Meeting Madame Sinister

According to the signage, Arbuck Medical Mall was established in 1984. Perhaps back then, less than a decade ago, it was more a name more fitting. I somehow doubt it. The “mall” — barely one of those, much less one of a medical persuasion — currently has a discount clinic [with three old women smoking out front], a dentist’s office that seems half closed, and a pharmacy. In something like a nod to “honesty,” these are the largest, fifth largest, and third largest storefronts [in that order]. The second largest is Cash’s Discount Tobacco where the “Discount” is in the exact some font as “County Discount Clinic” — and no, they do not specify the county’s name — and is likely either made by the same sign maker or one of them stole some signage off the other. I have no idea which. The fourth largest storefront is a New Age Herb place Called “Lovage and Thyme.” After that, you have three other open shops and a closed space. Then around eighty parking spots in cracked asphalt and those cement “islands” that maybe once held street lamps but now just hold dog poop and cigarette pups.

The summer heat is broken up by not a single ounce of foliage.

To contrast this dazzling display of modernity, behind the County Discount Clinic you can see the western edge of Waukepsie swamp. A reminder of man’s foolishness. Or something.

All this is to say I barely pay attention to any of this and instead am looking at one of those other “three open shops,” in this case the one with the badly drawn tarot cards and what might be a human palm if humans around here have four fingers. The words “Madame Sinister’s Fortunes, Potions, and Love Spells” is likewise badly hand written above it. For reasons unknown, and likely trap-shaped, a supposedly super-psychic let down his guard to visit the so-called Madame Sinister. Other agents would spend weeks trying to set up snares in the psychic matrix. Me? I’m the walk right in and chat sort of guy. Besides, if someone like Scooter is worried than I am worried. Scooter is the kind of guy who might consider an impending asteroid strike as a mid-ticket item.

I habitually go to weave some mild illusion around myself and feel a sense of vertigo wash over me. It is only now that I put together the realization that with the Forked Tongue in my possession, I am not Agent Johnny Blue. I am simply overly-curious-cat Jani Blum. My sigils feel numb to the touch. I spend so much time disconnected from psychic chatter than I hadn’t really thought about the fact that I am a walking dead spot. It’s uncannily like being in a forest and realizing all the birds and insects have shut the fuck up.

As I’ve said before, my lies work because they are mostly the truth. I’ll see how that fares me with no Nurse and no aether-enhanced powers.

Entering into the small “shop” the first thing I notice is the smoke. Cigarette. Spices. Incenses. This is the atmosphere dinosaurs might have had to put up with during active volcanic eruptions. Kind of surprised any oxygen can get in.

Reception up front is roughly my age, which is to say roughly in her thirties. A rough thirties but she still has that kind of atmosphere where you know she’d be fun on a date. Though at this time most of her atmosphere is a two-plus pack a day Salem Menthol habit. Her hair is blonde (fake) and her skin is warmly tanned (real-ish, but no doubt salon-supplied). A tattoo of a dragon licking its belly is prominent on her forearm. The rest are a variety of flowers and cartoon characters.

Her name is Tanya according to a nameplate in front of her. She keeps staring so I slip into a dumber, more friendly face and approach.

“My name is Johnny Blue. I called and made an appointment?”

Unspeaking, the great and terrible Tanya nods towards a cracked plastic chair and I sit and wait my turn. Twenty minutes later, a young woman walks out with a scowl on her face and slams the front door. I glance towards Tanya and she just shrugs and then with a twist of her head directs me to go through a black-and-red bead curtain dividing the lobby from Madame Sinister’s domain.

It is hokey as shit. Multiple crystal balls up on cherry wood shelves. Incense burners constantly pumping out tendrils of smoke. Stuffed birds. Props of hands with dozens of lines and Latin words written on them. Soft music, no doubt the kind that might be found in K-Mart’s “International” section, is playing from behind another curtain.

The smoke here is maybe worse than up front, only now it’s cigar smoke laced with lots of herbs.

A cowled figure sits at a table and turns to face me and this is the first time I am properly shocked, today.

Maria “Madame Sinister” Salas is maybe in her mid-twenties and one of the most singularly attractive women I have met. Sure, she’s done up in layers of farce — looking like a mix between a Sicilian grandmother attending a funeral and some old Universal Horror take on a Romani fortuneteller play-acting as a witchy-crone type — but she is just flat out pretty. The cigar she puffs on like a Cuban ex-pat is the source of the stench and while it is largely decorative I pick up some scents in the mix that no doubt help to lubricate the mind. I half suspect that if I didn’t have the Tongue on my person that I would be caught up in the pretense. My “this is a trap” meter is off the scales at this point and I am itching to talking to Nurse.

