Circle of Enemies

Her crossed arms and legs slid apart. “What?”

Francois spun toward her. “What did you think would happen? Get out!”

She pushed her long, lanky body out of the chair. I stepped to the side to give her room to pass—and to better position myself to rush the door—but the meatheads took hold of me in a very convincing way. Swizzle went out the far door anyway.

“Bad enough,” Francois said to us, “that you steal my fucking car and try to sell it back to me, but you had to put that fucking video on the Internet? And then you tell my wife?!”

Arne was still smiling. “That’s Web two point oh, baby.”

Francois stepped up close to him. “You think I’m being funny?” There was something unconvincing about Francois’s performance. He wasn’t used to threatening people, and he didn’t have the knack. I snuck a glance at Potato Face. His expression was not quite blank, and he had turned his body away from his employer. I didn’t think he’d be murdering anyone for this boss.

Francois shifted his feet. This wasn’t turning out how he’d planned, and he was growing frustrated. “Do you know what I do to people who cross me?”

I said: “You make them leave this air-conditioned room?”

Arne and Lenard both laughed. Francois spun and came toward me. He got very close to my face. “You think you’re someone, don’t you? But you’re nobody, and I’m going to prove it.

“What’s the matter, gallito?” Lenard said. “Are you a man or not? Tell your wife you wanted to fuck somebody new for a change, and if she don’t like it, tough.”

“The only problem with that,” Arne said, “is that most of the money is hers. Right?”

“That’s bullshit! I have my own money. All my own.”

“That’s good,” Arne said, his voice full of bad ideas. “It’s good for a man to have his own.”

“For now, at least,” I said. “I hear your wife is one hell of a lawyer.”

Francois licked his lips. “You guys are nothing. Mosquitoes. You have no idea what kind of enemies I have.”

Arne grinned at him nastily. “Baby, you don’t even know what kind of enemies you have.”

He turned into a silhouette and vanished.

Francois shrieked—actually shrieked like a little girl—in shock. The meatheads shouted curses or little prayers, and suddenly no one was holding me at all. Lenard smiled and shrugged, then he vanished, too.

Potato suddenly grunted and doubled over as though he’d been kicked in the crotch. The door behind me banged open, and I could hear heavy footsteps stomping through it. Potato staggered toward Francois and fell against him, pinning him against the door and shielding him with his body. “Shut that damn door!” Potato rasped, and his heavy, low voice had the authority to stop everyone still. I heard the door slam shut.

My ghost knife was still nearby. I called it and it zipped out of one of the meatheads’ breast pocket into my hand. He gaped at me, but no one else seemed to notice.

There were five of the meatheads left, plus Potato, Francois, and presumably Arne and Lenard. And me. Three meatheads backed against the glass doors blocking them. One stood against the door we’d come in, and the last one kicked the back of my knees and drove me to the floor.

I hated kneeling, but before I could do anything about it, Potato yelled, “Guns!”

The meatheads drew their pistols. Everything suddenly fell silent. We all listened for some sign of Arne and Lenard but couldn’t hear anything. Were they being completely still, or had they already left the room?

Potato fished a Zippo out of his pants pocket and tossed it to one of the men at the sliding doors. “Newspapers,” he said. The meathead grabbed a section off the coffee table and set fire to it, then held it out in front of him.

“Wave it around,” Potato said. “Spread that smoke.” He turned to me. “How the fuck are they doing this?”

“They were bitten by a radioactive chameleon.”

He scowled at me but didn’t press further. He had other problems to focus on.

The smoke filled the room quickly. I stared at it, eyes unfocused to take in as much as possible, looking for swirls that didn’t have any obvious source. I couldn’t see any.

“Let me out,” Francois said, his voice a low, terrified whisper. “Let me out. Let me out.”

“When I’m sure we have both of them trapped in here, I’ll open the door. Until then, shaddup.”

The central air-conditioning suddenly turned on with a low hum. Smoke swirled in every direction, and at the same moment, the guard holding the burning paper grimaced and clutched at his chest. Blood welled up under his left breast, and he collapsed forward onto the carpet, smothering the flames with his body.

“No, no!” one of the other men yelled, but Potato hissed at him. He shut up.

“Do you know what kind of enemies I have?”

It was Lenard’s voice, and it came in a low whisper, making it hard to trace. I had a strange feeling, though, that he was very near me—just a couple of feet away. It was the same feeling that had led me to the spell on Sugar Dubois’s back, a lifetime ago. It felt like magic, pulling me toward him.

“Gimme those,” Potato said, pointing at the newspapers. One of the men tossed him a couple of sections. He shook them out, letting the pages fall onto the carpet around him. His men did the same.

Within seconds, each was surrounded by four or five feet’s worth of paper.