3.
The sleek black Maserati took me home in no time, crossing over the Milwaukee River, into the Brewer’s Hill neighborhood and to my house. House. Such a quaint word, isn’t it? House, mansion, whatever. Wealth has its privileges and I have wealth up the wazoo. This was one of three homes I own, and my family owns a handful more as well, scattered across the nicer, and usually warmer, parts of the world. Why do I live in Milwaukee? What can I say; it’s home.
I pulled into the garage-slash-guesthouse at the forefront of the property and parked next to the three other vehicles there. The Maserati’s nice and all, but it’s not the best for a Wisconsin winter. I’d need to start driving something with a little more oomph for the rest of the season.
I checked the time on my cell phone as I strode through the nearest, iron bound door; warding spellsigns sparkled darkly on the metal banding. Almost two in the morning; playing with Harold had taken longer than I thought. Looking through the Pale can do that. The wind, the sand, the emo architecture; it makes travelling through the Pale a nightmare. The complete lack of time doesn’t help either. Yet another reason why I hate the place. Once inside I turned the wards up to eleven, threw out the tattered remains of my down jacket, kicked off my shoes and moved towards my room and the master bath where I would proceed to wash the evening’s masque from hair, face and body.
The makeup, the jell, the silly clothing; all a necessary evil. When I started my little business, about four years ago, I took potential clients to very nice places and landed maybe a third of them. Half of those turned out to be either delusional fruitcakes or idiots wanting to worship me. Or worse, train them. Summoning demons to serve as assassins is a surprisingly good business, but it attracts all kinds of nut jobs and I can’t have that. It’s bad for business.
So I changed. I started meeting clients at Virgil dressed like an overgrown Goth kid. Or at least how non-Goths expect Goths to dress. Anyone who doesn’t do some serious homework is turned off immediately. Several never even go inside the club. Some don’t do a sufficient background check and think I’m just another person into wet work and strange fetishes. Others do the work but let their prejudices get in the way. Surely this can’t be the Machiavel. Some punk kid with a fauxhawk and white makeup could never be the great sorcerer and demonologist.
Good riddance to the lot of them. A few, like my latest Mister Bob, saw through all the bullshit and knew more or less what to expect. Sure, Mister Bob needed some prompting, but he’d get there in the end. These clients provided me with an opportunity to hone my skills and gather knowledge. And amongst sorcerers, knowledge is power. That’s why I went into business in the first place. It’s about the knowledge, and the power that comes with it. That I get to remove some of the more unpleasant people from the world, making it a happier place for the rest of us, is a bonus.
The makeup and jell were a pain, however, and I made a point to wash them away as soon as possible. I made my way past the library, through an open kitchen the Iron Chefs would maim for, and into the master bedroom. I stripped out of the too-tight black leather pants and the remains of a frilly shirt, throwing one into a nearby laundry basket and the other into the garbage. Done stripping, I padded back down a short hall into the bathroom and looked at myself in the full mirror. I grunted at the crimson lines Harold cut into me and rummaged through a cabinet until I found a jar of purpleish salve I bought from a local witch. She’s a member of the Grand Coven and usually curses sorcerers on sight, but we managed to get along. I spread the salve on the wounds and wrapped a bandage around my chest. The purple goo was already beginning to tingle.
“Well, they’ll go nicely with the others,” I muttered to myself.
Damage taken care of, I commenced with scrubbing white and black makeup off already pale skin and jell from short red hair. The adjacent walk-in closet provided me with black silk sleeping pants and a loose fitting shirt. I pulled on the very comfy pants and not quite so comfy shirt before strolling back into the bedroom.
I’m almost certain she wasn’t there before, but the nude, raven-haired beauty now lying on my king-sized bed, just beneath the crossed rapiers that hung above, was hard to miss. With a single Word and snapping of fingers lightning sizzled into my hands, an automatic response to the intruder. I recognized the naked lady immediately and the lightning didn’t go away just because I knew her.
