Trickster by Jeff Somers Read Free Book Online Page B

and I could have sworn the sliver of green stone was still affixed to the exact spot on his chest where I had first seen it. The light caught it and made it gleam.
    “Jesus fucked,” Hiram said, stepping back from it. “Jesus fucked, Mr. Vonnegan, what have you been up to?”
    “What?”
    “Do you know what that is?”
    Panic lapped at the edges of my thoughts again. “No. My education was pretty shitty.”
    The old man looked at me, and then panic broke through and swamped me, because he looked panicked. “You did not touch it, did you?”
    I shook my head, and relief edged into his face.
    “That’s not just any ‘artifact,’ as your story had me believe. That is a very old, old artifact, Mr. Vonnegan. Or a piece of it.” He stepped to the left to get a better angle, and seemed careful to stay a certain distance from the green stone. “A very dangerous artifact.” He looked at me again. “The mage in the parking lot—describe him again. Carefully.”
    I did, trying to be detailed, and he started nodding when I was halfway through.
    “Calvin Amir, I think,” he said. He sighed and sat down on the edge of the coffee table, letting his hands dangle between his legs. “Do you know who Cal Amir is?”
    I shook my head. I hadn’t kept up on the gossip.
    “You do know who Mika Renar is, though?”
    The name made me jump, and Mags looked downat his hands and muttered “ Fuck ” as a grace note of despair and terror.
    I swallowed thickly. “Renar is . . . enustari .” Archmage. “Probably the most powerful mage on earth.”
    “Not probably,” Hiram said softly. “She is . She is old now, but she is the most dangerous person on the planet. Cal Amir,” he added almost gently, “is her apprentice.”
    I put my head down in my hands. “Ah, shit.”
    Mika Renar. Ancient, brittle old woman. Probably the worst living serial killer in the world. Able to reach around the globe and swat you off her ass without bleeding a drop of her own blood. Connected and rich in the mundane world, too, just for giggles. And I’d fucked with her apprentice .
    “Lem?” Mags said, sounding like a lost kid.
    I looked up and forced myself to put my hands on my knees and smile.
    “It’s okay, Magsie,” I said as cheerfully as I could. “We’re with Hiram now.”
    Mags smiled a little, relieved. I hated myself, but Mags could only understand four things at a time. We didn’t have time to teach him anything else. I looked at Hiram.
    “What can I do?”
    Hiram snorted, standing up and heading for the bar. “ Do? Nothing, Mr. Vonnegan. You have a girl who has clearly been marked for ritual in my bathroom. You have a stolen car parked outside my house. You have a man wearing a three-thousand-year-old artifact neither of us could create or control under anycircumstances, which is the property of either the most powerful entity in the world or her apprentice, which makes very little difference.” He turned his head slightly as he worked the glass. “Mr. Vonnegan, I believe you have done enough .”
    I swallowed. I had seen what powerful mages could do; magic required blood, and at their level, a lot of it. They were not a class of people concerned with ethics, or morality, as a rule. I’d seen people hideously deformed, killed in spectacular ways, cursed for life with the cruelest of subtle geas spells. I’d heard stories of worse, of course: buildings blown up and planes crashed, just to get the supply of fresh blood a spell required. The bigger the spell, the more blood needed. Some of the worst local disasters in history had been engineered by saganustari seeking huge amounts of gas for their spells.
    When you went up a level from there, to the Archmages, enustari, you could link some of the worst global disasters to them. Wars had been started, extermination policies enacted, all to fuel the biludha, the epic rituals such individuals could cast. The names from Hiram’s lessons flashed through my mind. Flight 19,