Maker

Chapter: 1-3

“Why Zora, I take offense to that. I haven’t violated anyone’s civil rights since…” he rubbed his chin in mock thought, “yesterday.”

They both huffed a laugh and Zora went to grab her bag from the corner. Rollo nodded over to me. “You get a permit for that weapon yet?”

It was my turn to scoff at him. Shithead. He knew this was a touchy subject.

“And put what! Name! On it?! Maker the Wizard? Abracadabra the Magnificent? No, wait, I know—Finn-2187! You’re the detective, go detect s**t! And if you ever find out what my last name is, come tell me, and I’ll be happy to not put it on a permit.”

Zora thought it was funny. She slung the duffle bag over her shoulder and made to leave.

Rollo grabbed her arm as she tried to walk past.

“What’s in the bag?”

“Personal property and no business of any law enforcement personnel not currently in possession of a warrant,” she said.

That was the trouble with cops. Even if I did want to be Rollo’s friend, and I can’t imagine why I would, he would always be a cop first and my friend second. At best that made him unreliable and reliability was the number-one thing I looked for in a person.

Zora seemed to see it the same way. Rollo was good for banter, and a tool if she needed something, but not much more than that. She gave his hand on her arm a pointed look and met his eyes. Her other hand flipped out a few inches of sword. “You’re not going to try and haul me in are you detective? Cause that’s not gonna end well for anybody.”

“Y’all can’t act any way you want ‘cause you’re wizards.” He was looking at her just as fiercely. Technically, Zora was threatening a police officer, but he’d never make that stick.

She smiled back at me. “Lay garlands atop the iron chains that weigh them down and let them love their slavery by turning them into something called civilized people.” She seasoned the last two words with liberal doses of contempt.

I smiled back. “Hmm… definitely French. Rousseau? 1769? Good year. This will no doubt taste nutty—with legs—and go great with pâté and baguettes.”

Zora and I both giggled. The joke didn’t make any real sense, but it had the effect of confusing Rollo. That made it funny enough. I didn’t even know what pâté was.

“And what the hell is that supposed to mean?” Rollo obviously had no head for 18th century French philosophers. Shame, too. Rousseau was a great read.

Zora snatched her arm away with a growl. “It means we don’t act any way we want because we’re wizards. We act any way we want because we’re criminals.”

“She’s got you there,” I said with a laugh. Zora and I did whatever it took to survive. Unfortunately, most of it just happened to be illegal.

I blinked and missed Zora leaving. There was a rustle of air and a blur as she left. Except for a few drops of blood, there was nothing to show she’d been there at all. Rollo just stared out the open door after her.

“Will you knock it off?!” I said. “You can’t find her if she doesn’t want to be found. Unless I help you, and spoiler alert: I’m not going to help you. Even if you somehow managed it on your own, you couldn’t catch her. If you got that done, you couldn’t hold her. And if by some miracle she was exceedingly bored, or in a coma, and let all that happen anyway, your forensics team would tell you that most of that blood came from something that doesn’t exist. Now, what do you want?”

Rollo stared out the door for another moment before refocusing on why he was here and closing it.

“Got a case.”

“What does that have to do with me?”

He answered by tossing a small cloth pouch on my desk. I picked it up. It was simple black cotton, closed with a drawstring. Inside were small chips of glass. I had designed and created a prism for Rollo that glowed in the presence of magical energies and intense radiation. Worked pretty well too. If I’d known at the time that he only wanted it so he could ensnare me into investigating magical happenings, I would’ve told him it was impossible.

“I walked into a crime scene, and the damn thing turned into a hot potato. By the time I got it out of my pocket, it had shattered. I need you to come take a look.”

“No.”

There were a few hundred things in the world that were strong enough to shatter that prism, and I didn’t want to meet any of them.

I could use magic. I could make potions that did all the things I told Blan they could do. That didn’t make me a real wizard. In the arena of magical brute force, I was in the kiddie division. That made casting powerful spells a draining activity or a flat-out impossibility. No way I wanted to go wherever Rollo had just been. Whatever it was would kill me for sport and eat me as an afterthought.

Rollo nodded when I spoke and kept talking.

“Took some photos of the place. Some kind of satanic ritual maybe?” The glossy eight-by-tens were portraits of two kids. The others had blood but no corpse in sight. I recognized the summoning circle in one of them. Rollo was still waiting when I finally succeeded in tearing my eyes away.

“From what I know, the prince of darkness is in a very deep hole with some very bad things and isn’t coming out anytime soon. If you wanna know more, see a priest.”

Rollo ignored me again. “There’s two children missing. The blood types on the walls don’t match either of theirs. Go take a look and let me know what I’m dealing with.”

I stayed silent as my eyes flashed back to the pictures. I just shook my head. Rollo must’ve noticed the fear on my face. I wasn’t about to go near that place, wherever it was.

“Dammit Maker. How far do I have to push this?” I knew what he meant.

I ran across a lot of things while hunting monsters. Some monsters had immaculate taste, but I couldn’t eat a Rolex. Sadly, the process of turning a dead vampire’s jewelry into groceries was illegal and Rollo knew it. He had me dead to rights on enough money laundering to put me in jail for a few years—and that was the least of my felonies.

“Answer’s still no. Jail’s better than dead.”

“Why’re you being a coward about this?”

“Why do you walk in my lab once a year and say, ‘Hey Maker I have another meat grinder for you to walk into?’ Get out!” I realized I was on my feet. I realized I was yelling. I also realized I didn’t care.

Normally people accused me of being stoic. I certainly tried to be. If only they could see me now. One deep breath later, Rollo dropped a piece of paper on my desk and went to the door. The paper had an address on it for a street I didn’t know. “I can keep the place empty and the press in the dark for another day or two. A full-on badass wizard shouldn’t have any trouble sneaking into one little crime scene.”

“No trouble at all, since I’m not going,” I said

“His name is Ryan; eight years old, likes baseball. Theresa’s twelve; good at math, wants to be a teacher.” With that Rollo closed the door behind him.

The Bastard.