CHAPTER 29: SWEET NOTHINGS

  CYPRUS ALLEY—NOVEMBER 20th, 1992 | MORNING

  ?

  Before the night’s end, Leroy had placed a call.

  Sparrow charged an arm and a leg for her services, which, on top of clean-ups, included professional-grade misdirections. On the off chance that there were any further eyewitnesses to what had gone down at the Nightingale, Sparrow made sure they didn’t. Rumor had it she was some kind of mesmer, which, given her line of work, would’ve been a damn good pairing. Other people said she was well-connected. Leroy figured it was a bit of both; he’d have to ask her if he ever had a chance to meet her.

  The next morning he woke up full of aches.

  Rachel Chen’s parting gifts, which came in the form of far too many slices and lacerations Leroy had cared to admit, had done a number on him, and worse, Gideon very nearly had made a fool of him. A few inches to the left and that weird shadowy-finger thing would’ve gone straight through him.

  Body aches, headaches, stomach aches. His knees hurt. His back hurt. Everything hurt.

  His impromptu visit with Bishop Hagreeves was probably the only reason he was half-functional that morning. On his insistence, Leroy had begrudgingly double-dosed on pasteurized demon blood, and he’d woken up three times in the middle of the night to vomit bile into his toilet. He vomited until there was nothing left, and dry heaved himself into a fetal position on his bathroom floor.

  When next he woke, a heavy cloud of fatigue draped over his head like a weighted blanket. He didn’t know how long he slept, or even if he slept at all. It was a hangover that would last the entire day, and he expected if he tried to eat anything, he’d vomit it back up.

  Worse, Foot demanded that he be up at six-o-clock sharp, and kept laying his butt flat on his face until he got up from the checkered floors. With a groan, Leroy swiped the black cat away from him. “Yeah, yeah. I know. Meal time.”

  The cat purred triumphantly, and paced over to the two bowls next to the door to Leroy’s bathroom.

  After a much needed shower, Leroy opened up his closet and his face soured upon realizing he was out of black turtlenecks. He scrounged through his closet, and dug through old clothes that were far too small for him these days, exhaling sharply at his lack of success in finding anything.

  A sweater hung at the very end of the clothing hangers, nestled between an old black button up and a red flannel: a knitted pullover with a black-and-white checkered pattern.

  Leroy’s eyes widened. He raised a hand, slowly, and hovered it over one of the sleeves as if the fabric were porcelain, too delicate to touch and too precious to even consider taking hold of. Her sweater lingered in front of him like an effigy, holy and sacrosanct, while he was anything but.

  Leroy sat down on an old trunk on the far side of his closet. Behind him was a mannequin, looming just behind him with his equipment harness over its torso, and by his feet were stacked ammo magazines that lay haphazardly between piles of unused waterskins and shoes he hadn’t worn in years.

  He held his face in his hands and inhaled slowly.

  Foot silently entered the closet and brushed up against his leg, and he leaned back to stare at the sweater.

  Leroy said, brown eyes fixed onto the sweater. A sad smile stretched across his face. “Don’t know what I was thinking. You hated the color black, and white, and gray. Should’ve gotten you a green one. Something more—... I don’t know. Something more preppy, or business casual. Or maybe no sweater at all. Maybe.. maybe I should’ve just given you this ring.”

  He tugged at his necklace, and fiddled with a small golden ring attached to it.

  Foot purred, and titled his little head.

  “That’s Foot. I think you’d like him. He’s a foolish little shit, hungry all the time, but I can’t say I blame him. Scooped him out from a drug den of an apartment over in South End. Your brother seems to be doing well, by the way. Big Mister Minister. Pretty sure you won him that election, and you’d never admit to it, but he’d tell you the same thing three times over, Melinda.”

  The sweater remained idle, dimly lit by the closet’s singular hanging bulb.

  She cannot hear you. She is gone.

  Cold whispers flooded his thoughts. Yaerzul’s voice crackled into his mind and echoed through the crevices of his awareness, sending a pulse of frigid authority through his body. Leroy held a hand over the symbol on his neck and furrowed his brows.

  “Quiet,” Leroy said.

  You do her a disservice. And yet you speak as if her spirit were here, watching you, happy that you remembered her. You are a fool. If she were here, she would condemn you to an early death for your idleness. For the years you have wasted. For the time you could have spent avenging her as you promised you would.

  Leroy clenched a fist. “Drop it, Yaerzul.”

  You gave up looking. And for what? To diminish the power I have given you on trivial jobs that never end? You became an arbiter for a reason. The privileges of the title are wasted on you. If this is how you intend to spend the rest of your days, submit yourself to the boy. Do it now. Today. Earlier than fate would intend for it to happen. Allow him the opportunity to do what you could not—and at the very least you will have died granting someone else what you have denied yourself.

