Bill’s necktie hangs sloppy and loose, the first buttons of his shirt undone. His hair uncombed. He is drunk.
The sounds of war have gone away.
A musician of small talent plays a violin in another room.
“Do you see what you have driven me to?” he says, in Ukrainian-accented Russian, looking at Andrew.
“Stop it,” Andrew says, pointing authoritatively at the television.
“Stop it!” shitfaced Bill Wilson says, in English, mocking him, laughing, pointing.
Andrew presses the power button on the remote.
The television flicks off.
Then turns itself back on.
Bill points at Andrew, says, in Russian, “You think you got away with something, don’t you? But your time has run out. We know where you are. And we are coming.”
Subtitles appear in yellow, doubtless for Anneke’s benefit.
“You will die, you sloppy little shit. Sloppy. Weak. Little. Shit.”
“Who are you?”
Bill W. smiles, but it’s not a pleasant smile.
The image freezes.
The celluloid burns exactly where his mouth is, burns in the nearly flat U of his smile. His eyes burn, too.
The violin stops.
Now the television screen begins to smoke where the mouth and eyes were.
Anneke jumps to her feet, puts the couch between her and the Sony.
“Christ!” Andrew yells.
The television catches fire.
41
The fire is magical in origin, but thankfully not in nature; an ordinary extinguisher stifles it in seconds. Not that the house would burn; Andrew set very powerful dousing wards at every corner of the property. The smoke alarm goes off, hurting their ears with its shrill chirps. Andrew sets down the extinguisher, silences the alarm. The room is murky with smoke and nitrogen. Anneke, her stomach still queasy following her belly flop out of sobriety, fights the urge to heave.
“Well,” Andrew says, “this is what magic looks like when used as a weapon. It’s not pretty.”
“Nothing’s pretty when used as a weapon.”
“I love your zero-tolerance approach to bullshit.”
“You’re trying to sound authoritative, like you’re in control. But you’re not, are you?”
“Not entirely.”
“Not entirely? More bullshit. Do you even know who did this?”
“I think so.”
“How did they get into the house? Your house?”
He notices the cord connecting a MacBook Pro to the television from his last streamed movie.
“Through that,” he says, pointing.
He disconnects it, handling it like a snake that might still bite.
“I need to e-mail somebody.”
42
Chicagohoney85: You’re going to owe me big for this. I don’t know if you understand how hard something like this is.
Ranulf: It can’t have been that hard if you’re already getting back to me.
—Difficulty is not measured in duration.
—It took you 24 hours.
—Labor can take 24 hours. Or it can take two. I’ve never popped one out, but word on the corner is that it sucks either way.
—Point taken. But it’s going to take me some time to trick out a car for you. That’s what you want, right? A car that cops, thieves and meter maids don’t notice?
—Yep. Tell me what else it’ll do again… City car stuff, right? I’ve got no use for big or fast.
—Runs on water. I know another user who can do that, but fitting in extra-tight spaces by making them bigger is mine alone. So far, anyway.
—Sounds awesome! Parking sucks here. That’s exactly what I want!
—So be it! But I’ll need a week or two to find the right car, and another week to do the work. Twenty four hours, my ass!
—What, should I have acted like it took longer? Mechanics always make less per hour than IT people. And you like working on cars
—No more than you like solving puzzles
—You got me. I do! And this one was a bitch. Here’s what you gave me—a hut somewhere in rural Russia, probably the Volga region, but maybe anywhere in Russia. Maybe Belorussia, maybe the Ukraine, maybe Poland, somewhere Slavic. Real specific, right?
—I gave you more than that!
—You did & I’ll get to that; I’m just pointing out that I had to search a pretty big chunk of the earth’s total land mass.
—But you have some way to detect magic, right? Some tweak to Google Earth or something?
—Yes, something like that. But I told you before she’s got somebody veiling her. Another techno-savvy user. And a good one, spooky good.
—I think I got a taste of how good he is.
Andrew remembers the burning smile, the burning eyes, how they stuck to the glass, then burned out the other side.
—You’re sure it’s a he? I’m not a he.
—I think he’s a he. I think you’re a she. I don’t know either one for sure.
—If you were ten years younger, I’d tell you to come to Chicago so I could show you. I’ve seen old pictures of you, you know. I Facebook stalked you. Hot! But you’re too old now, so you’ll have to take my word for it. I’m just saying don’t make assumptions-that can kill you in this game.
—True enough. But my point was that however good he or she is, I feel good having you in my corner. You’re spooky good, too.
—I am! Which is why I think I found her anyway.
—May I ask how?
—You just did. And, yes. I found her with shadows.
—I’m not sure I get it.
—First I used the magic-detection, then flagged areas that looked indistinct; veiling draws a screen, and a lesser witch wouldn’t even see the screen. But I can. I pick up a slight blur. Flagged all the blurs in Slavic countries. There’s a fuckload of magic over there, BTW. You were brave to go over there, what, during the cold war?
—You say brave. Some would say stupid.
—Now I took something else you told me. She eats kids, right? Actually eats them.
Andrew leans back from the screen, rubs his eyes with his hands, as if to massage away the pictures in his head.
—You there?
—Yes. She eats them.
—I hacked police records. I don’t speak those languages, so I had to outsource the translations. These people aren’t luminous, they just want money, I sent you an invoice. It’s a bit steep. Good, fast and cheap, you can’t have all three, right?
—I got the invoice.
—So I looked for reports of missing children. Infants. The Volga lit up, just like you said it would. But so did a few other areas where I saw blurs. Now we’ve checked for magic, hidden magic and missing kids. Still a bit of crossover. But the Volga stuff was old, like a few years old. You know what lit up since 2008?
—Tell me.
—You’re going to like it. Not that kids are missing, I mean, but where I think she is. It fits. But let me tell you the third thing I looked for, cause I’m proud of it.
—Shadows, you said.
—Shadows, sure, but what kind?
—I give up.
—So now I bring in the military eyes-in-the-sky. Hacked the shit out of them, and they’re mighty. Hi-res satellite images. I can find a fly sitting on poop in Mongolia.
—Ha!
—Now I think about the physical structure. You said the hut stands on chicken’s feet, right? Big ones, like taller than a man.