Right Hand Magic Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Golgotham Glossary

  MAGIC TO THE BONE

  THRESHOLD

  THE ULTIMATE IN SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY!

  Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here. . . .

  Fifteen minutes later the taxi reached the Gate of Skulls, one of the city’s most famous landmarks, right up there with the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building.

  Actually, “the Gate of Skulls” was something of a misnomer since it wasn’t really made of numerous craniums, but was simply fashioned to resemble an extremely large one. It stood thirty feet high, and twice as wide, carved from a single slab of white marble. Over the decades, the smooth surface had become pitted and stained from exposure to the elements, giving it an increasingly realistic appearance. Each tooth lining the Gate’s upper jaw was the size of a paving stone, and its eye sockets were lit from within by a flickering green light that burned day and night.

  That last bit was a relatively new touch, added by the Golgotham Business Owners’ Organization (GoBOO) back in the 1970s, in order to help promote tourism. Sensationalistic flourishes aside, the Gate of Skulls, rising from the intersection of Broadway and Perdition Street like the remains of some fallen giant, was an eerie sight, warning the unwary of the dangers ahead.

  I couldn’t wait to walk through its gaping maw. . . .

  ROC

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  First published by Roc, an imprint of New American Library,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  First Printing, December 2010

  Copyright © Nancy A. Collins, 2010

  All rights reserved

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-44577-8

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  Dedicated to the memory of my mother,

  Marilynn Willoughby Collins

  1936-2009

  Acknowledgments

  The author would like to acknowledge the following source materials as having been instrumental in bringing the neighborhood of Golgotham to life:

  The Gangs of New York: An Informal History of the Underworld by Herbert Asbury (Paragon House); Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York (Vintage Books) and Evidence (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) by Luc Sante; The Worm in the Bud: The World of Victorian Sexuality by Ronald Pearsall (Penguin); Abandoned Stations by Joseph Brennan (www.columbia.edu/~brennan/abandoned); Lost City (http://lostnewyorkcity.blogspot.com); Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York by Jeremiah Moss (http://vanishingnewyork.blogspot.com); and Old Streets of New York: A Guide to Former Street Names in Manhattan by Gilbert Tauber (www.oldstreets.com).

  She would also like to acknowledge the amazing work of Andrew Chase (www.andrewchase.com) and Jeremy Mayer (www.jeremymayer.com) as having provided the inspiration for Tate’s metal sculptures.

  Chapter 1

  The flyer on the bulletin board at Strega Nona’s Pizza Oven read “Room for Rent: $750 per Month.” At the bottom of the page was a line of tear-away slips bearing a handwritten phone number, several of which were already taken.

  I happened to be at Strega Nona’s that particular day because I was looking at a loft in Tribeca. Since I was nearby, I decided to grab a slice. Located at Broadway and Perdition, on the border of Golgotham, it’s one of the best pizza joints in the city.

  Sounds too good to be true, I thought to myself as I tore off the next tab in line.

  Housing at that price, just for a single room in a larger apartment, was hard to come by. I knew this because I’d been hunting for a new place for several weeks, without any luck. Even though I had a tidy quarterly income, courtesy of robber baron ancestors, I still had to watch my budget. The materials used in my work were far from cheap, and the last thing I wanted was to have to go to my parents, hat in hand, halfway through a project, and beg for an advance on my next trust fund payment.

  The reason behind my need to relocate was that the management of my so-called artist’s loft in SoHo, where I both worked and lived, had recently informed me that the amount of noise I generated creating my metal sculptures was in violation of their most recent tenancy rules and that I was to cease immediately or face the termination of my lease. Apparently the investment bankers and junior-level stockbrokers who lived on my floor didn’t appreciate the sound of twenty-gauge steel being hammered into twenty-first-century art.

  I decided it was far easier to move in toto than to either argue the point with the condo board or find separate studio space elsewhere in the city. As it was, there were some unpleasant memories associated with my current digs, all of them involving a certain ex-boyfriend, that made relocating attractive to me.

  I checked the time on my cell phone as I shoveled a slice of pepperoni-and-andouille-sausage into my mouth. I had a meeting at
three with Derrick Templeton, a Chelsea gallery owner interested in showing my sculptures. Since there were no subway stops in Golgotham, I had to walk either to Chambers or Wall Street if I wanted to catch a train uptown.

  After all, time and gallery owners wait for no woman.