  "Quiet!” Leroy lurched forward and grabbed hold of the sweater, plunging both hands down the neckline of the fabric. A rip fissured down the middle and the black and white fell to the floor as two separate pieces.

  Foot lurched at the sudden noise and scattered into Leroy’s bedroom.

  Leroy sat back down on the trunk and stared at the torn sweater.

  ?

  He decided on the red flannel, which barely showed beneath Leroy’s go-to-leather jacket. He fixed his checkered flat cap on top of his head and adjusted it until it felt like it was in its proper place, and paced towards the coffee maker. Foot scurried out between his feet and nearly tripped Leroy. A shirtless Cameron was already sitting at the kitchen bar, spooning some cereal into his mouth.

  “Get decent, Kessler. We leave soon,” Leroy said.

  “All of my clothes—except for the pants on my legs—are in the laundry room downstairs. Sick of stinking.”

  “Well, did you shower?” Leroy asked, reaching into a cabinet to withdraw some coffee paper and his go-to flavor. He sniffed the inside of the container as he opened it. “Could throw this on you if it’s real bad.”

  “Yes, I showered. Look, I came here with the clothes on my back, and it’ll be an hour before everything's done down there. If you want to get moving, fine, but I’ll need something to wear,” Cameron said, some of the words muffled out by the loud noise of his crunching.

  “You want some?” Leroy asked.

  “What?”

  “Coffee,” Leroy said.

  “No. What I want is a shirt, Leroy, so give me one,” Cameron retorted.

  The coffee had finished brewing, and Leroy filled his cup and took the first sip. “Okay, I have a black tee shirt, and a white one. Both are too small for me now. Take your pick.”

  Cameron furrowed his brows. “Are you serious? It’s mid-fucking-Novemeber, I’ll freeze out there.”

  “Okay, so wear them both, and we can get you a jacket or something on the way,” Leroy said.

  “No. I don’t need your charity, don’t want it—”

  Leroy let out a hearty laugh, wry and wheezy. “Hah! I’d say we’re well past the point of charity, Kessler. I made sure you didn’t go to Blackpool, gave you a roof over your head. Hell, I’m feeding you, and you draw the line at me giving you clothes? That’s the hill you want to die on?”

  “No, I draw the line at you buying me clothes,” Cameron said.

  Leroy faked a frown. “Boo-hoo."

  ?

  “New digs?” Velvet’s resident accursed, Rhett, stood in front of Cameron, smiling with his big gopher-like teeth.

  Leroy glanced to his side, where Cameron stood in a layered set of tee-shirts and faded, brown denim jacket that was almost khaki-colored, but not quite. Cameron insisted that they go to a second-hand store on the way to Spectre, and made sure to pick the cheapest thing available. A cup of coffee at a local cafe would’ve cost more, and in all honesty, the thing was a steal. Leroy would’ve worn it if he was twenty-something.

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  “You know, it doesn’t look half bad,” Rhett said, tugging on the sleeve of Cameron’s new-old jacket. “What do you think, Luisa?”

  Luisa kept her AR-15 slouched over her shoulder and nodded her head from side to side. “Not too shabby.”

  “Seems charity isn’t so bad sometimes, Kessler,” Leroy said.

  Cameron leered at all of them. “If we could go inside, that’d be a great start.”

  Rhett and Luisa stepped to the side, and Leroy tipped his hat to them. It was strange being in Spectre during their non-business hours, and even more strange that both Rhett and Luisa were still at the doors. If they had a chance to sleep, it must’ve been brief. Rhett's gray-skinned, scar-tissue filled face and strange, mangled jaw wouldn't have looked any better with a full night's rest either. Lots of accursed were ugly, but this guy was uglier than ugly.

  Leroy ascended the two sets of stairs until they reached the VIP lounge, which was still very much in a state of disrepair, and they were greeted by a man whose arm was in a sling, and whose neck had a brace. The heavyset bouncer immediately locked eyes with Cameron—this was the idiot who had been standing by the door when they busted it down.

  The man’s face reddened. “You motherfucker—”

  “Here on business,” Leroy said. He patted him on his bad side, prompting a groan from the man, and walked past him.

  “Ouch, ey’! Ey’! I ain’t say you could go in there!”

  Cameron brushed past the man. “Doors open.”

  At the disheveled bar was Gloria, the bartender, and Aria Remeau, sipping on what looked to be a small glass of whisky. Her tussled, neck-length red hair somehow looked well groomed, and she wore the same white tank top and trench coat Leroy had seen her in yesterday. She raised the glass to Leroy.

  “You want to start your morning off right, Leroy?” Aria said.

