Pay Dirt Page 3

  But why? What did I have to do with any of this?

  Hell, if Habi had gotten me into some sort of trouble, I was going to be pissed.

  “There was something on the paper,” Lilian said. “I saw it before…” She trailed off.

  The paper? I picked it up, brushed the dirt off it. It was thick, some kind of parchment. Maybe it was my imagination, but it smelled a little of dead bird.

  I unfolded the paper, stared at it in the light coming through the kitchen window.

  A single word had been handwritten in the center of the paper. I read it over and over, and each time I read it I believed my eyes a little less.

  Lilian said something, but I was too busy staring at the paper to catch it.

  “Huh?”

  “What does it say?” she repeated.

  “Matchstick.”

  “Matchstick? That’s it?”

  I nodded, not looking at her.

  “What does it mean?” she asked.

  I folded the paper up and slipped it into my pocket.

  “It means Habi’s trouble just became my responsibility.”

  3

  I left Alice’s place with a few muttered words. Early would take good care of Lilian, and I guess my sister would just have to do the rest of the dishes herself. I needed to be alone with my thoughts for a while.

  I drove my van into a secluded parking lot a half mile down the road, where the lack of street lights would hide me from any passersby. When I was sure I was alone, I climbed into the back of the van and got things set up.

  My van served as a kind of mobile lab. I kept a few of my more commonly used items and ingredients here. It didn’t pay to get caught short. With a lit candle as my only light, I emptied out the contents of my pockets and got to work.

  I didn’t hold out much hope that I could find the person who’d sent the coin with anything as simple as a tracking spell, but I had to try something. I gathered a handful of bloodied magpie feathers I’d plucked from the dead bird and tied them into a loose arrangement along with some chicken bones I’d cleaned and preserved after my last guilty KFC dinner.

  Without a real physical sample from my target, any tracking spell was going to be weak. But people left other traces, traces that weren’t so easily seen. I took out the piece of paper the magpie had been holding and smoothed it out in front of me. The single word, Matchstick, had been scrawled in tall spidery letters with a pen that was nearly out of ink. Maybe it was my imagination, but as I ran my fingers across the letters, I could almost sense the desperation contained within the paper.

  I touched the corner of the paper to the candle flame. As soon as it caught, I dropped it into a chipped bowl with floral patterns around the rim. Fire quickly consumed the piece of paper, leaving nothing behind but a pool of black ash.

  With luck, the ash would contain some emotional essence linking it to whoever had written the message.

  As if you don’t already know who wrote it.

  I forced the thought away. It was just a piece of paper with a single word written on it. I couldn’t be sure who’d sent it.

  I tapped the bowl so the ash gathered in the center, then grabbed a few pinches of dried herbs and added them to the mixture. Finally, I tilted the candle over the bowl and let a few drops of wax drip onto the ash mixture.

  Before the wax could set, I stirred the ash mixture into it, turning the red wax dark and dusty. While I gave it a few seconds to cure, I pulled the two gold coins out of my pocket and studied them in the candlelight.

  I took one in each hand, weighing them against each other. I’d briefly thought one might be a forgery of the other, but near as I could tell they really were both gold. There were minor imperfections on the surface of each—it seemed like they’d been cast by hand, rather than using any sort of modern machinery.

  At first glance they seemed nearly identical, but looking closer I saw that wasn’t the case. At the bottom of each coin, there was a difference in the script. What that meant, though, I had no idea.

  I put the coins back in my pocket and returned my attention to the wax mixture. As it began to cure, I picked it up and rolled the wax into a ball about the size of a marble. Weaving a small net of twine, I hung the wax ball within the web of bones and magpie feathers, completing the fetish.

  The wax ball would form the focus. With luck, it would create a tenuous link to the envelope’s sender. If something pinged the fetish, I’d know about it.

  Trouble was, this was like trying to pick up radio broadcasts on the fillings in your teeth. Either the signal needed to be strong, or I had to get closer to the source.

