“What?”

“The correct Sub Rosa term is Baleful magic. Not black. He told me,” she says, pointing to me.

“Thank you,” says Delon, trying not to sound too sarcastic. “May I go on?”

“Please do.”

“They were and I suppose still are black potionists. They made poisons and hexes subtle enough to get around all but the most powerful charms. The problem is that their old-school magic didn’t keep up with modern medicine. Antibiotics, transfusions, and stomach pumps put them out of business.”

He looks at Candy.

“The Mangarm term for it is ‘scientificated magic.’ ”

“Cool.”

Glass elevator enclosures run alongside the stairs. It looks like they haven’t worked since the day the place closed down. But someone is using them. Ropes have been strung inside. There are pulleys every couple of floors. My guess is that the setup runs all the way to the top. It’s probably how the Mangarms move swag from the lower floors to home sweet home. It also explains the garbage heap in the lobby. Whatever they don’t want anymore goes over the railing to the floor. I wonder what living over your own garbage dump smells like in high summer.

“Stop!” yells Brigitte.

Everyone freezes where they are.

Brigitte flashes forward and knocks Delon onto his face. Something creaks and blasts by us, swinging from a wire that reaches up into the dark over our heads. It smashes into the railing on the far side of the stairs, taking out a few feet of it, before swinging back and almost clipping Traven. It cracks the opposite railing and gets stuck there. Everyone turns their flashlights on the thing.

It’s smashed to bits, only held together with yards of wire and duct tape. Sharpened metal spikes stick out at all angles. The center of the thing is dull beige plastic with holes in the front where keys might have been.

Father Traven examines it, pushing pieces of crushed plastic back into place.

“It’s a cash register,” he says. “Sharpened rebar wrapped around a cash register.”

Brigitte gets up and goes to him.

“Are you all right? It almost hit you.”

He touches her shoulder.

“I’m fine. Really.”

Brigitte gets on her knees, shining her flashlight on the steps until she finds what she’s looking for.

“You see? Here.”

Her light illuminates several feet of monofilament line stretched across one of the stairs. It hangs loose where Paul stepped on it.

“It’s a trip wire,” says Vidocq.

“Thank you,” says Paul. He looks a little shaken. No. He doesn’t know he’s a machine. He thinks he’s going to live a long and productive life, marry and have a pack of little toasters to bounce on his knee.

I say, “From now on, we don’t all shine our lights in the same spot. Move them around. Look for other traps.”

“I guess we’ve officially lost the element of surprise,” says Candy.

Paul runs his light over the next few steps and starts up again. The rest of us follow.

“Glad you came along, Father?” I say. “What’s the story about Jonah getting swallowed by the whale?”

“I was thinking more about Dante,” he says.

Vidocq says, “But when Dante went up he was ascending to Heaven.”

Tags: Richard Kadrey Sandman Slim Fantasy
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