A Furnace Sealed Read online

  It was already past closing, so there wasn’t anyone around, and I was struck by how peaceful the place was. ’Course, even when it was crowded it was like that, but I’d never been here when it was this empty. With all the stonework and the high ceilings, and the near-total lack of people, it was one of those loud quiets.

  Or, at least, it would’ve been, except for a unicorn clopping on the floor, the sound echoing off the stone walls.

  We passed through a bunch of different rooms that were filled with Christian iconography, finally reaching a room with a huge golden altar with three painted saints’ heads on it. Medieval Christians really knew how to party …

  Across from that really gaudy altar was a doorway that was currently blocked by a large piece of wood with a sign on it saying, “Closed for Renovation.” That barricade and sign, which had both been up for eight days, were both a lie and the wellspring of Rodzinski’s copious amounts of sweat.

  That was the doorway that led to the unicorn tapestries. It was a big room, with more than half a dozen different tapestries with a unicorn theme. No one was entirely sure who made them, but most seemed to be part of a sequence that was about a bunch of guys hunting a unicorn down.

  One that definitely wasn’t part of the sequence was probably the most popular piece in the Cloisters: The Unicorn in Captivity. A beautiful work, probably the most commonly reproduced tapestry in the world—in the gift shop at the Cloisters alone you could get it as a print, a photo, a postcard, a book cover, a brooch, a throw pillow, or a blanket. It was the centerpiece of the Cloisters.

  It was also not just an ordinary tapestry. Remember that unicorn infestation in a French convent I mentioned? There were three of them—two were killed, to the chagrin of the nuns, so rather than see a third beast slaughtered, the nuns magicked the last unicorn into a tapestry. Mind you, they had to do something—if they hadn’t, it would’ve killed half the priests and monks in France.

  The unicorn was trapped with a helluva binding spell. And all those souvenirs I mentioned? They reinforced the spell.

  Which begged the question as to how it got out, but again, that wasn’t my problem.

  Rodzinski slid the barricade aside, and I guided the unicorn through the doorway.

  The room looked almost like usual: big fireplace (which matched the patchwork nature of the Cloisters, since the different parts that made up the fireplace were from five different countries) and tapestries covering each wall from floor to ceiling.

  On one of those walls—the first place your eye fell when you walked into the room on the immediate right, which was why they put it there—was what right now looked like a big green tapestry showing an empty gazebo.

  Normally, there was a unicorn chained to the gazebo.

  “All right, Gold,” Rodzinski said as I walked the unicorn toward the work of art that had been its home for five hundred years, “put the unicorn back in the tapestry.”

  I stopped dead in my tracks. “Excuse me?”

  Rodzinski pointed at the unicorn with a chubby finger. “Put it back in the tapestry! What do you think I’m paying you for?”

  “To track down a dangerous animal that you let loose and bring it back.”

  “Right, you handle all this supernatural”—he waved an arm back and forth—“y’know, stuff.”

  I couldn’t believe I was hearing this. “Did you even read my contract before you signed it? I don’t cast spells. I deal with supernatural phenomena, yeah, but I haven’t the first clue how to restore a binding spell. You need a specialist for that.”

  “How’d you get the unicorn to be docile?”

  “With a talisman I bought from a dealer.”

  Rodzinski’s nostrils were flaring in a manner depressingly similar to that of the unicorn when it had been about to play bull to my bullfighter on 180th Street. “You mean I could’ve just bought that smelly necklace and done this myself?”

  Somehow I managed not to laugh in Rodzinski’s face. “Assuming you could’ve found the unicorn and gotten close enough to the unicorn to put the talisman on without being shish-kebabbed—no, you still couldn’t have. Because my dealer wouldn’t sell to someone unlicensed.”

  Making a noise like a steam pipe bursting, Rodzinski turned away from me. “This is ridiculous. I need this unicorn back in the tapestry where it belongs. It’s our biggest attraction! Without it …”

  He trailed off. I didn’t finish his sentence the way I wanted to: “… lots of people will die.” That didn’t seem to be his concern so much as the bottom line of his museum. In his defense, that was his job, and besides, they probably didn’t teach “Binding Spells and How They Can Screw Up Your Day When They Go Bad” in administrator school, so I didn’t blame him for the compassion-ectomy.

