Caveat Emptor Who: Noah/NPC Jonas (Written By Gazer) What: Solutions Where: Las Vegas When: Present Ratings/Warnings: Medium
It had taken an unusual amount of greased palms to find himself here. Noah stood on the sidewalk, looking at the ramshackle building with a mixture of curiosity and disdain. The resident of this house had helped take everything from him, and all the pyrokinetic could do was hope that Jonas would agree to reverse it. Not violence, not coercion. He would have to ask.
Noah let out a deep sigh and climbed the crumbling stairs before making a fist and knocking on the metal door. It was hard to imagine Doherty here. The lengths he must have gone through, just for him. He almost felt a strange bond with the dead detective.
Jonas didn’t usually watch the news. His take on current events was similar to that of a generation who watched their country abandon an unpopular war, then the soldiers who fought it. That society as a whole would eat you if you let it, so it was better to just ignore as much of it as you could.
But he’d caught the story of Rob Doherty’s death on the late broadcast on KNTV, followed up the next morning with something that was almost like regret. He’d had a feeling that that situation could go bad, even with the little potion he’d mixed up for the guy. He’d even kind of liked him, had briefly considered calling in an anonymous tip to the police. But his long distrust of the cops had brought him to his senses, so he just put out the word to his clientele that there was a new password for entry to his sanctum. Then he added another protective ward. Then a second, stronger one. You couldn’t be too careful.
It was very early when the knock sounded, just past six in the morning. Jonas was eating breakfast, plowing his way through a plate of eggs and cheese with black coffee on the side. He was wearing a bright purple robe and plaid pajama bottoms. He squinted with annoyance in the direction of the door, looked at the clock on the wall.
“D’you know what Goddamn time it is?”
Noah hadn’t exactly been paying attention to the time. With insomnia came a strange distortion of time, each hour bleeding into the next. The sun hadn’t yet completely risen. He looked down at his watch, just a regular old fashioned watch, noting the time with a nonplussed, muttered, “Huh.” He banged again on the door, louder this time. Loudly, hopefully loudly enough to be heard through the barrier, “I have lots of money!”
The pyrokinetic looked over his shoulder to make sure no one on the street had heard this declaration. “I have a password.”
“Stop. Yelling. Jesus fuckin’...”
The complaint died down into something inaudible as Jonas rubbed the side of his face. He finished off the last of his coffee, put the cup down on the table before crossing over back to the slot in the door. There was a metallic sound as it slid open again, and he peered through the narrow opening to see what he could see of his visitor. Youngish guy, tall and skinny, looked like he hadn’t slept in about four days.
“Password.”
He felt some of the tension he didn’t even know he was holding release when that slot finally opened. Noah could see the man’s disembodied eyes pinned on him. The password had come with a hefty price tag of its own. “Do what ye will.” The pyrokinetic had Googled the phrase. As far as he could tell, it had something to do with magic, something called a Rede.
“Did you bring the golden ticket?”
The spellworker tapped his fingers on the door next to the slot, and he’d already added a PITA tax due to the hour. He would have to see about a ward to discourage early callers.
Noah pulled out a legal-size manila envelope that was filled to the limit with cash. There wasn’t any price he wouldn’t pay to get back what was stolen from him. “I have many pieces of paper with pictures of dead men on them,” he answered dryly. He wondered, briefly, what Doherty had paid. He hoped it had been a lot. He hoped that it had hurt to part with the money.
Tap-tap-tap, while Jonas looked at the envelope, and he stepped away from the slot to close it and belt his robe, tying the sash in a loose knot. He’d slept badly the night before, as if the man who’d come to him for help had been trying to reach him from whatever ether you went to when you died. Jonas was an atheist, but he believed in ghosts.
“The box next to the door. The envelope goes there.”
He stepped further away from the door, into the room. Hopefully this would be simple, because he was in precisely no mood for something elaborate. An elastic hair tie around his wrist was moved to the back of his neck, and he started to make a ponytail.
“What did you come to buy?”
