Wizard's Nocturne: The Sixth Jonathan Shade Novel Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  dedication

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  About the Author

  WIZARD'S NOCTURNE

  A Jonathan Shade Novel

  by Gary Jonas

  This one’s for Tania, who probably won’t read it.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Getting old sucks, and not in a good way.

  I had aches and pains in places I never knew existed. My knees were shot, my hands always hurt, and old injuries flared so often, I worried if healing was something that could be undone. My hair thinned and turned a silvery shade of gray, my skin wrinkled, my bladder shrank, my hearing paid the price of attending too many rock concerts by bands who hadn't even been born yet. Damn, I missed the music I'd grown up with. I missed television. I missed cell phones. I missed the Internet. I missed toilet paper that didn't have splinters in it.

  On the positive side, I was one rich bastard, and being rich beats the hell out of being poor. There is something to be said for knowing which companies to invest in. Thank you, Standard Oil. Thank you, Ford Motor Company. Having money meant some other really cool things. I got to meet Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. I got to talk to Edgar Rice Burroughs about John Carter and Tarzan. I got to drink champagne with F. Scott Fitzgerald, who preferred gin, and his wife, Zelda, at a party in New York City. I met Babe Ruth, and I learned firsthand that Ty Cobb really was an asshole. I met the Wright brothers and watched their first flight at Kitty Hawk. I told Aleister Crowley to his face that he was a douche bag. He thought I was a cranky old man who knew nothing about true magic. Excuse me, magick with a K. Don't forget the K, or the pretentious little prick will have a hissy fit.

  I watched Jack Dempsey smack the hell out of other boxers in the ring. I even got to cast my ballot to give women the right to vote. For a time, I considered paying Nikola Tesla's bills to arrange free power for everyone, but I worried that if I did anything big, I'd cause problems in the time stream.

  I could imagine my tombstone:

  Jonathan Shade

  born 1979, died 1926

  I was eighty-five years old fifty-three years before I was born. That still messed with what remained of my mind.

  Okay, my mind was still sharp, and I was comparatively healthy. I had to be because it was Tuesday, September 21, 1926, and I was waiting for myself to come back in time. Even here in New York City, all people were talking about was the hurricane that killed a bunch of people in Miami. To me, those people had been dead forever, but I nodded sympathetically when the doorman at my building told me his son lived in Florida. The guy's kid was fine, but when Mother Nature strikes close to you or your loved ones, you notice. That said, September 21st mattered to me for a much more personal reason.

  Henry Winslow was a wizard like his father, Elvin, before him. I'd killed Elvin Winslow back in 1877 without even knowing he'd been involved with magic. As for Henry, he was closing in on his fiftieth birthday, but he wouldn't live to see it.

  We shared an office on the thirteenth floor of a midtown Manhattan building. A young black man named Samuel operated the elevator, and he always smiled when I got on because I treated him like a human being. He smiled at me today too.

  “Time to go to the thirteenth floor, Mr. Easton?” Samuel asked.

  “Yes, it is, Sam. How's your mother? She kick that flu yet?”

  “Not quite but she's still breathing.”

  “Any day above ground is a good one.”

  My name is Jonathan Shade, but I'd been using the name Jon Easton for a variety of reasons, mostly because in a few days, a former lover of mine, Rayna Noble, would come back in time, and I didn't want her to know I was here, so I started using the last name of a former enemy-turned-friend-turned-betrayer because if she mistook me for him, that would be all right. Things had gone so wrong on our little time-travel excursion that I was working hard to make things right. Well, as right as I could. The next week was critical. Rayna was going to come back because Henry was going to die soon, and he would rise from the dead a few days later. If Rayna recognized me, which seemed unlikely since I didn't recognize myself when I looked in the mirror, she might mess things up. I needed to tie off a time loop here, and at my age, it was so hard to tie my shoes, I had to wear loafers.

  I walked those loafers out of the elevator and into the offices of Jon Easton Magic, Inc. as I'd done every morning for the past five years. To make certain things went the way I wanted, I prevented Henry Winslow's name from appearing on any leases or offices. He had his public stage magician performances, of course. I didn't want to change everything. I just needed to sway things a little bit this way or a tiny bit that way.

  Esther Carmichael sat at her desk, tapping away at her Underwood typewriter. Henry had written a book about magic, but he liked to write longhand, so I told him I'd hire a secretary to type it up for submission to a publisher. With his pedigree, it would sell. Henry was a key member of the American version of The Golden Dawn, a secret society. He wasn't sure about me hiring Esther, but I pointed out that she could also prepare memos and workbooks, take notes, and handle various other clerical duties for us. Henry didn't know that Esther and I had history in both the future and the past. Then again, neither did Esther. Thinking about time travel hurt my head--especially when I had to consider the ramifications of layering events.

  We mess with time at our peril, but sometimes it's necessary.