  I didn’t know where the source was. But I could think of a good place to start looking.

  I climbed into the driver’s seat and headed back out of town.

  The lights of Lost Falls faded away behind me. The train graveyard was a couple of miles out of town, down roads that didn’t see much use anymore. Thick forest closed in overhead as I drove, blocking out the sky. I turned on the radio, tuning in to the first music station I came across.

  I didn’t recognize the song, or the band, or even the damn genre. It sure as hell wasn’t the kind of stuff I used to like. But I listened anyway, reveling in the fact that I could. Not so long ago, I wouldn’t have been able to hear anything but discordant noise. Not anymore. Now, I could hear it all. Even several months later, it felt like color had come back into my world.

  I shouldn’t have been driving back out this way. It was stupid. I’d got my kelpie-hoof fetish back. Habi’s trouble was none of my business. The smart thing to do would’ve been to head home, get some sleep, and try to round up some fresh work in the morning. The ingredients I’d used to track Habi down hadn’t been cheap, and if I wanted to eat something other than ramen noodles and leftovers stolen from my sister this week, I needed a job.

  There was no reason to go back to the train yard. No damn reason at all. Nothing but a piece of paper that was now ash. Nothing but a single word and a promise made more than a decade ago.

  “We need a code word this time.”

  “A code word?”

  “Yeah. Something we can say and other people won’t get suspicious, you know? Just in case.”

  “You mean something we can slip into conversation.Except we know it really means—”

  “Get me the fuck outta here. You got it, big guy. Let’s see, how about…”

  “Matchstick.”

  “Matchstick? And how the fuck are you supposed to use ‘matchstick’ in an ordinary conversation?”

  “I don’t know. Ask for one.”

  “Who uses matches anymore? Besides, we’re kids. Who’s going to give a kid a match?”

  “They don’t have to give us one. We just have to say the word. That’s the point, right?”

  “All right, all right, fine. Matchstick it is. Jesus Christ. So if it all goes to hell in there and one of us says the word…”

  “Then I’ll come running to bail your ass out again.”

  “We’ll see who needs to bail out who, big guy. We’ll see.”

  I shook my head, trying to rid myself of the memories. With everything that’d happened to me in the last few years, I could barely remember those days. My life was divided into two: before the Dealer gave me my power, and afterward. The memories from before belonged to a different Ozzy, a young, angry, naive kid.

  It wasn’t until I read the word on that piece of paper that I realized how much he was still a part of me.

  I didn’t know what the appearance of that paper meant. Nothing fit together like it ought to. All I knew was that the old, mundane, Unaware part of my life was crashing into the hidden world I now belonged to.

  I just hoped I survived the collision.

  In the black of night, I slipped back over the train yard fence.

  I needed to find Habi. If I could pin the ghoul down long enough to get him to talk, then I might have some answers. He was bound to be around here somewhere.

&nb
sp; Unless Lilian was right. Unless the ghoul really was in trouble. Unless he’d already bolted.

  Or worse.

  No. Habi would be fine. He wasn’t cursed.

  Maybe not cursed. But there are worse things than curses in this town.

  I didn’t want to admit it, but it was true. Which was why I’d come prepared.

  My coat was heavy around my shoulders. It rattled as I moved. There were more than a dozen pockets sewn in the coat, both inside and out, and all of them were stuffed with vials and talismans and fetishes and flasks.

  Early didn’t like me wearing this coat. It was a relic of my past, when my use of magic hadn’t been dedicated to such wholesome pursuits. Some of the things I carried now were designed to hurt, even kill. That wasn’t exactly the way of the cunning man.

  Early could put his faith in the fundamental kindness of others. Me, I preferred to bring a little backup.

  Hanging from a loop on my belt was my last line of defense. A heavy wooden truncheon, nearly two feet long. It had an iron core and a silver-plated head. Words of power and arcane symbols were engraved along its length.

