James Baldwin - Burn Artist

“Did you notice anyone acting strangely? Staring at you, following you around the room?”

Slava shook his head again.

Closing my eyes, I held my hand out a couple of inches from Slava's chest, and relaxed my body along the straight rail of my spine. As my hand got closer to the mark, the hairs on his chest prickled with a tiny sound, like embers crawling through paper. The sound – and the energy – was orange, bittersweet and sharp. You could tell a lot about a static enchantment just by those first sensory impressions. It was hot, fiery, and the energy had a bated, unpleasant feeling about it. The spook behind this curse was waiting for a trigger, perhaps, or simply the right time to finish the spell. Whoever was behind this, they were using the mark to maintain a line of connection between themselves and Slava.

I knelt back, pursing my lips, and stood. Both men in the room watched me in uncomfortable silence as I went to my briefcase and popped the lid. Immersed in the white-noise trance of magic, I could feel their stares playing over my exposed skin. I drew a small knapped obsidian knife, a flat, blank piece of human bone on a red cord, a metallic silver Sharpie, and a tiny hooked graver with a fine, sharp point.

“So. What’s the verdict?” Rodion had his arms folded loosely across his chest.

“It’s a curse,” I said. “The more serious kind. I’ve heard of mages who are capable of affixing hex marks to someone from a distance, but this is the first time I’ve ever seen it in person.”

Rodion winced, clicking his tongue. “So, what? Does this mean his dick is gonna fall off or something?”

Slava’s hands gripped the sides of the chair. He made a weird, strangled sound in his throat.

“It’s impossible to know exactly what it’s intended for. My first inclination is to say that it’s a warning and possibly a surveillance tool… magic that feeds information back to the spook who cast the spell.” I knelt back down in front of Slava, this time on both knees, and spread my tools out.

“What’s it going to do to me?” Slava watched me, his eyes rolling like a spooked horse. It was hard to say what frightened him more: me or the curse.

“I literally just explained that I don’t know.” I couldn’t keep the irritation from my voice as I considered what we needed to do. “I’m going to draw on your skin around the symbol. It will work something like a tracking device… if the Spook tries anything on you, the ward will trigger and I will be able to find the mage performing the spell. I need you to make sure that you don't shower. No showering, no bathing until we find the guy that did this. Do you understand?”

Slava swallowed, and glanced past me to the others. “Okay.”

“The second thing I’m going to do is take a drop of your blood and create a protective talisman,” I said. “I’ll work on it tonight and bring it in tomorrow morning.”

“Tomorrow? Can’t you get it to him any sooner?” Rod said.

“Tomorrow is pushing it as it is.” I shook my head. “Talismans require a great concentration of effort. The standard charging time is a full lunar cycle; we're doing one in less than twenty-four hours.”

“Will it work at all, then?”

“It's better than nothing,” I said. “A dustbin lid will work as a shield if you're in a hurry. It won't stop a bullet, but the bullet won't go as deep.”

“Jeez. That's fucking reassuring.” Slava rubbed his hands over his face.

I knelt back. “It's the difference between injury and fatality.”

“Amen to that. If it’s the best we can do, it’s the best we can do, eh, Slava?” Rodion chuckled, but it sounded tense and reddish, too high-pitched to be a real laugh. “You'll be alright.”

That remained to be seen. I took the knife in one hand, the talisman in the other, and drew the point through the air over my chest, then over Slava's. He went still as I worked through the words of power needed to bind the sigil. The man was frightened, energy that radiated out from him in invisible waves I felt as a pressure in my mouth and sinuses. Fortunately, fear was the perfect tether for a ward designed to monitor and track. Like bodies, magic needs energy to stay alive. As long as Slava had this mark, he would be afraid of it. As long he was afraid and focused on it, the gathering ward would have an energy source.

I took his hand, exposed the pale skin of his wrist, and lay the point of the knife where his spider-and-web tattoo ended. He sucked in a sharp breath as I pushed it in and twisted the tiny wound open. Dark venous blood welled up slowly, and I used it to sketch first rendition of the ward around and over the curse mark. With the other hand, I pressed the bone flake over the small injury and held it there as I filled in the geometry for the ward with the silver Sharpie. The original cartridge was long gone: the replacement contained real colloidal silver.

It went on faded, dulled by the drying lines of blood, until I finished the figure and carefully closed the seal. Then it rippled and flared briefly before settling into a bright, metallic glow on his chest.

Both men were struck dumb. No matter how many times they saw it, magic was always startling for blanks. [12] A slang term for non-magical people. Their focus aided the spell, contributing force I didn't have to draw from myself.

“There.” When I was sure the circle was integral, I pulled the talisman away. The smooth bone now had a fine film of dried blood, which I quickly sketched on with the graver. “I will take this home and work on the actual protection tonight.”

“So what do I do now?” Slava said. “Go say my Hail Marys?”

“What does any red-blooded man do when he's facing down death, Slava?” Rodion laughed and clapped him on the back, nearly knocking him off his seat. “You drink and fuck. You’re off for tonight and tomorrow. Go visit the bar. There’s a new girl doing her public audition for us out there tonight, this little bitty brunette. She’s easy to pick out… huge rack, dances in all of this fancy lingerie.”

Slava perked up at the thought of lingerie, then turned to look at me with renewed concern. “This shit isn’t going to kill me, is it?”

“It might,” I replied. “However, I doubt whatever curse has been placed on you is going to kill you tonight at the very least, so try to stay calm and keep up your usual routines. I’ll bring the talisman after sunset tomorrow.”

“You fucking try to stay calm.” He rolled his eyes and got to his feet.

“Don’t be a dickhead, Slava. Go join the others and have a drink. I have to speak to Alexi in private.” Our Avtoritet was smiling, but it was forced. “Come on, Lexi… we'll go to my office.”

Slava shook my hand, and that was the extent of his gratitude. He and Rodion kissed cheeks, and I studied the larger man as they milled. Rodya was the kind of leader who appeared to wear his heart on his sleeve: down-to-earth, open, casual. In truth, he was a shrewd and intelligent man, but to my interrogator’s eyes he currently looked like someone under pressure. Someone was tightening the vice on my Avtoritet. There was something happening that Rodya wasn't talking about to his adviser or his commander, and it was bad. It was quite bad, and I didn't have to be a wizard to know that it was about to become my problem.

I followed my Avtoritet from the security office – a twin suite of plain plasterboard and fluorescent tube lighting – to the VIP manager’s office upstairs. Every man who’d been through here in my lifetime had done up the place differently. Sergei Yaroshenko, our founding patriarch and Pakhun , [13] The ultimate authority of an Organizatsiya. The Pakhun (literally ‘prince’) is generally a thief-in-law with great seniority. They are often involved in government and high-level corporate work, especially in gas and energy ventures. They may manage multiple Avtoritets and multiple criminal ventures and are rarely ever involved in street-level work. the real boss of the organization, had renovated the office in gold and purple. He was responsible for the purple carpet in the upstairs lounges. When he'd left us to our devices and traveled back to Ukraine to manage our continental branch, Rodion had come into leadership. He and Lev were the muscle and the brains, and despite their differences, they’d created a good, stable platform for us to do business.