Conjuror Read online

  She laid her head on his lap, and began to sob. ‘I can’t do this alone any more, baby boy. I just can’t.’

  10.

  OUT OF WORDS

  ‘Don’t cry,’ Rémy said helplessly. ‘Mom, please… it’s OK…’

  His mother pulled herself up, rubbed her face with her hands and fled from the kitchen. Rémy and Tia Rosa flinched at the sound of her bedroom door slamming shut, the key turning behind her as it always did.

  ‘What the…? What just happened, Tia Rosa?’

  His aunt picked up the pancakes and syrup and slid the mess into the rubbish container under the sink, plates and all. When they hit the bottom, they disappeared in a flash with a sound like a hammer on a xylophone. Then she dug behind the garbage disposal and uncovered a bottle of bourbon, pouring two fingers’ worth into two mugs.

  ‘Drink this. It’ll calm your nerves.’

  Outside the window, a plane from O’Hare banked over the horizon. Rémy wished he was on it, going anywhere far away from this kitchen. He coughed as the bourbon burned his throat and seared out across his chest. On the only occasions he’d drunk before, it was on the balcony late at night with Sotto, and it was a can of Budweiser. This was liquid fire.

  He asked the question he was most afraid of.

  ‘My mom isn’t human, is she?’

  Tia Rosa reached across the table and took his hand, squeezing his fingers in hers. Her hands were rough from a lifetime of teaching violin and cello to children before taking on his and his mother’s care full-time.

  ‘She’s human, son,’ she said. ‘But she’s something else as well. And so are you.’

  ‘The music…’ Rémy stopped. How was he supposed to put any of this into words?

  ‘Like your mom, your imagination is hard-wired in such a way that you can create things, alter reality, when you play or sing, Rémy,’ said his aunt.

  If Rémy hadn’t witnessed the transformation in the kitchen less than an hour ago, he would have decided Tia Rosa had climbed on to the crazy train with his mother. But in his heart, he’d always known his differences ran deep. He’d read music before he’d read words, plunking out melodies on a plastic piano at three. By the time he was seven or eight, Rémy could play any musical instrument he laid his hands on. He’d listen to a song on the radio, hum a few bars and then riff on it, expand it and make it his own. He’d taught himself the harmonica listening to Big Walter, Howlin’ Wolf, John Mayall, Stevie Wonder and Bob Dylan, the blues guitar from Muddy Waters and BB King. Music was as much a part of him as his blood and bones.

  ‘So Mom and I can create things with music?’ he said aloud. ‘Like, say, pancakes and blueberry syrup?’

  When his aunt nodded, Rémy furrowed his brow.

  ‘So I’m a freak,’ he said.

  His aunt pulled a Tiparillo from a pack in the drawer and rolled it between her fingers. She’d given up smoking years ago, but Rémy had noticed that the feel of the tobacco on her fingers, the last vestiges of her habit, calmed her.

  ‘You’re not a freak, son. You’re a Conjuror,’ she said. ‘To my knowledge, you and your mom are the only ones left in existence. Your father was one too, God rest his soul. Perhaps their marriage was unwise,’ she added, almost to herself. ‘That combination of power… I worried what it would lead to.’

  Rémy gripped the edge of the table. He wasn’t in any mood to think about his dad. He never was.

  Tia Rosa gave a brief shake of her head.

  ‘There are others who can conjure, son. But unlike you and your mom, they can’t use their voices, just certain sacred instruments. They’ve had lots of names since the beginning of time – Afriti, Moloch, Scaramallion, Lucifer. It’s said only a powerful Conjuror can destroy them. Needless to say, they don’t much like your kind.’

  Rémy felt a cold prick of fear. For years now, pretty much since the death of his father, his mother had been growing more distant, more obsessive, more paranoid. She had kept him away from kindergarten, walked him to and from school, stayed by his side more than most mothers. She saw monsters in shadows, threats in conversations, violence in a handshake. Now the monsters and threats and violence, it seemed, had a name. Evil.

  He gulped the last drop of bourbon.

  ‘Then let’s hope I never run into one of these demons,’ he said. His head felt light. ‘Because I’m not ready for battle.’

  ‘Even with the controller that’s glued to your thumbs?’

