Pay Dirt Page 19

  “I didn’t catch that,” York said to Stuckey. “What did you say?”

  Stuckey didn’t meet his eyes. “N…nothing.”

  “Nothing,” York said flatly. He glanced toward the cultist leaning against the wall next to the cursed man. The cultist just shrugged.

  York turned to me. “Ozzy?”

  Out of the corner of my eye I could see Stuckey trembling, but I kept my eyes fixed on York. “He said, ‘Who are you?’ Guess I don’t fit in with the rest of you folks.”

  York’s milky eyes narrowed a fraction. He turned back to Stuckey.

  “I’ll deal with you in a moment,” he said, before looking back at me. He gestured to the cursed man. “Well?”

  I shot one last glance at Stuckey. Here he was. The answer to all my questions. If anyone knew where Holden was, if anyone knew who had killed Habi, it was Stuckey.

  But I couldn’t talk to him. Not with York hovering over me. I ground my teeth in frustration.

  I had to figure a way out of this mess. We were in a garment factory, not a prison. It couldn’t be that hard to escape. All I had to contend with was the mob of armed fanatics and their boss who could apparently walk through witch’s fire unharmed.

  Piece of cake, right?

  I turned my back on Stuckey and moved to the cursed man. His eyes flickered beneath his eyelids. Sweat beaded on his pallid flesh. Scratch marks from his own fingernails traced bright red lines across his cheeks. There were bite marks on his forearms above the oven mitts taped to his hands.

  I glanced at York, wiggling my bound hands behind my back. “You mind?”

  He paused. “If you try any heathen tricks—”

  “Torture, death, etcetera,” I said. “I heard you the first time.”

  “Just so we’re clear.”

  He nodded at shotgun lady, who drew a disconcertingly large knife from somewhere. She grabbed my wrists roughly and sliced through the duct tape binding me. My fingers tingled as blood rushed back to them. I clenched and unclenched my fists a few times, then crouched down beside the cursed cultist.

  Without my kit I wouldn’t be able to definitively diagnose the curse. But I had a pretty good idea what Early was and wasn’t capable of. As a general rule, the old man didn’t go around cursing people. It wasn’t really the cunning man way.

  But Early wasn’t sloppy. When he did something, by God he did it right. This was no exception. This guy wasn’t going to be sleeping this curse off. This was a death curse. A slow one, but a death curse nonetheless. This man was Early’s hostage.

  Apparently the old man wasn’t quite as squeaky clean as he pretended to be.

  I laid my hands on the bare chest of the cursed cultist. Despite the sweat, he was cold as death. Even with a light touch I could feel the desperate hammering of his heart. I shifted my hand below the base of his ribs and pressed on his liver. He suddenly arched his back, his eyelids snapping open to reveal pupil-less eyes. He made a gasping, gulping sound.

  “Hey!” barked the cultist who’d been standing guard over the man. “What are you doing to him?”

  “Quiet,” York said. “Let him work.”

  I stopped pushing on his liver, and a couple of moments later the cursed man settled back down again. He was muttering to himself, an endless ranting. I couldn’t make out the words.

  I glanced back at York. “How did it happen? What did my friend do to him?”

  “I was otherwise engaged when your friend cast his devilry. I didn’t see.”

  Shotgun lady stepped forward. “I did.” She fixed me with cold eyes. “I saw your heathen friend strike Jameson down.”

  “Great,” I said. “Enlighten me.”

  “It was shortly after we captured him. He came bearing the lies and platitudes all your kind use to deceive and ensnare, but we were not so easily tricked. When he realized this, he tried to flee, but we cut off his escape. He feigned surrender. Jameson approached to disarm and immobilize the heathen.” Her eyebrows lowered. “And then the heathen ripped out one of his own teeth and scratched Jameson with it.”

  I gave a low whistle. Didn’t think the old man had it in him. I looked down at the cursed man. “Where did he scratch him?”

  “Left hand. The palm.”

  I flipped over the cursed man’s hand. There it was. A red, angry wound at the base of his palm. The edges of the wound were curled back, crusted fluid dried around the cracked flesh.

