Pirate!Sandy

Pirate!Sandy

I am a pirate and a landlubber. I dislike water, you see, though I find striped pajamas and making mischief irresistible.

Just the other day, as I was sauntering along the cobblestone ways of Boston (sauntering is no mean feat while carrying a baby and his kit, especially over cobblestones), I talked a rich barrister so dizzy that he forgot his valise at the bus stop (he held onto his umbrella, more’s the pity; perhaps I’m losing my touch). Naturally, being the pirate that I am, I took the case with me (at that point, sauntering became impossibility, and I was reduced to merely walking). All I kept of its contents was a twenty dollar bill, a striped tie that matched my pajamas, and a rather fancy pen (I like pens). I gave the rest to my favorite street-corner musician, and went looking for my next mark. I’d been trying for a week to nick an umbrella for the poor soul, but no luck. Bostonians hold tight their umbrellas.

Pirate!Sandy and the Coffehouse Harlot

As a new mother and a social misfit (read, Pirate), I don’t have time to waste on things like manners unless they’re of some immediate benefit to me and mine. Take the events of my lunch break, yesterday. Yes, even pirates must pause for food, and as I was doing so, a waif-like coffeehouse harlot gave me A Look that meant to turn me lobster red with heat or embarrassment, it doesn’t matter which. Sure, I was wearing stripedy pajamas. I’m a pirate; my garb needs to lend itself to freedom of movement, and I like stripes. Sure, my stripedy pajamas had a bit of baby’s burp-up on the shoulder. It could have been worse – there could’ve been a diaper mishap that morning, instead of a routine chucking up. Sure, I was eating with my fingers and chatting with my mouth full at the baby. Too bad, Milady. I’m a pirate, I’m a mother, and I just stole your bagel and venti-white-chocolate-mocha-thingy. Deal with it.

Little Lost Witch

The rain had painted the day a lovely cool gray, like that of sea gull feathers. While I was out walking in it, taking pleasure in piracy and giving my babe his first ride in the high speed get-away pram, I crossed paths with the most forlorn looking person wearing stripes I have ever seen. Of course, hers were stripes of a different color; by that, I mean she was a witch, but her being witchy didn’t explain why she was trudging along under an umbrella that was more like a spiderweb than a device for diverting raindrops. I hoped she was a good witch, because I had to ask: “Why so glum, Glenda?” She didn’t even curl a smirk at my horrible joke, that’s how bummed she was.

She said, “I missed the only bus back to the moon, last night, and now I’m stuck on Earth unless I can complete a Black Mass Transit spell before the end of today.”

“What’s the hold-up?” I wondered aloud, noticing that a spider did indeed reside on her umbrella.

“The spell calls for a sweet sin, but rain melted all my sugar cubes, and I can’t afford any more.”

I cheered and danced a pirate’s jig (tricky, on land). “I have just the thing. It’s sinfully sweet and won’t melt in the rain!”

“It’s bad luck to tease a witch, you know,” she said, the spider clinging for dear life while the pretty young hag threatened me with the point of her holey rain shield.

“I wouldn’t,” I promised, and held my darling, stripe-clad son between us. “Go on, lovey, give the nice witch a smile.” He did, and the girl disappeared in a blip of bubbles, back to the moon, or wherever. I rescued the spiderweb umbrella from the gutter, careful not to upset the spider, and went to make a gift of it for my friend, the street corner musician.

Baby Bandito

If you will, please strive to imagine my surprise and delight as I witnessed my stripe clad son succeed for the first time in a willful act of piracy. Clearly he is a pilfering prodigy.

Before my proud eyes, and indeed with the eyes of a busload of the publicly transported upon him, he lifted from each onlooker the most valuable possession they carried with them. In spite of their losses, the response to his thievery was unanimously, “Aw, how cute!” Nobody even asked to have their treasure returned when they departed the claptrap conveyance, though most did cast a smile back at the little villain who had made their loads lighter.

But tell me, what am I supposed to do with all these stolen hearts?

The Pirate Letters: Part One

To the redheaded pirate I saw on the train the other day:

Arr!

