“Not even Florida water,” muttered Heath. “How did you manage that, uncle?”

  “Forgive the ignorant white boy,” said Colin, “but what difference does smell make?”

  Apparently Heath had some room for surprise left after all. Air rushed out his mouth, too breathy to call a chuckle, while his lips moved halfway toward a smile.

  Nariko just answered the question.

  “We’ve both known Heath long enough that we can tell by the smells when he’s been working. Sometimes I can even guess the type of working from the different roots I can pick out.”

  Heath flashed on the way Nariko once made a game of guessing what herbs Heath had been working with as she slowly stripped him of his clothes.

  “But his uncle,” Nariko continued, “didn’t have any of those smells. Nothing. Not even a normal kind of clean adult man smell.”

  “So what does that mean?” said Colin.

  “It means he was hiding something.” Heath shook his head. “I’m not sure how he did it, but he must have tricked the air into not carrying his scent. Which means he knew I’d learn something from it. But what? And why am I smelling herbs you two don’t?”

  “Now those” – said a man’s voice far enough behind Heath that the speaker had to have been on the stairs – “are questions worth asking.”

  Heath turned while Nariko shifted so she’d be concealed from the interloper’s view by the pillar beside Heath. Colin stepped behind Heath, the size difference between them enough to make the smaller man vanish.

  Standing on the stairs looked like a reject from a Colonel Sanders audition. A portly white man verging on elderly, his suit as white as his short, wavy hair. A flash of gold under his left cuff implied a watch, and little round glasses on gold, wire frames made his face look larger than it probably was.

  Even the man’s shoes were white. Had he just come from gambling on a riverboat?

  “And what do you know,” asked Heath, “about which questions are worth asking?”

  The man started coming down the stairs, one hand gliding down the rail rather than using it for support. A practitioner, and from the feel of him, a major player.

  As the man approached, he spoke.

  “Mr. Cyr, my name is Ulysses Beauregard the Third, and I have devoted my life to knowing which questions are worth asking. Not to mention deducing the most appropriate ways of asking those questions to produce the most practical answers. So I think that you will be hard pressed to find yourself a person, be that person a man, a woman, or otherwise, who is more qualified and experienced than I am at the very art of the query. So to leave the rest of that as going toward the establishment in your minds of both my identity and my bona fides, I shall take it upon myself to answer your question now in the most direct and concise manner possible that yet allows for the proprieties of genteel conversation.”

  Mr. Beauregard came to a halt beside the pillar behind which Nariko hid.

  “I know a very great deal, Mr. Cyr.”

  “That doesn’t tell me why I care.”

  “Very true, but in my defense you did not ask why you should care.”

  “Talking to you is going to be like talking to the Sybil, isn’t it?”

  “Not nearly so recondite, Mr. Cyr, I assure you,” said Mr. Beauregard with a quiet laugh. “As proof of that and as a step toward convincing you of my good intentions, I would like to treat the three of you to lunch at the restaurant of your choosing. And perhaps as we dine we can discuss the mysteries of olfactory perception as they relate to your father’s brother, and from there we might bridge the topic to our shared interest in a book recently overdue from the Vatican library.”

  Heath’s stomach growled at the mention of lunch, and he allowed himself a slight smile.

  “I know just the place.”

  8

  Unlike Gripper, from the street Croatoan looked like a friendly, welcoming place. Large sign with the name in a witchy font. Smaller sign above the door reading, “Come in for a spell.” Big panel windows, tinted just enough so that pedestrians in the fashionable Pearl District could admire the bustle and the animated conversations inside without actually identifying the patrons.

  A private place for public conversations. A place where the occult wasn’t hidden; it was open and discussed by everyone in earshot.

  A place Heath, Nariko and Colin would not normally be caught dead eating a meal.

