The Warlock's Curse (32 page)

“Thanks, brother,” the young man said, looking up. His eyes became slightly wary when he saw who’d handed them to him. But whatever inspired the wariness, he kept it to himself as he struck a match into bright flame. The sudden harsh illumination revealed dark circles under his eyes. Will was reminded of the Dorians he’d seen at the dance hall in Stockton, but he didn’t guess labor organizers went in for such pretentious affectation.

The young man waved out the match and regarded the packet with interest.

“Hotel Stockton,” he observed. “The private dick said you were from California. I hear tell it’s mighty nice. Oranges and sunshine, right?”

“Plenty of sunshine, I guess,” Will said. “But my family didn’t have oranges. We had horses.”

“Must have had money too,” the young man said, narrowing his eyes as he inhaled smoke. “Poor folk don’t send private investigators looking for their sons.”

When Will did not say anything, the man held out the matchbook with a shrug.

“No, keep them,” said Will. He paused, then added: “Thanks for what you did the other night.”

No comment. Just another indifferent shrug as the man took a pull on the harsh tobacco.

“Hey, you want a cup of coffee?” Will asked. The young man peered at Will curiously, as if wondering if he’d heard him right.

“You sure you ought?” he grinned crookedly. “You sure your Russian nanny won’t mind?”

“That’s not a very friendly thing to say to someone offering you coffee,” Will said. “Especially when he’s willing to buy you a sandwich to go with it.”

The young man grinned again as he stuck out his ungloved hand. Even through his own glove, Will could feel how cold the young man’s skin was.

“We ain’t never been properly introduced. Name’s Briar,” he said, drawing it out so it sounded like
bra-ar
. “Harley Briar. Labor organizer for the Industrial Workers of the World. But I guess you already knew that, right?”

“I knew one, but not the other,” Will said. Then he added sheepishly, “You’ll have to tell me a good place to go. Someplace ... you know, safe. I only know the chop suey house and I don’t think I should go back there.”

Briar shook his head. “Boy, you’re on a short leash, ain’t you? Private dicks holdin’ one end and Tesla Industries the other. Hope you didn’t sign any kind of contract with Tesla, by the way. Normally I don’t concern myself with the problems of college boys, but his contracts are awful damn bad.”

Will shuddered. He didn’t want to think about the contract he’d signed, because the more he thought about it, the more he regretted it. He regretted not reading it in the first place, he regretted not having Jenny look over the changes ...

It’ll all come out all right. You’ll see
. He remembered the words in Ben’s letter. They were surprisingly comforting.

What was done was done. And after all, he was working at Tesla Industries. It would all come out all right ... somehow.

“C’mon,” Briar said. “I know a fine safe place, and it’s close t’hand.”

Will followed Briar to a small, dingy café on Grand River Avenue tucked in among a clot of darkened mechanics shops. The inside of the café was very, very warm—they probably kept it this way, Will realized, because most of the men inside seemed to be as insubstantially clothed as Briar, with wads of newspaper sticking out of the collars of their thin shirts and shoes held together with twine. No one gave Briar a second look, but Will drew many appraising glances. Remembering the Tesla Industries pin he wore, Will turned his lapel under to hide it.

Will ordered two cups of coffee and two big club sandwiches, and as they waited for their food, he took Briar’s measure. The young man was small and scrawny, but his hands—strangely stained and scarred—were large and looked very strong. When Briar noticed Will looking, he held them up for examination.

“I come from Kentucky,” he said, turning them over. “My dad and brothers all coal miners. Beats the hands to hell. I got out of there when I was fifteen. Been kicking around all sorts of places since then.” The coffee came first, and Briar poured lots of sugar and most of the cream into his.

“So, I’ve been wondering,” Will said, stirring what cream was left into his cup, “I see you on that corner every day, but I don’t get just who you’re trying to organize. The workers at the Teslaphone factory are escorted out on autobuses, and the other apprentices aren’t even allowed to leave at all.”