Noah dropped the money into the box and looked around curiously as he trailed behind Jonas. “Well, it’s pretty simple,” he answered, his gaze falling on the other man’s weathered face. “I want to buy back what you took from me.” His phone in hand, he held up the screen for Jonas to see a picture of Robert Doherty.
“You recognize him?”
It was one of those moments where time took a beat, slowed from a casual walk to a crawl and then stopped, and Jonas looked from the phone to his visitor’s face, then back to the phone. His hands were still moving, finishing the ponytail. He needed to get a haircut soon anyway.
“So you’re the little bastard.”
He said it almost off-handedly, picked up the plate that held the last of his breakfast and scraped it off into the trash. “The way he talked, I thought you’d be older. Or meaner-looking. Though I guess you’re mean enough, yeah?”
“Yeah, sure, you can call me the little bastard.” Noah resisted the urge to peek in the box and see how much money might be floating around in there. Jonas was exactly like he had pictured, and he wasn’t sure if that was reassuring or not. “And I suppose it depends on who you ask.”
The pyrokinetic spotted a chair, and without asking, sank into it. “I’m curious about what was in the cocktail that Doherty fed me.”
“I don’t give away trade secrets. Maybe you could find it through Google, I really don’t know, but every mage works differently.”
The older man sat down in the other chair, one bare foot crossing over the other as he scratched a spot on his chest, fingernails making noise against his robe.”Is it inherited?” he asked, his own curiosity getting the better of him. “I never saw a firebug up close, not one who doesn’t need gas and matches to get started.”
Noah smiled, though his eyes remained cold and fixed upon Jonas’ face. “A proprietary blend. Like kombucha.” It had been worth a shot. He also knew there was little chance of intimidating the mage, not in his own home, and not without his powers.
“If it’s inherited, I haven’t met anyone else in my family who has it. Though my parents off-loaded me when I was young, so I guess it’s possible that there’s a cousin or uncle floating around somewhere.”
The left corner of Jonas’ mouth quirked, not quite a smile but not a smirk either. He was an old bull sign, an old soul, and he did not intimidate easily. In his house or outside of it. He let out a breath through his nose, folded his hands together so that they dangled between his knees.
“You’re feeling a little naked without it, aren’t you?” he asked, his voice almost kind. “Like you left the house without your pants and didn’t notice until somebody pointed it out. I’m sure there’s easier ways of killing a man than bashing his head in. My fault for not being more explicit in what to watch out for.”
“I had to improvise when he suddenly decided that it wasn’t enough. He threatened to kill me, so I killed him first.” Noah left out the part about how he had already been planning to kill Doherty anyway. It was done, and he couldn’t undo it anyway. Crying over spilled milk and all that.
The pyrokinetic fell silent, the thoughts in his head tumbling in an uncharacteristically disorganized fashion. “It’s not so much feeling naked as it is...feeling like I’m nothing at all.”
“Maybe you aren’t.”
Because he could sense an unformed quality in the man sitting opposite from him, something that had splintered off either when his powers disappeared or long before that. Jonas wasn’t a doctor, but he did often have strong gut feelings about people. This one wanted something from him and so he was playing the nice guy, and his own ethics dictated that he should do something Cash spent was cash that had to be earned.
Alternately, his own karma had taken a hit here. He hadn’t warned Doherty strongly enough, and it didn’t matter that he hadn’t known precisely what to warn for. A man was dead, and Jonas felt the burden of that. After a long space of silence, he let out another breath.
“Tell you what,” he said, his fingers unlacing so that he could rest his hands on his knees. “I’ll fix you up something, but you have to take it here. And then I’m changing the locks when you leave. I don’t think I want a return visit from you. Take all the offense you like.”
Noah left out a small exhale of air through his nose that could have been a sound of amusement if one stretched their imagination. “No one ever wants a return visit from me,” he remarked dryly. “I’m used to that.” He leaned back in the chair contemplatively, dark eyes sweeping over Jonas intently.
“How do I know you won’t just poison me, or...curse me or something?”
Jonas’ graying eyebrows went up, and what warmth there was in his expression cooled off until his face looked like it had been carved out of a glacier with an ice axe. He was old and he was powerful and it wasn’t even eight in the morning yet. In another mood he’d have called the guy brave for questioning him in his own house, but this was not that mood.