  The terror in Rémy’s head dissolved a little. ‘Maybe killing it on Mortal Combat is a transferable life skill after all,’ he said with half a smile.

  Reaching up, he touched his finger to the raised birthmark on the back of his neck. It was a little larger than a thumbprint. God’s stamp of approval, his mother always said. The devil’s mark, his grandfather would counter. After this morning, Rémy was leaning towards his grandfather’s view.

  ‘The Conjuror’s mark,’ said Tia Rosa. ‘You know your mom has it too. It’s special.’

  ‘Grandpa didn’t think it was so special.’ Rémy lowered his hand. ‘Mom’s curls in a different direction from mine.’

  Tia Rosa’s eyebrows lifted. ‘Well now, I never knew that. I guess I’m not as observant as I thought. Still, a Conjuror’s mark is a Conjuror’s mark, no matter what way it spins. Your grandpa’s only education on conjuring was the stories he heard from his mamma, who heard them from hers, and so on and forever back to the time when the first Conjuror arrived in Bayou Teche on that demon slave ship.’

  Rémy fingered his birthmark again. It bothered him suddenly that it wasn’t exactly the same as his mother’s. He couldn’t remember his father’s mark, whether it had curled to the left or to the right. His stomach gave a familiar clench. His memory of his dad was an abstraction, a longing, a series of detailed imaginings where he pondered what his life might have been if his dad had survived the hit and run.

  His aunt was watching him. ‘Do you remember when your father died, Rémy?’

  ‘No,’ said Rémy lying.

  ‘You were five.’

  Rémy fought the memory, but it came regardless. He had spent the day with his mother at the Dupree Plantation archives, reading Curious George at a table big enough to live on. His mother had surrounded herself with ledgers and journals, poring over iron-brown handwriting, notes of sale, accounts and wills and all the paraphernalia of the museum. He remembered being alone in the great dark rooms of the plantation house, long windows striped with moonlight. He remembered fear in his belly. How had he got there? And then there had been a crash outside and a scream and he had been alone.

  ‘Are you sure you—’

  ‘I’m sure, Tia Rosa,’ he said, more sharply than he had intended.

  The bourbon was taking its effect on his elderly aunt. Her eyelids were fluttering and she was fighting to stay awake. She stared groggily into her almost empty mug.

  ‘When your mom was born and your granddaddy spotted the Conjuror’s mark on her shoulder, he banished her to Bayou Teche to be raised by his sister,’ she said. ‘When Bessie got too old, I went to help.’

  This was safer ground. Rémy felt the tension ease from his shoulders.

  ‘I remember Tia Bessie,’ he said. ‘She’d give me rhubarb stalks dipped in sugar.’

  ‘Bessie did her best by your mom, that’s for sure. She educated her well, and allowed her to play her music without shame. She taught her to embrace her gift. Unlike your granddaddy.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘That old man didn’t interpret the mark in the way Bessie and I did. To him, it was a sign of Satan, a symbol of evil simmering in your blood. He banned music from the house and wouldn’t let your mom play or even listen, for fear she’d incite the apocalypse and bring on the reign of Beelzebub.’

  ‘What if he was right?’ said Rémy, his pulse quickening. ‘What if being born with the Conjuror’s mark is a bad thing?’

  ‘No child is born bad,’ said Rosa. ‘But there is a darkness he
re, son, that I still don’t understand. It’s a shame you don’t remember the day your father passed on. A shame…’

  ‘A shame in what way?’ Rémy asked cautiously.

  The answer was so faint he almost failed to catch it.

  ‘Because I think your momma saw something in the archives of the Dupree Plantation that changed everything for her. And I think you saw it too.’

  Outside, Chicago’s traffic honked and steamed and stank. Rémy turned over his memories, trying to find anything that would match what Tia Rosa was describing. All he could bring up was an image of two men standing in a room. No – one had been sitting down.

  Tia Rosa seemed to wake up. ‘I found you that day, you know,’ she said suddenly. ‘Asleep, curled up under a four-poster bed in a plantation bedroom. You must have wandered away from the library.’

  Rémy’s head almost burst with the effort of remembering. He saw the men again, one standing and one sitting. Their faces wouldn’t slide into focus.

