Oliver McArdle shape shifted — that was his calling. We each had our own specialties. Mira’s abilities were in illusion, giving forms to visions and glamours. She also kept an elaborate greenhouse and had talent growing rare ingredients. Matthew’s understanding was at the mathematical-theoretical level. His experiments opened new ways of tapping into the energy that surrounded us. My own was a strange amalgamation of sympathetic magic and sheer will.
Oliver could be any form he wanted, but his preferred one was a black cat — a Bombay with slick fur and graceful moves. If needed, he could expand his size to that of a jaguar. His fluidity made tracking his location difficult.
I needed someone who specialized in divination. Alice Sweetwater was the best in the business for finding people who could hide from typical tracking spells, but we weren’t on that great of terms. I’d be lucky to get my foot in the door, but I had to try.
She lived in a quiet little neighborhood where parents let their children out to play without fear of violence. A pair of girls etched a hopscotch grid into a driveway with colored chalk. I watched for a moment from where I idled at a stop sign. The pavement would bleed color after each rain for months.
Making the turn, I drove the rest of the distance before pulling up to the curb across from Alice’s house. I came with the requisite sacrifice in the form of a carton of cigarettes. Pall Malls to be exact.
Stepping out of the Bronco, I crossed the empty street before walking up her path, cigarettes in hand. I stopped at the door and gazed at its knocker. A grape leaf crowned Bacchus stared back at me, a torc hanging from his mouth. I gave the brass a swing, rapping it against the heavy wood painted green.
The door opened a crack before it swung inward. A giant nose muzzled the edge, moving it further. Tongue lolling out in a pant, a beast of a dog stared at me.
The doorknob came to his jowls. Jagged fur alternating between gray, white, and tan feathered around his face and over his body. Amber eyes with a very un-canine-like intelligence met mine.
“Hello Ian,” I said, greeting Alice’s Irish wolfhound. Ian closed his mouth as his nose began to work the air, wiggling side to side. Satisfied with my scent, he took a step back.
Alice stepped into view then, one hand smoothing over the dog’s crown as the other held the door. Her hand rested hip level on the dog’s head.
“Alice.”
“Hello Alex,” she said, leaning against her open door as she focused on a point over my shoulder. “I thought I told you never to show up here again.”
Ian gave a huge yawn, passing his tongue over inordinately long canines. Alice glowered as her hand moved to grip her hip. Annoyed, she chewed on her inside of her cheek.
“I know, I’m sorry. It’s just….”
I wasn’t sure what to say. I needed to find the man who broke into Matthew’s storage to steal one of his most prized possessions. The contents of that lock box had been passed to him by his mentor. If nothing else, they were a keepsake.
“Whatever.” She said with a sigh, blond hair sweeping back and forth as she shook her head before stepping aside. “Come in.”
Ian made way, tail wagging as if happy I passed the test. As I walked by Alice, she held out a hand. I pressed the carton into it.
“Unfiltered?” She asked, feeling the box without looking at it.
“Of course.”
“Good.”
Blind to normal vision, Alice’s strength was the third eye. She could read the frequencies and fluctuations in the lay lines and celestial bodies like none other. For her, great sight in one realm meant total lack of it in another — Alice had been born blind. Only later had she developed the ability to harness what she saw.
I followed a few steps behind as Ian led the way to Alice’s sun room through an entrance from the living room. His nails clacked on the wide slats of the hardwood floor and she navigated by sound as he guided her around the coffee table and low couch.
A circular table and its four chairs took up the most space in the room. Windows lined it on three walls and made it warmer than the entryway.
“Who or what are you trying to find?”
“Oliver McArdle.”
“The shapeshifter?”
“Yes.”
She whistled. “You should have brought me two cartons. What did he do?”
“I think he stole a set of divination tools out of a lock box of Matthew’s.”
“And you want to get them back?” She used the chair backs to guide herself around the table.
“Or at least ask him what the hell he was doing in a locked and warded storage room.”
“Fair enough.”
Alice slipped into the seat that was closest to the long wall of windows and passed the carton of cigarettes back to me. Ian crouched beneath the table and laid down like a canine version of the Egyptian Sphinx.
“You know the drill,” Alice said as she pointed to the center of the table.
Digging out my pocket knife, I slit into the carton and started to open the individual packs. The pungent earthy peat smell of the tobacco filled the room as I packed all two hundred cigarettes into the metal canister sitting above a burner on the middle of the table. Wadding up the garbage, I stuffed it in the can near the entry.
“Torch it up,” Alice said and nodded towards me as she rubbed her hands together.
I lit the oil burner beneath the canister with a wood match and adjusted the wick till the flame stood a half inch. A funnel focused the smoke as it rose from the canister, feeding it into a silver coil that hung in midair from a long hook in the ceiling. At the end of the long coil in a recessed groove in front of Alice, sat a large glass orb. Once she was ready, the orb would fill with smoke, allowing her to manipulate it to give shape to her visions.