You really stood out, even for a pirate, lass. You towered over everyone else on the train, especially me, and you had such a mighty glower going for you that even I kept my distance. I usually prefer to torment those who are unnecessarily ferocious, you should know…

What I didn’t then understand was why you kept directing your ocular flames at me. You and I got on the train at different stops and we were standing nearly at opposite ends of the great green subterranean rail-ship. I never so much as bumped you, crammed so far up the aft of that vessel as I was. However, I would have enjoyed to; you’ve got that pretty-in-pale skin that goes so stereotypically well with your red hot locks, and your temper only made your somewhat clichéd package all the lovelier.

Later, I realized what it was that got your hackles up in my direction. Just as I knew you for your subversive self, you also recognized the presence of a fellow pirate on the train with you. Unlike me, however, you resented being truly seen, as it meant that you couldn’t work your piratical magic on the crowd in the presence of a savvy witness.

Such a pity for you. While you were so busy glaring at me and trying so hard to hide behind the handy bar you were clinging to for balance, I was taking advantage of the train’s unpredictable sway and your pre-occupation with my presence to get away with my usual mischief. I used the very blinks of your green eyes against you to steal a smile from a rich man, the luck off a handful of pennies, and a cat’s nap before the end of my voyage. And then, when I stepped from the train into the cold night, I made off with all your heat, as well.

Let it be a lesson to you, lass; mess with the best and be robbed like the rest. Avast!

The Pirate Letters: Part Two

On the topic of opportunities for piratical mischief that are just too obvious to act upon:

Recently, as I was rolling about town in my pirate-mobile, I passed a liquor store. Across the street in front of it stood a man beside his junker, waiting for a break in traffic wide enough to allow him to reach the firewater vendor. His intentions were clear enough by the eager look on his face, but the hundred dollar bill he held in his hand, out in the open air for any pirate to see… That was just too much. I could easily have leaned out my window as I passed and lifted it from between his greasy fingers, but I didn’t. Frankly, some opportunities are simply too unsubtle for this pirate’s tastes. I stole his alcohol tolerance instead.

Later, as I was exiting a department store with my many hidden pockets full of strange and invaluable pirate loot, I noticed that one woman in a checkout lane had turned her back on the stack of cash she’d readied for payment and also her entire moneybag. Even under the distorted glare of closed-circuit TV and with a guard against ‘loss prevention’ standing just a few feet from me, it would have been too easy for me to make off with the lot of it. Far too easy, so I nabbed a cheeky smile from her toddling child and took the woman’s rather burdensome and unfortunate sense of invulnerability with me while I was at it.

Just this morning, while I was riding the same great green underground railship that bears me every day away to my ‘honest’ labor, a gentleman in a dapper suit and fine shoes ignored my pirate self for the duration of my stay on the train so that he could brag about his day to a woman who couldn’t have cared less about it. He left his snappy-looking case full of doubtlessly valuable items propped beside his seat and did not notice the many times that it tipped away from him to bump against my leg. It was a heavy case, and well built with hard edges and corners; worth generous coin on its own, regardless of its contents. And yet I did not take it with me when I exited the train. No, the dapper gentleman’s arrogance was more portable and worth far more on the Very Black Market. I expect he will be more bothered by its loss than he would anything that he’d carried in his case, anyway.

And so that is how the truly choosy pirate plies her trade most adeptly – not by looting objects, which are common and traceable, but rather by stealing nearly priceless abstracts from their unwary abusers and delivering them to those who appreciate them and will pay handsomely to possess them.

The Pirate Letters: Part Three

Dear You,

Consider yourself repaid in kind for my loss. You should have known things would play out this way eventually. I am a pirate, after all. A pirate extraordinaire, in fact, which should explain how in the end I got away with exactly what you were guarding most closely. And why you were left standing there at the Carnival in the Rain wearing an expression so shocked and sweet that I was sorely tempted to steal that, too.

How you thought you could attract and rebuff me with impunity, I’ll never know. You baited me with a treasure so rich that in so doing you predestined its capture. Surely, I could not resist it. You caught my interest quite handily with those curves and that smile. And somehow you held me pinned like a snake on its belly with the long forked stick of your denial. But only because I let you. All along I granted you just enough control to convince you of my submission to your storm-tossed whims. Of course it was all cleverness on my part; as a champion among rogues I am perfectly comfortable surrendering boldness when a bowed head will deliver me closer to the object of my obsession.