  Two and a half hours later, I left Templeton Gallery with a smile on my face and a handshake from the owner, who had agreed to feature my metal sculptures at his next show. And my parents said I was wasting my time pursuing a career as an artist. Ha!

  I wanted to call them up and tell them the good news. Well, good as far as I was concerned, anyway. That would rub it in nice and hard. Take that, Mom and Dad!

  As I fished the cell phone out of my purse, my fingers closed about the slip of paper I’d taken from the pizzeria. I stared at the numbers printed in a neat, almost-calligraphic hand for a long moment, and then punched them into the phone.

  I’m probably too late. Still, what’s the harm in trying? The worst they can tell me is that it’s already rented out.

  The phone rang four times before someone picked up. “Hello? Who’s this?” The voice on the other end was definitely male.

  “Hi, I’m calling about the room for rent? Is it still available?”

  “Yes, it is. Would you like to look at it?”

  “Sure!” I replied excitedly. “When’s a good time?”

  “How about now?”

  As I scribbled down the address on the back of an old takeout menu, I marveled at my good luck. Finally, after weeks of dead ends and near misses, I had not only landed a gallery show, but was now hot on the trail of an apartment.

  “I’ll be there as soon as I can,” I said. “I’m in Chelsea right now.”

  “Just make sure to knock real loud when you get here. Sometimes I can’t hear the door if I’m in the kitchen.”

  “Taxi!” I raised my arm as I stepped off the curb. A cab swerved out of the stream of traffic and pulled up alongside me. The driver leaned out of the window, eyeing the tattoos on my arms and the stainless steel piercing adorning my right brow.

  “Where to, lady? The Village?”

  I shook my head. “Golgotham.”

  The taxi took off without another word, leaving me standing in the gutter. I gave the fleeing cabbie the finger, for all the good it did me, and resumed walking in the general direction of downtown.

  After three more hacks left me standing at the curb, I finally got a driver who was willing to take me most of the way there. The cabbie was a powerfully built West African, with tribal scarring on his cheekbones that resembled the waves of the ocean.

  “I take you as far as Gate. No farther,” he informed me solemnly.

  “I’ll pay you double the meter if you take me to the exact address,” I offered as I slid into the backseat. I held up a fistful of bills so the driver could see I wasn’t bullshitting him.

  “No. Gate only,” the cabbie responded firmly, shaking his head.

  “Very well.” I sighed, dropping my shoulders in surrender. I learned long ago there was no arguing with a New York City cab driver.

  Fifteen minutes later the taxi reached the Gate of Skulls, one of the city’s most famous landmarks, right up there with the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building.

  Actually, “the Gate of Skulls” was something of a misnomer since it wasn’t really made of numerous craniums, but was simply fashioned to resemble an extremely large one. It stood thirty feet high, and twice as wide, carved from a single slab of white marble. Over the decades, the smooth surface had become pitted and stained from exposure to the elements, giving it an increasingly realistic appearance. Each tooth lining the Gate’s upper jaw was the size of a paving stone, and its eye sockets were lit from within by a flickering green light that burned day and night.

  That last bit was a relatively new touch, added by the Golgotham Business Owners’ Organization (GoBOO) back in the 1970s, in order to help promote tourism. Sensationalistic flourishes aside; the Gate of Skulls, straddling the east corner of Broadway and Perdition Street like the remains of some fallen giant, was an eerie sight, warning the unwary of the dangers ahead.

  I couldn’t wait to walk through its gaping maw.

  Chapter 2

  The address I was looking for was at the very top of Golden Hill Street, between Perdition and Beekman. Unlike the rest of the surrounding city, there had never been an attempt to turn Golgotham into flat, orderly squares. Because of this, the basic layout of the neighborhood had changed very little since the early eighteenth century.

  I stared up at the house before me. If ever there was a perfect example of Golgotham architecture, this was it. With its twin turrets and ornate lightning rod perched high atop its peaked roof, it looked like an escapee from a Charles Addams cartoon. There was even a gargoyle poised atop the cornice, bat wings folded tightly against its humped back. Marshaling my nerve, I strode up the granite steps, grabbed the brass door knocker shaped like a coiled asp, and knocked as loudly as I could.