  Zory, the bouncer / doorman raised his shaved eyebrows when he saw Heath approaching. Zory was two-hundred fifty pounds of tanned muscle without a single visible hair beyond his eyelashes, all packed into a sleeveless white t-shirt and tight black jeans that Heath knew were seamed to allow for high kicks. Heath knew that because he once saw Zory kick the jaw of a man tall enough to play center for the Trail Blazers without splitting his pants.

  “Hey, Heath,” said Zory in his high, clear voice. “Nariko. Colin.” Quieter he added, “Everything okay with the wards? Maggie didn’t say anything about you stopping by.”

  “We’re here,” said Nariko with a forced smile, “for lunch.”

  Zory blinked, then his expression cleared and his back straightened, eyes tracking someone approaching along the sidewalk. And Heath had a pretty good idea who.

  “The wannabe-Colonel Sanders is treating us to lunch,” he said, “if we can get a booth away from the general shouting matches.”

  Zory smiled and opened the door.

  Heath was met by a wall of sound. Dozens of voices laughing and yelling and arguing and more all over what was either an orchestral interpretation of Celtic music or the soundtrack to one of the Lord of the Rings movies.

  Properly speaking, Croatoan was a public house. Three big runner tables in the middle where strangers could sit together and argue interpretations of grimoires, or whatever the hell it was these people devoted endless hours to reasoning their way through. Right now it had something to do with Pluto and astrology.

  Positioned around the big tables to allow free and easy access for the wait staff – women in wispy, witchy dresses and guys in tight pants and open-collared poet shirts – were nine smaller tables, all close enough to participate in the big discussions, for those with a mind to.

  A little more privacy could be found along the walls. Low-backed booths that could seat six, if they were friendly. And, of course, a bar covered in occult symbols. In fact, most of the main room was covered in occult symbols, or laminated seals from grimoires, framed pictures of old woodcarvings of witches at the sabbat, magazine and newspaper stories on occult topics, and so on.

  And right now every chair in sight was either filled or plainly occupied by a person standing up to make a point. Men and women in business suits alongside teenagers in lace and velvet or just black whatever (both the boys and the girls). The t-shirt-and-jeans brigade was in full force too, as were those who matched fabrics and colors to a method all their own. All body types and approaches to hygiene and makeup, from the understated to the overdone in just about every sense.

  And just about every scent too. Old incenses clashed with perfumes and colognes over the pervasive fried smell of pub food.

  Every one of these patrons was a student of the occult. Almost every one of them with an opinion to state loudly and often.

  And Heath would have bet that not a single one of them, not even the crowd of sullen teenagers waiting for a table, had ever managed to produce a single magical effect. Heath used to waste time wondering how many of them even tried, but that was a fruitless line of reasoning. For most of them, the discussion was all that mattered. Or perhaps enough introspection and meditation to fan the spark of power within any living being.

  Those were the ones in the worst danger. They had no idea what would have followed them out to their cars after a night’s discussion if it weren’t for Heath’s repelling wards.

  But right now, these innocent fools provided the perfect cover for a conversation Heath didn’t want to have where anyone important could hear it.

  A blonde waitress approached, pen in hand, to add them to the waiting list. Until she got a good look at Heath.

  “Mr. Cyr? Do you need me to fetch the manager?”

  “No thanks,” – Heath glanced at her attractively positioned nametag – “Holly. I need the booth if it’s free.”

  “Right this way,” she said, over protests from the waiting teenagers about how long they’d been waiting.

  Tucked away in the back corner was a booth that almost always sat empty. Maggie had once told Heath that the booth’s emptiness, even when customers were waiting for tables, had generated many amusing theories from the patrons. Her favorite was that it was reserved for the spirits of the beloved dead, and that food and drinks were laid out for them every dark moon at closing time.

  Heath wondered what the patrons would say if they noticed Heath and his party sitting there right now.

  The point was moot. They couldn’t notice. Little enchantments woven into the wood of the table and the cloth of the bench seats ensured that only the magically active could perceive people at the table. The wait staff and management had passcode enchantments in their nametags to let them hear orders and talk directly with customers seated in that booth, but even then they couldn’t understand side conversations in their presence.

