Pay Dirt Read online

  That would come at a cost. Hell, I was surprised the curse wasn’t already burning itself out. It was drawing power from somewhere. The circle of silver meant that power wasn’t coming directly from the old man. If this was some witch’s curse, I’d figure the curse was powering itself by draining the man’s life essence. But I didn’t believe Early would design a curse that would kill its target faster just to keep itself going.

  Which meant there was another source. Something like…

  My eyes snapped open. Ignoring the shotgun pressed against my head, I grabbed Jameson’s left hand and flipped it over once more. He’d clenched his hands into a fist. I pried the fingers back one by one.

  I could see blood throbbing around the unhealed wound on the man’s palm. I touched my fingers to the skin there. It was hot, so hot it almost burned.

  “I need tweezers,” I said to shotgun lady.

  “What?”

  “Tweezers! Or a small knife, or…or something. And a light. Quickly!”

  Something in my voice must’ve convinced her I wasn’t fucking around. The shotgun barrel left my head. She ran to the door, tugged it open, and stuck her head out. “Quinn, give me your pliers.”

  Jameson’s hand was trying to curl closed again. I clutched his wrist and called over my shoulder.

  “Stuckey! Sorry to involve you, but I need your help.”

  He started, hesitated for a second, then hurried over to me. His joints cracked as he knelt down beside me. “What…uh…what do you want me to do?”

  “Just keep him from making a fist. Hold his fingers back. And keep him still.”

  Stuckey shook a little, but he did what I asked. He gripped the man’s fingers tight and wrapped his other arm around the man’s forearm to hold him steady while I had a better look at the wound.

  Shotgun lady returned a few seconds later bearing a pair of needle-nosed pliers and a pocket flashlight. She gave them to me and then lingered there, looming over me.

  “Give me some space,” I said. “Pass me that bottle of water. And don’t scuff the circle.” I paused, then adjusted my tone. “Please?”

  With a little growl, she handed me the water and then backed away, carefully stepping over the circle of powdered silver. I switched on the flashlight, stuck it in my mouth, and bent over the cursed man’s hand.

  I brought the point of the bowie knife to the wound and cut a nick in the side of it, opening it up a little more. Pale pink fluid poured out of the wound, glistening in the flashlight’s beam. The fluid had a sharp stink, like acid. I put the knife aside and picked up the pliers. Seeing what I was about to do, Stuckey grimaced and looked away.

  I stuck the tips of the pliers into the wound. I felt Jameson’s muscles tensing even further, but Stuckey held tight, keeping him from clenching his fist.

  Even with the flashlight, I was feeling around blind. I tried to wash the wound with water as I worked, but blood and fluid were pooling faster than I could keep up with. I dug the pliers deeper, twisting them to the side, searching for what I was sure was there.

  The pliers scraped against something hard. For a moment I thought I’d hit bone. But as I pushed on it with my pliers, I felt the thing move.

  Jameson’s whole arm tightened, trying to pull away. Stuckey nearly lost his balance.

  “Steady,” I said around the flashlight. I leaned in, maneuvering the pliers into position. They kept slipping off the hard thing. Sweat beaded on my forehead.

  Finally, I felt the pliers gain purchase. Before it could slip away again, I pulled the thing free of the wound. Jameson offered one last groan and then went limp. Stuckey released him and backed off, wiping his hands on his shirt and leaving red streaks behind.

  I took the flashlight from my mouth and shone it on the blood-slicked thing gripped in the pliers. It wasn’t much more than half an inch long. Like a tiny sliver of bone. Or tooth.

  As I watched, the fragment began to disintegrate. Cracks formed along its surface, and then tiny chunks began to flake off, dissolving in the drops of blood streaked across its surface. A few seconds later the whole thing crumbled to dust.

  I turned my attention back to Jameson, examining him once more. His breathing had slowed, his muscles loosening. The paste I’d smeared into the cuts I’d made no longer bubbled quite so intensely.