Still…I may have lingered longer over it than I should have. It’s a pirate’s prerogative to gloat, to brag and show off in triumph, though that’s not what I did. My pleasure got the better of me for once, it’s true. And the pleasure was definitely mine. Selflessly, or maybe selfishly in a backwards way, I left you your own pleasure when I walked away with that which you obviously valued so much more.

Perhaps if you’d held fast in the fore of your mind a pirate’s chief motivation and singular desire then you might have kept me at bay indefinitely. But you forgot my truest nature in time. You were as lulled by my eager complacency as I was drawn to your precious cache – I’m certain my departure has granted you that perspective, at least – and now you face life with the consequences of daring to trifle with the likes of me.

Yet though I’ve technically ‘won’ this convoluted contest of motives and methods, it wasn’t an easy victory, and it was in its way costly. I should be accustomed, after this lifetime of piracy, to the small injuries my pride sustains and to the small sacrifices of self that dedication to my dark art requires…But I can’t pretend I am much more intact after our last encounter than you are. It was entirely worth it, but I’m sure I’ll have occasion to miss the shred of my infatuation that you will forever possess in place of what I took.

Take comfort in the knowledge that while in this world nearly everything has its price, I’ll never surrender your treasure without a worthy battle against a more-worthy opponent. It’s a pirate’s right to hoard their favorite loot, after all. Yes, this item, this captured piece of you, this long-secret, long-hidden gem is mine for as long as such a thing can ever be kept.

So it may be that you’ll never forgive my crime. Regardless of that, I know you’ll never forget it or the pirate who got away with it. I know that from now on, whenever you feel for that thing which you withheld from me for so long you’ll feel its absence. You’ll never tempt another with quite the same lure you used to lead me on. After today there’s no way you can ever give yourself fully to another, even if you wanted nothing more than to finally yield. Because today I stole your kiss.

And it’ll never be yours again unless you steal it back from me.

Mine,

–Pirate!Sandy

Pirate!Sandy and the Very Black Market

If running in public accomplishes anything, it draws attention. Here in Boston, fitness nuts are so common that in order for a runner to draw very much attention, they have to sprint like they mean it. However, if a person has cause to run for their life, or at least to save their skin, they aren’t likely to appreciate having all eyes on them. That’s why whenever I’m making a getaway, I jog; joggers are invisible in a city full of marathoners-in-training.

I was jogging away from the long arm of my most recent outlaw adventure when a black…thing…crossed my path. Were I anything but light on my feet, I would have collided with the impeding shadow. As I am anything but light on my feet, that’s precisely what I did.

Boston’s cobblestones are about as hard on one’s elbows and knees as trolls’ teeth. That is why whenever one has the choice one should endeavor to meet only toothless trolls and never to fall on Boston’s cobblestones. Alas, one rarely has a choice in these things.

“Aw, hell,” I moaned as I sat up and flicked grit off one of my chewed-up knees. I am not such a proud pirate that I am ashamed to whine over pain.

While I was on the ground, I surreptitiously glanced under the bus stop bench at my left for a second look at the specter that had tripped me. I wanted to know whether or not I should bother being afraid of it enough to make a spectacle of myself by leaping up and actually running away. It wasn’t there, but the sound of wind-that-wasn’t-really-wind rustling in the shrub to my right gave its hiding place away. I looked and saw with relief that I had nothing to fear; it was the ghost of a cat, and not some unspeakable horror bent on devouring yours truly.

As if muttering to myself about the new holes in my jogging pants, I said to the feline phantasm, “Shouldn’t you be getting along to your next incarnation?” I was in public, after all. I didn’t want passersby to think I had flipped my lid when I fell down.

“It’s me, Happenstance.” Happenstance is a witch’s Familiar I know. Good cat, but slightly paranoid around birds.

“Having an out of body experience, Hap’?”

“Not on purpose. I’m glad I ran into you.” He was very tense for an almost intangible thing. I took that as a signal to take the conversation someplace less mundane than a bus stop in the everyday realm.

“When I stand up, I’ll ‘accidentally’ drop my backpack. It’s unzipped.”

“Thanks.”

