Брайан Макклеллан - Uncanny Collateral

You think they’re packing up business? Maggie cut into my thoughts.

Maybe, I replied. They abandoned the warehouse with three months’ worth of rent already paid. People don’t close up when business is good.

So either business is bad, Maggie said thoughtfully.

Or, I replied, they know that someone has caught on to their little scheme.

I tried to work through a dozen different angles. It could be someone inside one of the soul collecting businesses, maybe a disgruntled or ex-employee. It could be an Other, like Maggie, who had limited omniscience and smelled trouble. It could even be a reaper gone bad. There were too damn many possibilities. I cursed Ferryman for bringing this to me instead of OtherOps and got back in my truck.

Where to? Maggie asked. We’re kind of out of leads.

I looked at my hands on the steering wheel, running my eyes over my tattoos. The facsimile of Grendel’s claw on the back of my left hand made the skin itch, dormant sorcery wanting to come to life. I considered going back to visit Zeke. I owed him a slap for siccing that necromancer on me, and he might be able to nudge me in a new direction. There’s still one good option, I told Maggie.

What are you thinking… Oh, no. I don’t think that’s a good idea.

I started the car. I don’t either. But I’ve got a job to do, and Kappie Shuteye is the only one who might know what a bunch of imps are doing working for a soul thief.

Alek…

I cut her off. It’s my next move. If you don’t like it, go read a book.

The words came out a little harsher than I intended, but I still remembered her anger at the necromancer. I get bossed around so much by Ada that I really didn’t need it coming from Maggie too. This job was starting to give me tension headaches – not to mention that fact that it had already forced me to kill five people. I needed to move quickly and decisively.

Still, I wasn’t above admitting – to myself – that Maggie might be right. After all, Kappie Shuteye is the imp king who sold me to Ada twenty years ago.

The term imp king sounds more impressive than it actually is. It would be more accurate to say something like imp mob boss , and for some of the people who’ve inherited the term, even that might be generous. All imp kings operate a little differently, but most of them amount to little more than a union overseer for their kind in a certain region. Their underlings bow and scape and pay their membership dues, and in return the imp king finds them steady work in his own ventures or hires them out to whoever is willing to pay for a little sleazy muscle.

Kappie Shuteye is imp king of northeast Ohio, but that hasn’t always been his job. Back in the ’70s and ’80s, he sat on the board of directors of a company called Paronskaft. Their specialty was buying firstborn children in return for magical favors. In the reaper business, we call the children rumpelstiltskins , or skins for short. Paronskaft basically ran a slave trade until they were shut down in the late ’80s. As far as I know, I was one of the last children sold by Paronskaft before OtherOps shuttered them for good. Kappie was the one who arranged the deal.

The last time I saw him, I broke his nose.

I pulled off the highway at a place called Brecksville, and pretty soon I turned into the parking lot of an old, run-down elementary school in an overgrown part of town that had once been a community of trailer parks. It looked like the school had been crumbling for decades: most of the windows were broken, the brick facade was barely in one piece, and the parking lot itself could barely be called concrete anymore. Despite the empty look of the place, there were at least a dozen cars parked in the teacher’s lot around back, including a couple of flatbeds and an entire semitrailer. A team of imps loaded the semi with plastic-wrapped pallets of indeterminate origin. They all stopped to stare as I pulled up and parked.

I got out and leaned against the hood of my truck, letting the imps size me up for a moment. I took out my phone, pretended to scroll through it, and snapped a photo of the group, which I emailed to Nadine – a little insurance policy in case Kappie decided he wanted to rough me up for breaking his nose. “I’m looking for Kappie,” I finally called to them.

None of them moved.

“I’ll go find him myself if you want a stranger poking around,” I said. One of the imps drew a knife. He and three of his friends took a step toward me. I did a quick count of the cars in the parking lot and decided that if fifty imps came pouring out of the old school, I’d probably be in for a rough time. I tried to act bored with their posturing and held up one hand. “Tell your boss that Alek Fitz from Valkyrie Collections is here to see him. I’m a reaper, so put your goddamn knife away.”

Two of the imps broke off from the group and ran into the bowels of the old school while their aggressive friend put his knife away without an apology. He gestured dismissively toward me. “Go in that door there. Wait just inside.”

The door led to an old furnace room, which was recessed into the ground about two stories below me. There was a small, ground-level space just inside the door, and then a handful of catwalks that led above the boilers to the halls of the old school. I did a cursory look around, checking to see what had changed in the five years since I was last here – and if Kappie’s imps had rigged any improvised traps. Imps love making things that can hurt people accidentally.

What do you think they’re loading in that truck out there? Maggie asked me.

Drugs, probably. Can’t you sense them?

Nah. There are low-level wards all over this place to protect against scrying. I’d have to be there in person to see through them. Why doesn’t the city shut Kappie down? This whole setup is beyond obvious.

I’d guess that Kappie makes sizable donations to the mayor’s office and local police force. Ambition isn’t a common trait among imps. Ninety-nine point nine percent of them are vicious little creatures driven by greed and hunger, and they seldom have the ability to plan beyond the next fix, robbery, or minimum-wage paycheck. Imp kings are the remaining few who do have the ability to plan beyond those things.

The door at the other end of the catwalk suddenly opened, and a wizened old imp appeared. He was taller than most of his kind – probably five foot two – and wore a bright red zoot suit, matching hat, and wingtip shoes. The clothes, together with an imp’s stereotypically squat, ugly face, made him look like a Dick Tracy villain. I would have laughed at his appearance if I didn’t know that he liked to trick out that suit with a straight razor in one sleeve and a switchblade in the other.

“Alek Fitz!” he proclaimed in a gravelly voice, a salesman’s smile on his face. “My old friend! How long has it been?”

“We’re not friends, Kappie. The last time we saw each other, you took a swing at me with a straight razor and I broke your nose. How is that, by the way?”

“My face hurts every time it’s cold.”

I grinned at him. “It gets cold a lot in Cleveland.”

Kappie’s smile faltered. He took a step onto the catwalk, his head nodding slowly. “How is your lovely boss, Ada? She still working you to the bone?”

Keep cool, Maggie warned me.

“You know, I really wouldn’t mind breaking your nose again.”

“And I wouldn’t mind burying your body on the premises, but I don’t think you came here for either of those activities. How may I help you, Reaper Fitz?”