I pulled my mind back to business and asked him, “Can you give me a list of the firms whose spells you’re storing at this containment facility?” That was a question I could legitimately ask him, regardless of whether the Listener was conscious.
He said, “Inspector Fisher, in view of the unofficial nature of your visit, I have to tell you no. If you bring me a warrant, I will of course cooperate to the degree required by civil and canon law.” He thought he was being heard again—he tipped me a wink as he spoke.
“Such a list is a matter of public record,” I argued, both because it was something I really wanted to have and because I still wasn’t sure I could trust him.
“And I will surrender it to properly constituted authority, but only to such authority,” he said. “But it could also give competitors important information on the spells and charms we use at this facility. Limited access to magical secrets is one of the oldest principles of both canon and civil law.”
He might have been playing it to the hilt for the sake of the Listener, but he had me and I knew it. Sophisticated magic has to be kept secret or else everyone starts using it and the originator gains no benefit from hard and often dangerous research work. People who want to socialize sorcery don’t realize there wouldn’t be much sorcery to socialize if they took away the incentive for devising new spells.
“I shall return with that warrant, Mr. Sudakis,” I said formally.
He grinned and gave me a silent thumbs-up the Listener wouldn’t notice, so he was either really on my side or one fine con man. “Will there be anything else, Inspector?” he asked.
I started to shake my head, then changed my mind. “Is there a safe spot in this building where I can look out at the whole dump?”
“Sure is. Why don’t you come with me?” Sudakis looked happy for any excuse to get up from behind his desk. My guess was that he’d been promoted for outstanding work in the field—he probably liked the money from his administrative job but not a whole lot of other things about it.
Our shoes rang on the spiral stairway that led to the roof of the cinderblock office. Steps and rail alike were cold iron, a sensible precaution in a building surrounded by such nasty magic. The trapdoor through which we climbed was also of iron, heavily greased against the rains Angels City wasn’t seeing lately. Sudakis effortlessly pushed it out of the way.
“Here you are,” he said waving. “You’re about as safe here as you are indoors; topologically, we’re still inside the same shielding system. But it doesn’t feel the same out in the open air, does it?”
“No,” I admitted. I felt exposed to I didn’t know what. I wondered if the air itself was bad somehow. I imagined tiny demons I couldn’t even see crawling down into my lungs and relieving themselves among my bronchial passages. An unpleasant thought—I scuttled it as fast as I could.
The dump still looked like a couple of acres of overgrown, underwatered ground. If it had been paved over, it would have been a perfect used carpet lot. I don’t know what I’d expected from a panoramic view: maybe that I could spot boxes or barrels with corporate names on them. I didn’t see anything, though. The most interesting thing I did see was a little patch of ground about fifty yards from the office building that seemed to be moving of its own accord. I pointed. “What’s over there?”
Tony Sudakis’ eyes followed my finger. “Oh, that. It’ll be a while before decon does much with that area, I’m afraid. Byproducts from a defense plant—I can say that much. Those are flies you see stirring around.”
“Oh.” I dropped the subject, at once and completely. I’d thought about the Lord of the Flies on the way over to the dump. He’s such a potent demon prince that even saying his name can be dangerous. Speak of the devil, as everyone knows, is not a joke, and the same applies to his great captain, the prince of the descending hierarchy.
I didn’t care for the notion of the Defense Department dealing with Beelzebub, either. I know the Pentagram has the best wizards in the world, but they’re only human. Leave out a single line—by God, misplace a single comma—and you’re liable to have hell on earth.
I looked back toward the place where I’d seen a whole lot of Nothing when I was coming up the protected (I hoped) walk toward Sudakis’ office. From this angle, it didn’t look any different from the rest of the dump. I thought about mentioning it to Sudakis, but didn’t bother; he probably saw enough weird things in the course of a week to last an ordinary chap with an ordinary job a lifetime or two.
Besides, that thought gave rise to another: “How often do you run across synergistic reactions among the spells that get dumped here?”
“It does happen sometimes, and sometimes it’s no fun at all when it does.” He rolled his eyes to show how big an understatement that was. “Persian spells are particularly bad for that, for some reason, and there’s a large Persian community here in the Valley—refugees from the latest secularist takeover, most of them. When their spiritual elements fused with some from a Baghdadi candy-maker’s preservation charm, of all the unlikely things—”
I drew my own picture. It wasn’t pleasant. Shia and Sunni magic are starkly different but argue from the same premises. That makes the minglings worse when they happen: as if Papists and Protestants used the same dump in Ireland. The Confederation is a melting pot, all right, but sometimes the pot wants to melt down.
I didn’t see anything else about which to question Sudakis, so I went back down the spiral stairs. He followed, pausing only to shut the trap door over our heads. As we walked back to his office, I said, “I’ll be back with the warrant as soon as I can: in the next couple of days, anyhow.”
“Whatever you say, Inspector Fisher.” He winked again to show he was really on my side. I wondered if he was. He sounded very much like a man speaking for the Listener when he said, “I’m happy to cooperate informally with an informal investigation, but I do need the formal parchment before I can exceed the scope of my instructions from management.”
He went out to the entrance with me. I craned my neck to see if the Nothing reappeared as I passed the place where I’d seen it before. For an instant I thought it did, but when I blinked it was gone.
“What’s there?” Sudakis asked when I turned my head.
“Nothing,” I said, but I meant—I guessed I meant—it with a small n. I laughed a little nervously. “A figleaf of my imagination.”
“You work here a while, you’ll get those for sure.” He nodded, hard. I wondered what all he’d seen—or maybe not seen—since he started working here.
When we got out to the front gate, the security guard again carefully placed the footbridge so it straddled the red line. I felt like a free man as soon as I was on the outside of the dump site. Sudakis waved across from his side, then went back to his citadel.
It wasn’t until I’d crossed the crosswalk, chanted the phrase that unlocked the antitheft geas on my carpet, and actually gotten into the air that I remembered the vampires, the werewolves, the kids born without souls, all the other birth defects around the Devonshire dump. Getting outside the site didn’t necessarily free you from it. Were that so, I wouldn’t have had to make this trip in the first place.
Midday traffic was a lot thinner than the usual morning madness. I was more than twice as far from my Westwood office in the Confederal Building as I was when I left from my flat, but I didn’t need any more time to get there than I do on my normal commute. I slid into my reserved parking space (penalty for unauthorized use, a hundred crowns or an extra year for your soul in purgatory, or both—judge’s discretion: if he thinks you won’t rate purgatory, he’ll just fine you), then walked inside.
The elevator shaft smelt of almond oil. At the bottom was a virgin parchment inscribed with the words GOMERT and KAILOETH and the sigil of the demon Khil, who has control over some of the spirits of the air (he can also cause earthquakes, and so is a useful spirit to know in Angels City). The almond oil is part of the paste that summons him, the other ingredients being olive oil, dust from close by a coffin, and the brain of a dunghill cock. “Seventh floor,” I said, and was lifted up.