“Are you looking for love or money, Mr… Blue?,” she asks, looking innocently at me as she shuffles around a set of Tarot Cards that, for her worth, look more handmade than mass-produced.

“Of course, who isn’t? Neither or why I am here, though.”

She places down a card and makes a non-descript noise in the back of her lovely throat. Then another. The major arcana seems to involve a lot of strangely shaped people. At least things pretending to be people. I am starting to feel a bit unnerved.

“You are looking for Mr. Estevan,” she says in a voice similar but not like the other, and I nearly turn and run. Still, it does not seem threatening. Just ominous.

Before I can try and get a lie up try and deflect, she continues by flipping over a card. Only this one is very handmade. A cut-out photo of Finley “Farsight” Estevan has been glued to it. 100% a trap.

“I’m impressed,” I say. I am, really. Also a little disappointed that I just violated some major Order codes of conduct for nothing.

“Impressed that someone who makes money putting on a show for yokels has actual power, Mr. Agent Man?”

“You can drop the ‘Agent’ and just call me Johnny.”

“Not your real name.”

“No.” I have showing-no-reaction to a fine art but I doubt it matters. I feel her ability to know my internal panic. Maybe it’s just paranoia. Who watches the Psychic Watchmen? Folks like her. Surprised someone of her strength hasn’t already been picked up and dealt with.

“I like the whole vibe you try and give off. You work very hard for it. I bet it usually works.”

“Vibes. Plural. Lucky for both of us I am in pleasant ‘just-looking-for-a-chat’ mode and not real business mode.”

“Ah, good. Then let’s chat.” She pulls out the half-for-show, half-for-drugging-her-clients cigar and stubs it out in an ashtray that has seemingly showed up for nowhere. Pulls back her hood a bit and she’s even more attractive now that the mask is slipping. Even though I tried edging upon a threat with my tone, she is completely unconcerned.

“Estevan visited you.”

“Sorry, I’m not going to say. Maybe you should try that ‘business vibe’ you were just bragging about.”

I sigh, because I know that she knows I am caught up in the play-acting now. “Sorry, not really in the mood to threaten a lovely lady at this moment. I was hoping we could be on more friendly terms.”

“Shame, it sounded sexy.”

“Oh, it is.” At least flirting with her seems easy enough, even if she is likely leading me to my own slaughter.

“The answer is ‘yes’ by the way.”

I made a confused gesture with my hands that is roughly one-third how confused I feel right now.

“To the question about you taking me out on a date.”

“Ah.”

“8pm. Meet downtown by the statue.”

“Which statue?”

“You think this is a big enough town to have more than one statue? I believe you will be able to figure it out.”

She pulls back up the cowl and relights the cigar and I take this as my cue to leave. Back in the lobby, I stop off to look at Tanya who is reading a paperback book featuring very pretty people on the cover and walk up to her. “You were listening, of course.” Knowing that Maria can clearly hear me just as well out here.

Tanya is half-way through shaking her head when I put down my Order badge and a $100 bill. “Just point, ok?”

She picks up the money and then points back past the clinic to where the swamp starts. Then smiles. Like it is all a funny joke.

Just great. My missing psychic has decided to shack up with the gators.

Learning to Hate the Locals in Real Time

PREMIUM Motel — “PREMIUM” always in all-caps for all the branding so I’m playing along like a good-boy — is run from Arbuck but by stint of a long history of avoiding both swamps and paying the wrong locals for land rights, it is closer by main road to Gaston. Marginally. Therefore it plays itself off as practically in Gaston. And who can blame them?

I am here because even though I was picked to fall into this trap of an assignment, I want to make people drive to get me. Driving takes time and I thought I might have bought myself margin. Foolishly. Hence, when the knock hits my door — and way too loud — I am working on figuring out what kind of response I need. I have my Order-assigned gun but the Soulburn-powered aether-enhancements won’t work and I have been ignoring Nurse’s advance to play for such a time. I have the Forked Tongue which, besides wrecking havoc on my ability to use my powers, is enough shaped like a sharp-and-pointed object that I could ostensibly stab something with it. Both of these options would likely involve the sort of paperwork the Order was trying to avoid by hoping that Estevan simply went away.

The general lack of viable options is why — by the fifth round of overloud knocking — I have a shit-eating grin on my face as I open the door. To two men that probably warrant a stab or shooting, but on the surface I am trying to efface “man incautiously opens door” as best I can. A splash of water on my face fills in for the pretense of a shower or bathroom delay to explain the forty-five second lapse before I opened it.

The bigger of the two men — by which I mean both fatter and taller — pushes his way into the room. The smaller of the two men — looking like an underfed swamprat and showing off his clearly racist tattoos — stands back and looks around. Someone keeping guard makes me wish I had started with stabbing.