  “Good morning, Mr. Easton,” Esther said. She wore a shapeless dress that still looked good on her. She was in her mid-twenties and full of life. Even after having her work in the office for the past six months, I still sometimes found myself staring at her, pleased that I couldn't see through her. In all the years I'd known her, she'd been a ghost. To see her as a living, breathing woman amazed me. She sometimes caught me gazing at her, and I suspect she thought I was a dirty old man. How could I tell her that we’d known each other before? That we’d shared intimate secrets? Those times were in the past and in the future, though that future no longer existed. She would think I was as crazy as all that sounds, and who could blame her? Some secrets needed to remain buried in the mists of time.

  “Good morning, Miss Carmichael,” I said. It was best to keep things strictly business and professional. I didn't want her to know me too well. To her, I was the owner of the business. I signed her checks, and as far as she was concerned, I ran the business, while Henry was the star who craved privacy. I removed my fedora and ran a hand through my hair to try to keep it out of my eyes. The long hair hid the earrings I wore. The earrings had a magical spell to translate any foreign language into English for me, which had saved my ass on more than one occasion in the past fifty years. I had an implant in the roof of my mouth that translated my words into whichever language the listener understood. While direct magic had no effect on me, these were items with magical spells built into them, so they worked just fine.

  Esther was calm and professional in her manner, not at all the sassy ghost I'd known. But it was still her. The kindness
in her eyes was the same. The hopefulness in her manner. I sometimes wondered what she thought of my long silver hair hanging down from a terrible bald spot. If I lost any more hair on my head, I'd look a little too much like Riff Raff from The Rocky Horror Picture Show for comfort. I'd already done the Time Warp, so I didn't want any further association on that front, thank you very much.

  “Mr. Winslow needs you to attend a lunch meeting with him and Mr. Penick,” Esther said. She held out a slip of paper with the name of a restaurant and an address on it.

  “Penick is a weasel,” I said.

  “He's a respected author in the field, Mr. Easton.”

  “He's still a weasel.”

  She stifled a grin. “If you say so, sir.”

  “I can and I do. Mark Twain once said that The Book of Mormon was chloroform in print. All about the Occult Arts breaks noses.”

  “You hit someone with Mr. Penick's book?” Esther asked.

  “No, I damn near broke my nose when I tried to read it. Two sentences in and I was so bored, I face-planted on my desk. Amazing that such crap can see print.”

  “People will believe the strangest things,” Esther said. “Mr. Winslow writes about ghosts and spells and energy patterns in the air.”

  “You don't believe any of those things?” I asked.

  Her skin flushed and she put a hand to her mouth. “I shouldn't have said anything,” she said. “I'm so sorry.”

  “It's all right, Miss Carmichael.”

  “Please don't tell Mr. Winslow. He's a great magician, but that's all sleight of hand and--”

  “Not to worry; it will be our little secret.”

  “I need to stop beating my gums. I just feel a strange comfort when you're here.”

  “You can say anything to me, and it will go no further. I didn't hire you to believe what he wrote. I simply need you to type it.”

  “I can do that.”

  “Think of it as fiction if that helps.”

  “Like it's something out of Robert W. Chambers or Ambrose Bierce?”

  “Or even Henry James,” I said. “I'll let you get back to work.”

  I moved into my office and took a seat. Henry didn't like Carlton Penick, and while I'd managed to steer Henry away from most of the darker magic, he was still obsessed with immortality. Penick claimed to have translated a spell to grant everlasting life, but he'd refused to share anything about it. I had my suspicions about where that spell had originated, but I kept it to myself. He wanted a membership in The Golden Dawn, which had splintered into Alpha et Omega and Stella Matutina. Henry and I had managed to work our way into the Thoth Hermes Temple No. 9, and Penick desperately wanted in. Probably because of the sexual rituals. Hell, if my equipment still worked, I'd really want in too. Alas, for me it was like watching the movie Eyes Wide Shut. How a movie with that much nudity could be so boring was beyond me. Wake up, Little Johnny.

  Sorry. I digress a bit in my old age, remembering things that have yet to happen. Where was I? Oh yes.

  Henry knew he was going to die today; I’d never kept that from him. That made the lunch appointment with Penick the Weasel that much more important to both of us.

  Inside my office, I sat in a high-backed leather chair and turned toward the window. New York City in all its splendor spread out below. Important to me, and to the ritual Penick offered, was Cleopatra's Needle, an obelisk in Central Park visible from my office. The obelisk had been imported from Egypt, though it was older than Cleopatra, having been commissioned and carved during the reign of Thutmose III. It was one of three obelisks moved from Egypt in the previous century--one to New York, its twin to the banks of the Thames in England, and another which stood in Paris.

  A newspaper lay open on my desk to an article about Howard Carter. For the past few years, the world couldn't stop talking about him and the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun, the boy king. I'd met Tut, but I knew his wife, Ankhesenamun, better. She'd stolen away through time first with me, then with the version of Henry Winslow I was trying to stop. She'd be arriving here in about five months.

  When I tried to work everything out in my mind, I felt like something bigger was happening than my little jaunts through time and being trapped in the wrong century. It all went back to ancient Egypt. The obelisk stood there in the park, the hieroglyphics carved into the sides telling stories about wars in later times. Three obelisks from ancient Egypt relocated to different parts of the world. I knew it was important, but if someone asked why, I wouldn't have an answer.