Once the disembodied cat was settled among my recently pilfered prizes, I zippered the pack just enough to keep from displaying its contents, and then took us away at a brisk limp to the nearest deserted doorway.

I have just one key. I wear it on a thin silver chain around my neck. It opens every lock. That’s why it’s called The Master’s Key. Guess who I stole it from.

I put the key through the lock; not into the lock, through it. No matter that it was one of those fancy electronic locks you see everywhere these days. The doorknob turned like magic. Imagine that. What was on the other side of the door after I used the key was not the same as what had been there before. Instead of illegally entering the stock room of a boring franchise bakery, Happenstance and I crossed the threshold into the Very Black Market.

There are a lot of seemingly empty doorways just standing around the Very Black Market. Now you know why.

I let the cat out of the bag. “Thanks for the lift.” He gave my ankles a ghostly figure-eight of appreciation. “Where’d you pick up such nice swag? I don’t know when I’ve seen so many broken dreams in one sack.”

“It’s audition season. I’ve been hanging out backstage in a lot of theaters lately.”

“And those confessions? You’ve got some real gems in there.” Like most cats, Happenstance had an unhealthy curiosity.

“Let’s just say that it’s amazing how eagerly people will burden you with their inmost secrets when they repeatedly mistake you for a man of the cloth, and leave it at that.”

“Very nice. You are a pirate nonpareil, Sandy. A real grifting wiz.”

“Thanks.”

“And that’s why I need you to do a job for me.”

I started. “Wait—What?” I suppose I should have seen the compliments for bait. Now there was this hook to deal with, and I am unfortunately cat-like in that I also possess more curiosity than is good for me.

Happenstance wound himself around and around my ankles without ever taking his dead and faded yellow eyes off mine. It was kind of a neat trick, if a bit creepy. “Come on, Sandy, I need your expertise. Nobody else is good enough to get my body back from the bastards who snatched it.”

“…Body snatchers?” Damn curiosity. “No, let me guess. Necromancers. Is this another magical turf war? Because I am utterly disinterested in witch-fights.”

Happenstance hissed. “Necromancers are not witches! And you should be interested – you’re as much a witch as you are a thief!”

“If using magic makes me a witch, then it makes the same of every necromancer out there! And I am nothing as common as a thief, you former furball.” Watch me argue semantics with a dead cat. It’s funny. Ha.

“That’s exactly why I need you. You can go anywhere; you’re practically invisible. And everyone knows you can steal even impossible things.” Hap’s eyes bobbed to reference the fancy key I had tucked back under my shirt.

“That’s exactly why I’m wrong for the job. I deal in intangibles. They’re small, barely recognizable to mundane eyes, and damn near impossible to trace. You want me to steal something that is not only tangible, but also unmistakable.” Happenstance’s corporeal form had an uncanny sort-of-spiderweb pattern in the fur across the left side of his head and shoulder. “Not to mention that you’d have me steal it from some creepy zombie-puppet master. That type is so anal about traces – stray hairs and skin cells and the like – that even if I succeeded, I’d probably get tracked down and…” I didn’t get to be a ‘pirate nonpareil’ by railroading right past the obvious. I gave the ghost a suspicious look and asked, “What did you do, Hap’?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Cats feign nonchalance better than most actors, but I could see right through the Familiar, and not just because he was dead.

“Don’t waste my time. Go find yourself a stupid swashbuckler. They’re always game for rescue missions and the associated daring-do.” I walked away.

Happenstance pursued. “I’m sure I’ll pay for my ignorance, but isn’t that what you are?”

Sigh. “Do you see a sword on my hip? Have you ever heard of a pirate placing any outside goal or foolish principle above their own?” My tirade drew a few glances from nearby shoppers. That people only glanced and didn’t gawk at me for publicly declaring myself a self-centered pirate says much about those of us who frequent the Very Black Market. That my consternation attracted more interest than the presence of a ghostly cat at my heels says even more.

“I’ll make it worth your while.” Hap’ stopped in the alley, clearly thinking I would, too, for that kind of promise.

I kept walking. “You don’t have anything I want. You don’t even have a body.” Real pirates have standards.

The cat hissed his wrath but chased me again as I turned a corner to put another of those fantastic standalone doorways between us. I had The Master’s Key in another lock already.

