The Night Sheriff, page 16
Her mother’s reign was a short one. In the early 1960s, another sorceress, a Lady LeChow, attempted to become the new Moon Queen of New Orleans. An important part of this plan involved the eradication of the old Queen, which she did in a rather messy fashion.
This was supposed to let people know that the new Queen was serious and would suffer no sass. She was very surprised when she discovered that Celeste was the actual power in New Orleans. Now there may have been a bit of generational friction, but Celeste had been very fond of her mother. I am told that in a certain New Orleans voodoo-themed tourist trap, there is a room where the casual tourists are not allowed to go. One of the things you’d find there is a cunning little doll trapped inside a cage of nails. This contains the Lady LeChow’s spirit. When it is not moaning in pain, or begging to be released, it will relate her whole, sad story for a dollar.
Celeste is once again (as far as she’s concerned) the undisputed Moon Queen of New Orleans. She comes to visit, every decade or so, and I quite enjoy it when she does, the whole geas unpleasantness aside. She once addressed the Council of Shadow’s annual fiesta, and her speech was even more popular and inspirational than the one delivered by that charming Elvira woman, and I’d thought that a bar impossible to clear. She has brought her own daughter, and later her granddaughter along as well, both of them rich with the family power. I am convinced that the carnival of the dead will be strutting through the streets of New Orleans for generations to come.
Anyway, several decades ago, when it had become patently obvious that the Zenon Corporation might very well outlive western civilization itself, I had once again begged her to undo the geas. Unfortunately, when my geas was originally crafted, part of what made it so strong was the understanding that no L’Enfant will ever undo that which a previous L’Enfant has wrought.
Higher magic is all about tricking reality into behaving against its better interests. As a result, when done correctly, it reads like a contract between insane lawyers. And, like an innocent man caught up in the coils of the law, I have pleaded, threatened, and railed against her about this, all to no effect. The upshot is that while she cannot abrogate the geas, there is the possibility that some other sorcerer could actually undo the damned thing, but apparently no one powerful enough is willing to do so, at least not within the United States.
If you are unlucky enough to spend any time amongst the magical community, you will realize that these people have issues. Everyone who has the slightest ability to sidestep the observable nuances of cause and effect is a large ball of thin-skinned insecurities. Thus, if you dared to unweave another sorcerer’s geas, it would be seen as a challenge of some sort, and you’d wake up to find all of your handkerchiefs trying to strangle you or something.
Thaumaturgy is a filthy business, and the schadenfreude I experience whenever I hear about some magus being dragged down through the floor or going up in a ball of green flame is well earned, I think.
Celeste has sworn that she would not go after anyone “foolish enough to dare to challenge the might of the L’Enfant,” but just the wording of that ostensibly benign declaration should tell you all you need to know. Be that as it may, I cannot deny that she did her best to get me out on a technicality.
This attempt was made in 1988. Mr. Raphael was in the hospital with pneumonia, and it was an open secret that he was not expected to last for much longer. Celeste had informed me that she was arriving, and I met her at the main gate. She explained that she might be able to retroactively tweak the geas so that it would only bind me while a family member of Mr. Mortimer’s generation still lived. The downside was that there was a thirty percent chance that when Mr. Raphael died, I would as well.
To make a long story slightly less long, I accepted.
Again there were words in the light of the moon. Oaths and declarations, potions and another dance step that left me stretched out upon the ground, panting. Celeste looked at my reflection in a smoked mirror and declared the enchantment in place. She even waited around until Mr. Raphael slid peacefully into his final slumber. I had an unpleasant moment there, when he actually died. I felt a great tugging from nowhere. But after a minute, I realized that I was not going to die, and with a joyful shout, I leapt up into the sky and sailed smack into the ever-present barrier.
Celeste was quite embarrassed. To the point where she did not even bill me.
In fact, the most immediate and long-term effect was a souring of the relationship between Bone Cat and myself.
He glowered at me after Celeste left. “Did you even think what would happen to me iffin you died?”
I looked at him in surprise. “Not really,” I admitted. “I have had several close calls, like when I fought the Wendigo, and you never mentioned it.”
“That was different. You was doin’ your job. I respected that. But this … ‘Oh, fuckin’ boo hoo, I’m so sick of being stuck here that I’m okay with gettin’ snuffed for nothin’.’” He sneered. “You wanna be pathetic, you do it on your own time.”
I felt stunned. It was true. I had never even considered what my death would do to Bone Cat. He only manifested when I touched the ground. And now that I thought about it … “What would happen to you if I actually managed to sever my geas and leave the park?”
He leapt up and smacked me across the face. “Thirty-three years and change before you even thought about that? You asshole!” Obviously he had thought about it a lot, and for the next few years, our partnership was an uncomfortable one.
It was ten years before Celeste got back in contact with me. To my surprise, it turned out that she had been working on my problem for a large part of it. L’Enfant de Lune does not like failure.
We met up at Bayou Wonderland’s homage to New Orleans’ Café du Monde, which is famous for chicory-infused coffee and a particularly beloved variant on humanity’s eternal love affair with fried and sugared dough, called a beignet.