  I breathed a sigh and dabbed at my forehead with my sleeve. “Okay. I think we’re past the crisis point.”

  “You’ve broken the curse?” shotgun lady asked.

  “Not yet. There’s work still to be done. It’ll be a few more hours yet. But you can tell your boss that barring any other nasty surprises, his man will be okay.”

  I stood up, kicked her bowie knife and the pliers back over to her, and stretched. The whole thing had only taken a few minutes, but I was aching like I’d spent all day pumping iron.

  As she picked up the knife, shotgun lady looked at the man. Her expression didn’t change, but I could see the tension seeping from her muscles. Her eyes turned back to me.

  “York is right, you know,” she said. “You’re serving the wrong side.”

  “I don’t serve anyone.”

  “Then maybe you should.”

  “I already got the sales pitch from York, thanks.”

  She frowned with frustration. “We’re not some crazy cult. I don’t follow York because he makes good speeches. I follow because I’ve seen what he can do. I’ve seen what he’s fighting for.”

  “Do the space aliens talk to you, too? Or do they only speak to York?”

  “None of us are pure enough to bask in the light of the divine. None but York. But I’ve felt the reflections from him. I’ve felt…” For a moment, the hard-ass scowl left her face, and she became a young, wide-eyed woman shining with wonder. Then the look faded, and she turned back to me. “I’m trying to help you.”

  “I’ve felt a lot too,” I said. “Seen a lot. I’ve seen great power twisted to evil ends. I’ve seen it used to manipulate and deceive. You’ve fallen under York’s spell. You and all your friends out there. There’s no greater good here. Just York, and whatever the hell he wants.”

  She shook her head. “Have you considered that you might be wrong?”

  “Have you?” We stared at each other for a few seconds. Then I picked up the nearly empty water bottle and shook it. “Got any more water? Your friend should be able to drink now. It’ll do him good.”

  I turned away. Muttering something, shotgun lady backed away.

  Stuckey looked exhausted. As shotgun lady hollered out the door, he came alongside me and looked down at the cursed man.

  “You’ve come a long way since high school,” he said.

  I shrugged. “I had help.”

  “You know, I think Holden was wrong about you. And right.”

  “Yeah?”

  He nodded. “You have changed. You’ve changed a lot more than he has.” He reached behind his back. “He should’ve asked you to join the team. Things might’ve been different.”

  As he spoke, he cast a glance toward the door, where shotgun lady was speaking to someone outside the office. Then he took his hand from behind his back and slipped something—or more than one something—into my pocket. I felt something heavy settle, and there was a soft clink of metal on metal.

  Frowning, I glanced down. He’d taken his shoes off again. I touched my pocket and felt the shape of the third gold coin.

  I met Stuckey’s eyes. They were determined. And…resigned? I opened my mouth to speak, but at that moment shotgun lady turned back around. She tossed us a bottle of water and followed it up with a big packet of beef jerky.

  “The hell’s this?” I asked, holding up the jerky.

  “Dinner,” she said. “You need to keep your strength up.” Her face hardened. “Now get back to work.”

  21

  Over the next few hours I tried more than once to talk to Stuckey again, but it proved difficult. Shotgun lady rotated out of guard duty, and instead we got stuck with my ol
d friend, the Viking. And, unfortunately, his demeanor toward me wasn’t quite as professional as his predecessor’s.

  The big blond bastard stalked through the room, twirling his gun on his finger like he was John fucking Wayne. Every time I tried to edge closer to Stuckey the Viking appeared behind me, his breath tickling the back of my neck. I think maybe I’d made him a little angry knocking him out back at the museum.

  Even on the odd occasions when our guard was distracted enough that we might’ve been able to exchange a couple of words, I was finding it hard to catch Stuckey’s eye. He seemed to have been struck by the muses in the last couple of hours. Maybe the ordeal with the cursed man had reinvigorated him. He buried himself in old documents and maps, comparing them to my notes. Once or twice he asked me a few questions about the things I’d discovered, but even when I answered he barely seemed to be listening. Each time he just nodded and returned to his work.