“Fine. How’s this for an offer? If you don’t help me, you’ll never do business in the Very Black Market again. The witches will see to that.”

Ah. That was more like it. I turned the Key, slowly and with as much emphasis on the motion as such a small act could contain. The pins gave a menacing click. “If witches had that much control over the Market, then the necromancers would be out of business already. Try again.”

Happenstance didn’t really have ears anymore, but the flickering peaks above his spirit’s pale amber memories-of-eyes flattened unhappily. “Why do you have to be so difficult? We both know you’re going to steal my body back. Just name your damned terms and get on with it.”

Even better. “Three of each; Life Potions and Lucky Draughts. And I want another Wand for my son.”

He cringed at the price. “I thought we were friends.”

“We are. That’s why we can play together like this.” I probably meant to smile when I said that. Oh well.

“Why all the Wands anyway? I thought your offspring was already a pirate prodigy, not a future witch.”

Bad kitty. “Don’t change the subject.” I finished turning the Key. Sounds that were not there a second ago penetrated the door.

“Okay, okay, I’ll speak to the witches. Geez, Sandy, you get harder every day, I swear.”

Watch me turn into a diamond before poor Happenstance’s very eyes. “Every hour I have to wait for an answer, my price doubles.” The expression on Happenstance’s spectral cat-face indicated that my final term was shocking enough; had he still lived, the shock might have killed him. Good. If that didn’t make the witches reconsider pestering me about getting the Familiar’s body back, then at least the reward might come close to equaling the risks I’d have to take.

With piratical flair, I swept away through the enchanted doorway, flinging it shut in Happenstance’s still aghast face behind me. I emerged through the locked backdoor of a private parking structure across the street from my mundane day-job. Yes, this pirate nonpareil has a mild-mannered alter ego. Complete with a boring nine-to-five and an anonymous cubicle. It’s the perfect cover, actually. And I’m not the only ‘regular’ at the Very Black Market who feels the same.

Once inside the building I work in, I flashed my ID at a security guard with ogre ancestry. His human disguise was very good and very expensive; I would know, as the pirate who supplied the stolen ‘shred of humanity’ he’d needed for the enchantment he wore to work everyday. He waved me on to the elevators without so much as a friendly ‘Hello’. Outside the Very Black Market, we are by necessity strangers to each other.

I shared an elevator ride with a scientist who started life as a caterpillar. Her metamorphosis went…awry…and she emerged from her cocoon a fully formed ‘human’ butterfly. It is perhaps needless to say that she is gorgeous, but it is worth mentioning that her amazing mind is what earned her way through a few of the best universities in the world to secure her place as a leader in the evolutionary genetics field. I know from rumors in the Very Black Market that, regardless of what her mundane research is aimed at, she is in fact studying the genetics of magic rather than the other way around. She and I have never spoken; in fact, I suspect she doesn’t know my true piratical identity at all, and that’s fine by me.

There was a message waiting on my tiny cubicle desk. It looked like a blank yellow sticky-note, but there was ‘just something about it’ that made me suspicious. I didn’t touch it. Instead, I turned my back on the thing, took the magic hand mirror out of my backpack and angled it over my shoulder at the note. The mirror revealed what eyes would not see. The message was a contract from the witches, but there were two problems with it; the first was that they had ignored the terms I’d offered, and the second was that they had worked a Binding Acceptance spell onto the surface of the paper. They wanted me to retrieve Happenstance’s body in exchange for one Temporary Invisibility charm and a one hundred dollar bill with a Return-to-Me spell on it. And if I so much as touched the contract I would be bound against my will to fulfill my end of it.

“Touching up your makeup?” That was my boss. I gave her a warm, un-made-up smile by way of answer that was no answer at all and tucked the magic mirror away in my backpack. The truth was that nobody who had one would willingly check their own reflection in one of those mirrors; they inevitably broke, and where else did people think the superstition about seven years’ bad luck came from but magic mirrors?

“Oh, hey, I was just looking for a sticky—” The witches’ contract was in her hand before I could even open my mouth to protest. Her eyes glazed briefly before an absent-minded determinedness spread across her features.