Apparently, when it first opened, the beignets here were rather awful, if young Celeste’s reaction was anything to go by. However, she paced out a little cantrip around the building, and with my help, inscribed some symbols on the roof in red chalk, and now any employee who produces less than perfect pastries or coffee has an increasingly horrible series of dreams explaining how they’re going to metamorphose into an alligator unless they flee or their work improves. This has proved so effective that the whole alligator thing only happened once, to a troubled young lady who had a very well-hidden herpetological fetish. She was actually rather pleased when she transformed into a majestic albino alligator who is now treated like royalty at the local zoo.
It was kept out of the papers, of course, but a transformation like that leaves a residue, as it were, which can linger for over a century in the right climate. What it did here was give those dreams credence. As a result, pastry chefs have traveled here from the original Café du Monde to see how it is that the Zenonland bakers are now producing better beignets than they are.
So there we were, sitting together. The café was crowded, as always, but magically, as it were, a small empty table was waiting for us in a corner. Celeste sat and listened to Bone Cat, who enjoys having a new listener for his ramblings, while I fetched us a large plate of pastries and a couple of coffees. Naturally, I myself do not have to eat or drink, but there is the public appearance of things to consider, and Celeste does not want to look like the kind of woman who would plan on eating a dozen beignets all by herself (Although that is in fact what she does, all the while making a great show of reluctance about doing it. It is a performance that never fails to entertain.).
As for myself, I surreptitiously sprinkle a little powdered sugar down my front and simply allow people make the obvious assumption. Incidentally, I have found this to be a very useful psychological trick whenever I want whomever I am talking with to be more at ease in my presence. Tastefully small dabs of mustard and salad dressing work equally well, but ketchup has rather the opposite effect.
So Bone Cat and I sat back and watched as Celeste plowed through a half a dozen pastries (without a speck of powdered sugar getting anywhere near her black outfit) before she paused and looked me in the eye. “I have been working on your geas, mon ami. Ever since Raphael Zenon, paix à son âme, died.”
I shrugged. “Magic is, by its very nature, tricky.”
“No.” She surprised me with her vehemence. “No, it should have worked. We did everything correctly. You agreed to the price. It was accepted. I saw that in the mirror.”
“So what happened?”
Celeste hunched down and selected another beignet, which she delicately nibbled on. “There are several possibilities. There is no mistake about Bartholomew and Raphael Zenon, but we must now acknowledge the possibility that Mortimer Zenon is not actually dead.”
I felt shock at this declaration. I was convinced that Mr. Mortimer had suffered some terrible fate the night I had been bound to the park. If only because I could not believe that if he were alive, he would have stayed away. I had let it be known, through Celeste, and the rest of my contacts, that I had forgiven him. But in all the intervening years, I had heard nothing. I looked over at Bone Cat, who was engaged in attempting to steal one of the L’Enfant’s beignets. He shrugged. “Sorry I can’t help you answer that one, chief. Barty-boy was the only member of the family I ever cared about.”
This was certainly true. The two had had a most interesting relationship. Mr. Bartholomew had been thunderstruck the first time he’d met Bone Cat, and apparently—I had stepped out to allow them a modicum of privacy—had spent an inordinate amount of time apologizing for “throwing him over for Preston.” Artists worry about the strangest things.
“I find it hard to believe that he might still be alive,” I said carefully.
“As do I,” Celeste said regretfully, selecting another beignet. “It would make things ever so much easier, but all of my researches have told me that he never left the city.”
“Then he could still be alive, albeit a prisoner. He’d be in his late eighties, but—”
Celeste waved a hand. “I have dreamwalked. Through this city, through the state, through the upper world.” She sighed, and suddenly looked as tired as if she had continuously lived every one of her lives in one long stretch. “It was difficult. But even if he was drugged, I would have found his sense of self. No, even if his body was alive, Mortimer Zenon is no more.”
I had thought that I had come to terms with the idea that Mr. Mortimer was truly gone, but the sick feeling in my chest let me know that I had still held out hope. I slumped in my chair, and Bone Cat gently patted my arm. “Very well … so?”
Celeste sat back, glanced at the beignets, and with an uncharacteristic grimace, pushed them away. Bone Cat took this as permission to begin wolfing them down, to the fascination of several young children at the next table.
“It is possible that one of his parents had additional children, of which mayhap even the three sons were unaware.” She shrugged. “A premarital indiscretion secretly given up for adoption. The hidden fruit of an extramarital affair. Magic delights in exploiting these sorts of surprise loopholes.”
I sat back and considered this. I had never met the elder Zenons. But everything I had read implied that they were simple, hardworking people you would have unironically described as “the salt of the earth.”
They had been immensely proud of what Mr. Bartholomew had built, although I’m told that they were worried that it was all some sort of gigantic confidence trick, as the idea that his fame and fortune actually resulted from simply drawing an endless succession of cartoon animals seemed improbable to them, at best. I would have said that neither of them seemed the type to produce mysterious, heretofore unknown offspring, but there are certain things that continually surprise me as far as people are concerned, and a depressing number of them have to do with sex. I sighed. “So we are back to waiting for someone to die. How cheerful.”
