Chapter 7: Psychic Enemies Network
The first thing I did was go down to the front desk and explain to the desk sergeant exactly what was going on with my family.
Mariel heard the bellow of “What!” all the way on the third floor.
As I went up the chain of command, the screams of incredulity got louder. My Lieutenant, my Captain, and even the on-site Internal Affairs people were shocked to their core at the level of utter bullshit on display here.
You know it’s bad when I received another phone call before I left the building. It was from IA detectives Horowitz and McNally, who had investigated me three times before. They had retired during my time abroad. They called to tell me this was stupid, and they had my back if I needed witnesses.
I got a text message from D, asking me if there was anything he could do? Along with an acronym of “ITAYNMTK?”
I could only translate that as “Is there anybody you need me to kill?” but I didn’t want to inquire.
I texted back that I might need him to testify before a CPS hearing. His reply was a shorthand for “Rolling on the ground, laughing my fat ass off.”
I went back to the car. Alex was already pulled out onto the street. He leaned out through the window. “Is this done yet?”
I shook my head as I got in next to him. “Sorry, no.”
Alex shook his head. “It’s closing in on noon. How about food?”
I shrugged. “I brown-bagged it. You get something. I need to make another call.”
Alex rolled his eyes. “It can’t take that long, can it?”
Alex drove up to Braddock Avenue, then hung a right, heading for Jamaica Avenue, and his favorite Chinese restaurant.
I called Father Richard Freeman. I left the phone on speaker (and plugged into the charger) as I talked with him. The entire time Alex spent getting his food was spent comparing notes with my priest on all of the insanity that had happened this morning around my family.
By the time Alex was back in the car ten minutes later, I wrapped up with what Lena told me. I had to explain Jayden the succubus to both Alex and Freeman.
Alex put the car in gear with one hand and bit into an egg roll with the other. He drove back Jericho Turnpike towards Jamaica Avenue—they were the same road, just different sides of the Queens-Nassau border. The route would take us to the Cross Island Parkway, which we’d take up to Fort Totten. It also provided us with a great view of the bay on our route.
“You get all the fun demons,” Alex said, “don’t you?”
Freeman ignored him. “Tommy, you do realize that there are forms of possession that stop short of going full-blown Exorcist, right?”
Alex made a choking sound. I checked him to make sure I didn’t have to pull the car over from the passenger side. “You mean we get more than one flavor? Great. What are they so I can avoid ordering them?”
“Demonic obsession, for one. Oppression. Infestation... There are some people who like being possessed. You know that, don’t you?”
Given my experience, that was a little difficult to wrap my brain around. “Why?”
“Because the demons enhance the sins the host indulges in. They get extra pleasure from it. In this case, the possession is more like bringing a soul into Hell, rather than making them suffer on Earth. Please remember you get the outliers. The bulk of demonic problems are usually indistinguishable from mental health issues.”
I frowned, thinking it over. “So it’s possible that Meadowsweet is just nuts?”
Freeman said, “Eh,” which was his version of a verbal shrug. “She could be nuts. She could be possessed. She could just be plain, old-fashioned evil, and Lena senses that she’s similar in type to your succubus.”
I sighed. Just great. “What next?”
“I have connections with CPS. It’s less as a priest and more as a psychologist. They’ve gone out of their way to close down every Catholic orphanage and adoption service over the past twenty years. I’ll see what I can find out. Though the name Meadowsweet is so distinctive that you’d think I’d know it offhand.”
Alex scoffed. “Good. You reach out and touch someone. Maybe we can get back to work.”
Freeman said goodbye, and I hung up. I was ready to rib Alex about being so gruff with the priest.
Without any warning, a shooting, blinding pain stabbed me in the head.
Thankfully, Alex was driving, otherwise I would have crashed the car.
The pain was like ice picks that stabbed me in both temples, the ears, and the back of my head all at the same time. I didn’t know where or how to flinch, so my head whipped back and forth like a dog in pain. I was in so much pain, I couldn’t even scream. I just grabbed my skull and hoped that it wouldn’t explode from the pain.
“Tommy, talk to me!” Alex demanded. He shook me silly, and I had to clear my eyes.
I found we weren’t moving anymore. He had pulled the car over so fast, I hadn’t even seen him do it. Then I realized the car was turned off. The pain was so blinding, I had actually been blind.
Well, that’s new.
“What the Hell was that?” Alex asked.
