Magic and Loss

back and forth among the bedsteads, armoires, and steamer trunks like a hummingbird in a summer garden. From where I stood I couldn’t tell if she was trying to cast protection spells over the items in hopes of keeping them from being stolen or simply babbling to herself in despair.

The familiar face I had glimpsed belonged to Octavia, who was talking to an elderly Kymeran gentleman with receding maroon hair liberally laced with threads of silver. I pushed my way through the throng to join them.

“Octavia—! What’s going on?”

As the firefighter turned to face me, I saw she was wearing a T-shirt bearing the message STALEMATE CHESS. “That chuffer Ronnie Chess is throwing my old next-door neighbor, Torn, and his wife out of their apartment today! I came here as soon as I heard to try to help.”

“Thank you, my dear,” Torn said humbly. “You were always a good neighbor.” He turned back to stare up at the building that until that day had been his home. “The old landlord promised we would be ‘grandfathered’ in. But the new owner raised our rent from seven hundred and fifty dollars to six thousand a month! Arum’s blood, there’s no way we could possibly afford that! Hana! Look who has come to help us! And she’s brought a friend!”

Torn’s wife paused in her frantic checking and double checking of their belongings to peer over the top of her Ben Franklin glasses at us. “Adon bless you both,” she said, fighting to keep the waver from her voice. “I don’t know what we’re going to do. . . .”

Before Hana could finish her sentence, an ipotane emerged from the entryway, carrying a rolled-up carpet under one arm and balancing a steamer trunk like a boom box on his opposite shoulder, and unceremoniously dumped his cargo with the rest of the couple’s property. Unable to take yet another blow to her dignity, the old woman sank down onto a mound of casually discarded clothes and began to weep into her apron.

Torn hurried to his wife’s side, slipping a protective arm about her trembling shoulders. “Now, now, Hana, darling—don’t cry,” he said, trying his best to console her.

“I can’t help it, Torn,” she sobbed. “What are we to do? We’ve lived in the same apartment for twenty years! Where do we go now?”

“Don’t you have a son who can help you?” Octavia asked hopefully.

“We had a son,” Torn replied tersely, all but spitting the words. “We haven’t spoken to him since he disgraced the family, thirty years ago!”

I looked up to see real estate developer Ronald Chess, the new landlord of the Machen Arms and the author of Hana and Torn’s misery, step out of the front door of the apartment building. An errant gust of wind caught his trademark comb-over, setting it momentarily on end, like the fin of a shark, before slamming it back down onto his head.

His pale eyes always seemed to be narrowed in permanent suspicion and were too small for his face, which resembled that of an overfed, slightly lumpy baby. As he scanned his surroundings, his cheeks abruptly turned bright red and his face grew even lumpier.

“What are they doing here?” he bellowed, pointing to Octavia and myself. He turned to the blue-haired Kymeran standing beside him who carried a five-foot-tall brass staff topped by the seal of the GoBOO. “Lash promised me all protestors would be kept five hundred feet away!”

“Who’s the dude with the big stick?” I asked.

“That’s Elok, the GoBOO’s beadle,” Torn replied forlornly. “He’s here to oversee the evictions.”

“I thought the PTU were the police in Golgotham.”

“They only deal with criminal cases,” Octavia explained. “Beadle Elok handles all the civil stuff, like collecting fines, seizing property, and evictions—that kind of thing.”

“You there!” Elok said imperiously, gesturing with his staff as if to shoo us away. “What are you doing on this side of the street? I expressly stated no protestors beyond the barricades!”

“We’re not protesters!” Octavia snapped, flashing the Golgotham Fire Department credentials she wore on a lanyard about her neck. “We’re friends of Hana and Torn’s and we’re here to help them relocate.”

Elok’s pinched features visibly relaxed. “Very well,” he sighed. “I’ll leave you to it, then. Believe me, I don’t like evictions any more than you do. But I swore an oath to do as the GoBOO commands. . . .”

“Hey! You—! Beadle!” Chess shouted, refusing to come any closer to us than he had to. “What do you think you’re doing? Why aren’t you arresting those hippies like I told you to? And get these geezers out of here!” he added, pointing to Hana and Torn. “I’ve got photographers coming in from the Herald to take pictures for the Sunday Living section, and I don’t need them seeing this kind of shit! It looks like a goddamned yard sale out here!”

“I know what my duties are, Mr. Chess,” Elok replied frostily. “And must I remind you that I answer to the Golgotham Business Owners’ Organization, not to you?”

“Is that a fact, huh?” Chess scowled as he tapped the screen of his smartphone. “Hey, it’s me. Your boy here is giving me some lip. Says he only answers to the GoBOO. You going to set him straight or what? Here—your boss wants to talk to you,” Chess smirked as he handed the phone to Elok.

The beadle grudgingly accepted the phone as if it was a poisonous reptile. “Hello? Yes, sir,” he said, his cheeks suddenly turning beet red. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize . . . yes, of course, Mayor Lash! Whatever you say!”

“I’m glad we’ve gotten that cleared up,” Chess said as he reclaimed his phone. “Now bust these hippies and get them out of here.”

As the sigil atop Elok’s beadle-staff suddenly began to glow, I took a step toward Chess, who drew back as if I might spit on him.

“I don’t think that’s a smart idea, Ronnie.”

The real estate tycoon gave me the same look he would something he’d scraped off the bottom of his shoe. “That’s Mr. Chess to you, toots.”

“And that’s Ms. Eresby to you, fella,” I replied.

“You’re not related to Timothy Eresby, are you?” he asked, unease flickering in his too-small eyes.

“He’s my dad.” I said, taking a perverse pleasure as I watched the color drain from his overstuffed face.

Back when my father had harbored political aspirations, he and Chess had butted heads more than once. What was it my old man used to call him? Ah, yes “that short-fingered vulgarian.” Ronald Chess might not respect the arts, Golgotham, women, or people he called “hippies,” but he most certainly respected money, which meant at that moment he respected me.

Of course, he had no idea that my parents had cut me off without a dime and we hadn’t spoken in months, but there was no way I was going to tell him that. . . .

“Perhaps I was a little too rash,” he said to Elok. “There’s no need to get rough. If these young, um, ladies are here to help the old couple move their things, I’ve got no beef with that. Just be quick about it.”

“You heard Mr. Chess,” the beadle grunted. “Get the old man and his wife packed up, if that’s what you’re here for. You’ve got two hours, or I’ll have the lot of you in the Tombs for obstruction. . . .” Suddenly a snowball came sailing through the midsummer air, striking Elok square in the face. “Who conjured that?” the beadle sputtered as he wiped the ice crystals from his eyes.

“Traitor!” one of the protestors from across the street shouted. “Why is the GoBOO sucking up to numps?”

“Here now! I’m just doing my job!” Elok protested angrily. The sigil atop his staff of office flickered back to life, this time even stronger than before.

“The GoBOO is selling us out!” A second voice shouted as another snowball came arcing toward the beadle.

As Elok slammed the butt of the staff against the pavement there was a ringing sound, like that of a gigantic gong. Fingers of blue-white electricity shot forth from the seal of office, vaporizing the icy projectile in midflight while scorching a zigzag pattern into the cobblestones, scant millimeters from where the protestors were gathered. There was so much electricity in the air it made my hair fluff out like an angry cat and Chess’ comb-over stand up like a cockatoo’s crest.

For a horrible moment I thought I was going to be caught in yet another race riot, like the one at the Calf. But instead of retaliating, the protestors lowered their signs and gradually dispersed. Although there was a good