“Aw, hell.” Damned witches hadn’t discriminated enough in their spell casting, and now they had mesmerized a high-heeled mundane person instead of a pirate adept into doing their dirty work. Normally I get along well with other magic-users, but the best feeling about the witches that I could muster in that moment was a flicker of relief that I had at least been present when my boss had fallen into their magic trap. That flicker was mostly paved over by the hot tar of my rage that the witches had essentially resorted to the same sort of human puppetry that set them against necromancers in the first place.

Then something happened which added distraction to my mixed-bag of emotions. I wasn’t surprised that my boss headed for the stairs – of course she did, the contract obviously contained a compelling spell – but when she reached them she began climbing rather than descending. She was being sent to rescue Happenstance’s body, and yet instead of leaving the building, she was working her way up to the higher floors. There could be only one reason, and I was so struck by realization that I actually froze for a moment on the steps.

The necromancers who had killed Happenstance were working day-jobs in the same laboratory building as me. And obviously the witches had known that before they sent the ghostly Familiar to find me in broad daylight. The bewitched sticky-note might even have been magically delivered to my desk before my conversation with the cat in the Very Black Market, just in case Happenstance hadn’t been able to catch up with me on the street. I blinked at the audacity of their manipulations and chased up the stairs after my boss before the unwitting pawn could get into more trouble than I could get her out of. If we weren’t both too far gone already.

My boss stopped at the tenth floor, but before she could throw back the door and charge unknowingly into a den of morally ambiguous zombie-makers on a rescue mission of dubious merit, I grabbed her.

If one has frequent enough occasion to make daring escapes on short notice, one learns to keep certain tools on hand at all times. I pulled a set of magician’s links from my pocket and used them to chain her with her hands behind her back to the handrail of the stairs. They’re not really magical, but they will double for a lot of different tools in a pinch, including handcuffs for those not initiated into the secret society of magicians. No, I’ve not been initiated into the secret society of magicians either, but I once did a magician a favor and left with the secret of the links as my reward. Whether or not he intended to give me the secret is irrelevant.

She struggled a little, and if she hadn’t been basically possessed by the witches’ sticky-note spell, I might have worried about her firing me for the bruises the links were going to leave on her wrists. As it was, she was about as aware of me as she was aware of magic; which is to say, not at all. So I left her there and used the Master’s Key to enter the tenth floor laboratory through the locker door of one of the ‘researchers’ instead of via the stairwell. I love that key.

Once inside the otherwise deserted locker room, I shut the door I came through and used the key on it again, but from the outside. I needed a disguise, and – hooray! – I found a one-size-fits-all lab coat inside the locker that was probably no bigger on me than it was on its owner. For the show if it, I clipped on the radiation badge I found there, too. My backpack could have been a problem, but since I knew that a lot of the people likely in the lab were ostensibly PhD students, I decided that keeping it with me was a better risk than that of leaving it somewhere for the necromancers to find and use against me. I zipped all its pouches completely to protect my tools and treasures, though, and let it hang off my left shoulder as though I was a just another sloppy post-doc coming in late to the lab.

The disguise was remarkably effective. As Happenstance had said; I was practically invisible. In fact, I spotted a handful of other people around the lab dressed exactly as I was and looking just as dull and under-caffeinated as I was pretending to be. One researcher even had a hole in the knee of his jogging pants. The important difference was that they all belonged there and so at least had something legitimate to do with themselves. On the other hand, if I continued to trudge through the lab, someone was bound to notice that I was doing so aimlessly. The answer, of course, was to get my hands on something that belonged there more obviously than I did, so that it might legitimize my presence without requiring me to actually do anything.

As is so often the case in life and piracy, coffee was the best solution to my problem. I spotted the door to the break room as I rounded the corner from the locker room, and tapped my fellow bedraggled jogger on the elbow when I passed him. “Hey, I’m gonna put a pot on. You want some?”

He glanced up at me from his data only long enough to quirk an appreciative half-smile and to say, “Sugar and cream. Thanks.”

With the addition of his absentminded acceptance, I now had validity and purpose in the lab. My disguise was as complete as it was going to get, and unless I did something stupid, it gave me all the time I needed to casually wander the lab in search of Happenstance’s body. Whether I would actually recover it for the dead little git and his manipulative witches was as yet undecided, but I could at least satisfy my own curiosity about the situation while I was there.

