Out the window, the truck barrels past us. Julie hits a button and the truck’s air horn blows three times.
At the corner of Robertson, she hits the front brakes and the trailer starts to swing around, threatening to pull the cab over on its side. But she hits the accelerator and lets up on the brakes at just the right moment so that the truck slides across the intersection, up over the curb, and crashes into the front of the Pickman Building broadside.
Smashing through the glass and steel walls, the truck doesn’t slow until most of it is resting comfortably in the lobby. Julie cuts the engine. This isn’t the time for random fires. Just a distracting truck with a dead driver. How tragic.
“What about emergency response? We just set off a shitload of alarms.”
She hands me a box with one red button.
“Get ready,” she says, shutting down her electronics. “Hit it.”
I press the button. Nothing happens for a second. Then a dull thump echoes through the street. All the lights in the neighborhood go out.
“There’s an EMP device in the trailer. We just blew their power and all their electronics. They’ll come back up, but not until we’re gone.”
“You are diabolical.”
“Coming from you, I’ll take that as a compliment. Now get us inside.”
“It’s too dark. I need a shadow.”
Across the street, guards are coming out of the Pickman Building, gazing up at the truck. Some fiddle with their walkie-talkies. Some are trying to use their phones. None look happy.
Julie leads me into a toilet in the back of the store and snaps a glow stick.
“Is this enough light?”
“Barely. But it’ll work.”
I push my arm into a shadow just to make sure. I hear Julie draw in a breath.
“You’ve never seen this trick before?”
“Not this close.”
“You might want to close your eyes. It can be a little weird the first time.”
She closes them and I take her hand.
“Ready?”
“Definitely.”
I pull her into the shadow and out onto the tenth floor of the Pickman Building.
JULIE WAS RIGHT. There aren’t any guards on the tenth floor. All that’s there is a small room, a plastic cube in the center of the empty floor. This would be a cakewalk except that the floor is covered in magic circles. It was dumb luck that we came out between two of them.
“Don’t move,” I say. “This is why I don’t like going into places I don’t know. Step in any one of these circles and you’re dead. Probably we’re both dead and I’m not in the mood for that tonight.”
“Damn. What do we do to get around them?”
“It’s too dark for me to see them clearly, so I can’t draw a countersign.”
“I have climbing gear. We can go across the ceiling.”
“Easy, Catwoman. That will probably be hexed too.”
“What do we do?”
“If I knew what kind of hoodoo these were, I could answer that.”
“These might help,” she says, and pulls two sets of goggles from her pack.
I put mine on and find a button on the side. The room blazes with the light, showing every nook and cranny protected by hoodoo power. The only thing glowing brighter than the circles is Saint Nick himself in the plastic cube. I guess that answers Wells’s question. I get the feeling he’s locked up tight. Nick is no guest.
“Well?” says Julie. “Can you get us through?”
“Give me a minute.”
I kneel and examine the first circle. Shit. I don’t recognize it. Probably some Angra bullshit. If only Father Traven was here. A good guy who deserved to live a lot longer, he’d read these signs like a cookie recipe and we’d scoot right through. But he’s dead, I can’t read these, and we’re stuck.
“Anything?” says Julie. I don’t want to tell her that we’ve come this far and can’t go on. There has to be something. There’s always something.
“Ever hear of a potion called Spiritus Dei?”
“Sure. It’s one of the most powerful potions around. Supposed to ward off any supernatural being. Do you have some?”
“No.”
She lets out a breath.
“But I always dip my bullets in it. We can jump the small circles and there are only two big ones between us and Saint Nick’s door.”
“You’re going to shoot them?”
“Unless you have a better idea.”
She looks up and down the room like she’s hoping a cab will pull up and take her away from the crazy man. Finally, she shrugs.
“Magic is your end. Do what you think is best.”
I pull out the Colt.
“This is going to be loud. Cover your ears,” I say.
She does. I aim with one hand and put the other over one ear. No point in going completely deaf.
I cock the hammer on the Colt and fire into the first circle.
The hoodoo light through the goggles flickers. The circle pulses like broken neon and goes out. I pull the trigger again and the second circle flickers off.
“Is it safe now?” says Julie.
“Only one way to find out.”
I jump the small circles and the place where the first big circle glowed just a few seconds earlier. Nothing happens.
“Don’t touch anything,” I say. “There might be hoodoo the goggles can’t see.”
“Thanks.”
“You know I’m stealing them, right? I mean, when this is over, these goggles are coming home with me.”
Julie shakes her head.
“Just come up with a good story for the report. I didn’t see anything.”
We make it to Saint Nick’s door. He’s sitting in a plastic kitchen chair staring at us. Not hostile, but not looking like he’s thrilled about being rescued. They might keep him drugged. Or he might be so crazy he doesn’t know what’s happening. That’s the Saint Nick I’m hoping we don’t have to deal with.
Julie flicks on a small flashlight, holds it between her teeth, and examines the cube’s lock. It looks like some combination of a keypad and a physical lock. She pulls a small silver box from her pack and fits it over the mechanism. It glows and something whirs inside. Julie looks at her watch.
“The building has shielded generators. The power will be back on in the next three minutes. We need to move.”
Through the goggles I can see a sigil burning on Saint Nick’s door. It’s a circle with designs I don’t know. Tentacles and tree trunks and human limbs. At the bottom of the outer circle in letters like something off a beer-hall menu it says DER ZORN GÖTTER. Of course. Pickman Investments. Heavy money. Heavy power. We’ve just blown the Angra’s Vatican bank. Yes, we need to be out of here as fast as we can.
The lock pops and Julie slides open the door. I look around for hidden hoodoo or trip wires. There’s nothing. These people are pretty confident that their power and magic will protect them. I guess they have for all the years it’s taken to put the Angra’s return plan together. Personally, I don’t want to meet them or their Gods in anything bordering on a fair fight.
Saint Nick stands up with his arms at his side. He looks like he’s in his mid- to late thirties. A nondescript guy. Brown hair and eyes. Flat nose and thin lips. No one you’d ever notice on the street, but isn’t that how it is with serial killers? They’re the most boring people in the world until cops dig up the basement and the news vans show up. “He was always so quiet and polite. I would never have guessed . . .”
He isn’t cuffed or shackled. There’s nothing in the cube with him, not even water or a slop bucket or any sign he’s ever had them. That means he isn’t locked in all the time. Does that mean he’s not a prisoner? This isn’t the time to worry about that.
Julie approaches him slowly and takes his arm. He lets her, and when she pulls him, he follows her out of the cube. She nods at me.
“Okay,” she says. “Take us out of here.”
“You have another glow stick?”