  ‘When your mom was climbing into the ambulance with your dad that day, she was hysterical,’ said Tia Rosa. ‘She kept screaming that I protect you and “destroy it”. I figured I’d do the protecting part and worry about the destroying some other time.’

  ‘Destroy what?’

  Tia Rosa shrugged her shoulders.

  ‘Whatever it was that she saw, we left Louisiana that day and never went back. I’m sure your mom has details somewhere but…’

  She fell silent. They both knew what she was thinking. That Rémy’s mother hadn’t let anyone see her research in almost ten years. Hadn’t even let anyone into her bedroom in about as long.

  Tia Rosa stroked Rémy’s cheek. ‘Despite everything that’s happened, baby boy, you and your mamma are the gold in my life.’

  Rémy watched his aunt drag herself slowly towards her bedroom. He closed his eyes. Behind his lids he saw the memory of a hand-held battery fan, blue and plastic, spinning like a whirligig at the feet of a man with a hessian sack at his shoulder, a pitch pipe in his mouth and black flies buzzing above his head. As he squeezed his eyes tighter he heard an oboe and a snare drum, like a heartbeat and a howl.

  11.

  COUNT TO TEN

  LONDON

  PRESENT DAY

  One Mississippi. Two Mississippi.

  Rémy rolled his neck muscles, double-checking his surroundings.

  Three Mississippi. Four Mississippi.

  A man in a navy pea coat, his collar turned up against the chill, stepped into Old Worm’s Curiosities and Ancient Alchemies. Nodding at the shop clerks, he jogged up the wooden staircase to the balcony two steps at a time. Rémy took his mother’s notebook from his inside pocket and flipped to a page he’d marked with an elastic band. He glanced at the series of scrawled drawings and ragged photographs she had torn from an auction catalogue just a few months ago.

  Five Mississippi. Six Mississippi.

  The cabinet matched the drawings and photographs. Relief flooded Rémy. He was in the right place.

  Seven Mississippi. Eight Mississippi.

  For the first time in his seventeen years, Rémy Dupree Rush was OK with validating a racist stereotype. He pulled his hoodie over his buzzed hair, making sure it covered the mark on his neck, then stared as menacingly as he could at an elderly lady browsing a stack of musty books in a nearby aisle. Clutching her handbag to her chest, she scampered away, muttering under her breath.

  Nine Mississippi. Ten Mississippi.

  In a blur of movement, Rémy dropped to the floor and popped open his guitar case. He grabbed something inside and stood up.

  ‘He’s got a gun,’ someone screamed.

  Fear. The most powerful weapon of all.

  12.

  NO DIRTY NOTES

  Rémy Dupree Rush did not have a gun. Instead he gripped a harmonica, a blues harp, a Reckless Tram, a Mississippi saxophone. While the shop clerks stood frozen with indecision, he began to play.

  The music slid from his head to his hands. No slurring notes. No dirty chords. His was a clean melody. Rémy’s breathing deepened, his pulse slowed, but his nose began to bleed. He’d never animated so many times within short periods since he fled Chicago. Colour rose like streamers from his harmonica, curling round the rafters before dipping down and bouncing along the planked floor.

  At the sound of the music, the clerks and customers turned like automatons towards the door. As Rémy picked up his tempo, so did they. No panic, no toppling over the macabre displays, no trampling over the buckets or barrels, no crazed frenzy. All was quiet and orderly as they filed out on to the street.

  When everyone was safely outside, Rémy slumped to the floor, slipping his harmonica back inside the guitar case and snapping it closed. His head was pounding worse than anything he’d ever experienced before, and the tablet around his neck was still hot against his skin. He exhaled slowly, and then wiped his hands across his bleeding nose. Slowly, his imagination began to settle, the music in his head fading to the edge of silence.

  As he stood up, the floor tilted, a million floaters filling his field of vision. Making his way unsteadily to the front door, he turned the lock. He rubbed at the dusty window with his sleeve and peered outside. The customers had gone, leaving just the two clerks huddled together on the kerb, talking into the woman’s phone.

  He leaned against a barrel of white bones until his legs steadied, then headed back to the antique cabinet. Shakily pulling on a pair of black gloves from his jacket pocket, it took him two tries to manipulate the brass catch and open the doors.