  “And the tooth?” I asked.

  “It went black when he stabbed Jameson. Then it just…disintegrated.”

  I nodded. I’d figured as much. A couple of years ago, when I was still working under Early, we’d come across a similar curse. One of the coven witches that lived outside town had developed something of a grudge against another member of the community after relations soured. Wanting to get his own back—and protect himself against retaliation—the witch had cursed his rival, using one of his molars to forge the connection that would bind their fates together.

  It had been brutally effective. We managed to break the curse before it killed the victim, but it was close. I suppose Early must’ve learned enough about the curse that he figured out how to prepare it himself.

  The trouble wasn’t going to be breaking the curse—it was going to be breaking it without causing a magical backlash against Early. Casually severing the connection could be dangerous.

  I continued to examine the unconscious cultist—taking his pulse, palpating his organs, peering at the undersides of his eyelids—all the while trying to determine the course that the curse had taken through his body. Despite the anxiety chewing at my own gut, I forced myself to take my time. Early would be able to take one look at the guy and know exactly what was wrong with him, but my talents lay elsewhere. I had to get by on good old fashioned grunt work.

  As I studied the cursed man, I could feel the room’s occupants watching me. Without moving my head, I glanced over at Stuckey. He was standing in front of the wall-sized node map, working his hands together nervously. Our eyes met. His eyebrows raised a fraction, like he was trying to tell me something. When I just gave him a puzzled look, he stared at me harder. Whatever it was he was trying to tell me, I didn’t get it.

  I heard York shift behind me, and Stuckey’s eyes grew wide and fearful again. I followed his gaze.

  “Perhaps you should focus more on your own work,” York said to Stuckey, “and less on our friend’s. My patience is wearing thin, Stuckey. Have you made any progress?”

  Stuckey licked his lips. “I…well…as you can see I’ve been using the reference material I have on hand to create a partial map of the mine networks in the region. I’ve identified several collapsed tunnels that are promising.”

  York made an unimpressed noise and cast his eyes over the map. “We don’t need a survey. We need a location.”

  “I know. I know.”

  “We’ve been waiting days, Stuckey.”

  “I’m trying. I am.”

  “I wonder if you are.” York loomed over the older man. “You were part of their team. You were helping them find the tomb. And yet you seem unable to help me.”

  “You took me away before I could gather all my notes!” Stuckey protested. “If you just let me go back to the museum—”

  “There will be no going back,” York interrupted. “There are no more notes.”

  “What? But—”

  “It’s gone. You will find the tomb using the information you have here. Or we will find another use for you.”

  Stuckey stared at York, the fear fading now. “What…what do you mean, gone? I…”

  He trailed off and glanced at shotgun lady and the cursed man lying beside me. His eyes roamed across the man’s singed hair and blackened skin. He looked back at York.

  “You…you burned it down? Tell me you didn’t burn it down.”

  York turned his back on Stuckey. “Just find me the tomb.”

  Stuckey stood there, staring at the back of York’s head. Emotions passed
across his face in waves. Confusion. Denial. Anger. Blood rushed to his face, turning his cheeks and forehead bright red. His face twisted into an ugly grimace.

  I tried to catch his eye, hoping to calm him down. But he wasn’t looking at me anymore.

  “Fuck your tomb,” he spat.

  York paused. For several seconds he stood completely still. Then, slowly, he turned back toward Stuckey.

  “Excuse me?”

  “You’ll never find it,” Stuckey said. “His bones will turn to dust. All that treasure will be swallowed up by the earth. You and your children and your grandchildren will be forgotten in the mists of time. And still your little cult will never find the tomb. You’re nothing but whiny little puppies begging for scraps from dead men.”

  Stuckey was panting by the time he finished his rant. The flush in his cheeks had spread to his neck and ears, giving him the look of a wrinkled beet. Silence descended on the room, only broken by the feverish mutterings of the cursed man beside me.

  York sighed. “I’m disappointed that you feel that way.” He gestured to shotgun lady.

  The woman stepped forward, raising her shotgun. Stuckey made a little squeak as she stared down the barrel at him.

