Chapter 6
The hexworks building was quiet today—they usually took Saturdays and Sundays off, to give the scribes a chance to rest their hands.
They churned out a wide variety of hexes, a few semi-legal, most not: birth control, abortifacients, mood enhancers, and other things people enjoyed or needed but the law said they couldn’t have.
Sam wasn’t entirely comfortable with some of the mood enhancers, but at least they weren’t as bad as the tainted liquor most of the country seemed to be gulping down.
No one had ever died from a Sweet Dreams hex.
Not directly, anyway, though there had been the woman who wandered in front of a train in her daze, and you always heard about people falling in the lake…
Though the rank and file hexmen weren’t in, Sam had called Luke Gallo and Glenda Walker to join him this morning. He’d worked with them in the first lab, under Vic—until Vic turned out to be a homicidal maniac who burned everything to the ground.
Sam turned his thoughts firmly away from Vic, and from the terrible night in the abandoned hotel, when he’d seen the rotting corpse of Bobby Watts returned to life. And taken the bullet wound that left a knot of scar tissue behind as a reminder of things he would have preferred to forget.
The armed guards saw him approaching and opened the door for him.
“Mr. Cunningham,” one said in a heavy Italian accent—Paladino was his name.
“Good to see you. Mr. Sullivan doubled security here, just to let you know. Mr. McIntyre said to tell you the thing you’re looking for is in the safe in your office, and to be sure to lock it up when you aren’t using it. ”
He must be referring to the golden disc with the hex symbols on it. “Thanks.” He tried to remember something about Paladino. “Your son—how is he?”
Paladino grinned with obvious pride. “Passing all his classes with flying colors! Gets his smarts from his mom, he does. Maybe he’ll even go to college in a few years. Wouldn’t that be something—a kid of mine, in college!”
A pang of envy stung Sam—there’d been no question of any schooling after high school for him. His family had needed him at home, or in the pharmacy.
Or so they’d said. They’d wanted him there, but then acted like his presence was a burden. It was why he’d thought it would be okay to let them believe he’d died. Except they said his mother had been distraught, so…?
Just another way he’d failed them. Sam pushed the thoughts away and affixed a smile to his face. “That’s great,” he said, and meant it.
“I’m just glad Mr. Sullivan gave me a job that pays well enough to afford it someday.” Paladino tipped his cap. “I won’t hold you up no more, Mr. Cunningham. I’m sure you’ve got important work to do.”
Sam climbed the two flights of stairs up to the old editor’s office, which he’d taken for himself.
Someone like Paladino, an uneducated immigrant, would never be able to pay for his kid to go to college on the salary of a dock worker, or a miner, or any of the other legitimate jobs that would hire him.
Of course, he might be gunned down today, if Fabiano made a move to get her disc back. Hopefully she didn’t know where the hexworks was located, but there had been traitors in Sullivan’s ranks before.
Then again, men died all the time while unloading cargo, shoveling coal, or building skyscrapers. At least Sullivan looked after the widows and children of the people who perished in his employ.
The old newsroom had been converted into the lab, filled with tables, desks, chairs, writing instruments, and paper ranging from thin scrap to heavy cotton.
Cabinets stored the jars of ground gemstones and other items used to create the hexes.
Glenda and Luke already sat at their desks, both with cups of coffee.
“Morning, Sam,” Glenda said upon spotting him. “Do you know what’s going on?”
“This is supposed to be our day off,” Luke pointed out. He sat back in his chair and folded his arms over his chest. “I had plans, you know.”
Sam winced. This was what he hated about being in charge of the hexworks—everyone assumed he was the one making all the decisions. “I know, I’m sorry. But Mr. Sullivan wants us to look closely at something.” He paused, then added, “It’s pretty secret, I think?”
“We know not to talk about work,” Glenda said.
Luke glowered. “Yeah, we’ve been here longer than you. We know to keep our yaps shut.”
“Sorry, sorry.” Sam resisted the urge to wring his cap in his hands. Luke hadn’t been happy when Sam, a relative newcomer a decade younger, was promoted over him.