I shook my head to clear it. The pain was still bad, but no longer crippling. I blinked a few times to clear my vision. I forced myself straight in the seat and slowly looked around. It was still Jericho Turnpike. Nothing had changed. It was like a standard main street, only not as bucolic as the term evoked. It bustled and bristled. At its worse, it was generally “New York City” lite. Businesses were stacked upon each other. The literal corner deli was next to the pizza place, which was next to the bagel shop, which was next to the...
“Hey, Alex,” I said, my eyes locked on the target. “Is that psychic shop new?”
Alex craned his head to see what I meant. The storefront parlor was very ... tacky. The front door was covered in a curtain of beads. Crystals hung around the edge of the store window. There was no sign with the name of the shop. There were posted boards all over the place. There was palm reading, and tarot, and divination, and even a crystal ball.
“New to me,” he answered.
I unbuckled my seat belt and opened the car door. “I’ll be right back.”
I looked around the sidewalk before I got out. Alex didn’t happen to find an open spot on Jericho. He had found a fire hydrant to park at. There were few pedestrians, so I didn’t have to have my head on a swivel—I thought if I swiveled it too hard, it might fall off.
I stepped in front of the psychic shop, and the ice picks came back, driving into my skull.
I ground my teeth against the pain and opened the door. The beads rattled like bones against the glass.
The interior was dark and suitably designed for a carnival psychic. Someone decided that the circus was in town.
I pushed through the lobby and into the next doorway. It had been curtained off by more beads. Then the pain got worse.
The main room for the business was festooned with crystals dangling along wires from the ceiling. Each string of crystals were a different color—quartz, Amethyst, Helenite, etc.—turning into rainbow effect.
It would have been pretty if it weren’t for the pain in my head. But then, cobras were nice to look at, too.
At the table in the center of the room were two people. One was a woman whose clothes and demeanor said “housewife.” The man across from her was dressed up like the Amazing Karnak—yellow silk robe, purple turban twice the side of his head—who was the right shade of “Mediterranean” that he could have been anywhere from Spain, Sicily, Israel, to Northern Africa.
House Wife had her hands on an Ouija board. It would have been more reassuring if they both had their hands on the wedge—that way, he would have been a con artist guiding the indicator. Plugging her into the infernal device sent a chill through my bones.
I stepped in and badged them both. “Detective Thomas Nolan.” I glared at the psychic. “Can I have a word with you?” I glanced back at the woman. “I’m sorry to interrupt your session, ma’am,” I lied. “But I am certain that mister—”
“Solari,” the psychic supplied.
“Will happily refund your fee.” I glared at him again. “Won’t he?” I prompted with more venom than I meant.
Solari smiled graciously ... but he still clenched his teeth a little as he said, “Of course, I will.”
The woman smiled broadly. There was so much strain at the edges of her smile and around the corner of her eyes, that her pain radiated through. As she headed for the door, I gently took her by the shoulder and guided her past me.
“You’re going to be okay now,” I told her gently. I had no idea why I said it. The words just came out of me. “Everything will be all right.”
She froze and looked at me. She studied my eyes, searching for something to latch onto. I didn’t think my eyes looked like life preservers. But she smiled and nodded.
She left with a rattle of beads.
I turned back to Solari. He sat back in his chair, hands clasped across his chest. He was going to be the sort of perp who “knew his rights,” and claim harassment if I blinked at him the wrong way.
I grabbed the chair and straddled it, leaning forward, crowding his space.
Solari and I exchanged glances for a long moment. After a while, he said, “Can I help you, detective?”
“If you’re so good at your job, maybe you can tell me what I’m doing here.”
While it is a perfectly sound tactic for a cop to start conversations with questions he already knew the answer to, I only had an inkling. Certainly, sharp pains were a bright neon sign of what was involved here. But until this point, I had acted entirely on instinct, letting that guide me.
But now was the time for a different cop tactic—to let the perp assume that I was the one who knew all and saw all.
“I couldn’t guess.” He reached for a tarot deck next to him. “Unless you’d like me to study you through the cards.”
I smiled tightly, not showing my teeth, which were ground together. “Try,” I dared him.
Solari arched a brow and smiled slyly. He thought he was being clever.
The first card was a skeletal black knight on a white horse.
“Death,” I pronounced like a sentence.
Solari casually spread his hands, his smile still genuine. “It just means that there’s a big change coming. Nothing more.”
He flipped out the next card.