  “Wait!” I jumped up, getting between the woman and Stuckey. “Stop!”

  Shotgun lady didn’t even blink. “Move, heathen.”

  I did my best to ignore the cold darkness staring at me from her twin shotgun barrels. My mind whirring, I licked my lips and addressed York. “I…I can help him.”

  “You already have a task,” York said, gesturing to the cursed man.

  “I’ll do both. It’ll take me a few hours to break the curse, but there’ll be downtime. I’ll have to leave potions to brew, wait for him to respond to the first component of the counterspell before I can move onto the next. I can use that time to help find the tomb.”

  York looked vaguely amused. Shotgun lady shot him a glance, silently asking what she should do. He didn’t answer her. His blank eyes were fixed on me.

  “Very generous of you,” York said. “But I’m not sure you’ll be much help.”

  “I disagree. In fact, I think I’m your best chance to find Morley’s tomb.”

  The name had the desired effect. York didn’t react, but behind me I heard the cultist on death watch draw a sharp breath. Shotgun lady’s shoulders stiffened. I kept my eyes fixed on York.

  “That is what you’re looking for, isn’t it?” I asked. “The tomb of Morley the Profane.”

  “Yes,” York said after a moment’s pause. “Yes it is. You make for an intriguing heathen, Ozzy. You know the tomb’s location?”

  “No. But I’ve come across some clues. Let me work with this guy. Let me try to put it together. What have you got to lose?”

  Shotgun lady didn’t believe a word that was coming out of my mouth. Her face made that plain. Her finger twitched over the trigger, ready to blow me away the instant York gave her the word. I could feel the specter of death hovering over me, cold hands reaching for my throat.

  For thirty seconds York was silent. Then a minute. He wasn’t looking at me. He cocked his head to the side, like he was listening for divine guidance.

  I don’t know if he got an answer or not. Finally, he straightened, his milky eyes fixing on me once more. “Very well. The two of you will get me a probable location on the tomb. You have one more day.”

  I breathed a sigh of relief. We weren’t dead. Not yet.

  “I’ll need some things out of my coat,” I said. “Some notes I have. And I’ll need you to move all those confiscated ingredients in here.”

  “No. You can brew any necessary potions out in the main room,” York said.

  “That’s not going to work. Curse-breaking is a lot more hands-on than that. I need to be able to make adjustments on the fly. I need to work here.”

  “You make a lot of demands for someone in your position,” he observed.

  “I prefer to think of it as being assertive.”

  “Indeed. You shall have what you need.” Gesturing for the cultist on death watch to follow him, he turned away. Then he paused and glanced back. “Your life needn’t be like this, Ozzy. You don’t have to wallow in filth and corruption. All you need to do is open yourself to the light. Surrender to it. Let its warmth burn away the darkness inside you. I could show you the way.”

  As I stared into his blank eyes, a prickling heat washed over me. With each passing second it grew hotter, hotter than Isidora’s mind burn, hotter than the burning York had inflicted on my hand outside the museum. The blisters on my hand began to throb again.

  I tore my eyes from York, and instantly the heat faded. I dragged a hand across my face. I was drenched with sweat.

  “Thanks for the offer,” I rasped. My throat felt like I’d swallowed scalding hot coffee. “I’ll think on it.”

  “Do so,” York said. And then, with a smile that sent spiders crawling up my spine, he turned and left the room.

  I let out a breath. Idly, I ran my thumb across the burns on my hand. They still hurt, but it felt nothing like the sensation I’d just experienced. Whatever York had done to me, it felt…it felt…

  A hand touched my back. I flinched before seeing who it was.

  “Are you all right?” Stuckey asked me in a low voice.

  I shook my head, trying to banish the feeling. I wiped the sweat from my face, straightened, and steeled myself.

  “Yeah. Yeah. Just…never mind.”

  He offered me a small smile. “Thank you. For before.”

  “Don’t mention it.”

  He shot a glance over my shoulder at shotgun lady. She was still there, guarding the door. Stuckey edged closer to me. I could smell that he hadn’t had a shower in a few days. I probably wasn’t a bed of flowers either. “I had some friends. Do you know if…?”