  “I’m good,” Leroy said.

  She grimaced, and glanced towards Cameron. “How about you, handsome?”

  Cameron took a step forward, a big grin on his face, and Leroy pulled him back a step.

  “What? It’s free,” Cameron said.

  “No, it’s not. The hidden price tag is the crazy woman you’d be sharing a drink with. Not a path you want to go down, trust me,” Leroy stated.

  “Pff! Yeah, right, like you’d know,” Aria laughed.

  A twenty-something thaumaturgist working for Marcus Velvet, a day-drinker, and a vixen to boot. Leroy didn’t need to have first-hand experience to know that she was trouble, and exactly the kind of trouble a guy like Cameron probably went out looking for. “Call it context clues, Aria. Don’t see Hughes or Rachel. Seems like you’re an army of one today.”

  “Well, with the amount of p-blood they downed yesterday, yeah. One hell of a hangover,” Aria said with a wink.

  Cameron switched up, and his enthusiasm for a shared drink seemed to completely leave him. “Hughes.. is, is he uh—... he’s alright?”

  “Pretty as a peach. If he wasn’t, I wouldn’t be offering you a sip of my liquid gold here. No, we wouldn’t be having a conversation at all,” Aria said plainly.

  Leroy believed her. He glanced over his shoulder to look at what remained of the VIP lounge, and though Rachel’s ink-sword-things had long since faded, the damage from Aria’s misfired thaumaturgic spell would probably cost Marcus a pretty penny to fix up.

  The doors to the office swung open, and with them the sound of snakeskin heels drew Leroy’s attention. Marcus stood as he did just the day before: adorned in long slacks, a velvet dress shirt, and thick golden chains. His rimless rectangular sunglasses rested perfectly on his nose, and he smiled in Leroy’s direction.

  “Leroy Waters! You’re back, and with your underarbiter no less,” Marcus said, holding one of the two doors open. “Come in, come in.”

  Aria raised her glass to Leroy and Cameron, took another sip, and watched as the two entered the room. The office looked exactly as it did the night before: untouched by the skirmish at the VIP lounge, gaudy, with neon fixtures and a big modern-styled desk that Marcus was already leaning up against with two crossed and expectant arms.

  “What do you have for me, gentlemen?” Marcus asked.

  Cameron opened his mouth, but closed it quickly. Leroy was glad to see that—at the very least, it meant he was getting a sense of when and when not to speak.

  “Gideon was running with a small outfit, no more than three people,” Leroy reported. “As far as I know, the three of them have been picked up by the Civic and Occult Authority.”

  Marcus nodded. “And Gideon?”

  “Handed him off to Bishop Hargreeves. He’s been dealt with.”

  The Uncrowned King of Cyprus Alley was silent for a long while, his face taciturn, stilled, and drawn forward into what looked like silent deliberation. Then, he nodded, albeit slowly. “If I’m being frank, Leroy, I would’ve preferred if you killed him. But given his status as a demonic contractor, I doubt I’ll ever hear from him or see from him ever again. I suppose that’s one favor done with, then.”

  One more to go, and then he’d be rid of this snake of a man for the foreseeable future.

  Leroy cleared his throat. “Ether, Marcus. We had a deal. You aren’t going to peddle it out of here anymore, and you’re going to tell me the name of the manufacturer.”

  “Eager, isn’t he?” Marcus asked with a smile, looking towards Leroy. “See, Cameron—that is your name, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah,” Cameron said with a nod.

  Marcus sprawled up and stretched his arms out. “Take notes, young Cameron! Here stands a man who gets things done! Eager, full of vitriol, tenacity, in spite of those old knees. A real grade-A, stand-up individual. A real treasure here in Cyprus Alley. Now, Cameron, you make sure he knows that, alright?”

  “Enough with the theatrics, Marcus. I need a name,” Leroy declared.

  “Ether isn’t all that bad, you know. See, Donovan, he was one of the more volatile examples, but once the side-effects can be worked out, I imagine it’ll hit the markets within months, maybe even weeks. Take away the excitability, the quickness to anger, and you’ve got the alchemical equivalent of something that grants the everyman a fighting chance—”

  “Marcus!” Leroy yelled.

  Marcus whistled. “Yes, yes, alright. That was a freebie, Leroy, because I happen to like you in spite of all of the trouble you’ve caused me. Next time, I’ll charge you the going rate—”

  “There won’t be a next time,” Leroy said.

  Marcus smiled at that. “Bluestein Philterworks. They have an office on the 58th floor of Godfrey Tower.”

  Brinehaven’s leading alchemical manufacturing company, makers of some of the more popular elixirs and salves, most of which were well out of the common man’s price range, sold in the handful of high-end boutiques they had littered around Garland Heights and Caulton. It made perfect sense.