When it was ready, I poured the coffee into a pair of corporate-logo mugs I found in a cupboard and creamed and sugared it to please my new ‘friend’. I delivered one to him with a mostly blank half-smile to match his, and then I set off with my handy little hand-warmer to explore the lab.

On the surface, it didn’t look like the sort of place where elite magic-users met to raise the dead. Mad scientists, perhaps, but of the necromancers there was at first no sign. Of course, the daytime, above-board science was mostly a front for the sort of dark ritual work that could only be performed at the midnight hour. Necromancers were clever like that.

So, without seeming to, I looked for subtler clues. And found them right away. It was all I could do not to drop my coffee and run from the building forever. My clumsy jogger ‘friend’ had a very tidy line of fresh stitches along his hairline that I hadn’t noticed before, and what I had first taken for the blah look of a PhD’s hangover was in fact the unfortunately graying skin tone of a corpse. I was surrounded by extremely high-functioning zombies.

“You look like you’ve got the creeps.”

Once again, I almost dropped my coffee. The individual suddenly beside me was not a member of the animated dead. No, she was far more dangerous and scary. Without actually looking at the necromancer, I replied, “Well, that tends to happen when you spot a post-doc experimenting on his own maggots.”

She chuckled. It would have been a less eerie sound if it had come from a ghost. “You get used to it.”

“You’ll have to forgive me if I never do,” I say, finally turning to face my sinister hostess. “How’ve you been, Diane? Heart still beating?”

“Heh.” She fingered the bright red, teardrop-shaped badge pinned over her left breast and smiled with only a little cruelty in her eyes. “I’d dare you to try and steal it, but I’d hate to have to vivisect another old friend.”

“Mm. Well, it’s not what I’m here for, anyway.” Burn, bridges, burn.

Diane had always hated not being wanted, and it showed more than she probably knew. “So what, then? You’re here spying for the witches, like that stupid cat?” I couldn’t help enjoying the way she turned back into a spoiled child when her feelings got hurt. In the name of continuing to live, I just tried not to enjoy it too noticeably.

“No,” I said, telling the truth because it was so much more fun than lying, “In fact, I’d prefer it if you kept Happenstance’s body, too. Having to go through the drama of reincarnation and starting over at the bottom of the Familiar hierarchy should teach him a valuable lesson in dealing with the consequences of his actions.” Stupid cat.

She scowled bewilderment. “If you don’t want him, then why are you here?”

I took a few slow swallows of my coffee. It had just occurred to me that to prevent Diane from having an easy source of my DNA-laden saliva, I had to steal the mug and I didn’t want to ruin the other contents of my backpack by dumping hot coffee in there. Plus, it contributed brilliantly to the aura of unconcern that I was trying to project, which in turn drove Diane practically up a wall. Playing with fire is fun.

After another swallow, I said, “I’m looking for a remedy, actually. A mundane acquaintance of mine ran afoul of a compulsion spell, and I can tell she’ll be useless to me until it’s lifted.”

Diane huffed haughtily. “And you thought you could just come in here and steal necromancer secrets? You’d never have made it out alive!” She started rambling and talking with her hands in a most un-amusing way. “Then I’d have had to salvage all the little pieces of you from inside my puppets’ digestive tracts, and that isn’t as much fun as it sounds, believe me.” What a class act.

“I’ll take your word for it.” I finished the coffee. “And believe it or not, I came here ready to trade.” Never mind that I’d only moments ago learned the location of the necromancer lab.

“Are you kidding? You’re a pirate. If I so much as blink, you’ll probably walk out of here with an entire zombie somehow stuffed in your backpack.” The best part was that she wasn’t exaggerating on purpose. “Besides, you don’t usually steal the sort of things necromancers need. So get out.”

I shrugged. “Okay. But don’t come crying to me when the head of Research and Development charges in here and closes your lab down after she sees what you’ve been doing to the ‘rats’.” I turned my back on her with only the least amount of flair and strolled away toward the elevator bay. While rage and suspicion still had her stunned, I used the brief cover provided by the fluttering stolen lab coat to deposit my new coffee mug into my bag of loot through the special slit in its back panel.

