Victor Gischler - Vampire A Go-Go

Allen thought Zabel did not look anything like he imagined a wizard should look. Maybe he was thinking too much of Gandalf. Zabel looked like Allen’s dentist. Allen hated his dentist.

Zabel led them into a small sitting room. The furnishings were old-not Commie surplus, but not quite antiques either. Threadbare chairs, a table that needed polishing, tall shelves filled with books, a small Persian rug, also threadbare.

Zabel didn’t sit, didn’t offer chairs to Amy or Allen. “So what can I do for you?”

“We need to speak with a dead man,” Amy told him.

Zabel nodded. “Uh-huh. Who’s paying for this?”

“I’m with the Society. I know you’ve done jobs for us before, and I was hoping our credit was good. It’s sort of a rush job.”

Zabel frowned, eyes darting around the room. “What do you know about my work for the Society?”

“No details,” Amy said. “I heard your name, knew you were in Prague. I’m not even sure you have a spell for what we need, but we had to try something.”

He seemed to relax, scratched his chin. “I have a spell. How long?”

“What?”

“The person you want to speak with,” Zabel said. “How long’s he been dead?”

“A little over four hundred years,” Allen said.

Zabel laughed. “Who do you want, Rudolph the Second himself?”

“Edward Kelley.”

Zabel stopped laughing. “Who sent you here? Somebody’s playing a joke on you. Or on me.”

“Please,” Amy said. “We think the philosopher’s stone is-”

“The philosopher’s stone?” Now Zabel laughed again. “Now I know you’re jerking me. Save it for the tourists, okay? We’ve all heard the legends. I don’t have time for jokes.”

“This isn’t a joke,” Amy said.

“It doesn’t matter,” Zabel said. “You expect me to pluck a four-hundred-year-old ghost from the cosmos and bring him here so you can play twenty questions. Spells like that are complex. I’d need a lock of his hair or some clothing, something to help focus the spell. Otherwise it’s pointless.”

“What about this?” Allen held out the manuscript. “It’s Edward Kelley’s diary.”

This caught Zabel by surprise. He looked at the manuscript. “His what?”

“I found it in Strahov Monastery,” Allen said. “It’s handwritten.”

Zabel reached for the manuscript, and took it carefully. “This has to be some kind of hoax.”

Allen shook his head. “It was kept in the library’s special collection. It was among the items relocated from the castle.”

“The philosopher’s stone.” A hint of reverence crept into Zabel’s voice. He ran his hand over the cracked leather. “Lead into gold. It’s nonsense.”

“I don’t think it has anything to do with gold,” Amy said. “The stone represents a kind of power. Something never seen before.”

They stood in a small circle, nobody speaking. Zabel had a faraway look in his eyes. He bit his thumbnail in thought while he held the manuscript in his other hand.

“I think,” Zabel said, “that you’ve piqued my curiosity. Wait here.”

Zabel left and returned two minutes later with a black leather bag, the Kelley diary tucked under one arm. He motioned for Amy and Allen to follow him.

Amy asked, “Where are we going?”

“To the roof,” Zabel said.

They followed him up to the second floor, down a hall and into a small bedroom, up a tight spiral staircase to a trapdoor in the ceiling. Zabel slid back an iron bolt, threw the hatch open. Daylight flooded in.

They climbed out onto the roof. There was a clean breeze, a good view of the castle beyond the river. Zabel pulled over a small table, placed the diary in the center. He opened his black bag and began to fish around for items. He came out with a squat, black candle, lit it from a book of matches, and set it next to the diary. Allen squirmed at the sight of the open flame near the old manuscript but said nothing.

Zabel measured various powders into a mortar and pestle, crushed some dried leaves and other ingredients into the mix. He mumbled words that danced just at the edge of Allen’s comprehension.

“Can I help with something?” Amy asked.

“Just stay out of the way.” Businesslike. No time for chitchat.

When he’d crushed and mixed the powder to his satisfaction, he took a handful, flung it at the candle flame with a few harsh syllables.

A purple gout of flame erupted from the candle, engulfed the entire rooftop. Allen and Amy flinched, but the flame was cool, didn’t burn. The purple light continued to shimmer around them, turned the world beyond the rooftop into a hazy blur, like they were looking at Prague through the bottom of a bottle of grape soda.

“Damn,” Amy whispered.

Allen agreed. Damn.

“This is a particularly potent casting,” Zabel said. “Usually I do this for people who’ve lost a loved one, six months dead or a year. I thought I’d better crank up the power for what we need. I hope I haven’t overdone it. I wouldn’t want this to turn into a cattle call.”

“What’s that?” Amy asked.

“Sometimes the summoning catches other spirits. Not all ghosts are at the same level of self-awareness. A powerful spell like this… moths to a flame. Even when it’s not meant for them, they often come anyway.”

“That doesn’t sound very useful,” Allen said. “Do we have to wait very long or-shit!”

Allen jumped back, bumped into Amy. A glowing apparition hovered in front of him. A young girl, a ragged slice across her throat. Her eyes were hollow, her mouth open, a vague moan.

“That’s just Bethany,” Zabel said. “She haunts the building next door, so she didn’t have far to come. Murdered, I think, but I don’t know the whole story.”

“Great.” Allen tried to sound sarcastic, but it came out slightly frightened. “How many more of these things?”

Zabel grinned. “Wait and see.”

As wizards go, Zabel is a better technician than he is a scholar. You can see he has little interest in reading my diary. To him it’s more useful as a component for his spell. But he knows about the philosopher’s stone-the legends, anyway. The notion that the stone holds some secret power appeals to his natural wizardly greed for power.

I suppose it’s possible that-

Did you feel that? No? Okay, sorry. Got distracted. As I was saying-

There it is again!

Don’t tell me you didn’t feel that.

I feel it tugging me so hard that I dig in my heels. Not actually my heels, of course. That’s just the outside manifestation of my resistance. If you were able to see me being dragged along the halls of Prague Castle, you’d see my heels digging in, my hands grabbing at doorknobs and window ledges, like a doomed astronaut trying to keep from being blown out an airlock. That’s what it looks like, but it’s with my mind that I resist.

I don’t fight it too long. Too strong. Some mighty hand that has reached for me, grabbed me.

I go with the flow and start to fly, sailing over the castle walls and toward the river. I haven’t been this far in decades. I stop wondering what’s happening to me, such is the awe of seeing this part of Prague again for the first time in so very long. I’m over the river now, a tour barge below me, young couples sipping wine. I am equal parts blue sky and wind.

The far bank comes into view, crowded Josefov beyond that. I have not seen the Jewish Quarter in three hundred years. I glance to the right and to the left. A half-dozen glowing streaks in the sky, ghosts like me. We converge on the same place.

A pulsing purple beacon on a Josefov rooftop. I feel like a kite being reeled in, right toward the rooftop. People standing there I recognize. I already know them, yet I’ve never met them before. Time works so strange here.