  They were using Spectre, and Cyprus Alley at-large, as a testing grounds for whatever ether would end up turning into. Remove the red-tape that came with getting clearance from the Commonwealth to sell something like that, and Bluestein Philterworks would end up saving money, saving tax dollars, and saving themselves from public scrutiny.

  No advanced studies, no animal testing. They went straight to human trials to see how it would hold up.

  “Your informants. They kept an eye out on the streets, watched, and waited to see how it would affect people. And you sold that information back to Bluestein Philterworks so that they’d have some damn semblance of working data to draw from,” Leroy thought aloud. “You weren’t worried about Gideon killing your people, or taking over turf. You were worried about him killing the ones who saw what went down with ether-users after they used it.”

  Marcus shrugged, as if to playfully deny such a thing, but the half-smile on his face spoke volumes. Cameron remained silent the whole while, trying to put on some sort of brave, brooding face to hide his confusion.

  “Thirty-percent you were making on every ether sale in Spectre. That, plus the extra cash flow from selling that dirty intel back to Bluestein Philterworks. You're cutting ties with what could’ve been one hell of a business venture. You shot yourself in the foot with this, Marcus.”

  “A price I am willing to pay. And a fair one, given what I’ll have you doing for me next," Marcus said, smiling to himself.

  Leroy envisioned how easy it would have been to kill him, right then and there.

  A quick gunshot would’ve sufficed, and while Aria had her strengths, her thaumaturgy wouldn’t hold up against Leroy and Cameron together—especially with Hughes and Rachel absent. Coldness seeped through his features, and it was in that absence of visible irritation and anger that Marcus likely knew he was considering it.

  “But! You take all the time you need. I did say I’d be collecting on that second favor only after you’ve completed your little arbitration contract. And man, disrupting Bluestein Philterworks is one hell of a tall order. Now, if all is well, I’d prefer if you two got going—”

  “We were just leaving,” Leroy said. He dug his heel into the ground and pivoted towards the door.

  Cameron followed after him, and Aria only raised her glass as they made for the stairs.

  By the time they reached the second floor, Cameron shuffled in front of Leroy and placed a hand out to stop him from proceeding. It was the last thing he needed right now, and that look still hadn’t washed away from Leroy’s face. Cameron could likely sense it, see it, feel it, but he stood in front of him regardless. Any credit that was due to him for such a thing was upended by Leroy’s soured mood.

  “What the hell does he have on you, Leroy?”

  Leroy urged him to be silent by placing a hand over his mouth. “Quiet. We’ll talk about it in the car.”

  They passed Rhett and Luisa at the doors, where Rhett issued a wave and a proper goodbye, and Luisa offered them nothing more than a simple nod. They were both awfully cordial given the events that had transpired just yesterday, but that was neither here nor there. After looking both ways, Leroy crossed the street and Cameron followed after him, and they both entered Leroy’s black SUV. He switched on the engine and thumbed around, but every radio station was pure static.

  “So?” Cameron asked.

  “We’ve been over this. Nothing and everything. I don’t know, but I know it’s something, and now, at the very least, he has it on good authority that I committed a crime outside of an arbitration note. So even if he didn’t have anything before, he’s got something now. Not a risk I’m taking,” Leroy said.

  “This is going to bite you in the ass, even if you still do that second favor. ‘Cause then he’ll have two somethings. Two things he can use against you on top of whatever you think he already has."

  “I—...” Leroy huffed, pivoted, and glared at Cameron. “I’ll figure something out by the time I’m done with the second favor, Kessler.”

  “No, you won’t. If I’ve learned anything about you by now it’s that you suck at planning, and you’re even worse at thinking about the future,” Cameron stated.

  “You’re one to talk,” Leroy retorted.

  “I never said I was any better. But you’re the arbiter. We had a deal, remember? You need to stick around long enough for me to get my arbiter’s license. You owe me that. Once there’s a second favor, there will be a third, and a fourth. A fifth. A sixth. And every time you do one, you keep giving Velvet something he can work with to bring you down if you refuse. This isn’t for me to figure out, but it’s something you need to nip in the ass. Sooner rather than later.”

  Leroy smiled. Cameron sounded more like him than he did himself.

  “What the fuck is funny, Leroy?”

  Leroy put the car into drive. “Nothing. You’re just a quicker learner than I ever was, and if I’m being honest? I wasn’t expecting that. Not from you.”

  Cameron slouched into his seat and stared out the window. “That’s me. Full of surprises.”

  LEROY WATERS

  CAMERON KESSLER

  ARIA REMEAU

  MARCUS VELVET

  rHETT

  LUISA

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