“You can trust me or you can take your money and get the fuck out of here right now,” he said crisply. “This isn’t Starbucks, boyo, and I am not here at your convenience. I may or may not have suggested poison to begin with, but that wasn’t what I was asked for. You want my help? Stop insulting me.”
Noah took a brief moment to imagine all of the things he would like to do to Jonas once he got his powers back. He wouldn’t soon forget that he was the architect of their theft. Once finished, he nodded curtly. “Fine. Let’s go.”
The chair made a scraping noise as Jonas got up, and he cinched his robe tight over his bare chest. Fucking tourists. He opened the top cupboards, first the left and then the right. Studied the unmarked jars and bottles before pulling several of the glass containers down from the shelves, setting them out on the counter. He could feel his visitor watching him, and beneath the fabric of his robe he thought he heard the bull’s head snort quietly.
“It’s a very delicate business,” he said, his voice milder than before as he began to measure out the portions. “I’ve had entire batches go bad, and one caught fire because I misjudged. And you can’t just dump it down the sink either. I’ve tried. It’s worse than pouring out cooking grease.”
As he talked, Jonas mixed, and he’d been experimenting with psychedelics. Mostly on himself, though also for the occasional customer. He had the extract of a particularly potent species of mushroom he could only get as an illegal import, and he’d had to wear a face shield while boiling it down to keep the fumes out of his nose and mouth. Getting high on his own supply wasn’t a frequent thing, but it was like the tea, something he indulged in.
The surface of the liquid was a bright blue whirlpool after he dropped in the last bit of extract into the bottle, and he watched it swirl before holding his hand over the opening. Cool but not icy, a hint of chill. “You hit a bump in the path, that’s all,” he said, and his temper of earlier was already forgotten. “Opening your eyes, even the one no one can see, is how you can get back on it.”
A bump in the road. Noah couldn’t decide if that was comforting or dismissive. He stood up from the chair, his legs buzzing from sitting still while his body yelled at him to do something. Anything. His gaze fell on the blue liquid. It looked poisonous but also strangely alluring. It just needed a label that said drink me, like from Alice in Wonderland. “What will this feel like? Or is there no adequate way to prepare myself?” This was going to be the most expensive cocktail he had ever consumed.
“No way to get ready for it. Every trip is different, just like the same destination wouldn’t be the same for two separate people. It’ll taste cold at first, like water with too much ice in it, but if you don’t drink the whole thing all at once it probably won’t work.”
Jonas didn’t reclaim his chair, parking himself on the other side of the table, the small of his back aligned with the counter. He knew that despite the other man’s currently powerless state, he was still dangerous, but as long as the new wards held nothing would go south. And once the concoction he’d just made had been imbibed, the guy would have...other concerns.
Noah wrapped his hand around the glass, eyes fixed on the blue substance that could just as well have been antifreeze. It shared that same chemical blue quality that was almost pretty, in a garish sort of way. He lifted it to his nose. It didn’t smell that terrible. Weird, but not biohazard bad. He looked up at Jonas, meeting the older man’s weathered eyes. “Cheers.” As instructed, he downed it all at once, despite a twinge of pain at the front of his forehead due to the cold. Once finished, he set the jar back down with a quiet clink.
“I’d better sit down for this,” the pyrokinetic marked dryly. Once back in the safety of the chair, he asked, “How long does it take to kick in?”
“Few minutes. Depends on if you’re here on an empty stomach.”
Jonas busied himself putting things away, glass rattling against glass before he closed the doors to the cupboards. He wondered if his guest had ever tripped before. Probably not. A guy like that could probably start a fire while he was high and think the colors were pretty. When he was finished, he took up his chair again, covered a yawn. He should go back to bed after this. Or drink some coffee.
“Clear your mind,” he advised. “It’s better if you take a couple of deep breaths while it takes hold. Makes it not as jarring.”