  The truncheon was a reassuring weight at my side. Magic was all well and good, but when it got down to teeth and claws, there was nothing like having a big heavy stick in your hand.

  Gravel crunched beneath my shoes as I passed between the shadows of forgotten freight cars. When even the faint moonlight filtering through the clouds wasn’t enough to see by anymore, I pulled out my phone and switched on the light.

  And immediately the beam of light flashed across a gaunt, hooded face staring down at me from the top of a freight car.

  I jumped back a step, my heart lurching to life. My hand went to the truncheon at my side.

  Then I took another look, and realized it was a face I recognized. It was the teenage ghoul from earlier, the one who’d been making a snack out of some poor bastard’s intestine. She’d lost her friends, and now she was sitting up on the top of that freight car all alone. Her legs dangled over the side of the car.

  “I thought you left,” she said.

  I took a breath, moved my hand away from my truncheon. “I did. Then I came back.” I paused. “Mind if I join you up there?”

  She stared at me for a second, then made a lazy gesture, as if to say, “It’s a free train yard.”

  I looked around and found a few rusted steel rungs at the end of the car. I muttered a silent prayer that they’d hold my weight, then hauled myself up.

  The god of dead trains must’ve heard my prayer. I clambered up onto the roof of the freight car and took a look around the yard. From up here, I thought I could see the box car where I’d found Habi, and beyond that the building he’d fled into. Nothing moved in the darkness.

  I sat down next to the girl. She reached into the pocket of her hoodie and brought out a plastic water bottle. I didn’t know what was inside, but it sure wasn’t water. The fluid was black and sludgy. She offered it to me.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Puree.”

  “Pureed what?”

  One corner of her lips quirked upward. “It’s good.”

  “I’ll pass.”

  She shrugged and uncapped the bottle. I caught a whiff of something that smelled like roadkill left out in the sun too long. I tried not to gag as she took a swig and returned the bottle to her pocket.

  “Sal, right?” I said. “That’s your name?”

  She nodded.

  “What happened to your friends?” I asked.

  “They left to find food. They got pissy ‘cos I wouldn’t give them any of mine.”

  “The guy, he seemed—”

  “Like a real prick? Yeah, he is.”

  “Then why are you friends with him?”

  “You don’t have any friends who are pricks?” she said.

  “Not really, no. Not anymore.”

  She shot me a sideways glance and a small smile. “Then maybe it’s you. Maybe you’re their prick friend.”

  “Now that I think about it, you might be right.”

  The girl stretched out her arms above her head, and I heard joints popping. She was a scrawny thing, practically drowning in her own hoodie. By the smell of her, she hadn’t seen the inside of a shower for a while.

  “You were supposed to help Habi,” she said after a moment.

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, did you?”

  I shook my head. “No.”

  She frowned at that. Maybe she wasn’t expecting honesty.

  “My friends said you wouldn’t help him.”

  “In my defense,” I said, “Habi wasn’t exactly making it easy for me. He bolted. Any idea where he is now?”

  She paused, then shook her head. “I went looking for him after I saw you leave. Wanted to ask him what it was all about.”

  “And?”

  “He’s not here anymore.”

  “You sure?” I looked out at the shadowed lines of dead trains. In the dark they looked a little like veins on a dead leaf. “Lot of places here he could hide.”

  “You think I don’t know all of them?” She jumped up and balanced on the balls of her feet. With surprising grace, she threw her arms forward and performed a handstand right on the edge of the freight car, stretching her legs out over empty space.

  “Whoa, easy there.” I put my hand out, but I didn’t want to grab her in case I made her overbalance. I didn’t even really want to move too much—the rusted freight car wasn’t the sturdiest thing in the world. “You’ll break a damn leg if you fall from here.”

  She stayed where she was, balancing on the edge like a gymnast. “Do you know what a ghoul is, cunning man?”

