Smoke & Silver

The pink neon from 'Gris-Gris a Go-Go' was jarring against the gunmetal grey of the sky. It hadn't started raining yet, but the pregnant clouds were due any moment. The bar wasn't set to open for another few hours, making parking easy to come by. John had killed his flask on the ride, leaving nothing to stop him from being the first to disembark. He shot out of the car like an angry bullet, forgetting that I'd have to unlock the side door for him. The glare he turned to me when he realized this sizzled against my skin.

"Chill out, John." I pushed past him to put my key in the lock. He took a deep breath, purely to reprimand me, I'm sure, but Isaac put his hand on his shoulder again. The fight didn't so much leave him as it went to go take a nap like a cat in the sun. I knew that the next thing he was going to do was crawl into a bottle of gin so he'd have an excuse to brood in a corner and think for a while.

And that's exactly what he did.

Isaac sat at the bar while John found a corner booth to nest in. I took a bottle of gin to him and set a black plastic ashtray down amid the water rings from drinks long gone. He snatched the gin from my hand in a way that suggested that he was already lost in thought. He was impossible when he got in these moods. I learned a long time ago to ignore them. The hurt feelings weren't worth it. I walked back to the bar and hopped up on a stool next to Isaac, who was pouring himself a glass of gin as well. I shook my head and reached over the bar for a bottle of whiskey and a second tumbler.

"Well, that was an absolute waste of time. And John was right."

"About what?" I lit a cigarette and pulled the ashtray across the bar to rest between us.

"Something was off. They didn't have any proposition for us, beyond asking us to 'reclaim' a bag of coins that John picked up a few years back and left with me. No one knows I have them, of course, but..." He trailed off, staring into the melting ice cubes in his gin.

"How can no one know you have them if Whitehouse himself brought them to you? Doesn't he have like... I don't know... people that fund him? They'd only pay him if he brought back what he was sent after."

"Oh, he did that." Isaac reached for a cigarette of his own, and smiled faintly as I lit it for him. "But he came across something else while he was on that particular trip."

"A bag of coins. Don't know why you ended up with them instead of some museum."

"First of all, they weren't just some 'bag of coins', Georgia. They were The Thirty Pieces of Silver." His tone was even, not quite patronizing, but he was getting there.

"I'm sorry. The what?" I wasn't sure if it was last night's drinking or if I hadn't had enough yet today. Either way, it sounded like a good idea to try and catch up. I threw back a shot's worth of whiskey and poured another.

"Come on, Georgia. You may have strayed from the path, but you were raised a Good Christian Girl." And there was the patronizing tone.

"You're kidding."

"No, I remember you trying to keep up the Christian charade for your mother for years before-"

"Not that. The coins. THE coins? THE silver?" The penny had finally dropped, so to speak.

He nodded and took a sip of his gin. The bluish smoke rising from the cherry of his cigarette was the same color as his eyes. I stared at him in disbelief.

"You're kidding."

"Nope." He took a long drag off of his cigarette, looking back to the ice that was diluting his gin.

"I'd ask, but I don't think I wanna know the story. What's the deal with them? I get the religious significance, but-"

"You know the story, the lore, as it were, behind The Thirty Pieces of Silver. I'm guessing that since it's a bit out of your element, you don't know what else they can be used for."

"Obviously not. Enlighten me."

"There's a sigil, an obscure one, that is supposed to summon a powerful demon. You know my old superstition against speaking their names, so please, indulge me when I don't say which. But, it's one of the biggest, baddest nightmare things in Christianity, short of the Devil himself. With the silver, it can be controlled."

"And made to do...what?"

"Literally anything. Appeal to its greed and the world is yours. You want fame? You've got it. You want war? The world's on fire. You want power? You'll be the president of the United States or the King of the whole goddamned planet."

"Oh. Oh fuck." I downed the rest of my whiskey in one swallow.

"That's about it, yeah."

"Who would want to do something like that?"

"Who wouldn't?" He smiled at me. That smile always made me melt. It reminded me of the nights spent on my couch with greasy pizza, cheap beer, and awful horror movies, of nights where we ate macaroni and cheese from the same battered soup pot. It reminded me of the home I'd made for myself among other sad and lonely kids old enough to buy booze. I thought of the time he'd been sick, and I'd been at work with my apartment door locked. He climbed in through my window to sleep in my bed until I got home and could curl up beside him. And, here was that same boy, now a very rich man who was missing a leg. A leg that I'd run my fingertips across and wrapped my own legs around more than a few times. Times had changed, that was for damn sure. He wasn't as angry now. He seemed content, if lonely. But I guess we were all lonely. That hadn't changed. Isaac had always had a bit of a temper when we were in college, but he'd managed to overcome it in the years since. I think losing his leg mellowed him out a bit. As much as he'd loved playing powerful characters in the games we had, he also knew that it would corrupt. He was a devout Christian, if a strange one, and was one of the few people I knew I could always trust.

"You."