  Sighing, I said, “Let me see if I can find one of those specialists I mentioned.” I looked at my bare wrist for a full second before I remembered that my watch was eaten by a dragon last week. Then I took out my cell phone, which I needed anyhow. Based on the time on the phone’s display, it had been forty minutes since I dropped the talisman on the horn. At worst, we had twenty minutes. Ahondjon was kinda vague on the exact time frame of the thing’s effectiveness, something I intended to take up with him right after we discussed the odor.

  “Whatever.” Rodzinski took out his own phone and started stabbing angrily at it. “But this is coming out of your fee.”

  “Like hell,” I said as I called up my phone’s address book. “Read the contract again.”

  “You really think a contract for something like this is binding in a court of law?” Rodzinski asked in a dismissive tone that made me wonder if he had ever intended to pay me at all.

  “Doesn’t need to be.” I didn’t even look up at him. “The Wardein of Manhattan’s already gonna be paying you a visit after this, and if you violate a single dot on a single ‘i’ of my contract, he’ll pay you another visit. Trust me, you don’t wanna piss him off twice.”

  Rodzinski frowned. “Who the hell is the war-deen of Manhattan?”

  “From the moment this unicorn got loose? Your worst nightmare.”

  Wardeins were in charge of all magickal activity within their demesne. The island of Manhattan was a single demesne, and for all of my life to date, its wardein had been an old bastard named Damien van Owen, and he would probably whittle Rodzinski down to size in six-and-a-half seconds. If I could’ve, I’d’ve sold tickets.

  But right now, I had bigger problems. I didn’t deal with van Owen that often because I usually stuck to the Bronx, which had a different wardein. Most of the spellcasters I knew were in the Boogie Down, also, which luckily wasn’t all that far from Fort Tryon Park.

  I started scrolling through the cell’s alphabetically sorted address book. Atkins was out of town. Fofanah still wasn’t talking to me after that incident with the bajloz on Pelham Parkway. Hwang and Kanchibhotla were both on vacation—together, if the rumors were true, but I was pretty sure that Hwang only had eyes for McGillicuddy. Saravia lived too far away and didn’t have a car. Solano had her son this weekend, so she wouldn’t be doing anything. Teitelbaum was Orthodox, so he probably wouldn’t even answer the phone on a Friday night this close to sunset.

  Which led me to my only option: Velez.

  I sighed. I really didn’t want to deal with Velez.

  On the other hand, Rodzinski probably didn’t want to deal with him, either, and watching him be forced to would be highly entertaining.

  So I called him, praying to a deity I didn’t believe in nearly as often as I should that it didn’t go to voicemail.

  As it rang, Rodzinski looked up from his phone and pointed a chubby finger at me. “This friend of yours better put the unicorn back, because if he doesn’t, I will sue you for breach of contract, you understand me?”

  I grinned. “You really think a contract for something like this is binding in a court of law?”

  Chapter 2

  My name is Bram Gold, and I’m a Courser.

&nbs
p; Coursers are folks from all across the globe who get hired to hunt the peculiar, police the strange, and so on—whether we’re talking ordinary folks who used the supernatural to do bad things, or actual paranormal creatures who didn’t play by the rules. There were a lot fewer of the second kind than people think. Most of them just minded their own business and lived their lives like anybody else. Best Hanukkah present I ever got was from a domovoy, just as a for-instance. And some of those paranormal creatures were like the unicorn: victims of their nature.

  The name always threw people. Coursers were people who hunted with dogs—it came from Europe in the Middle Ages, I think. Had to do with big-game hunts and that sort of nonsense. I don’t know, I didn’t come up with this crap. All I know is we used to be called Slayers. Then Buffy the Vampire Slayer got popular on TV, and people stopped taking us seriously, and figured we were just role-playing or something. So fine, no problem, we went ahead and changed our name to Hunters—which was more accurate, anyhow, since we weren’t just about the killing—but then Supernatural got popular, and the whole nonsense started all over.