The next card featured a man lying face-down and with ten swords in his back. The caption read “Ten of swords.”
Solari’s smile remained. Different muscles held them up, forcing the smile. “The surprise is unwelcome.”
He flipped to the next card. The title was heavily descriptive of what showed on the cards. “Five of Pentacles.”
Solari’s smile became small and tight. “Financial misfortune.”
His eyes flicked to me. I smiled broadly, baring teeth. He scowled.
He reshuffled the cards.
“Isn’t that against the rules?” I taunted.
“Shut it,” Solari snapped, his accent shifting from “Arab mystic” to Rockaway—the Brooklyn end.
The next card slapped the table. Three of Swords. Rejection, betrayal, and grief.
Another card. The Devil. Negativity invading one’s life.
Another smack. The Tower, struck by lightning and bombarded by flying objects. Something shocking was coming, and it was going to completely wreck all peace and harmony.
Solari couldn’t even fake a smile.
In a voice as calm and as controlled as I could make it, I said, “I was passing your establishment and suffered shooting, blinding pain in my head. Can you guess why?”
Solari’s teeth were bared as he ground them together. “You’re sensitive to the source of my power.”
I nodded slightly. “That’s right. And we both know that the source isn’t a pleasant or positive one.”
Solari scoffed at me. Now his smile was genuine. “You’re a cop. What are you going to do? Arrest me for making a deal with the Devil?”
I arched my brows calmly and smiled evilly. “A nemesis of mine—one of your fellow practitioners—pointed out a tool he wanted to use for control over the city.”
“Oh?”
“Did you know the laws about business are so bad that the average street cop could close an entire block of stores if he wanted to? All he’d have to do is enforce existing laws and regulations. They’re so numerous that no one can follow them all, or keep up with them without a law degree. The Supreme Court even decided decades ago that ignorance of the law is no excuse ... but that was back when the laws were so relatively few in number that you didn’t need a law degree to follow them. Some accountants can’t even memorize existing tax law because it’s so insane.
“Lucky for businesses, beat cops rarely enforce these laws, if ever. It’s like why we don’t generally bust people for smoking pot unless we’re really pissy. We usually have better things to do. And alienating entire blocks for idiot violations is a great way to turn ordinary civilians into threats. The city, though, enforces these laws when they feel like it... When they want to send a message... When a petty politician wants to act like a mafia kneebreaker and starts using the law to twist arms.
“In your case, buddy? I can shut you down right now. Hell, give me five minutes of research, I could possibly throw you in jail.”
Solari arched a brow. He sensed a deal coming. “Unless...?”
“Take your crystal ball, your Ouija board, everything you have that has been touched by Hell to give you this power, and you throw it out. Burn it. Smash it. Then send it to Staten Island or New Jersey where it belongs—in the garbage.”
Solari’s eyes narrowed. “And what if I don’t?”
“Then I simply enforce the law.” I held up a finger to silence him. “Do yourself a favor—learn to cold-read people. I think it would be better for both you and your client if you were a simple fraud.”
He looked surprised. “Really? You’re the morality police now?”
I gave him a casual smile and a shrug. “Look. I can’t stop your clients from coming to you. I would if I could, but I can’t. If they don’t go to you, they’ll go somewhere else. Much as I’d like to, I can’t save anyone without their volition. Don’t play with the forces of darkness, I won’t come back. Continue to play around, and you will get burned.”
Solari scoffed. “What? You’re going to torch my place?”
Solari placed his hands on his tarot cards.
The cards burst into flames. He screamed in pain and surprise, leaping away from the table, stumbling over the chair and falling on his face. His hand on fire, he slapped it again on the carpet repeatedly until it went out.
I slowly rose from the chair and slid it into place against the table. “I didn’t say I’d do the burning.”
Four large and ugly bruisers charged into the room. They wore black suits without ties. They came from a Guido cookie-cutter—thirty-six-inch necks and biceps as large as their heads. Each and every one of them was a full head taller than me. I caught not a whiff of evil.
They spread out through the room, forming a semicircle. One on my left. One stood in front of Solari, blocking him from my view. One hung back in the doorway. The third stood between the two. The last one circled around the table, coming in at my right. hung out in the corner.
My first instinct was to defuse the situation. If I explained that I didn’t want them to stop their business, just change how they went about it, perhaps they wouldn’t be concerned about the sudden drop in their revenue stream.
But Solari looked up from the floor and cried, “Kill him!”