  On the surface, it didn't seem to be anything.

  It was just a big block of stone weighing in at one hundred forty tons.

  But the deal was made in 1877.

  And 1877 was the year Henry Winslow was born.

  Coincidence?

  There were three obelisks.

  Winslow split himself into three parts using a scroll he'd stolen from the Forbidden Texts in his quest for immortality.

  Egyptian kings were considered gods, and they sought immortality. Their tombs were filled with the items they'd used in life so they could have them in their next incarnation. That suggested physical rebirth. Most of the tombs were robbed, so those items were gone. The tomb of King Tutankhamun was nearly intact. Robbers had managed to get into some of the chambers but not all of them. I'd seen Tut's ghost in ancient Egypt during the burial ceremony for the young king. He'd been worried about Ankhesenamun, but he went with Osiris into his tomb.

  Round and round, a mishmash of history and numerology swirled together and apart, and all of it signified nothing or everything. Take your pick.

  If I'd been younger, I'd have tried to hire on to Carter's team to help excavate the site. They were still pulling treasures out of there. They'd cut Tut's mummy in half to get to the jewels wrapped in his linens. Tut had planned to use that body. His ghost had been waiting there.

  I wondered what became of him.

  Tutankhamun had been forgotten for thousands of years, but now he was the most famous Egyptian pharaoh. He had achieved immortality of a sort, but not the way Woody Allen wanted--by not dying. Immortality didn't sound like a good thing to me. I didn't want to live forever. If not for the job at hand, I'd have been ready to head off into that dark, good night many years ago.

  All of those tenuous connections could easily be attributed to coincidence. But it didn't feel like it, especially when you piled them together, and in all my years, one thing I knew to trust was my gut instinct. That didn't mean I was immune to second-guessing myself.

  As humans, we love patterns. We look for them everywhere because they help us make sense of the world around us. Correlation is different from causation. Just because there were three obelisks didn't mean it mattered that Winslow divided himself into three parts. It's not like one part went to England and another to France. But all three obelisks had been in Egypt. Winslow lived most of his life in San Francisco, but relocated to New York when he was in his forties. I'd made sure we moved when the original Winslow had. Why New York?

  Ostensibly it was because of the secret society. But Chicago would have worked just as well for that. There was a temple in the Windy City. We went to New York instead. And Winslow's offices faced Central Park so he could see that obelisk. He'd been fascinated by it too. I'd never pushed him to learn anything about Egypt. I'd never told him I'd been to Egypt.

  Still, he was fascinated by Egyptian magic. He was drawn to items like the jade stones known as the Emerald Tablets of Thoth the Atlantean, which is what I figured Carlton J. Penick had found. The temple was the Thoth Hermes Temple No. 9. Nine is three times three, so the numerology of it fit the numbers Winslow wanted.

  Correlation. Causation. Coincidence?

  I'd been puzzling over these things for years.

  The first version of Winslow I met stole the Emerald Tablets from beneath the Great Pyramid.

  He'd been drawn to me in ancient Egypt.

  His next avatar waited for me in 1877. The draw there was power
ful too.

  I suspected that once he died and came back, he'd feel pulled to me in 1926, but I would already be there in his presence.

  The obelisk cast its enigmatic shadow into the park but refused to give up its secrets.

  Was it pointing to anything? Or was it pointing to nothing?

  Patterns out of chaos?

  We always try to bring order to the random nature of things, and sometimes we want so badly for it all to make sense that we fool ourselves into believing that they do.

  Sometimes they do mean something, and sometimes they don't.

  I closed my eyes and napped until lunch.

  CHAPTER TWO

  At my age, I didn't care if I arrived on time. Getting there alive was good enough.

  The hostess, an attractive brunette in her twenties, gave me a smile when I stepped into the restaurant. “Good afternoon, Mr. Easton. It's nice to see you again. Mr. Winslow and Mr. Penick are expecting you. If you'll follow me . . .”

  “Lead on,” I said.

  She clutched a menu to her chest, turned, and led me into the depths of the cavernous restaurant. They kept the lights low and the tables spread out to give privacy, or the illusion of it, to the guests. My hearing might not be as sharp as it once was, but I could still overhear a conversation at another table if I focused on it.

  Henry and Penick rose from their seats as I approached. Penick's pinstripe ensemble was a size too big. Penick had a pencil-thin mustache, which made him look like a shady conspirator from central casting. His hair was slicked back and looked like a victim of the BP oil spill. Henry wore a smartly tailored brown suit. He kept his hair short and styled the same as he had in his original timeline, but he had an easy, charismatic smile. I hoped my influence had something to do with his manner. By the same token, when you like someone, you tend to see their better qualities. I’m the wrong man to judge how different he was with me in his life as opposed to the way he was the first time around, when he grew up on his own.

  “Glad you could make it, Uncle Jon,” Henry said as he pulled out a chair for me.