  The booth only existed so Maggie could have a place to talk with friends when she had to mind this establishment instead of Gripper, but she allowed certain other people to use it.

  Heath was one of the lucky few.

  Heath and Mr. Beauregard took the inside seats, with Nariko next to Heath and Colin next to Mr. Beauregard.

  “Interesting establishment,” said Mr. Beauregard. “It appears to be a place of many answers and few questions, with little regard to the practical veracity of the arguments supported. I do not believe that I would be telling tales out of school if I were to suggest this is not a public house upon which you frequently bestow your patronage.”

  Heath drew breath to reply, but Mr. Beauregard was not finished.

  “Although, given that you were properly identified by the charming young lass who escorted us to our seats, and given that this particular booth appears to be warded against the dropping of eaves, I suspect, Mr. Cyr, that you are well acquainted with the proprietor of this establishment, and furthermore that the fine protective handiwork I perceived woven into the exterior paint as well as the windows and doorframes would be yours. Are my suppositions correct?”

  “Do you ever breathe?” asked Colin.

  Mr. Beauregard laughed, a high sound that would have been fine to hear if it didn’t remind Heath of chickens pecking at their food.

  “I have been known to circulate oxygen through my system, when the mood takes me.”

  Mr. Beauregard winked.

  Heath had been ready to laugh off Colin’s question, but now he found himself wondering whether or not he’d ever noticed Mr. Beauregard breathing. He couldn’t say either way, so he answered the question he’d been asked. But he also started paying closer attention.

  “No, none of us usually eat here, and I’m sure you’ve already figured out why. And what’s more I’m sure you’ve figured out why we’re eating here now, and why this booth. So shall we—”

  “Are we ready to order?” said Holly, who apparently didn’t need a pad to remember her orders. Colin ordered a chili cheeseburger with chili cheese fries with “whatever Hef you have on tap.” Mr. Beauregard asked for a tall glass of iced tea with a sprig of mint. Nariko declined so much as a glass of water. Heath had the haddock fish and chips with a Teufelsbrau IPA.

  After the waitress left, Mr. Beauregard raised his white eyebrows at Nariko.

  “When we leave today, I’ll be the only one of us who can still say I’ve never eaten here.”

  Mr. Beauregard laughed again. “While I confess that I have yet to pass much time in your quaint little city, I must admit that I find fascinating the variety of deeply held beliefs and views of its citizenry. In fact—”

  “With all due respect, Mr. Beauregard,” said Heath, “time is pressing and we have a great deal to do.”

  “Yes, of course, of course.” Mr. Beauregard gave Heath what he would have sworn was a chagrined bow from the neck up. “The topic, I believe, concerned a certain volume of lore that appears to be not quite so forgotten as its quaint and curious subject matter might have—”

  “We might get to that topic,” said Heath, “if the first one goes well. And the first topic is why I was smelling garlic and hawthorn under the bridge, but Nariko and Colin were not, and what you know about it.”

  “Ah, indeed,” said Mr. Beauregard with a smile that gleamed with a great many small teeth, “because to understand the reason for the differentiation, we must begin by the determination of which of you were in error. Whether you, Mr. Cyr, perceived an olfactory disturbance that was not present, or whether Ms. Tachibana and Mr. Driscoll—”

  “Whoa,” said Colin. “How do you know my last name? I mean, Heath’s practically in the phonebook, and Nariko gets all formal with people from time to time. But me? Nobody uses my last name. Not unless it’s official. Heck, the last time I got arrested the cops all called me Colin.”

  “You’ve been arrested?” asked Nariko.

  “Never charged,” said Colin with a grin. “Tell you about it another time.”

  Mr. Beauregard looked at Colin, then at Heath. Then at Nariko, and Heath again. But apparently whatever he was hoping to see, it wasn’t poker faces, which was all he got beyond the challenging look in Colin’s eye.

