as Nicols and I entered his warm salon. He was wearing dark pants and a crimson shirt beneath a fringed vest adorned with patches and decals of astrological symbols. Fish splashed down the left side of his chest, and a bull wrapped itself across his right shoulder. His smile broadened as he spotted the bag of candy in my hand. We had stopped at a QFC on Queen Anne to buy sweets. "What do you have there?"
The basic rule when seeking information from an oracle, I had told Nicols when I had asked him to stop at the store: bring a gift.
I put the bag on the table near his half-finished card game. "Caramels," I said. "A couple of different flavors."
On the top of his discard pile, the card he had turned over as we had entered: the jack of spades.
He caught my glance, and tapped the card several times with a blunted forefinger. The top knuckle was missing, as was the knuckle on the middle finger next to it. Both of them, supposedly lost in a fishing accident, and I hadn't bothered to call him on his white lie. It was enough that we both knew, just as he didn't talk about some of my secrets. The cards have a way of revealing a man.
"The Prince of Swords," he said, giving it its tarot name.
I nodded, not surprised to see the jack. Energy patterns were coalescing. Coincidences were simply a manifestation of systemic orientation. "This is Detective John Nicols," I said, introducing my companion. "Seattle PD. We're working together."
"Ah," Piotr said. He turned his attention to the sack of caramels. "There are neophytes in the ranks of SPD now, are there?"
"Inadvertently. And he's not the first."
Piotr selected a candy and unwrapped it delicately. "No," he noted, glancing up at Nicols. "Not the first. ."
"Have you seen Lt. Pender recently?" Nichols asked.
"Not recently." Piotr smiled at Nicols as he popped the chewy candy in his mouth. "The lieutenant has a tendency to neglect my sweet tooth," he explained. "Unlike Markham, who always brings something."
Nicols nodded, a gracious inclination of his head. The sort of salute usually reserved for visiting royalty. He was good at reading situations and swallowing his own ego in order to make people comfortable. One of those traits of invisibility so useful to a homicide investigator. "It would appear the lieutenant believes his position exempts him from certain obligations," he said. "And you aren't influenced by his shiny badge now, are you?"
Piotr's smile widened. "Influence is the butterfly which flaps its wings and changes the weather a thousand miles away. Pender is not a butterfly."
"Nor am I," said Nicols. "But I'm starting to wrap my head around the basic concepts of your special style of chaos theory."
Piotr turned his eyes toward me. "When the calf is born, accidental or otherwise, the farmer cannot put it back. The animal must learn how to stand, how to suck from its mother's teat. The farmer may assist the calf when it first learns, but if it is to survive, it must find its own strength. Wouldn't you agree?"
"My dad owned a potato farm," I said. "They didn't need much coddling. You just put them in the ground, and they grew all on their own."
"Ah, the life of the vegetable farmer. So dependent upon the cycles. So trapped by the wheel." Piotr pushed a hand through his game, dissolving them into a haphazard mix of red and black.
The trouble with fortune tellers was their constant exposure to the vicissitudes of chaos, which gave them an unconscious ability to know the course of a thread throughout the Weave. They were oracles, unconscious soothsayers who spoke in enigmas and mysteries. Most of them weren't even aware of the esoteric precognition that underscored their words.
I hadn't told Piotr anything about my past, neither stories of the farm nor anything about my initiation into magick. And yet, he always seemed to be readily aware of my mood and my intentions, as if they were warning labels printed across my chest. This one is hunting, and has become lost in the woods. Devoured by darkness.
Piotr's hands, like the brush of palm fronds back and forth, moved across the cards, and they became a deck. He shuffled them twice, and all the cards, regardless of their previous orientation in his motley deck, flipped themselves face-down. The backs of the cards were green with yellow and red lettering-a garish logo for one of the Indian casinos that haunted the curve of I-5 through the tulip fields up north. With a deft motion of his hands, he cut the deck, and turned over the top card of the bottom half of the stack. The jack of spades.