Frank Tuttle - The Cadaver Client

“We were talking, Mama. About you-know-who. Then the room got cold, and Mrs. Mays here had trouble breathing.”

“There were hands,” said Mrs. Mays. She brushed hex dust off her shoulders and shook it off her hat. “Hands around my throat. I could feel them.”

“I couldn’t see or feel anything. I dumped your hex bag out on her, and my glass shattered, and the Hero of Cambrit Street over there charged in here and tried to stick me. Which was actually brave of him, even if I was the intended party.”

Summers grunted.

“So, what about it, Mama? Your owl find anything sorcerous floating around?”

“Hush.”

Mama wandered about, mumbling and shaking her owl. I couldn’t help but think she was putting on a show for the woman in the fancy necklace wearing the expensive clothes.

Another dried bird popped out, this one a finch even more ragged than the owl. Mama held a long, whispered conversation with them, and then she walked to the door and repeated her performance just outside.

I managed to get Mrs. Mays back into a chair. Summers stood protectively by her. We were becoming fast friends. He only glared at me when he touched his ear.

Mama came stomping back in.

“Boy. You got to get these people out of here right now.”

Mrs. Mays looked up at me.

“I mean right now, boy. Right now.”

“Out,” I said. “Mama is the closest thing to a wand-waver I’ve got. If she says get out, we’re all getting out. Mama, the lady’s carriage-safe or not?”

“Leave it where it sits. He knows it, might follow it. You all got to go.” Mama grabbed Mrs. Mays’s sleeve and yanked her out of her chair and dragged her protesting body toward my door. I saw Summers tense up. I snatched up his sword and poked him in the small of the back with the sharp end.

“Mind your manners.”

And outside we went.

Mama made for her place at a run. She let go of Mrs. Mays, but whatever she’d been muttering must have had some effect because the plump woman was outpacing her.

I flipped Summers’s sword around and handed it hilt-first to him and made for Mama’s. If he didn’t want to follow I wasn’t going to herd him. But we all piled into Mama’s tiny potion shop at about the same time.

Everyone started talking at once. Mama shushed us and started rummaging through drawers and opening jars and screeching long, strange words that made the hairs on my arms stand up. She concluded her brief fit by throwing a handful of dust into the air and giving her door a thorough shake of her dead owl.

Then she collapsed into her card-reading chair and looked up at me with weary Hog eyes.

“I done what I could, boy. Reckon the rest is up to you.”

Mrs. Mays and Summers both started yelling. Mama and I ignored them.

“What exactly did you do, Mama, and why?”

“I reckon I fixed it where that haint can’t follow you or them two. Leastways not for a while.”

“So you’re saying we just had a visit from-”

“Don’t say his name, boy, what I done weren’t that good. I ain’t no spook doctor.”

Our companions fell silent, listening and glaring.

I leaned against the only bare spot on Mama’s sooty wall.

“Mrs. Mays, even if I don’t believe in vengeful ghosts, it may be that sorcery is involved here. Did you-know-who have any connections to anyone with that kind of talent?”

She shook her head no. “None that I know of. But I suppose he could have hired one.”

Freelance sorcery is illegal in post-War Rannit. Not that the law stops private practitioners, although it cheerfully hangs them if they make nuisances of themselves.

“Boy. That weren’t no wand-wavin’. That was a haint. Come to do this lady harm.”

“Sure, Mama.” Sorcery or spook, one thing was clear-everything led back to a wardstone that bore the name Gorvis.

And even a sorcerous working would need a focus. Something solid, material, to act as an anchor.

Or a trigger.

The bag of coins and Marris Sellway. In the same room.

I cussed.

Everyone gave me the eye.

“Sorry. I’ve had an epiphany. Mrs. Sellway, we need to get you out of here. But if I’m right, this isn’t just going to go away on its own. If I send word for you to be at a certain place at a certain time, even if it’s after Curfew and in a bad part of town, can I count on you to show up?”

“Now wait just a damned minute.” Summers put himself in front of Mrs. Sellway.

“You can bring General Summers here. And as many others as you can trust to keep their mouths shut and do what I say.”

Mrs. Sellway knew what the certain time and the certain place were likely to be.

“How many?”

“Five. Ten. A hundred, if you can get them. As long as they know I’m running the show.”

I was hoping she could manage a dozen. Making a scene after Curfew in a poor neighborhood was going to be like ringing a big, silver dinner bell for any halfdead out for a snack. It’s one thing to slip down to Eddie’s after dark for a quiet beer and a sandwich, but if I was going to raise a ruckus I wanted an army at my back.

And raising a ruckus was the order of the day.

Summers snorted. “I reckon you’re aiming to put this here ghost back in the dirt. How much that gonna cost her, Mr. Markhat? Look me in the eye and tell me how much.”

“Not a copper. I’m not doing this for show. Something has taken a swipe at someone sitting in my office. They’ve broken my window and upset my cat. I won’t have it. Mrs. Sellway, go home. Make sure you keep your daughter in sight. Don’t say certain names, round up men you can trust and wait. Can you do that?”

She nodded. The marks on her throat were plainly visible now. Some of the red was going purple.

Summers opened his mouth to say something, but Mrs. Sellway cut him off. “Get us a cab, Summers.”

He stomped out, giving me a good hard glare the whole time.

Mama appeared with a clean, white china cup steaming in her hand. She offered it to Mrs. Sellway, who took it but did not raise it to her lips.

Mama laughed. “It’s clean. Just tea. With some honey and chamomile. Your throat’s goin’ to be needin’ both before long.”

Mrs. Sellway sipped.

“He burned Cawling Street,” she said, after a moment. “Twice. All because I wouldn’t come out into the street when he called.”

“Somebody ought to have put him down,” muttered Mama.

Mrs. Sellway nodded. “They ought to have. But no one did. He was a monster, you know. Not just a bad man. Not just an angry man. You could feel it. He wanted to hurt you. Even strangers, children, animals. Anything that lived, it-offended him, somehow.”

I’d known a man like that, during the War. Even the officers were afraid of him.

Until one night someone emptied an oil lamp on his tent and set it ablaze while he slept. Not a soul had moved to aid him as he burned. I’d watched too. But I hadn’t lifted a finger to help.

“Whatever it is, Mrs. Sellway, it gets put down tonight. I promise you that.”

She shuddered. “Do you think Natalie-my daughter-is in danger too?”

“Not yet. Not ever, if we do this right.”

Summers stuck his head back through Mama’s door.

“Got a cab, ma’am.”

Mrs. Sellway rose and thanked Mama for the tea. She adjusted the collar on her high-necked dress to hide some of the marks, and then she faced me by the door.

“I will, of course, pay you your usual fees.”

“You’ll send me an invitation to your daughter’s wedding. That and nothing else. Now beat it, before Lance Corporal Summers here has a fit.”

She didn’t laugh, but at least she smiled.

“Boy,” said Mama, when we were alone, “just what have you got planned in that fool head of yours?”