There was a part of Noah that immediately wanted to do the opposite of what Jonas said. That, however, didn’t seem a wise choice at that moment. His breathing was deep but even, his fingertips dangling over the arms of the chair as he looked down at them. Minutes passed, though he hadn’t been keeping track of how many. The pyrokinetic was about to speak again when the sound in the room fell away, as if getting sucked into a vacuum. He turned to look at the other man, but he was shrouded in shadow, muted.
Noah struggled to get up from the chair, but his body felt different. Heavier. Before he could get to his feet, there was a sinking sensation, falling.
“Breathe deeper and count to five. Maybe ten. It’s up to you if you float or fall.”
That wasn’t entirely true, but for the moment it would do. Jonas sat back in the chair, one bare foot crossing over the other. Haircut tomorrow, and maybe a stop off at the food co-op he liked. He was almost out of his favorite bread.
“Open that inner eye, the one that’s mostly blind. The path’s as narrow as it is steep, you’ll need it.”
Jonas sounded far away, like listening to a television playing from a different room. Still, Noah heard the suggestion to count. He got to three before blackness gave way to a blurry image of dim morning light spilling into a bedroom. There was a bed, tangled sheets and blankets. A curled up, sleeping form next to him. And an insistent buzzing next to his head. He turned to look at a cell phone vibrating against a night stand; the source of the noise. The pyrokinetic reached out a hand, except it wasn’t his hand. It was larger, with a plain gold wedding band on his ring finger.
Tentatively, Noah picked up the phone and pressed the green button. “Hello?” The person next to him stirred, long dark hair brushing against his shoulder. A muffled voice began to speak, and even though the words weren’t clear to him, somehow he processed the meaning of them. It took a moment, but confusion was replaced by a blinding pain that he had never felt in the entirety of his existence. He could only just pick out a few words, like fire and family and dead.
He tried to get up from the bed, but it felt like the sheets were wrapping around him, keeping him trapped. Every part of him burned. His eyes were being pulled of their own accord toward a framed photograph on the nightstand. Noah froze. It was Doherty and his family; his brother, sister-in-law, nephews. Happy, smiling, alive. Finally, he was able to lurch forward. He closed his eyes and felt himself hit the floor before his stomach heaved and he threw up. When he was finished, he wiped his mouth in disgust and looked up to see Jonas’s eyes on him.
“What did you do to me?”
“I didn’t do anything to you, though I can see why you’d want to think so.”
Jonas looked at the mess on the kitchen floor with distaste, the man crouched on the linoleum with just a shade less distaste. He was going to have to clean that up, though he really should make his guest do it. But he wanted this guy out of here, because he could feel the waves of ill will rolling off of him like high tide.
“You don’t have to believe in karma for it to believe in you,” he added. “Whatever you saw, maybe it’s you trying to grow a conscience. Or the universe sending up a flare as a warning shot. Who’s to say?”
Noah sat back on his heels. The burning was beginning to subside, but just barely. His eyes watered, his stomach still churning. He couldn’t stop picturing the faces of the family he had killed. The pyrokinetic looked down at his hands. After a moment, a spark glowed from his fingertips, slowly growing in intensity before letting it fade away. “It’s back,” he remarked flatly.
Slowly, carefully, he got to his feet. There was no elation, no excitement. Just pain.
“Caveat emptor, right?”
The older man’s chair made noise as it scraped backwards, and he made another mental note to add to his wards. Right after he got a mop and a bucket of Pine Sol-infused water,, before the smell soaked into the floor.
“You can see yourself out, yeah? I have some housekeeping to do.”
The pyrokinetic didn’t respond. He was thinking of the person next to him in the vision or whatever the hell that was. Noah knew who she was, and knew that she was in Vegas. Something was urging him to find her, like a whispering voice in his ear. After a few moments of tense silence, he spoke. “I doubt you offer refunds.”
He walked past Jonas and to the door, glancing briefly at the box with the money before exiting the home. Once outside, Noah blinked rapidly in the morning light, bright and strangely cheerful. A person wandered past with a small dog on a leash. Normal. First things first, he needed to wash the taste of sick out of his mouth. Then he needed to find Laura.