  After a few moments, there came a squeal of rusty hinges as the heavy door swung open. Although I was half expecting Dracula, I was pleasantly surprised to discover the person on the other side was a very handsome young man, no older than twenty-five, with the lean, muscled body of a skater. He was dressed in a T-shirt,with SUPER FRIENDS printed on the front, skinny jeans, and had a pair of scuffed Chuck Taylors on his feet. His hair was shoulder length and unruly, as if it couldn’t decide whether to be straight or curly, and deep purple in color, with pale blue highlights.

  He tilted his head quizzically to one side, fixing me with golden eyes that had cat-slit pupils. I noticed with a slight start that he gripped the edge of the door with six fingers instead of five. It was only then I realized I was face-to-face not with just another Lower East Side boho hipster, but with an actual flesh-and-blood Kymeran.

  I had seen Kymerans on television and in movies, and read about them in books and on scandal Web sites, but I had never actually laid eyes on the real thing before. A part of me was surprised that the extra finger wasn’t like the rigid fake plastic pinkies sold at Halloween costume shops, but actually curled and flexed like the others on his hand.

  “Yes? What is it?” he asked with a hint of irritation. He had noticed me staring at his hands.

  “We, uh, talked on the phone earlier,” I replied, color rushing to my cheeks. “I’ve come about the room.”

  “You got money?” he asked bluntly, eyeing my own tattered jeans. “I don’t care how hot you look; I’ll not have a lubbard under my roof.”

  I had no idea what a “lubbard” was, but it didn’t sound complimentary. “I can pay three months in advance, plus deposit, if that answers your question.”

  He studied me for a long moment, as if trying to decipher something written on my forehead that only he could see, before finally stepping aside. “The room’s on the second floor.”

  As I entered the house, I caught the scent of used jockstraps boiled in potpourri. Well, that probably wasn’t what it actually was, but it sure smelled like it. I automatically wrinkled my nose in disgust.

  “Sorry about the stink,” he said, closing the door behind me. “I was in the middle of mixing something up when you knocked. Give me a moment—I need to take the cauldron off the boil.”

  He hurried down the hallway to the back of the house. Unsure of what to do, I followed him. As I tagged along, I glimpsed a double parlor with an adjoining dining room and what looked like a study on the ground floor.

  The kitchen was large with plenty of counter space, every available square inch of which was littered with glass vials and containers. Sitting atop the old-fashioned gas stove was a large cast-iron vessel, the contents of which bubbled and gurgled like a pool of lava waiting to erupt. As I watched, he pulled on a pair of oven mitts and lifted the heavy cauldron from atop the burner ring as if it were a pot of spaghetti.

  “Careful! Hot soup!” he said as he crossed the kitchen and placed the steaming container on
a circular slab of marble covered in arcane symbols. “I have a little side business as a nimgimmer,” the landlord explained, noticing the puzzled look on my face. “I have a client with a fondness for fauns, so to speak, and he’s picked up an unfortunate case of orf.”

  “Uh-huh.” I tried my best not to let on that I had no clue what the hell he was talking about.

  “It’s a form of knob-rot passed along by livestock,” he explained with a wry smile.

  “Oh!” I lowered my head and coughed into my fist so he couldn’t see me blush.

  “You’re new to Golgotham, aren’t you?” he asked, not unkindly.

  “Is it that obvious?” I winced.

  “Just a tad,” he replied. “So what kind of psychic are you? Clairvoyant? Telekinetic? Dowser?”

  “I’m none of those,” I explained, slightly baffled by the question. “I’m an artist.”

  He stopped what he was doing, a surprised look on his face. “Really? I would have figured you for a medium, myself. Normally psychics are the only type of humans who look to make their home in Golgotham. What brings you here?”

  “Rent, for the most part. I’m looking for a place where I can live and work in the same space. The raw materials for my art are expensive. I need all the help I can get. Plus, I’ve always been fascinated by this part of the city. It’s so . . . real.”

  “I’ve never heard it described quite like that before,” he laughed.

  Kymerans are known for giving off natural perfumes, as opposed to body odor, and now that the noisome concoction in the cauldron was off the boil, I finally noticed the landlord’s personal scent. When he brushed by, I caught a hint of citrus, moss, and leather. It was definitely a masculine aroma, and one I found quite attractive.

  As we headed up the stairs to the second floor, I looked around for signs of other tenants. “Do you live here alone?”

  “Hardly!” he laughed. “I have another boarder right now, but I doubt you’ll have occasion to see him. Assuming you want the room, that is.”