“Why Marcus,” the nude drawled, a strong southern accent filling her voice, “is that lightning in your hands or are you just happy to see me?” The woman lay draped across the center of the bed; her long black hair hiding the interesting bits. Barely. Ample breasts heaved as she spoke and emerald eyes flashed from a Botticelli face. The shimmering light of the electricity in my hands reflected from smooth tanned muscle and rounded flesh, making them all the more alluring. A distraction, of course, and purposefully so, and we both knew it. Besides, I’d seen all that before, and a great deal more.
“Hello, Bica,” I said. I kept my right hand raised before me, an orb of crackling lightning still held within its grasp. Beatrice Montgomery is either my lover or my rival. My would-be assassin even, and with her these were in no way mutually exclusive. Ex-army and now private detective and sometimes bodyguard she’s also one of the best illusionists I know, which explained why I hadn’t seen her when I first walked into the room. She’s that good. And she knew me better than almost anyone else, which explains how she got past the simple exterior wards. No one had been out to get me lately, so I hadn’t felt the need to turn them up to kill. Not a mistake I’d make again. Fortunately those weren’t my only means of protection. Mind you, just because Bica laid naked in my bed did not mean she wasn’t here to kill me, imprison my soul, turn me into a zombie and/or screw me until the sun came up. Hence the lightning.
“So, Bica, did you forget your clothing somewhere?” I gave her my best smirk and made a show of eyeing her up and down. “It seems to me the last time we spoke you were hurriedly putting it back on, not lying about without.”
“Oh for Christ’s sake, Marc,” she said in a huff, frustration and disappointment showing on her face, “put it away already, will you? I’m not here to fight. The Demiurge wants to see us. All of us.”
Well, that’s different, then. The Demiurge; the name given to the god of creation in Platonic and Gnostic lore and the double-edged epitaph of our mutual benefactor, the Master Antonio Giacobo.
Master, Magistri, Disciples. It all takes a little getting used to. We sorcerers have three ranks: Disciple, Adept and Master. Sexist as hell, but such is life. The Masters run the show; make fountains of gold, crush entire worlds, that sort of thing. Sorcerers the lot of us. As a whole we call ourselves the Magistri, because it sounds bad ass and it makes it look like every last one of us is a miniature god. We aren’t the only practitioners of the art out there, so PR is important.
The Demiurge is one of the most powerful and accomplished of the Masters, perhaps second only to the Hierarch himself. Bica and I were the first apprentices Master Giacobo had taken in thirty years, not including his half-wit son, so it’s supposed to be an honor. The Magistri granted me, a mere Disciple, a seal and title four years ago, at the age of twenty-four, just after I went into the murder business. That made the honor a little more mine than Bica’s and the Master made sure to remind her of that whenever he could. He said it would make her more competitive, give her a better edge. As far as I could tell it had done no such thing, though the attempts on my life began shortly thereafter. The sex, too.
“This isn’t a good time,” I told the nude. Sighing, I released the lightning in my hand, allowing its energy to fade back into the Pale from where it had come. “Where are your clothes?”
The raven-haired beauty nodded towards a chair behind me, moving just enough to keep things interesting. Another calculated move, one which I ignored as I retrieved her clothing and threw the bundle at her face.
“Would you mind . . . .” she made a little turning gesture with a finger.
“Yes, I would. I’ve seen you naked before, Bica, and I don’t trust you enough to turn my back to you. Get on with it already. The sooner you’re dressed the sooner you leave.”
She sighed, though she didn’t seem disappointed, and dressed quickly. I made sure to leer the whole time, never allowing the look reach my eyes. I’m kind of a bastard that way. A short while later Bica was dressed in loose fitting blue jeans and a dark green sweater that left everything to the imagination. She blinked emerald eyes at me and then rolled off the bed.
Bica padded to me on bare feet, pressing herself close and drawing her hands over my chest. “We need to talk,” she announced before twirling away in a swirl of hair and striding from the room. I followed with a shrug she never saw.