“I started hanging around outside Fort Tesla just out of sheer cussedness,” Briar smirked, warming his hands on the white china. “Just ‘cause Niko finds us organized labor types so messy and upsetting. He thinks of us like a spot the dog left on the rug. But I’m only there mornings and night. During the day, while you’re inside, I make the rounds.” Briar paused, took a large swallow of his coffee. “Now, everybody knows about Detroit’s auto factories, ‘course, they’re famous. And our boys have plenty to do with them. But I got a different angle. I work the
magical
factories. The three big ones between Woodward and Grand River ... CharmCo, you heard of them, right?”

Will nodded. “They make the charms that the old businessmen use. The ones that have all the young businessmen yelling about a Mantic Trust.”

“They make all sorts of things,” Briar said. “Strong charms for old men, weaker charms for young men, woman charms to tell pregnancy or stop it ... anything and everything. They run a nonstop line and they’re rotten to their workers. All the magical factories are. See, except for a few old hands, all their workers are under thirty. And even if they’re not working lots of magic, they’re still working it steady, and that exposure builds up, worse than the Black Lung I saw back home.” Now the sandwiches came, and no sooner had the waitress set the plate on the table than Briar attacked the food. When he spoke again, it was through a full mouth. “‘Course, by the time they actually get sick, the factories don’t want nothing to do with them no more.”

The waitress was trying to hurry away, but Briar plucked the hem of her apron, and said, in a very courtly fashion, “I’d be much obliged if you’d bring me a cup of hot water, sister.”

The waitress rolled her eyes and jerked her apron away.

“Bum,” she muttered, but, eyeing Will’s nice overcoat, she left and eventually returned with the hot water Briar had requested. Will watched as Briar opened the bottle of ketchup that was on the table and poured half of it into the cup. He winked conspiratorially.

“Good as tomato soup, free as the wind.”

“Heck, I’ll buy you soup—” Will began, but Briar cut off the words with an emphatic shake of his head.

“Nothin’ doin’,” he said. “I did you a favor and you paid me back. We’re square. Grig Grigoriyev and all you brainy bastards inside Fort Tesla can say what you like about me, but I ain’t any kind of a bum.”

There was an uncomfortable silence, broken only by the sound of silver against china as Briar stirred his ketchup soup.

“You come a long way to work at Tesla Industries,” Briar said finally, tapping the spoon against the cup’s rim. “You’re awful young. I guess they picked you right off the horse farm, huh?”

Will was eager to get to the main point. “Look, can you tell me what the man—the private detective—what did he say to you?”

“Well, he said he knew you and your girl were somewhere around Tesla Industries. He wanted to know if I’d seen you, if I knew where you two were holed up. Your father is offering a good reward.” Briar signaled the waitress to refill his coffee cup. She frowned disdainfully and did not hurry to do so.

“My
father
?” said Will. “He said that? Exactly that?”

Briar nodded. “Exactly that. Said he’d been hired by your father in California. That surprise you?”

“No. It doesn’t surprise me at all,” Will muttered. It confirmed Ben’s suspicions. Mr. Hansen and Ma’am had agreed to Jenny’s terms—but Father hadn’t. With Father, it was a grudge. Father was going to have his pound of flesh, come hell or high water.

“Bastard,” Will whispered.

“What’s he after you about?” Briar asked. “You two elope, maybe? You couldn’t stand to leave her behind in California?” He paused, then added thoughtfully, “That’s ‘bout the only reason I can figure Tesla would let you live off Compound.” Then he snorted with laughter. “Hell of a good dodge ... I bet half them college boys you work with wish they’d thought of it!”

“Wish they’d thought of it,” Will affirmed, “and hate me because I did. Except I didn’t. I just kind of ... lucked into it.”

“That’s the kind of luck to have,” Briar said. “Dumb luck.”

There was a sudden disturbance at the front of the café, as the door was jerked open with a loud tinkling of bells. A young boy—no more than twelve—poked his head inside and looked around wildly. When his gaze fell on Briar, he seemed to melt with relief.

