Read Online The Long Way Down by Craig Schaefer - Free Book Online
Authors: Craig Schaefer
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you say?”
“I said it was already dropped. Which is a big, fat lie. Problem is, he’s doing his creepy ‘I know everything about everyone’ act, and I need to watch my ass if I keep digging into this case.”
“You could walk away.”
I arched an eyebrow at him. “You know I’m not going to do that.”
“Daniel, it’s one thing to work around a creature like Nicky Agnelli. It’s another thing entirely to work against him. If he’s connected to that poor girl’s death—”
“Then I deal with him. I gave my word, Bentley. You taught me how important that is. Don’t worry, I’ll be careful, but I need a helping hand. Can I borrow the Eye?”
He gave me a long look, concern etched in his faded blue eyes, and nodded. “I’ll bring it over first thing in the morning.”
Back out on Fremont, the night young enough for the crowds to keep churning, the party in full swing, I stepped into a doorway and checked my phone. I had a message from Paolo.
Call me asap, Kaufman wants 2 meet u.
“Showtime,” I whispered, my spreading smile cast in the glow of a neon light.
Nine
T he next morning Bentley brought me a present: a tiny, lacquered casket, like something from a Chinese fairy tale. I opened it and took out the package inside, wrapped in rumpled black silk. A spike of cold shot through my palm and up my arm, fading as fast as it came.
The Black Eye was one of Bentley and Corman’s collected curiosities, a small pewter pendant depicting a half-lidded eye with its iris scratched and pitted, dangling from a thin silver chain. Egyptian hieroglyphs adorned the back, but half of them were chiseled away. According to Bentley, the Eye was originally dedicated to a god of forgetfulness, who was in turn forgotten by history.
“What we can read of the back,” he told me, “says ‘He dwells in spaces between spaces. Name him not, for he craves no name. He is silence.’”
I don’t know if I believe in gods, but I do believe in power, and the Black Eye has a kick like a mule. I took a deep breath and draped it around my neck, letting the pendant rest against my bare skin.
One moment, the universe around me was alive and humming with information, with magical potential and the flow of energy, all the invisible conduits and symbols I’d trained for years to recognize and master. The next, my mind’s eye was wrapped in cotton gauze, deaf, voiceless, and blind.
That was the blessing of the Eye and its curse. It made you invisible to the world of magic: as far as the unseen world was concerned, you simply didn’t exist. Seers couldn’t find you, and divining spells washed over you like dewdrops. On the other hand, you were about as mystically powerful as a newborn baby. You were cut off from the tap, pure and simple, like a drunk at last call.
I took deep breaths, struggling not to panic. I lasted almost thirty seconds before I yanked the Eye back over my head, twitching uncontrollably, trying to keep myself from hurling it across the room. I dropped it on the bedspread and sat there, trembling, feeling the hum of the universe wrap its loving arms around me once more.
Magicians are not, as a rule, healthy people. We’ve all got our hang-ups, be it booze, sex, drugs, you name it. A sorcerer with no obvious vices is inevitably hiding something really nasty in her closet. The fact is, they’re all just substitutions for our one true addiction. Learning magic, real magic, changes you forever. We play games with the machinery of the universe, witness unimaginable beauty and terror, brush against power undreamed of by most humans. Once that door’s been opened and we see the world as it really is, the idea of losing it is the most terrifying thing imaginable.
Wearing the Black Eye feels like gouging out your own eyeballs and stabbing your eardrums with a spike. You know, intellectually, that your senses will flood back the second you take it off, but your animal brain still flails like you’re a fish out
“I said it was already dropped. Which is a big, fat lie. Problem is, he’s doing his creepy ‘I know everything about everyone’ act, and I need to watch my ass if I keep digging into this case.”
“You could walk away.”
I arched an eyebrow at him. “You know I’m not going to do that.”
“Daniel, it’s one thing to work around a creature like Nicky Agnelli. It’s another thing entirely to work against him. If he’s connected to that poor girl’s death—”
“Then I deal with him. I gave my word, Bentley. You taught me how important that is. Don’t worry, I’ll be careful, but I need a helping hand. Can I borrow the Eye?”
He gave me a long look, concern etched in his faded blue eyes, and nodded. “I’ll bring it over first thing in the morning.”
Back out on Fremont, the night young enough for the crowds to keep churning, the party in full swing, I stepped into a doorway and checked my phone. I had a message from Paolo.
Call me asap, Kaufman wants 2 meet u.
“Showtime,” I whispered, my spreading smile cast in the glow of a neon light.
Nine
T he next morning Bentley brought me a present: a tiny, lacquered casket, like something from a Chinese fairy tale. I opened it and took out the package inside, wrapped in rumpled black silk. A spike of cold shot through my palm and up my arm, fading as fast as it came.
The Black Eye was one of Bentley and Corman’s collected curiosities, a small pewter pendant depicting a half-lidded eye with its iris scratched and pitted, dangling from a thin silver chain. Egyptian hieroglyphs adorned the back, but half of them were chiseled away. According to Bentley, the Eye was originally dedicated to a god of forgetfulness, who was in turn forgotten by history.
“What we can read of the back,” he told me, “says ‘He dwells in spaces between spaces. Name him not, for he craves no name. He is silence.’”
I don’t know if I believe in gods, but I do believe in power, and the Black Eye has a kick like a mule. I took a deep breath and draped it around my neck, letting the pendant rest against my bare skin.
One moment, the universe around me was alive and humming with information, with magical potential and the flow of energy, all the invisible conduits and symbols I’d trained for years to recognize and master. The next, my mind’s eye was wrapped in cotton gauze, deaf, voiceless, and blind.
That was the blessing of the Eye and its curse. It made you invisible to the world of magic: as far as the unseen world was concerned, you simply didn’t exist. Seers couldn’t find you, and divining spells washed over you like dewdrops. On the other hand, you were about as mystically powerful as a newborn baby. You were cut off from the tap, pure and simple, like a drunk at last call.
I took deep breaths, struggling not to panic. I lasted almost thirty seconds before I yanked the Eye back over my head, twitching uncontrollably, trying to keep myself from hurling it across the room. I dropped it on the bedspread and sat there, trembling, feeling the hum of the universe wrap its loving arms around me once more.
Magicians are not, as a rule, healthy people. We’ve all got our hang-ups, be it booze, sex, drugs, you name it. A sorcerer with no obvious vices is inevitably hiding something really nasty in her closet. The fact is, they’re all just substitutions for our one true addiction. Learning magic, real magic, changes you forever. We play games with the machinery of the universe, witness unimaginable beauty and terror, brush against power undreamed of by most humans. Once that door’s been opened and we see the world as it really is, the idea of losing it is the most terrifying thing imaginable.
Wearing the Black Eye feels like gouging out your own eyeballs and stabbing your eardrums with a spike. You know, intellectually, that your senses will flood back the second you take it off, but your animal brain still flails like you’re a fish out
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