The only things that I had managed to do that day had been to add sweat stains to a once reasonably clean shirt and find the least ineffective spot for a small electric fan.
Calliope opened the door to my office.
“Anything I can do for you before I head out, boss?”
Even after three years she can completely derail my train of thought by just entering the room. This entrance merely put a pause in my absently flipping Tarot cards at my upturned hat.
Yes, I thought, tell me how you can make a heat-limp cotton sundress look like the height of Paris fashion. She stood in the doorway looking in at me. Her blonde hair was done up in ringlets that defied both gravity and the humidity. She only stood about five-four, but she had curves that were truly treacherous; hard to notice at first, but easy to go over the edge when you did. Her eyes were as wide and blue as Heaven, and lips as red and smoldering as Hell. The dress she wore was less at both neck and hem than decorum would dictate for a proper young lady, a role that Calliope had never made any pretense of observing. The heat must have been truly fierce if she had managed to wear that dress on the street and into the building without my having to drive out a gaggle of Imperial doughboys.
“No, go on and have a good time,” I said.
“Sure will. You should try it some time.” With that she turned, flashing a scandalous bit of thigh.
She had been gone for a few seconds by the time I got my mind back into even keel. I scolded myself for becoming so distracted by her. Heh, its not as if I have anything else to occupy my mind, I thought as I flipped the next card at the hat.
It sailed well wide of the mark and landed face-up, The Lovers. Typical.
The program on my neighbor’s wireless changed over from a cricket match to the news. The lead was once again the imminent capture of the city of Detroit, last holdout of the rebellious colonials east of the Mississippi River. The Ministry of Information had been running that same headline on and off for the past month. That they never seemed to get around to announcing the consummation of the immanent victory said more than any honest report of the locals beating back the attackers would have.
I had heard that the auto-works up there had never re-tooled after the Allies got steamrollered in the Great War. Not that the armored cars and tanks they had produced en-masse had helped much when the Imperial Order invaded the States. What we had needed was magical might, much like what the Germans had unleashed during the war in Europe.
My thumb idly rubbed the base of my right ring finger, the place where I would wear my ring when I needed to reach into that bag of tricks. I had been part of that effort, part of the Army Corps of Sorcerers. They trained me to be a wizard and to cast spells on the battlefield. I learned to use the power that had ripped across the face of the earth back on the Winter Solstice of 1915.
That battlefield never came for me. Magic is a subtle way, and the Imperial Order honed their subtleties while we prepared to face the brute force they had already shown the world. They found and subverted those who would sell their country out for a title and a position of influence. Before the first shot was even fired, the Order knew the location of every ship at sea, all of our ray-gun emplacements, and every senior military commander that had not been subverted to their side. Most damning was how the wards against the Emperor’s Demonic Legions were never erected. The Army Corps of Sorcerers had been turned at the very top and subsumed into the Order of Illumination. Every American mage either swore fealty to the Emperor, ran for their lives, or died.I chose the second option. I had never been to New York, so no one would think to look for me here. The Order taught that Names have power, so I chose my Nom de Guerre after old good ol’ Uncle Sam and Dr. Watson from the Doyle stories. I learned patience and how to find information that doesn’t want to be found in my time with the Order. I figured that I could make a go of it as just another private detective in the big city.
The plan was working quite well, except for the making a go of it part. I managed to keep a couple of steps ahead of my dwarf landlord, and why Calliope stuck around despite her paychecks sometimes having more rubber than Goodyear was beyond me.
The next card flew off the deck in my hands. It made a graceful arc through the air and landed neatly in the hat. The Wheel of Fortune. Not that I couldn’t use a change in luck. The card after that also landed in the hat, but face down. I contemplated turning it over, but I was interrupted by a twinge in the back of my mind.
A lot of people talk about that feeling of being watched or the sensation of a goose walking over their graves. The Order trained me to harness that sense, to call upon it with a little bit of concentration. More than that, I learned to make wards that alerted me when anything with more mojo than a book of matches crossed them. The twinge I felt was the ward telling me that something out of the ordinary had just crossed my threshold.
I opened the drawer that held my gun when she walked through the door.
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