“Harley!” he cried, rushing inside and over to their table. Undernourished and undersized, he wore ragged clothes and his face was streaked with oily grime. “Gee, Harley, am I glad to find you. You gotta come!”

Briar leaned back in his seat. “Gotta come where? What gives?”

“There’s trouble over at Mayflower! Floor boss made Rico Selvaggi work a double. He’s gone off the deep end!”

Briar paled, and was already half out of the booth before the boy had finished speaking, putting on his coat and hat. “There anyone else over there can help?”

The boy shook his head, his face anguished.

“NoBody” he said, then added caustically, “Nobody who ain’t afraid of getting
canned
, that is. But I’ll come, Harley!”

“Hell, no. Wrassle down Rico Selvaggi?” Briar slapped the scrawny kid on the shoulder. “You keep running. Get down to the Temple of Labor, see if anyone there can come. I’ll do what I can in the meanwhile.”

“You ain’t goin’ to take on Selvaggi by yourself, are you?” The kid’s eyes were huge with the thought of it. Even Briar looked daunted. He looked at Will, body tense with haste. “You,” he snapped. “You really want to pay me back? Hell, pay me
forward
? I need you to come with me. Selvaggi is a big mean sonofabitch, and I can’t handle him alone.”

Will knew he shouldn’t be out on the street—Ben had warned him against it. But the private investigators wouldn’t be looking for him in the kind of places a labor organizer was likely to take him. All that was waiting for him at home were his unfinished schematics and Jenny’s foot-tapping. And Grig wasn’t likely to check on him until after midnight. Nodding, he slid out of the booth to follow.

As they jogged along the dark sidewalk, Will asked Briar, “What is ‘Mayflower’?”

“Mayflower Tobacco Company. They’re one of the big three magic companies I was telling you about. Magic ain’t their primary business, they mostly just manufacture regular cigarettes. But they got a huge magical sideline making Golden Bat Cigarettes ... ever hear of ‘em?”

Will grunted assent. He remembered them—the black-papered, magically-infused cigarettes that came in beautiful green and gold packages. The cigarettes the Dorians smoked to give themselves an “interesting” pallor.

“Mayflower employs about a hundred magical workers to charm the Golden Bats. I been talking to some of these fellows, and the boss at Mayflower caught wind of it, packed a couple dozen of ‘em off to the breadline. Now he’s making the men he
didn’t
fire pull double shifts. A double shift is murder on the guys who are sensitive. And Selvaggi is
extra
sensitive.”

They heard angry, unearthly screams coming from the Mayflower Tobacco Company a whole block before they reached the building itself. Inside the cavernous building, lit from high above by strong electric floodlights, dozens of cigarette rolling machines clanked away noisily. Before each machine, workers in stained white aprons, stood busily sorting and packing cigarettes as fast as the machines could spit them out into long square holding trays. These workers seemed to be carefully ignoring the screams of a man at the far end of the factory floor, where a large cluster of rolling machines was set off to one side, expelling cigarettes wrapped in black paper. The employees on these machines wore black aprons to distinguish them as magical workers, and while some of them kept to their business, many more stood around the packing table onto which the screaming man had climbed, kicking hundreds of black cigarettes onto the floor around him. He was a powerfully built man, and in his demented rage he’d torn off his apron and his shirt, and was standing bare-chested under the harsh light. To Will’s horror, he could see tendrils of something black writhing beneath the man’s skin like fat burrowing centipedes.

“Jesus,” Briar muttered, charging forward.

“Get down from there, you goddamn anarchist!” The floor boss—identifiable by his soft white hands and expansive belly—screamed up at the man.

“Kresswell, it’s your own damn fault!” Briar yelled right in the fat floor boss’s face. “What the hell you thinking, making him pull a double shift? You know Selvaggi is sensitive!”

Kresswell glared at Briar with equal parts disgust and astonishment. “I don’t give two shits if he’s sensitive! He’s hired to do a job and if he can’t do it he can go find work somewhere else!”