  Now we’re called Coursers, mainly because we figure nobody in Hollywood knows what that is.

  So—that’s what I do.

  As for my name, I wasn’t actually born Bram Gold. And thank G-d for that, honestly. No, Rachel and Mordechai Goldblume named their bouncing baby boy “Abraham.” They probably already had my shingle out when Mom got pregnant, figuring I would just join their practice—they were both doctors, and I was always groomed for the family business.

  That lasted right up until my parents were killed by a golem run amuck.

  So instead of seeing old farts bitching about their latest ailment, I became somebody people hired to kill demons or hunt nixies or slay dragons or what-the-hell-ever. And if that was what you were looking for, you weren’t about to hire some schmuck named Abe Goldblume, right?

  Bram Gold, though, he sounded like the kind of guy who got things done. So that was the name on the big piece of metal outside my office on West 230th Street just off Broadway in the Bronx.

  Of course, my nametag for Montefiore Hospital’s ER says dr. abraham goldblume. I put in two days a week there. It’s been good to stay in the medical game, especially since the other Coursers sometimes made use of my services. Most other ER docs tended to call for psych consults when patients explained that they’ve been, say, gored by a unicorn.

  Luckily, this particular unicorn wouldn’t be a problem anymore. José Velez answered on the third ring, and he said he could be there in ten minutes, which he was. He only gave me a hard time about it for a few seconds before I conveyed the rush nature of the job. That just meant he’d be back to giving me crap afterward.

  But he cast the spell, the unicorn popped back into the tapestry, he and Rodzinski argued for a while about the price, eventually agreeing to an amount and having me add it to my overall fee and I’d then pay Velez. Just as Rodzinski and Velez shook hands—Rodzinski looking like he wanted to be anywhere else just then—the talisman made another popping sound and crumbled to dust, leaving me holding a leather string and staring at a pile of dust on the floor.

  I wondered if Rodzinski would dock the floor sweeping off my fee.

  When we got out to the driveway, I saw Velez’s bright red 3000GT parked right behind my rental truck. I had no idea how Velez squeezed his three-hundred-and-fifty-pound frame into the two-seater, but he managed it.

  “Thanks again for coming,” I told him. “You were the first guy I thought of.”

  “That’s some bullshit. First person your ass thought of was Vanessa Fofanah,” he said with a laugh, “but she is pissed at you.”

  I gave that the response it deserved, which was silence.

  Velez shrugged. “Whatever, yo—look, I was already on my way down the Deegan.”

  I chuckled, realizing the most likely place Velez could be headed via the Major Deegan Expressway on a Friday night when he could drop what he was doing and come help me. “You were going to see Katrina again, weren’t you?”

  “Fuck you, Gold, you don’t know shit, okay?”

  “I’ll take that as a yes.” Indicating the Cloisters with my head, I added, “By the way, when’d you start adding basil to the binding spell?”

  Velez had no discernible neck—he went straight from his chin to his broad shoulders—so he looked very silly when he shrugged. “A few months back. Clients like it if the spells don’t stink. You should try that.”

  I held up both hands. “Don’t look at me, I bought that talisman.”

  “Lemme guess—Ahondjon? That fool’s always bringin’ it old school up in here. Someone oughtta tell his ass that it don’t gotta smell like shit to work right.” He reached for his car keys. “You wanna get a beer?”

  “Really?” I gave him another grin. “Katrina might still be up.”

  This time he ignored my dig. “I seriously need me some alcohol, yo. Putting El Blanco back in the rug took a shitload outta me.”

  That got my attention. “Seriously? What happened?”

  “Hell if I know.” Velez shook his head, running his hand over his close-cropped hair. “Whatever undid that motherfucker was harsh. Took way more mojo to put that bad boy back than it shoulda.”

  “Weird.”

  Holding out his arms in a “well?” gesture, Velez asked, “So, beer?”