The fat man is dressed in a kind of outfit that tries to play at “hardworking male” but the bulging frame in it dispels the look. Still, I cotton to him wanting to be “The Big Man” in the room and so I lean into it. I sag my shoulders a bit, let my spine relax. Cock my knees a hair. Loose around three inches without making it obvious. I also keep my stupid smile going but playing along start letting it slip. Is that a hint of fear on my face? Wouldn’t you like to know?

The fat man finally speaks: “Now, Mister. You might be wondering why someone like me is visiting you,” no mention of the wiry guard whose drugged-up eyes are starting to twitch in the slow mode, “I just had to get a glimpse. Figured I’d have a little welcome talk.” He pats his pockets. “Sorry, did not bring a gift. How rude of me.”

Looks back at the other man and laughs like a joke was told. The other man seems to miss the cue and does not respond.

Fat man sighs and turns back around. “My ex-wife listed rudeness in the divorce papers. That and the bruises. You know how bitches like to talk.”

I have said nothing at this point and decide to keep it that way until actually asked a question. I point back towards a desk chair in a universal “you want to sit?” sort of gesture.

He shakes his head and continues his no-doubt pre-planned threat-down. “Now, I didn’t introduce myself. You didn’t do the same. That’s all to the good because you’ll soon be leaving, boy.” In that way of southerners who have worked on racism as a lifestyle, he puts a lot of emphasis on “boy.”

I decide to fish around with this shrunken persona for a second more. “I…I can’t. I got…”

“Oh, but you can. Hell, we can call up Dr. Boisse and get you a sick note if you need. He’s real good with broken bones.”

The smaller guy is starting to give up on keeping guard and starts trying to edge into the room. I know time is ticking fast. Dial back the downtrodden just bit, like I found a little spine.

“How now, don’t talk like that. I ain’t done nothing!”

Big man snaps his fingers and points to his own sweating face. “Keep your eyes on me. Don’t you mind Bunny, none…”

“Bunny” slaps the TV remote to the floor and then kicks it hard into the wall. If he keeps going, he’ll get to my bag and the Forked Tongue isn’t exactly easy to keep discreet if he pokes much at all. I resist looking anywhere near the bag and I especially resist looking anywhere but my bag. It is a careful dance.

Big Man: “A stranger comes to town and beelines straight to Maria? Why you suppose he might do that?”

“Maria?,” I ask, actually confused for a second. I was expecting anything but jealousy to be behind this visit.

“Don’t play dumb, boy!”

I’m still off-guard enough that my pretense is dropping in real time. I’m dangerously close to standing taller than Big Man. I start fishing for a cover story. “My wife…”

“Yeah?”

“I wanted to know what to get her for her birthday. Saw an ad in a paper for a psychic…” Realizing too late it makes no sense. How far away I come to need a motel room but still close enough that Madame Sinister might get a mention?

“Bullshit!”

At this shout, Bunny shoves the whole TV off the stand. It’s an older model and probably could withstand a nuclear blast but I at least appreciate he is trying to be intimidating.

“Bullshit?,” I ask though I know I’m dropping the ball. I’m mingling tough guy and scared guy too hard. Muddying up my work. I am too used to Soulburn to sustain this level of play-acting.

“I don’t know why, but my whiskers itch that you were here for Maria. She’s mine, boy…”

I don’t need psychic powers to know this is mostly not the truth, but likewise I sense he truly believes it. I think about trying to actually console him on the obvious misunderstanding he has with Miss Salas but Bunny makes a grab for me and I manage to not be where I was subtly enough it just kind of looks like Bunny tripped. Keeping that going, I twist enough to shove Bunny into Big Man hard enough to buy myself enough time to grab the bag and make for the door.

Turns out there are three of them. A guy who looks small enough that he probably considers Bunny to be alpha male material powers into the door right as I am leaving it. I swing the bag up enough to distract and as he raises his arms make a careful dive to the side. Now all three local assholes are in my motel room and I am running across the parking lot. I jump into my car and wish it wasn’t quite so obvious a ride, now.

I look back to see them watching but not chasing, and that somehow feels worse.

The Date Goes as Expected, Really

“Lost and Found?,” I ask Maria. She’s out of the faux-cinematic-Romani act and into clothing that screams, “It takes time to seem this effortless.” The overall effect on me is notable and really wish I could let my guard down which means my guard is out the window. The Forked Tongue is back in my car which means it is far enough way that I can just taste Soulburn but still I am relative blind and trying to enjoy myself.

The herbed-up cigar is replaced with a cigarette and we have been walking around the “park” — think a few dozen feet to either side of a green space with a statue, a fountain, and a playground in the center — abutting the so-called downtown Arbuck. The statue — and true to her words it is just the one — turns out to be a a Sherlock Holmes homage though the woman standing next to him or the kids surrounding the couple leave me a bit blank.