Celeste shrugged. “But it is a step in the right direction. Everyone does die.”
I considered this. Both of the elder Zenons had died in the 1940s, both in their eighties. I could not realistically see any contemporary kin of Mr. Bartholomew being younger than seventy-five already. “Well,” I grumbled, “they’re certainly taking their time about it, but the next ten years or so should be sufficient, yes?”
“Oh, yes,” Celeste assured me, “There is a very good chance you’ll greet the new century free and clear.”
And yet, once again, she was proven wrong. It has been over twenty years since that night, and as my recent flight confirmed, the geas that binds me to this place is as strong as ever. Whomever it is that the geas binds me to either has access to superlative medical treatment or else, and this is the thought that troubles my dreams, is being prevented from dying. There are any number of curses that could do that, though you don’t usually see that kind of old-school malice much these days. Those types of curses tend to extract a terrible price on those foolish enough to cast them. However, if I am honest, I must admit that during the time of our association, Mr. Mortimer and I earned that level of enmity several times over.
I only wished that I had been there to help him as he had helped me.
Chapter Seven
I extrude myself from my sanctuary and pause. I can feel it. Something is different, but what?
It looks like it’s going to be another pleasant California night. The crowds ebb and flow in their usual patterns, but there is something odd. An out of place note in the overall symphony of the park. Bone Cat gives a yawn that looks like it would split his head in half and darts out into the twilight.
It is still a bit too bright outside for me to fly up and survey the park en toto, so I step out and extend my perceptions. The visitors are normal. A few wisps of vague dread about the cost of this vacation or fretting about the report they really should have finished that is still on their desk, and there is a ubiquitous, but low-level fretting about gas explosions, which makes sense, I suppose—thin fare to be sure, but until I know what is wrong, I prefer not to get too full.
Suddenly something that has been right in front of me snaps into focus. All of the park employees are wearing new badges. The first concrete sign of our new masters. It has a lovely holographic image of the Castle that sparkles as it tilts, but it seems like an odd expenditure, the old badges were still quite serviceable … The mystery clears a bit when I see another employee attempt to use one of the service doors, only to find it locked. They roll their eyes and dip slightly in order to bring their badge within range of a newly mounted reader. The door gives a gentle buzz, and they step inside. Ah, I have read about these. In addition to allowing only employees entrance to backstage areas, they can also tell security which employee is opening which door.
Initially I think this to be Mr. Donovan’s doing, in response to yesterday’s infiltration. But even a minute’s thought is enough to dismiss this idea. The paperwork alone for a job this extensive would have to be undertaken days—if not weeks—in advance, especially if you want it done within the space of a single day, which it appears that they have.
I debate whether to get my old badge replaced immediately, or to wait until I head down to my office after the park closes. On the one hand, I do not want to give the impression that I am worried about the state of my “job” (I fully expect to find my office—gasp!—locked), but on the other hand, I do not function in a vacuum. The security people that I work with are touchy enough about my status that they appreciate the fact that I bother to hew to the form of things, and actually wear my badge, pay my Union dues, and fill in my time card. This is one of those occasions when I want to remind people that I am a “team player,” plus I expect that no matter how tight a lid has been kept on things, the news of even a minor explosion on a Zenonland ride will be all over the news. The park will be swarming with outsiders, newspeople, and those damned inspectors, who do not know who I am … So—let us force the issue. To the office it is.
That is, until Bone Cat rockets back around the corner, grabs my coat, and drags me forward so that I can see that there is scaffolding around the castle tower. This is a shocking lapse to begin with. Repairs and maintenance are, of course, going on all the time, but to exhibit the mundane artifacts of this; to admit to the public that this place of magic and moonshine is subject to entropy and California State Building Codes is practically unheard of. I assume that someone is taking the gas leak threat all too seriously—until I notice that the focus of the scaffolding seems to be my chambers.
I step into the shadows and skirl my way up to the window. What I find is so surprising that I almost coalesce enough to once again be subject to the forces of gravity. My room has been, well, foamed. It’s the sort of insulation stuff that they squirt between walls, which swells and hardens, filling every nook and crevice. I extend my senses and can tell that the room’s furnishings are still there, just entombed in foam. The casket has been opened, and thus, even if I could somehow phase through several meters of solidified foam (which I cannot, of course, no ephemeral ghost or phantasm am I), it would provide me with no useable sanctuary.
I do not for an instant believe this to be some misguided attempt at repair or renovation. This is an attack upon myself. With this realization, I dart out into the night and head for my next closest registered resting spot. My suspicions are instantly confirmed. This place has also been destroyed.
An hour later, I finish my survey of the park. After the first three destroyed resting places, I began to travel more surreptitiously to try to avoid leading anyone to places they might not already know about, but that particular horse has already left that particular barn far behind. All twenty of the resting places registered with management have been destroyed. Of the additional twenty-three I had thought secret, only seven remain untouched. No, someone wants me dead, not fired. This is no longer amusing. While I am perfectly willing to play through the whole being fired farce, I have no patience with anyone who tries to kill me. It is definitely time to have another talk with my new friend, Mr. Donovan, and examine the park camera recordings.
