Chapter 7 Not Quite a Man
Not Quite a Man
The sky hung heavy with the full-bodied promise of rain as Malachy drove his sleek motor car from the booze warehouse back to the Emerald Club.
He had missed the car’s purring engine and buttery leather interior, but not London’s endless dreariness and clogged roadways.
Traffic crawled along like chrome mollusks as the first fat drops of rain splattered on the windshield.
He had driven rather than risk traversing with all the coppers about. He couldn’t twitch without feeling someone’s eyes on him, Potts or Bittenbinder or Ghose.
At the warehouse, the liquor that should have been shipped into Prohibition states was piled up to the ceiling.
A mountain of contraband that Malachy needed to move before it fell into Potts’s grasp.
He nearly drained his magic re-enchanting the cargo containers, both to double their capacity and conceal it.
Finally, Malachy pulled up to the club’s curb, engine idling. A shiver ricocheted over his nerves like an internal alarm bell.
He shook it off. The house wards had been going haywire since he returned from Rome. Every time he’d inspected the tripped wards, he had returned empty-handed. An almost sentient house did have its drawbacks.
Anita Tambo sauntered up to the motor car and slid into the passenger seat. A cloud of expensive perfume clung to the retired courtesan’s mink and diamonds.
“Hiya, Mal.” Anita offered him a beaming smile, a flash of white on dark skin. “Safe to assume I was invited to this meeting to shamelessly flirt with Julian Morro?”
“Butter him up for the roast.” Malachy winked.
She laughed, tossing her head of springy black curls. “More than happy to oblige, boss. Julian ain’t bad looking, for an American.”
He pulled back into traffic. Julian had suggested meeting at his workshop “full of wondrous inventions”, and Malachy had not declined the invitation to snoop.
From what he'd dredged up on Julian, the young American had raised a little too much hell in Hollywood before he found himself in London after the war, along with his close friend Laurence Bellamy.
While Julian had failed as an actor, apparently behind the scenes his Lumomancy crafted state-of-the art equipment that created magic on the silver screen.
“You want the usual interrogation-by-gossip, boss, or something special?”
Anita’s gossiping skills were one of the primary reasons he had hired her from the Gilded Lily. The Sanguimancer could extract more from five minutes of bar or bedroom chat than Sloane could from days of shadow sleuthing. Heartbeats couldn’t lie to a blood mage.
“I want to know if Ari Razaq is actually running the gang and what their endgame is. The one time I met Julian, he struck me as a vain fool prone to flattery.”
“An easy mark, then. This oughta be fun. Most Lumomancers can’t keep their illusions up during the act, you know.
I’ll find out if Julian’s hair really is that blonde.
” She added at Malachy’s sidelong look, “And if he’s in charge of the gang and the rest. I’ll share everything, Mal. Don’t you worry.”
“Speaking of sharing.” He offered her a cigarette before lighting one for himself. “Those letters I sent from Rome. Cora said she never got one, and that you hadn’t mentioned my arrest or me trying to contact her.”
Her dark eyes widened. “She said that? I must’ve told her over a dozen times, Mal.
Though, she always looked a little confused when you were brought up.
Almost like it took her a second to remember who you were, if I’m being honest. I swore I told her about you.
Ask the others, if you don’t believe me. ”
He mulled this over. “I believe you. I’m just worried about Cora.”
By Anita’s look, his pounding heart had betrayed what his words tried to conceal.
Since his return, Cora had spent every night above the club in Anita’s flat, and he had scrounged together the self-control to give her the space she needed. But if addiction, or worse, had addled her memory this badly, who would save Cora from herself, now that she was no longer under his roof?
Putting out various fires at any given moment had kept him from acting on his concerns. Still, it saddened him to return home to only a surly cat. The house felt empty without her. Was that why it had been acting up so much lately? Did it miss her too?
“I’m also worried about Cora,” Anita confessed. “She’s been… odd. More than usual, I mean.”
His gaze sharpened on the Sanguimancer. “Drug problems?”
“Nah, my blood magic hasn’t sensed a lot of junk in her system. Sure, she drinks and partakes when offered, but it ain’t a problem like it was with my mum. Drinking like a fish from morning until night, that woman was.”
Anita’s words dispelled one fear and inflamed another. If not drugs, then a demon.
But which demon, and how? Ghose’s time magic could not have done this. Perhaps one of his accomplices, or several, had slipped through the veil to wreak havoc on Cora’s mind, to hurt Malachy by hurting her and all he hoped to have with her.