When I asked about it she called me a Philistine and mentioned the Baker Street Irregulars. For the kids. Which rang a bell. I’m not a dumbass but busy enough that I barely slow down to keep up on Victorian-era reading. As for the woman, that’s apparently Dorothy Lang. Arbuck’s once — seven decades ago — chief librarian and author of a dozen successful mystery novels that are now mostly lost to time. Apparently back then the town considered her a big enough deal to want to make a statue in her honor but didn’t really think a pudgy librarian from Arbuck would quite survive the harsh reality of perpetual tourism so they made Holmes, the Irregulars, and Lang into a statue using Lang’s husband as the model for Holmes. The kids were locals picked by lottery in what was no doubt a big damned deal back in the day. One of the kids is apparently now the town’s elderly mayor and that sort of tie-in is why the park is better kept than it has been historically.

As for the mystery text carved into the wooden beam of part of the playground? Maria seems to distracted to notice my question. “Pardon?”

“It’s been carved here. On this bit of the wooden tower.”

Stubbing out one cigarette and lighting another she glances down the street like looking for someone and in the distance I can practically taste Nurse screaming my name in that sometimes overly aggressive way he does. “Ah, kids. I don’t know.”

I getting caught up in the act and start looking around myself to see what she’s trying to find.

“Why are you acting like I’m a spider luring you into a trap, Secret Agent Man?,” she asks and it’s as good as a confession. To try and let her work this out to her ends, I fall back into the Johnny-Blue-Persona which is very nearly myself but not quite. I start describing the threats in my hotel room. She asks a few questions to clarify some things and then laughs it off like it was all a fun little hazing ceremony.

“Ah, Cash. He runs the tobacco store where I get my stage cigars. Seems to think that gives him some control over my daily schedule,” she says. I seriously can’t tell if she is unfazed by it or not.

“Why does a fat, middle-aged white supremacist lay claims on a young — and quite beautiful — latina?”

This question finally gets her attention enough that actually looks at my face. All smiles but I can’t help but wonder. “Why does any colonizer try to fuck the natives they claim to despise? Penis bullshit. Both ends of it.”

“Maria, job mode for a second. Are you working with them?”

“Them? Which them?”

“For right now, Cash and Bunny and whoever the third was. Besides buying cigars and being stalked.”

“You tell me. Use your powers of deduction,” nodding to bronze Holmes.

She’s playing at games within games and my only really thought is that she’s brushing up against an early death but I can’t help but run that “Penis bullshit” line back in my head because why in the hell am I here as an outsider trying to act like a noble knight for a woman who is very likely knee deep in the kind of shit I sometimes shoot people to stop? I’m quiet long enough she asks if I’ll buy her dinner.

Why I wave around at the number of dark store fronts — 70% boarded up and 30% closed by 5pm — she giggles and grabs my hand. Starts taking me down the street. Eventually, get to a three-way interaction and on the corner is the Cloister. In this light I can just make out the original structure which has weathered the climate as well as can be expected though most of the business is now held in a much more modern building — in good enough condition I doubt any of the lumber or glass was here back when Lamark was feasting on flapjacks. It is also not open this time of night but a knock on a side door leads to us entering through the kitchen and sitting at a staff table while a man she calls Donald prepares us a chopped steak and hash dinner for two.

“The food’s good,” I say to Donald as he brings us a refill on sweet tea half-way through the meal. He nods by way of thanks but does not speak. He is the kind of man who is no doubt in his early thirties but serious enough to be a grandfather. Worry lines in his late teens. Hair blonde enough, and cut short enough, to make it seem almost gray. His arms and shoulders shout athlete. Former high school athlete? Health nut? No clue. We are now far enough away from the Forked Tongue that I can pick up a hum of sigils on him woven into the tats he wears. Still muffled, though. Like hearing a fight in the apartment three floors down from you.

I feel like I’ve play-acted enough and despite enjoying myself try to push back to the question at hand. “Does Estevan work with those guys?”

Maria laughs a little overloud at this and wipes ketchup from her lips before lighting up a cigarette. Donald shows up out of nowhere to drop an ashtray on her table and then disappears back to whatever task he is doing in the after hours.

“You are insistent,” she chides me, “Bribing and threatening Tanya. You should have just asked her out to the fireworks show. She’s a good date. You take her advice, yet?”

“Go into the swamp? No. I’m too city to wander off road without a fairly specific map.”

She leans back and blows smoke and then knocks once on the table.

Alas, I am way to slow to avoid the frying pan Donald brings down on the back of my head.

I really hate the town of Arbuck.