  “I do believe that I already explained the extent to which I have made a study of the questions and answers that plague us in life. In fact, I rather thought that I did a sufficiently thorough job that the matter of such mundanities as my comprehension of information freely available to the public would be taken as given.”

  “No one questions that you could find out Colin’s last name,” said Heath.

  “The question is why,” said Nariko.

  “Well, as to that I’m afraid that I must beg your pardon,” said Mr. Beauregard with a look of honest contrition. “Because our esteemed Mr. Cyr has forbidden the topic of that certain volume for the time being, and that does rather tie my conversational hands when it comes to enlightening the three of you as to precisely why I have come to your fair city of roses, why I have learned about each of you what has been necessary for me to learn, and why, as a matter of strictest fact, I came to be perambulating down that certain staircase at such a time as to bear witness to the conversation that first began our discourse not so much as half an hour ago.”

  “Un-fucking-believable,” said Heath, eyes widening with realization at what he was seeing. Not a single breath. The mouth was moving but the words were coming from someplace else.

  “What?” said Colin, but Heath already had one hand deep in his backpack for an empty blue glass bottle and the other snatching the salt and pepper shakers off the table.

  “I believe that while Mr. Cyr enlightens you as to the reason for his sudden ejaculation of colloquial verbosity I shall take advantage of that time to avail myself of the facilities—”

  “You’re not moving,” said Nariko, steel spike in hand and hair collapsing down.

  “Really, I—”

  Mr. Beauregard started shaking and shivering, and Heath immediately licked salt and pepper off his hand to activate it with the right intentions and spat the mixture onto Mr. Beauregard’s shirt.

  Mr. Beauregard shook harder, and Colin yanked out his wallet as though to use it as a mouth guard for the man, but glanced at Heath and stopped. Heath put the full weight of his own power behind his words.

  “By pepper I kick you out and by salt I bind you.” Heath thunked the empty bottle on the table, the cork dangling from where Heath had tied it to the neck. The blue glass displayed the variety of symbols and passages needed for the bottle to do its task. “Into the bottle, ghostie, or the Baron himself will have words with you.”

  All at once Mr. Beauregard stopped shaking. His head dangled forward.

  “I said in and I meant it,” said Heath. “Last warning or I get rough.”

  Heath watched with his spirit eyes as the ghostie trailed out of Mr. Beauregard like the vapors from a humidifier to gather inside the bottle.

  Heath slammed the cork into the bottle.

  “Gotcha, you little bastard,” he said with a smile.

  9

  Twenty minutes later Heath, Nariko and Colin gathered once more around the marble island in Colin’s kitchen with rich, sweet-smelling coffee brewing in Colin’s fancy coffee maker. They had left the innocent Mr. Beauregard eating a meal at Heath’s expense and convinced – thanks to a believe-me charm that worked very well on people who were already a little confused – that he would be fine after his fit, though he should get a check-up to be sure.

  On the counter between the three of them sat the blue bottle containing the ghostie Heath had knocked out of Mr. Beauregard. Something about the scene felt ominous to Heath. Maybe it was the pouring July rain with its undertone of lightning and thunder.

  “I can’t believe Nariko and I both missed that possession,” said Colin for the third time. But this time he followed it with, “How did you spot it, Heath?”

  “Well, if it had been anything more powerful than what it is, we’d have all seen it at once. As to what tipped it, I could say it was the filibustering, or my uncle’s choice of sending a man in all white like a Vodou hounsi, or even just clean living on my part. But it was your hint about the breathing.”

  “I was joking.”

  “No.” Heath pointed to the bottle. “You only thought you were because the chest muscles were moving right. But the nostrils and the lips weren’t flaring to match the chest, and he never paused in what he had to say. A real blowhard like that uses pauses for emphasis as well as breath.”

  “You’re sure your uncle sent it?” said Nariko.

  “Positive. I saw his ghosties flitting about while we were talking. Didn’t count them though. That was a mistake. But when Colin mentioned breathing the rest came together.”