  I jerked a thumb at the truck. “Nah, I gotta get this monster to the parking lot before it gets too late.” There was a big outdoor parking lot near where I kept my office, right off the Deegan. If I didn’t get there before midnight, though, all the truck-sized spots would be taken up by tractor-trailers settling in for the night before getting back on the road in the morning. You ever try parking a twenty-six-foot truck on the street?

  “So bring your sorry ass by afterward.”

  “Where?”

  “Freddie’s.”

  That settled that. No way I was going to that dump again. “Lemme see how I feel. I gotta check in with van Owen, and I got some other crap I need to take care of.” That was almost true.

  “A’ight. Thanks for throwin’ me the work.” He held up his hand. I grabbed it and we did the man-hug one-pat-on-the-back thing.

  “Hey, it was that or let the unicorn disembowel me.”

  Velez chuckled. “Peace.” He squeezed into the GT while I climbed into the truck, and we headed out into the night.

  I was able to park in the lot I mentioned without any hassle, which was a huge relief. Seriously, all the other parking lots around were indoor ones in which the truck wouldn’t even fit. It was hard enough finding street parking for a normal-sized car, much less this monstrosity. My driveway was too small to accommodate it—it would stick out onto the sidewalk and I’d get a ticket. I mean, yeah, I could’ve added that to Rodzinski’s bill, but why risk it? I was already pretty sure he wouldn’t accept the parking fee.

  But it was all good, and I walked to Broadway, standing under the elevated train, waiting for the bus that would take me to Riverdale and my home. I called van Owen while I waited and left a message on his voicemail, telling him how it went down with the unicorn, including what Velez said about how hard it was to restore the binding spell. Between that and a binding that strong coming unraveled in the first place, something funny was going on, and he needed to know about it.

  As soon as I hung up with van Owen’s voicemail, the cell phone rang with the opening bars of “Daytripper” by the Beatles, which startled the crap out of me. That ringtone meant that it was Miriam Zerelli calling.

  Remember when I said that the Bronx had a different wardein than van Owen? That was Miriam. Her demesne included not only the Bronx, but also some parts of Westchester and western Connecticut—the boundaries for these things were geographic, not political.

  Miriam and I’ve actually been friends since childhood. Her dad—the previous Wardein of the Bronx—was good friends with Esther Lieberman, who was both my aunt and my family’s rabbi. Miria
m and I, we’ve been through some stuff together.

  “Hey there, Mimi.”

  “Where the hell are you?”

  I blinked. “I’m on Broadway waiting for the bus up the hill. I had to park a truck in the lot down by 230th. Why, I—”

  “Oh, good, so you’re on your way.”

  “Uh …” As soon as I heard the tone in Miriam’s voice, I knew there was something going on that I had forgotten, but I couldn’t for the life of me remember what the heck it was.

  Correctly reading my hesitation as cluelessness, Miriam spoke very slowly, as if to a not-too-bright four-year-old. “Because if you don’t get here when the full moon rises—”

  I snapped my fingers, suddenly very grateful I hadn’t accepted Velez’s offer of a post-unicorn beer. “Right! The werewolves! It’s my turn to babysit!”

  Miriam said in a very tight voice, “Yes. And you forgot. Again.”

  The bus came, and I hopped onto it, dropping my MetroCard into the slot. It beeped and informed me that my remaining balance was a buck-seventy-five, which meant I’d need to refill it before I could use it again. I’d probably remember that with the same attention that I remembered my plans for tonight.

  “I’m sorry, Miriam.”

  “Yes, you are. You really should hire an assistant to deal with your forgetfulness.”

  “I know, but I keep forgetting.”

  I could practically hear her rolling her eyes as I took a seat near the back of the bus across from two white teenagers sharing earbuds and next to a Latino guy in a doorman’s uniform.

  “Don’t worry, Miriam, I’m headed there right now.”

  “You’d better be, boychik.”

  I winced. “Mimi, bubbe, please—don’t bring the Yiddish.”

  “Then stop calling me ‘Mimi.’ See you soon.”

  She ended the call and I let out a long sigh that twinged my aching ribs. I briefly toyed with the notion of once again going through my cell’s address book, this time to find a replacement werewolf minder, but the full moon would be up in half an hour.