James Swain - Dark Magic

He couldn’t concentrate, and shook his head. “Sorry.”

“Please!” they chorused.

“Come on, everyone. Let’s give them a big round of applause,” he said.

The audience started to clap. The applause had a strangely hollow sound. To his horror, he realized that every member of his fan club had also changed. Rows of dead Millys and dead Hollys confronted him, their clapping motions stiff and awkward.

“What’s wrong?” Liza asked through his earpiece.

“The spirits are communicating to me,” he whispered into the mike in his shirt collar. “I’ve got to get off the stage.”

“But this is your fan club. You can’t let them down.”

He wasn’t thinking straight, and couldn’t have continued if his very life depended on it.

“I can’t.”

“ Peter. These are teenage girls. They’ll be crushed.”

“I’m freaking.”

“Do it anyway. Finish the routine, damn it.”

He gave it his best, and stepped to the foot of the stage. “Who’d like to be next?”

“Take me!” A young man wearing a ridiculous fake moustache stood in the aisle in the very back of the theater. Snoop to the rescue. When tricks in the show broke bad, his assistant had been trained to jump in, and salvage the routine. It was an old ploy developed by Houdini, and had stood the test of time.

“Your name,” Peter said.

“Jerry Smith, and I want my future read,” Snoop said.

“Very well, Jerry. Please concentrate. I see a shiny race car. Is it yours?”

“Why, that’s amazing. Yes, it is.”

“Formula One?”

“Yes-how did you know that?”

“You don’t look like a NASCAR kind of guy. You race cars for a living, which is something you’ve wanted to do since you were a little boy. You’re visiting New York with your family, celebrating a race you just won. In a few days you’ll fly off to Europe, where you plan to race in all the major events.”

“That’s impossible. How did you know that ?”

It was crude to use Snoop as a plant like this, but Peter had no other choice. The sea of dead faces stared at him with morbid fascination.

“I see a long future for you in car-racing. One day, you may own your own team. I’d tell you good luck, but I don’t think you’re going to need it.”

The hollow clapping began. Peter signaled that he wanted the stage lights turned off. Hurrying into the wings, he spent a moment composing himself. Then, he pulled out his cell phone. Holly’s number was the first he called, Milly’s the next. He left messages on voice mail, telling them their lives were in danger.

“What are you doing?” Liza appeared beside him.

“Wolfe is going to attack my friends, Milly and Holly.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I just had a vision. I have to warn them. Please go out there, and make up some story that I’ve fallen ill, and that the show is cancelled.”

“You can’t be serious.”

Peter took his girlfriend by the shoulders. “The face of every girl in the audience turned into Milly and Holly. They were both dead. He’d killed them.”

“No, they didn’t. It’s just a bunch of giggling teenagers.”

“I saw it. You have to believe me.”

“Do you know where your friends are?”

“No. I need to go find them.”

“You’re leaving right now?”

“Yes.”

“Peter, this is insane. Call the police. They can protect them better than you can.”

The police hadn’t protected his parents, or Madame Marie and her husband, and Peter knew they wouldn’t be able to save Milly and Holly. When it came to dealing with the spirit world, the police were always one step behind.

“Offer everybody a rain check,” he said.

Liza stepped back. The look in her eyes bordered on pure disdain.

“Please don’t do this.”

“I have to go. If that doesn’t work, give them a full refund.”

“Whatever you say, Peter.” And then she was gone.

Wolfe waited until dark to hunt Millicent Adams.

According to the information he’d found on the Internet, she was considered the psychic in New York, and counted many of the city’s rich and famous as her clients. She worked out of a luxurious apartment building called the Dakota on the Upper West Side across from Central Park. Finding her would not be difficult, even in a city as big as this one.

Still wearing his elaborate disguise, he left the Hotel Carter at nine o’clock, and walked to the busy Times Square subway station at 42nd Street. Soon he was packed in a subway car with a mob of people hooked into iPhones or reading a newspaper.

Just north of 59th Street, the car hit a bump in the track, and the lights went out. The smell of fear emanated from his fellow passengers like cheap perfume. The day his hearing had changed, so had his other senses, and his sense of smell was better than a dog’s. Human beings threw off a variety of smells depending upon the mood they were in, and Wolfe knew what each smell meant. It had saved his life many times.

He exited at the 81st Street station. At the top of the stairs was a man hawking the New York Post . He bought a copy. Splashed across the front page was his picture with the words HAVE YOU SEEN THIS MAN? Everyone in the bloody city was looking for him.

He found an isolated spot outside of the station and opened up the newspaper beneath a dim street light. There was a long story explaining his various misdeeds. The police had upped their reward to $100,000 for his capture. The captain of the NYPD was quoted as saying, “We’re going to nail this son of a bitch, so help me God!”

Wolfe did not scare easily. But the Post story was troubling. It mentioned the tattoo on his neck and included a drawing of it. It was like having a scarlet letter stitched to his chest. He had to get the damn thing removed.

Stuffing the paper into a trash bin, he headed south on Central Park West, walking along the wide sidewalk beside the park. The smells emanating from the park were more varied than in the subway. Joggers panting, lovers in between breaths, a baby needing its diaper changed, someone smoking a joint. At the corner of 72nd Street, he caught another smell coming out of the oak trees inside the park. It made every hair on the back of his neck stand up.

A waist-high concrete wall separated the sidewalk from the park. Wolfe pressed his stomach to it. A mob of black crows stared back at him from the tree limbs. As a soldier, he’d learned about crows. They were meant to guide spirits into the afterlife, and were considered dark omens on the battlefield. He tried to put their presence out of his mind.

A more pleasant smell invaded his head. On the corner, a vendor sold roasted chestnuts from a metal cart. Wolfe bought a bag, and asked for directions to find the famed Dakota.

“You must be from out of town,” the vendor said.

“Is it that obvious?” Wolfe said.

“It’s across the street.”

He had a look. The Dakota took up the entire block, and was as imposing as a medieval fortress. He spotted no less than a dozen security cameras secured to the front, a doorman, and more security people inside the lobby. No wonder the city’s elite chose to live here. Breaking into the building would be difficult, if not downright impossible.

He thought back to the articles he’d read about Millicent Adams. Milly, as her friends called her, was a creature of habit, and dined each night at a quaint French restaurant on West 86th Street, where she sat at her own table, often in the company of a friend, ate a simple meal of broiled fish and vegetables, and drank a single glass of white Chablis. She’d been following this routine for forty years, and had ventured out every night, regardless of the weather. Would tonight be any different? Something told him it wouldn’t.