And Sam didn’t blame him—Luke must have assumed he was next in line if something happened to Vic. Even though Sullivan had been the one to make the decision, it was Sam sitting in the chair Luke thought would belong to him.
He’d make it up to Luke somehow. In the meantime, he went to his office. The walls had originally been glass, but Sullivan had them torn down and rebuilt with solid masonry blocks, along with a heavy steel door.
It would have seemed like overkill, but Sam had been at the original hexworks when Fabiano’s forces attacked. A room they could hide in if bullets started flying was comforting to have.
How had his life come to this? From tending his family’s pharmacy in sleepy little Gatesville to worrying about being blown up or gunned down at his job?
Of course, if he’d stayed in Gatesville, he’d have been gunned down instead of Mom. So maybe nowhere was really safe.
No time to ponder it now. He shut the door behind him and hung up his overcoat and cap on the coatrack just inside.
The office was large and contained a desk he seldom worked at, preferring to be outside in the old newsroom with Luke and Glenda.
Bookshelves lined two of the walls, packed with every text on hexwork that Sullivan’s money could buy.
There were three chairs and a low table, beside which was a sideboard with cold-hexed drawers.
Sam used it to store bottles of ginger ale and Bevo.
The innermost wall held a safe, which itself was protected by the medieval look-away hex Sam had helped recreate when he first came to work for Sullivan. Even knowing it was there, his eyes slipped off it until he took out one of the counterhexes they’d come up with.
He reached for the warmth of his bond with Alistair. The hex in his hands seemed to shift from a two-dimensional drawing on a piece of paper into something with breadth and depth. Concentrating on it, he allowed the magic to flow from Alistair, through him, and into the hex.
Alistair would feel the drain of magic—more than a casual use, since the look-away hex was powerful and needed strong magic to counter it. Indeed, a moment later, he asked, “Everything all right, Sam?”
“Fine—I just needed to charge something.”
The sense of Alistair withdrew, the bond back to its base level. Sam held the hex up and spoke aloud the activation phrase: “Reveal all that is hidden to me.”
And there was the safe, in its ordinary place, right where it had been the whole time. Now that he could focus his eyes on it, Sam deactivated the alarm hex, spun the dial to enter the combination, and swung the heavy steel door open.
Inside waited the small wooden box from the night before, now closed. He took it out, feeling the weight of gold inside, and carried it out to the lab.
“…I know,” Luke was saying. “I just—” He fell silent at Sam’s appearance.
Had they been talking about him? His face heated, and he felt suddenly foolish, the way he had in school when other children would whisper and giggle while glancing in his direction. “Um, this is it,” he said uncomfortably, putting the box down and opening it.
“Holy Familiar of Christ,” Glenda swore when she saw the shimmering gold.
“I didn’t know you were Irish.”
“My gran was, and she raised me for a couple of years.” Her hands hovered over the disc. “May I?”
“Please.” Sam moved out of the way so the other two could examine it more closely. “This is what Mr. Sullivan wants us to figure out.”
Luke frowned slightly as Glenda passed it to him. “Are we sure it isn’t just some kind of primer to teach hexwork?”
“No, we aren’t.” Sam’s shoulders slumped. “Fabiano had it, so it might be something valuable? I mean past the gold and gems and all that.”
“Let’s take some pictures of it,” Glenda suggested. “That way we don’t have to handle the real thing while we work on it. It’s got to be worth a fortune.”
“We need someone who knows about Ancient Egypt.” Luke glanced up at Sam. “Otherwise, we’re flailing around in the dark.”
Sam hesitated. “Do you think an Egyptologist would work with us? Mr. Sullivan, I mean? It looked like Fabiano smuggled the artifacts into the country, and, well, now we have them.” After killing Fabiano’s men at the warehouse and taking everything, a thought which made him suddenly ill.
The look Glenda gave him was almost pitying. “Oh, Sam, you know there’s nothing money can’t buy. Mr. Sullivan will get what he wants, one way or another.”