Read Online The Curse Servant (The Dark Choir Book 2) by J.P. Sloan - Free Book Online

Photos.”
    After a long pause he replied, “We’re in Philly now. I’ll call you in four hours.”
    “Roger.”
    My Sunday got busy, all of a sudden. I pulled myself out of bed and slushed through the laundry on the floor on my way to making breakfast. Ches never worked Sunday mornings, so instead of hiking over to the café, I warmed up some cassoulet and made my way down to the basement. I rifled through Emil’s library for that stupid Macedonian-Bulgarian-Ottoman text for Carmody. Dealing with those tomes was never easy. The energies bound within and around those books were almost blindingly distracting. The old stories of books driving men insane were based on the hornet’s nest of infernal intent that swarmed around such texts. And it wasn’t even intentional. The knowledge contained within was simply that potent.
    I paused when I stumbled across a text written by Asok the Sharqui in the late seventeenth century. Emil had jotted down the words
thoughtforms, darql craft, servitors, soul traps
in the margin. This was the book I needed to bone up on before I made my meeting with Gillette. I plunged headlong into the Indian heretic’s treatise on soul manipulation, not knowing precisely what to expect. The man had been a cultural Muslim during the Moghul Empire, but claimed a Rajput ancestry. The blend of political and religious conflict during his lifetime had driven him outside of the more conventional pursuits of near-Eastern mysticism, pushing him into what could only be described as “utterly sinister” practices, even by modern standards. His ultimate goal of slicing his soul into representations of traditional deities was interrupted by an ill-timed wave of plague, taking his life and those of his followers. Though not before the last managed to put to parchment his theories, means, and observations in his attempts. The document fell into the hands of Muslim landlords a century later, and ultimately rested in the hands of a Vatican emissary just prior to the First World War. Said emissary, regrettably, contracted a rapidly progressing case of tuberculosis during his voyage from Tyre to Italy. The ship made it to Rome intact. The text landed in the hands of whoever taught Emil his craft.
    I recognized Emil’s handwriting on every other page, his translation of the original. The translation was colored predictably with his resentment of Euro-centric colonial ideals. After three hours of plodding through Emil’s butchering of Urdu, I surrendered and returned upstairs to check my phone.
    I had a voicemail from Leibnitz. He had acquired the necessary reagent from his target, and wanted to hand it over as soon as was humanly possible. I figured a man of his focus and seemingly sparing constitution deserved as much quick attention as I could afford. I showered, dressed, and made my way to the street in front of Grey & Lisle.
    He looked like hell. His eyes were sunken, his face more pallid than last I saw him, and his shirt looked like he slept in it last night. Maybe he was working off an all-nighter, maybe he’d hit the sauce last night. Either way, he wasn’t the ray of sunshine I quite frankly needed at that moment.
    Leibnitz shoved a black plastic bag into my hand and turned to walk off.
    “You okay?” I asked.
    He spun a circle of steps without stopping and returned to my side. “You should be able to work with this.”
    “Good. But, are you okay?”
    “No.”
    “What’s going on?”
    He looked up into my eyes with an expression of nauseating dread. “I got what you needed. I don’t want to talk about it.”
    Leibnitz turned to retreat once again.
    “Ari? This isn’t witchcraft. This is karmically clean.”
    He paused as his eyes worked lines on the pavement alongside his shoes.
    “Just take him down, Mister Lake,” he muttered before finally retreating into the lobby of his building.
    My hex would be karmically clean. Sure. I could vouch for that. But as I jostled the plastic bag in my hand,