  Inside on the left was a fretwork of drawers. Rémy ignored them, running his gloved finger along the top of the frayed satin lining at the back instead. A vibration shot up his arm, and a horrible squeeee exploded inside his head like air rushing from a balloon.

  He pulled away. Jee-zus.

  The din continued. After a moment, he tore away the corner of the lining, touching, pressing, squeezing.

  Nothing.

  He touched his finger to the tablet at his neck. Its regular thrumming and heat had brought him to this shop. It couldn’t be wrong. He tore again at the lining. Nothing.

  The man in a navy pea coat charged at him from nowhere with a Taser.

  No time to think, only to act.

  Rémy dodged sideways, pivoted and straight-kicked, knocking the man on to his back and sending the Taser skittering across the floor. Scrambling to his feet, the man rushed at him again. This time Rémy dropped his shoulder, let his guitar case slide down, grabbed its neck and swung it like a baseball bat into the side of the man’s head. The man went down hard.

  Sorry, dude.

  As Rémy dragged him against the wall, he noticed the tattoo on the inside of the man’s wrist.

  Shit.

  He knew that shape – three fat curved lines with a slash above and below, like a silhouette of a harp.

  13.

  RUN, RÉMY, RUN!

  The man was unconscious, blood oozing from a gash above his eye where he’d face-planted on to the floor. Of course the Camarilla were tracking him. He’d been dumb to think otherwise. They’d probably been on his tail since he’d fled Chicago. Maybe before.

  Rémy slid to the floor. He was so tired. The tablet around his neck was still screaming, taunting him. He missed Tia Rosa and his mom. A sob escaped from his throat. He lashed out in frustration, kicking the pea-coat guy’s legs multiple times until the man groaned and slipped back into unconsciousness.

  Squeezing back his tears and letting his pulse settle, Rémy felt his anguish thin out. He pulled himself up, shored up his grief, stifled his self-pity and pushed on.

  Outside, sirens were closing in on the shop, lights from the panda cars pulsing through the latticed front windows. A customer must have called the police. He had to move. Rémy pulled the unconscious man across the shop and pushed open a hobbit-sized door tucked into the rear wall. He dragged the man inside the cramped space, and then backed out, shutting the door and jamming a
chair under the handle. He kicked the Taser under a cabinet, out of sight. He didn’t need to be caught on the streets with it.

  This may not be Chicago, but he wasn’t born yesterday.

  The male shop clerk was outside peering in, a uniformed police officer in silhouette behind him. Rémy sprinted up the stairs, out through a small arched window and on to an old iron fire escape. At last, the tablet stopped shrieking in his head.

  He shut the window behind him. Rémy secured his guitar case on his back and climbed up the iron steps to the uneven roofs above the alley.

  A loud whistle carried above the city’s noise. A young police officer stood in the street below, staring up at him and talking into her radio.

  ‘This is Patrol Officer one-zero-three in pursuit of a black youth, approximately eighteen years old, heading across the rooftops towards the Prêt-A-Manger on Adelaide Street. Repeat, a possible burglary suspect fleeing on the gabled roofs above Hogarth Lane…’

  Rémy ducked behind a rusty water tank and crawled to the end of the roof, where he watched as the officer sprinted to the front of the old building. He could hear her yelling at the shop clerks. From the sound of things, they were being deliberately unhelpful.

  ‘How do I get up on that roof?’

  ‘Why’d you want to do that?’

  ‘Is there a key to get into this place?’ she asked.

  ‘We’re waiting for the owner to open up. He’s always bloody late on Mondays, ’specially if he had a rough weekend.’

  Rémy peered over the edge of the roof. The police officer was eyeing the clerks.

  ‘Do you often turn up for work without coats or bags?’

  ‘I don’t see that it’s any of your business.’

  ‘Fine,’ said the officer. ‘You two stooges stay where you are. I’ll be back for a chat in a bit, and you’d better have figured out a way inside by then.’

  Rémy jumped across the roof to the building next door. But he wasn’t fast enough. The officer was directly beneath him, looking up. In a panic, he scanned up ahead, trying to find the best way down.