  So I focused on mine. The curse Early had cast was layered and interwoven with itself, requiring careful rituals and precise applications of counter-spells. It was tough work. Still, slowly but surely I was beating back the curse.

  Time became difficult to judge. There were no windows in the office, and I didn’t have a phone or a watch to refer to. It was only when I was finally allowed to take a bathroom break that I discovered night had fallen. As I was led out through the main factory floor I saw a clouded night sky through the windows. Several of the cultists were napping in dark corners, while others spoke to each other in hushed voices beneath the harsh fluorescent lighting. No sign of York, but he couldn’t be far away.

  As I glanced out through the narrow windows, I wondered how my friends were doing. I was doing my best to insulate Early from the magical backlash while I worked to break the curse, but I wouldn’t know how well it had worked until I saw him again. Which, with the way things were going, might not happen for a very long time.

  I worried about Lilian as well. I figured she’d probably escaped the museum safely—being dead already made you pretty resilient to things like whiplash. Seeing her at the hag’s the other day, though, that had really shaken me up. It was like seeing someone you loved in a hospital bed hooked up to oxygen and a catheter. Lilian didn’t cope well with being trapped, being weak. And the fear I’d seen in her eyes when she told me she was losing herself to the monster within her…

  Even if I hadn’t been trapped here, there’d be little I could do to help her. Still, I wished I could just have a beer with her, talk things over, offer what help I could. Maybe figure out what it was about that coin that’d set her off in the first place.

  Hell, some part of me was even worried about Isidora. The woman was a witch, sure. But not so long ago I hadn’t been much different. I’d once done bad things to try to save my brother. She was doing the same for her sister. I didn’t much like her, but for the moment we were on the same side.

  And Holden. Holden still dominated my fears. I’d been trying to deny it to myself, but now, as night fell on another day, my faith was beginning to waver. So far I’d clung desperately to the belief he was alive. Because if he wasn’t, then it was because I’d been too slow. Too stupid. Too blind. I hadn’t seen what I needed to see, hadn’t followed the trails I’d needed to follow. I wasn’t sure I could bear that weight, not on top of everything else.

  But another day had gone by. Another day, and still I’d heard nothing from him. He’d gotten a message to me once—why not again? Not even the fetish I’d created to connect myself to him had given me anything to go on. I needed so badly to believe he was still out there. I needed to believe this hadn’t all been for nothing.

  My guard gave me a shove to keep me moving. Sighing, I turned away from the sliver of night I could see through the windows.

  I thought the bathroom might’ve granted me enough privacy to look at what Stuckey had slipped into my pocket, but I had no such luck. My guard didn’t leave me alone for a second. It was a real glorious end to this nightmare of a day.

  Or it would have been, if my captors showed any sign that they were going to let me or Stuckey get a couple of hours’ shuteye. No comfy pillow and sleeping bag for us. As soon as the guard brought me back to the office, he crossed his arms and gave me a look that told me to get back to work.

  And work we did. Stuckey and I didn’t speak. While he pored over maps, I worked on the cursed man. It wouldn’t be long now until I’d freed him of the curse Early had laid. A couple more hours and it’d be broken. Jameson would still need time to recover, but he could do that without my help.

  Which, I was beginning to realize, meant I was rapidly outliving my usefulness.

  While I worked, I racked my brains, trying to come up with a way out of this damn place. Maybe, if I had time and was very careful, I could brew up something that would help me fight my way out. Some witch’s fire, perhaps. My guard wasn’t an expert in cunning man’s magic—he probably wouldn’t be able to tell what I was doing.

  But I didn’t have time. And while the guard might not notice, I got the feeling York would. If he caught me, I was dead.

  Besides, even with some witch’s fire or a few sunflares I didn’t fancy my chances at a breakout. There were just too many of the bastards, and they all had itchy trigger fingers.