I sat in the chair across from her, reaching out to clasp her hands in mine and complete the circle.
“What do you seek?”
I closed my eyes and focused. “Answers.”
“To what question?”
That was the tricky part. The spirits Alice invoked loved messing with people, using their odd sense of humor to twist anything asked for into the exact opposite. Ask for a million bucks and a lot of venison will show up at your door. Try to get the week’s lottery numbers and it’ll be for a country in the middle of nowhere and the prize would be someone’s best pig.
“I want the knowledge of the locations of all divination sets that were ever in the possession of Matthew Vaughan immediately before his death.”
I opened an eye and glanced at Alice. She nodded once, satisfied with my question. As her chant started, the tobacco smoke rose from the canister and entered the twisting silver pipe. Her voice rose in pitch as the pace of her words increased to a crescendo to the point where the last phrase came out as a breathless gasp.
Smoke flooded the orb, curling back on itself as it billowed into the empty space. Alice let go of my hands to parallel hers over the glass. It sensed her influence, following her hands as they washed back and forth.
“Reveal. Reveal.” Alice whispered before her head lolled back. When it came forward again, her mouth was agape and her eyes were rolled upward.
“I see a long path, lined with shrubs. It’s leading me to a front door. It’s painted a glossy red.”
The smoke shifted, showing a gray-scale approximation of her vision. I saw it as she walked.
“I try to notice the numbers, but they’re scratched and faded. The door opens easily, but everything is empty. Maybe the place is up for sale or was just bought?”
A vague hallway took shape as Alice stepped further inside. It led towards a vacant room to the right and the kitchen at the back. I strained to see detail, but it was all flat, gray, and barren.
As she strode into the kitchen, a gigantic cat leapt up onto the island counter in the middle of the checkerboard floor. It hiss-growled at her. A ridge of hair stood up along its spine and its tail bushed out. He crouched over a dark pouch — I took it as a sign that Oliver still had Matthew’s possessions.
“Alex?”
“I see it.”
Something else stood in the gap where a refrigerator should have been. The shape morphed the longer I stared at it, but its outline was humanoid. It stood forward — digitigrade like an animal — and its wide barrel chest shadowed a gaunt abdomen. Both arms and legs were skinny spindles with long and thin fingers and toes. A slim neck rose above its shoulders, it’s length twice that of any human’s. Two glowing red eyes stared out from an oval face. A cadaverina demon. The vultures of the Other that ate everyone else’s scraps.
“Why is a cadaverina hanging out around McArdle?” Alice asked, her hands working the smoke to fine-tune the image. What she saw in her mind translated to the orb and her gestures ran them both.
“Not sure. Any more detail as to where this house is located?”
“Um.” The smoke image blurred as she lost concentration on McArdle and his demon buddy. “Kitchen door?”
“Go for it.”
Morphing again as Alice moved to and opened the door, the orb depicted a small backyard bordered by a privacy fence lined with ivy. A giant willow dwarfed the area, its drooping branches trimmed to the same height above ground.
“I need to look for ancient weeping willows.”
“And a side view of the Episcopal Church tower.”
A Calvary cross stood a distance away, barely visible above the ivy fence.
“That’s a bit easier to find. Thank you, Alice.”
Bowing her head, she let her hands slip from the orb to rest on the table. She spoke the final blessing to release the energy before cranking the exhaust valve on the orb. The smoke exited out another small chamber to a vent shaft that ran upward to the ceiling before hooking towards the wall over her head. Burning the tobacco also served as an offering — Alice would let all 200 Pall Malls smolder to ash as a thanks to the spirits.
“Here,” I said as I dug two twenty dollar bills out of my pocket. I pressed them into Alice’s palm. Her fingers were cold.
“I don’t want your money, Alex.” She slid them back over the table towards me, her cloudy eyes not quite finding mine. “Never have.”
“I’ll give it to Ian then.”
At the mention of his name, the great dog started to slap his long tail across the wood floor. Bending over to glimpse at the animal, I smiled, watching as he belly crawled towards me.
Alice laughed. “You’re going to give Ian forty bucks?”
“Sure, why not? He can buy himself a new collar. Maybe a steak or two.” Ian lapped his fat tongue on my wrist as I folded the bills around the leather of his collar. “Or how about a case of Guinness?”
His tail thumped faster and his snout reached for my face to drag a long line of slobber across my cheek.
“Don’t give him any ideas.”
I pressed a friendly kiss against Alice’s cheek before leaving. She gave mine a friendly slap.
As I climbed into the Bronco, a man dressed in gray tweed opened Alice’s door and stepped out onto the stoop. Tall and wiry, he ducked to avoid the top of the frame. When he caught my eye, he saluted me. For a moment, his hazel eyes flashed amber and his canines were twice the length as normal behind his smile.