  “I think I have some idea. Now sit back down.”

  “A ghoul is a scavenger. A carrion-eater. We’re not like the vampires. Lockhart and her brood are predators. They have strength, power. They think they own Lost Falls, and maybe they do. But us ghouls, we scurry around in the filth and muck, trying to keep the hunger at bay. Knowing that if we can’t, if it becomes too much and we go feral, we have nothing better to look forward to than our brothers and sisters hunting us down and tearing us apart before we can expose everyone to the humans. We don’t have power or wealth or any of that shit. We have holes to hide in and a very strong survival instinct. I’ve been all over this place tonight, asked everyone, looked in every hole, and I’m telling you, if Habi was hiding here, I’d know about it.”

  With that, she bent a leg and spun right-side-up again, sitting back down beside me. Why do all teenagers think they’re invincible? She nearly gave me a heart attack.

  It wasn’t wrong, though, what she’d said. When it came to sentient Strangers in Lost Falls, ghouls were at the bottom of the heap. They were the homeless, the poor, the ones left behind. They didn’t have the sorcery of the vampires, or the cunning of the goblins, or the ability to walk easily among the Unaware like me and Early and all the other humans in our community could.

  But when it came down to it, they weren’t that different from the rest of us. They were hiding from a world that had few places left to hide. Just like the vampires, and the goblins, and the ogres, and all the rest. Just like Early. Just like me.

  “All right,” I said. “I believe you. Habi’s not here. So where is he?”

  The girl shook her head. “I don’t know.”

  The way she said it, I believed that too. And though she was trying to hide it, I could tell she was worried. Which made me worried.

  I was getting a real bad feeling about this whole mess. Sure, maybe I’d just spooked Habi enough to send him to ground. Maybe he’d show up in a day or two, safe and sound. But that bad feeling kept gnawing at my gut, telling me something was wrong.

  I kept going back to that sound I’d heard coming from the repair yard bathroom. Breaking glass, and then a cry. I’d thought that sound had been Habi smashing a window and then wriggling through, maybe cutting himself as he tried to get away from me. But maybe there was so
mething else.

  Maybe something other than me had caught up with him.

  “You know Habi well?” I asked.

  “Kind of. We hang out the same places. He used to get me food sometimes when I couldn’t find it myself.”

  “Does he think the same way you do? About what it means to be a ghoul?”

  She nodded and gave a little laugh. “Oh, yeah. You think I’m a downer, you should get talking to him sometime.” She paused, her brow creasing. She stared out into the darkness.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “About a week ago, he said something. He was complaining again, like he always does, but this time he wasn’t so grumpy. He seemed kind of excited or something. I asked him what he was taking to make him grin like that, and he said he had a way out.”

  “A way out?”

  She shrugged. “It was all he’d say.”

  “What do you think he meant?”

  She thought for a second. “Money. I think he thought he’d found some way to make a lot of money. Something that would get him out of this shithole, take him somewhere he could lounge around on silk cushions eating fine delicacies.”

  “Huh. What’s a delicacy for a ghoul?”

  “Why do you ask questions you don’t want the answer to?”

  “You know, I’m really not sure.” I shook my head. “Was anyone else in on Habi’s scheme?”

  “Probably. Habi was never an ideas guy.”

  “But you don’t know who?”

  “No,” she said. “Sorry.”

  I sighed. I could go around asking every damn ghoul in this place, but I knew I’d be lucky to find any as talkative as Sal here. And if any of them were wrapped up in the same business as Habi, they probably wouldn’t be interested in opening up to someone like me.

  “Do you have a phone?” I asked her.

  “Who doesn’t have a phone?”

  I crooked a finger at her. Eying me carefully, she took a phone out of her pocket and handed it to me. No fancy new smart phone for her. This one was at least ten years old—no camera, no internet access, nothing. I navigated to her contacts and added my number under “Cunning man.”