This is a serialized story. Start here for the first episode.
The walk away from a fresh corpse is always longer than the walk toward one.
The rain spat its static-kissed venom onto my trench coat, a thousand tiny drumbeats dancing off my shoulders before dissolving into the crackling cobalt-spark of the alley puddles at my feet. I slipped from the streetlight to shadow, leaving the spreading chalk outline of a problem for the boys in blue. That’s when it caught my eye — a sickly green stain creeping across my glove. The corrosion from the dead man’s identification coin had left its signature, thin, poisonous tendrils still foaming where they’d kissed the laminated identification papers. A dirty reminder of a dirtier business.
I set the heavy, leather attaché case on the rain-soaked asphalt. The cramped air already held the metallic tang of spent leather glove, and I felt the residual energy pricking at my fingertips. I used the hand towel I’d borrowed from Cookie to carry the attaché to rip the glove from my right hand and tossed it to the ground. Already, the corrosive magic was leaving a nasty, tingling sensation snaking up my arm and a rising, dissonant hum filled my ears. After a frantic check, I confirmed the copper’s verdigris hadn’t burned through to the skin.
The glove was compromised; the seams were turning a sickly yellow-green as the corruption ate the fibers.
Moving fast, I cracked one of my last single-use stasis deadlights. The fetish dropped with a dull thunk onto the center of the contaminated glove, firefly flickering into the sickly luminescence and that low, unpleasant humming just… stopped. The glove went inert, the corruptive magic frozen solid, at least until I could myself grab a coffee — or stiff drink — and figure out my next move.
Safe now. I tied the stiffened glove in Cookie’s towel with a knot as loose as my morals. I leaned back against the pitted brick wall, catching my breath. The worst of the immediate danger was over, but the scent of cheap fear and rain-slicked asphalt still clung to the air.
The air was a thick, frigid syrup as I fought to get my breath back, trying to bleed the adrenaline of fear from my veins. The pale, weak glow of the first stasis deadlight, still clipped to the case, shuddered like a dying heartbeat and snuffed out. A deep dread hit me like a sap to the skull. I cracked the last fetish and lashed it to the case. That left me praying it would hold off the creeping frost before it could turn the pavement into a sheet of lethal glass while I sought professional help for my “little problem”.
I was exhausted and the call of my warm cot back at the office was loud, but a more permanent way of neutralizing the case presented itself with a cold sense of urgency.
Kogan’s shop was my best option at the moment. I just ran out of fetishes to toss at my problem and he could at least slap a hex on the case to keep the thing within from crawling up my arm before I got to Rezzer’s Street. With any luck, he might even have heard rumors, giving some direction to point this weary gumshoe.
He might even have a few leads about the copper coin rattling around my blackbox. At the very least, he’d be offering basement bargain prices on his cheap trinkets, the kind of junk to replace the fetishes I’d been voiding like tossing loose change into the bottomless well of forgotten wishes.
I took the heavy case down to the riverfront, to a brick building sandwiched between a defunct meatpacker and a tire fire. The rusted sign over the loading dock read Kogan’s Silvering and Reclamation. It smelled like ammonia and ozone, and it was the only place in the city where you could get a curse lifted and a mirror re-silvered in the same morning.
For a Hollow like me, the alley was just quiet, wet, and miserable. But the way the stray cats were flattening their ears and giving Kogan’s door a wide berth told me the block was already humming. Kogan’s Silvering and Reclamation was open for business.
I didn’t bother knocking. I threw my weight against the heavy steel door to shove it open and let it slam shut behind me, cutting off the hiss of Roarke’s static rain.
The air inside the shop hit me like a physical wall. It was stiflingly hot, stinking of burnt ozone, acid flux, and tonsil varnish masquerading as whiskey. Krogan was hunched over his scarred workbench looking through his jeweler’s loupe, the bruised purple light of his soldering iron throwing long, jagged shadows against the tool racks, while clockwork clicked and whined to ground out blank glass deadlights for him to fill on the cheap in the background.
Kogan peered at me over the rim of his spectacles, the incandescent light of the cramped, perpetually dim workspace glinting off the thick lenses. He let out a low, guttural sound. It was an unmistakable noise, a universal signal that transcended language barriers and echoed through every smoke-filled, deadline-driven bureau: a dismissive, impatient grunt that clearly meant, “Hold your horses, Locke. I’ll get to you.”
I dropped the attaché onto his table and stepped back. It hit the wood with a heavy, dead thud that cut right through the mechanical whine of his shop. My last deadlight sputtered out in front of Kogan, the gloom swallowing the workbench as the frost from the case crept out and added a slick layer of hoar to the table’s surface.
Kogan winced, the cause an open question: the raw magic spilling from the case or the rough justice of “hair of the dog.”
“What kind of hell have you dragged me into this time, Locke?” He killed his torch, rubbed the bridge of his nose, and gave a weary stare at my leather case. The tired gaze he fixed on my beat-up leather case as he reached for the stub of a cigarette and put it to his lips.
I bypassed his crude greeting and went straight to the point. “I require your specific expertise on a problem that just landed in our hands,” I said.
“And if I’m overcome with a sudden lack of interest in your problems?” he asked, taking a drag and blowing his smoke at me.
“Then our problem becomes your problem as I turn on my heel and walk right back out your door. Without the case.”
episode postmortem:
I’m still tooling along on this tale, generally liking the tone and direction it is taking. Hope y’all are enjoying it too.
The more I write this story, the better I feel like I’m honing in on the final balance and tone of Vivian’s voice. The first case file was a little over the top with the corny commentary. As you’ve likely noticed, I’m pulling back on that particular voice as the series progresses and leaning a little more into the cynical to balance out the wiseacre.
The original chapter would have ended up further along in the story and was roughed out with that endpoint in mind. But, as I started to fill in the empty spaces, I realized it was getting into meal-sized instead of snack-sized, so I cut it roughly in half. Besides, this seemed like a good resting spot for your eyeballs.
As this develops, I am coming to strongly believe that online fiction works best in smaller, bite-sized chunks. Unlike traditional book media, I think the mind and eyes start to get worn out quicker with online media, and it is important for writers to understand that bigger is rarely better, even in traditional media. In the online world, I think smaller is queen. My 2¢, which are often not worth as much as the copper used to stamp them.
Let me know your thoughts and opinions about the postmortem or the story itself below. Thanks for your continued readership.
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