  He trailed off, seeing something in my face. The soft flesh of his cheeks went slack.

  “Who?” he asked.

  “Habi.”

  He closed his eyes, the wrinkles at the corners growing deeper. For a moment, he said nothing. Then he opened his eyes. “And the others?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He nodded again, glancing once more at shotgun lady. Then, with more speed than I thought the old guy could muster, he grabbed me by the shirt, stood on tiptoes, and hissed in my ear.

  “We can’t allow them to find the tomb. There’s something there they want. Something that needs to stay buried with the bones of the Profane.”

  “Hey!” shotgun lady roared, stomping over to us. “Get your hands off him.”

  I tried to pull back, but Stuckey’s grip tightened on my shirt. “I think my friends unleashed something. Something meant to hunt down anyone who tried to open the tomb. We should never have—”

  The butt of a short-barreled shotgun slammed into Stuckey’s face with a sickening crack, sending him sprawling to the floor. As he hit the ground, he spat a trail of blood onto the thin carpet. There was a tooth in it.

  “Shit!” I started to grab the woman, but she spun around and gave me a real good look at both barrels of the shotgun.

  “Back off,” she snarled. “Now!”

  I held up my hands and took a couple of steps back. On the floor, Stuckey groaned softly, rubbing his jaw.

  The door creaked open behind me. York entered, followed by a couple of cultists holding armfuls of dusty jars and vials.

  “Well,” York said, looking around. “I see things are off to a good start.”

  20

  After York was satisfied I had everything I needed to break his man’s curse, he left me to my own devices. I guess he had other important culty things to be getting on with. That spaceship wasn’t going to build itself.

  Of course, he was kind enough to leave shotgun lady watching over us. She leaned against the door frame, watching us with her gun at the ready. So far she hadn’t felt the urge to knock any more teeth out. Hell, she didn’t even seem to care much what we were doing, a
s long as it didn’t involve us trying to escape. York had told her to guard us, so that’s what she was doing. She was a soldier, through-and-through.

  I got to work on the cursed man—Jameson, his name was. I took the sleeping bag off him and laid him down half-naked in the middle of the floor. I needed space to work, so I had to shove some of Stuckey’s document boxes out of the way. When I had the place set up like I wanted it, I started preparing some simple written charms sealed with soulwax. I laid them on Jameson’s body—one on his forehead, one above his heart, and another over his liver. The charms wouldn’t do anything to break the curse on their own, but as soon as I laid them on his clammy skin, his muscles loosened and stopped twitching. He continued to mutter, but slower now, quieter. The charms would offer him some relief, as well as buying us both some time.

  I could feel Stuckey watching me as I worked. It wasn’t something I usually allowed, even when the spectator knows of the existence of magic—doesn’t pay to have too many people knowing your tricks, in case they figure out a way around them. But privacy didn’t seem to be a big concern for York and his lackeys. And besides, Stuckey getting a little inside knowledge was the least of my worries right now.

  After grinding some herbs and scraping them into an iron pot along with some salt water and a swabbing of Jameson’s saliva, I set the mixture above a burner on a low heat. I could only hope the ingredients in York’s confiscated stores were fresh and potent and correctly labeled. That’s always the trouble when you source your ingredients from unreliable suppliers. You’re never entirely sure what you’re getting. If it turned out that grave dirt was nothing more than garden soil, Jameson would soon end up in a shallow grave himself. Probably with me alongside him.

  Stuckey shuffled a few documents he was pretending to look through, then sidled up beside me. He glanced from the potion to the cursed man, his nervousness giving way to curiosity. “Never seen a curse breaking before.”

  “It’ll get a lot uglier before the end.” I gestured to the pot. “But there’s nothing more I can do until this brews. So I guess we should talk.”

  “Yes. Yes.” He shot a glance toward shotgun lady, then ushered me over to the desk he was working at. Papers were strewn across the desktop seemingly at random, but I got the feeling he had it just the way he wanted it. “You said you had some information that might help.”