Once he settled business with Julian Morro, this demon was next.
“Just keep an eye on Cora for me.”
They arrived at Julian’s workshop, a spacious building with black shutters, its brick face crinkled like aged skin. John O’Leary and Dimitri Bocharov greeted them out front. The solicitor looked like a bespectacled child beside the Hydromancer’s formidable bulk.
Another shudder racked through Malachy as he slid out of the motor car. The house wards again. He shook off the phantom sensation of alarm.
After ensuring that no Umbramancers were listening from the shadows, Malachy turned to his crew.
“O’Leary, once we’re inside, siphon memories from everyone you can get close enough to discretely touch.
Dimitri, keep an eye out. I don’t trust any of these mages.
Anita, be yourself, and go for the jugular if you have to. ”
“Right-o, Mal.” The Sanguimancer winked. Threading her arm through Dimitri’s massive one, they entered the other gang’s territory.
Metal doors swung inward to a massive, airy space. Floor-to-ceiling windows offered views of the splatter of rain upon the city beyond. Judging by the swanky new equipment gleaming with polish and whirring with productivity on every bench, business had been very good for their gang.
“Oi! Can I help you?” A man with a blurry face rushed out of an adjacent room. The more Malachy tried to focus on his features, the blurrier they became. A Lumomancer still perfecting his illusion, or a skilled light mage concealing his appearance?
The blurry-faced man’s eyes widened in recognition. “Oh. Bugger. It's you. Julian mentioned the Realmwalker might stop by. He’s either down in Ari’s laboratory, in his office, or he’s fucked off to parts unknown, yet again. I’ll check.” He shuffled past.
Malachy waited for the blurry man to round the corner before turning to his gang. The fool had left a rival gang to their own devices inside his territory. “Pair up. Spread out. Find out what you can. Mind the shadow-cloaked Umbramancers. If caught, act lost.”
Wordlessly, Dimitri and O’Leary headed off in the opposite direction of the blurry man.
Anita followed Malachy through the workshop towards an elaborate door at the other end.
They passed camera equipment, industrial lights, and devices he had no name for, their gears spinning in secret machinations within metallic exoskeletons.
The door was unlocked. He signaled for Anita to wait outside as he let himself into an office that was spacious and occupied.
Julian Morro, his platinum blonde hair gleaming as brightly as his smile, remained sitting behind a behemoth of an oak desk when Malachy stepped inside.
Malachy noted the insult, along with the empty desktop and bookshelves, the sparse furniture.
The office was more like a showroom than a workplace.
“Heard you’ve been entertaining clients at the Gilded Lily,” Malachy said in lieu of a greeting.
Julian lifted a shoulder. A smile of dubious delight spread across his face. His wide mouth was full of perfect white teeth, and Malachy wondered how much magic it took to maintain the illusion.
“Pleasure to see you again as well, darling.” The Lumomancer’s mismatched eyes—one blue, one brown—flashed. He adjusted the diamond pin in his silk necktie, as pale gray as his pinstripe suit. “Tell me, Mal. How was your little Roman vacation?”
“As enjoyable as seeing you. Tell me, Julian. How has your London vacation been? You followed Laurence Bellamy here from Hollywood; will you stay when he leaves you for his honeymoon?”
By the clench of Julian’s fists, Malachy had aimed for the right sore spot. Perhaps Ravi Shah would have been better to invite than Anita.
“Oh yes, his honeymoon with Rosemarie.” Julian uttered the name with scorn.
“Impregnating and marrying a human, in that order, is antithetical to everything Larry and the Protean Society stand for. A scandal would sell more movie tickets than a marriage, I told him, but would Larry listen to reason? No, he— Well. Bygones, am I right? I've only endured the endless gray of London for Larry’s sake. Though once he’s gone, I could be persuaded to stay.
” Two-colored eyes poured over Malachy in a slow onceover.
Malachy’s fist traversed across the office and punched Julian’s perfect jaw. “You get one warning,” he said. “That was it.”
“Ooh, feisty.” Even rubbing his jaw and grimacing in pain, Julian managed a wink. “Pray tell, what did you come here for?”
“Business.”
“How frightfully dull.” Julian slumped back in his chair. “I tire of business.”
“You suffer from the mistaken belief that I give a shit. What I want to know is why the coppers claim they’ve been following me around London while I have decidedly not been in London.” He scrutinized the Lumomancer. “Have you or other illusion mages in your gang impersonated me while I was gone?”