"Me." He smiled wider, "That's why I have the silver. That's why we didn't let anyone else know that I have it, or that John even found it in the first place."

"That sounds reasonable. I think I understand a little better now."

We smoked and drank in silence for a bit, until John came back to life in the corner booth. "It was a goddamned set up!" he exclaimed. I jumped, nearly knocking over the glass before me. The shock in Isaac's eyes said that his heart had forgotten how to beat for a moment or two.

"Don't you see? They told us NOTHING! They wasted our time asking over those coins that I gave to you, KNOWING that you had them! We have to get back to your place. NOW." A fire blazed in John's eyes. Isaac and I jumped up from our chairs and followed him out of the door, to the car.

"No way in hell you're driving, John." I said as I caught up to him. I was, admittedly, a little out of breath. That's what sitting on your ass and chain smoking Marlboros will do to you when you get older.

"Georgia, you can't stop me."

"Get your ass in the back seat and we'll go."

"For the thousandth time, Georgia, you're not coming with us!"

"I'll drive. You've both had considerably more to drink than I have anyway. Georgia, backseat. John, shotgun. This way, maybe the two of you won't bicker like children." Isaac shoved us both aside, taking the keys from my hand. John turned away, breaking our eye contact at the last possible moment. His head swiveled like a cheap desk chair as he turned away from me. Always so dramatic...

I slammed my own door as I got in behind Isaac. The engine snarled as we pulled out of the lot and raced to Isaac's house.

When we got there, everything appeared normal. At least, it did until we got inside.

Every one of Isaac's employees were tied up in the ballroom. They had been bound and gagged with pale rope and bits of white cloth. No one was bruised or bleeding, which I took to mean that Isaac needed more lively help, or to pay them better. The men rushed off into the library, apparently unaware as I started untying the unfortunate staff.

When I removed the gag from the first man, whose shirt was emblazoned with the name 'Mack', he shouted out, "Mr. Gorman! Be careful! We didn't see any of them leave!" I had to grab his shoulder to keep him from falling over on his side from the force of his scream.

"'Them' who?" I asked, starting to untie his hands.

"They were dressed all in black, like ninjas or something." He said, this time at a normal volume. His voice shook.

"How many of them were there?"

"More than us. By a long shot."

I glanced around the room. There were at least twenty-five people that sat in a tight circle, feet touching. The ropes that tied their ankles also tied them to the others on either side of them in an intricate knot. Other ropes stretched across the circle, creating an odd pattern that was almost familiar. Faint chimes rang in the back of my mind, but I couldn't quite place why.

"Guys, I'm gonna need you to bear with me just a few seconds more. Something's not right here. I'm gonna get you all untied, but I need to take some pictures of this first.

Mack looked up at me like I'd sprouted a second head.

"You're seriously gonna just stand there and take pictures?"

"Hold still. It'll take two seconds. There's something weird here and I think it might be magic."

"Are you CRAZY?"

"Do you really wanna sit here and hum Kumbaya with your coworkers all night or do you wanna give me two seconds to get this done? And stop moving. You're making everything blur."

He sat dutifully silent, but continued to stare me down. It was my day for catching the stink eye, I guess.

I got three good pictures from different angles and I started untying Mack's wrists. "Don't any of you touch the ropes around your ankles until I get John and Isaac in here, do you hear me? This could end up being worse than unemployment if you don't listen to me." They nodded as I finished untying Mack's hands. He turned immediately to the woman on his right and began to untie her wrists, lying back on the floor for better angles. I started on the man to his left, noticing the knots were identical to the ones that had bound Mack. This was troubling.

I heard a low murmur begin behind me as gags were removed from mouths. There was some muffled sobbing that sounded like tears of relief, but I couldn't be sure. I was halfway to the library when I heard a loud crash and louder swearing.

"They're gone!" Isaac's voice was rough with rage. John was swearing nearly incomprehensibly and pacing by the desk. When I got to the door, I saw Isaac holding a hollow book with a complicated looking device that probably kept the book locked. It seemed to have been scorched somehow. There was a look of disbelief and shock that vied with the absolute fury that shook his shoulders. His grip on the cane left his knuckles bone white. The veins stood out on his arms.

"I realize that this isn't the time to bring up another problem, but-"

"Goddamnit, Georgia, don't you ever shut up?" John snapped.

"You're right. I'll be quiet and let his employees possibly end up with their souls in some sort of demonic blender just to spare you a headache."

Isaac dropped the book and looked at me.

"Yeah. Your servants are all tied together at the ankles in some sort of weird pattern that I think is probably occult related. I'm not sure, but you've read books I've never even heard of. Figured I'd get an expert opinion before I let anyone start hacking away at what looks like a summoning circle."

Again, I was left in the dust as the men rushed past me. I'd been fishing my phone from my pocket, but decided that it wasn't worth the trouble and slipped it back in before making my way back to the ballroom.

The place was deserted. Mack had worried me for nothing.

And then everything went dark.