  Nor did I think I was going to be able to sneak out. They were watching me too closely. Hell, I wasn’t even sure where the exit to this place was.

  I had to believe my chance would come. But I’d need to wait for it. Which meant I needed to give York a reason not to burn me at the stake once he was done with me.

  I was still wrestling with the problem when York returned. By my guess, it was after midnight. Exhaustion pulled at my bones and scratched at my eyes. My heart could barely even manage a nervous flutter as the office door opened and York strode in. Despite the late hour, he looked well rested and unflappable as always.

  I was crouched at the cursed man’s side, dribbling one last fortifying potion into his mouth. His color was almost back to normal. York loomed over us, peering down at the man.

  “Is it done?” he asked.

  “You’re just in time, actually.” I shook the last couple of drops into Jameson’s mouth, closed his jaw, and massaged his throat. The man swallowed, groaned, and went quiet again. His breathing became deep and slow. I stood, gesturing to Jameson. “Voilà.”

  York glanced down at the man. “He’s cured, then?” He sounded a little skeptical. Jameson wasn’t exactly singing and dancing, after all.

  “He’ll probably sleep for a day, maybe two. And when he wakes up he’s going to feel like he’s got the mother of all hangovers.” I paused. “Hey, listen, now that I’ve—”

  “Good work,” he said, cutting me off. He strode past me, over to where Stuckey was staring down at some piece of paper. He was pretending to read, but his eyes weren’t moving. As York approached, Stuckey seemed to slump down a little.

  “Have you found me the tomb, Stuckey?” York asked. His voice was quiet, but Stuckey flinched a little just the same. For a moment, Stuckey didn’t react. Then he gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head.

  York inhaled, then sighed deeply. He turned to our cultist guard and beckoned with his finger. With a little smirk on his face, the guard came and grabbed Stuckey by the collar.

  “Wait,” I said. “What are you doing?”

  York turned away from me as the guard started to drag Stuckey toward the door. “I have lost faith in Stuckey’s ability to find the tomb.”

  “You said we had a day! There’s still time. I’m done with the curse now. I can help him more.”

  But York wasn’t listening to me.

  Stuckey didn’t scream or fight. He let himself be hauled out of the office to the main factory floor. York followed. No one stopped me, so I headed after them.

  The cultists didn’t seem surprised to see Stuckey being dragged out. In fact, they looked like they’d been expecting it. They’d all been roused from their sleep, and now
they were gathered in a cluster near the center of the room. Several tables had been pushed back to clear a space. They were silent as we approached.

  The guard shoved Stuckey to his knees in front of the gathered cultists. Then he stepped back, blending into the small crowd as York and I came closer.

  My heart was in my throat. All my earlier tiredness was washed away by a wave of black dread.

  “Don’t do this,” I hissed to York. “He hasn’t done anything to you.”

  York ignored me. He moved so that he was standing in front of Stuckey, close enough that the old guy could’ve licked the cult leader’s boots if he wanted to.

  “I’m very disappointed in you, Stuckey,” York said. “I’d hoped to bring you to the light.”

  Stuckey mumbled something that I couldn’t make out. His eyes were on the floor, his hands clenched into fists on his knees.

  “What was that?” York asked.

  Stuckey raised his head and glared at the cult leader. “I said get it over with!”

  York looked to the cultists, and shotgun lady stepped forward. Only this time she wasn’t holding her shotgun. She was bearing a linen-wrapped package about as long as my arm. It was tied with fine white ropes which easily unraveled as she tugged on the free end. The linen fell away, revealing what lay within.

  It was a sword. An honest-to-God sword. It had a wide scabbard made of aged leather trimmed with silver filigree. The grip was wrapped with more leather—black this time—and the pommel was embossed with a symbol that looked like a sunburst. Shotgun lady held the scabbard, turning the grip toward York. He wrapped his fingers around it and drew the sword.

  It had a single edge, with a curve along the blade making it wider and heavier toward the top, almost like a machete. The blade had been polished to a dazzling shine.