When she charged up behind me, I could feel her wrath precede her. It took actual effort on my part not to squirm. Necromancers are the creepiest people. “Why would the Director come up here? As far as she knows, we engineer hypoallergenic pets for kids with allergies! You should see them! We make great hamsters!”

I imagined reanimated graveyard pets running tirelessly in their little wheels and couldn’t help shuddering in mid-step. “No thanks.” I thumbed the down button between the elevators and turned again to face Diane. “But if you hook me up with a remedy, then I can reverse the compulsion that’s sending her here in the first place before she tosses the place searching for Happenstance.”

That did the trick. “The witches compelled a mundane person to get to us? Oh, that is low, even for them!” I did not miss the note of respect in Diane’s voice. Nor did I miss the new wickedly playful twinkle in her eye.

An elevator dinged its arrival and I stepped half way inside. “So, will you give me what I came for?”

“I thought you said something about making a deal.”

“That is the deal. You give me the remedy and I keep the witches’ real spy from making a surprise inspection of your lab.”

If suspicion was deadly, Diane would have murdered me horribly with her eyes just then. “You also said that the person under the compulsion was your friend. You’re not as clever as you think you are, pirate, if you think you can get away with such an obvious slip.”

“No.” I gave her a sardonic look and shook my head. “You weren’t paying attention. I said she was an acquaintance, not a friend. I simply withheld the part about her being the Director of R&D until it became important.”

“You really know the Director?”

“How do you think I found out where your super secret magical laboratory was?” It felt good to grin. “I find it very worthwhile to get to know people in a variety of fields.”

The depth of her scowl was beautiful to my eyes. She reached into one of her sleeves and pulled out a very small plastic zip-top bag of what appeared to be soot. At least, I hoped it was soot. “Get some of this in her eyes – as much of it as you can – and it should nullify every bit of magic affecting her.” When she handed me the baggie, she stepped forward into my personal space to loom over me sinisterly. “And if I ever find out you’ve sold this secret to the witches, I’ll feed you to my puppets a hundred times before I let you die.”

I shrugged, pocketed the remedy, and stepped the rest of the way into the elevator in one smooth move. “That goes without saying. But have you ever thought of what you’ll do when they figure it out for themselves? You guys aren’t as different as you pretend to be.” The elevator doors closed between us while Diane’s maw was still gaping in silent protest. Ghastly woman.

I didn’t wait for the elevator to descend even one floor before I jammed the Master’s Key through the panel and turned it. The elevator itself didn’t slow or stop, but the doors popped open to reveal the stairwell where I’d left my boss chained up. Stepping off the dropping elevator onto the motionless landing made me feel a little giddy.

My boss didn’t struggle against her bonds as much as she leaned steeply toward her objective and tread slowly in place where the magician’s links held her. The lack of thrashing was good news for me both because I needed to get the necromancer’s remedy into her eyes and because if that didn’t work, I didn’t have to worry about my boss hurting herself too badly if I left her there long enough to find another cure.

The briefest temptation to turn her loose in Diane’s lab to see what would happen struck me and vanished. She was a decent boss, as mundane people go, and she didn’t deserve to become the latest draftee into the undead host. Not that there was a great deal of difference between those two states of being, but it was the principle of the thing.

I brought the baggie out and poured all but a pinch of the ash-looking powder into my hand. Then I huffed and puffed and blew it into my boss’s oblivious face and hoped for the best.

She screamed.

“Aw, hell.”

I took the links off her in the hopes that she’d calm down, but then I had to grab her hands to keep her from clawing at her face. “Stop that! Let me help you to an eyewash station!” She quit screaming, which I took as a great sign, and she didn’t resist as I led her down one flight of stairs to the research animals facility and the safety features therein.

After about five minutes with her head mostly under water, my boss finally came fully back to herself. “What happened?!”

I lied. “I don’t know, but I think you should have Environmental Services investigate, just in case it’s something in the air on the tenth floor.” Let’s see Diane explain her zombie house pets to them.

“I don’t even remember going up there…” She found the blank sticky-note crumpled in her hand and searched the empty air between us for a moment as if hunting a vague memory.

The spell was broken, but I still couldn’t let her travel back down the rabbit hole it had clearly left in her mind. “You should really report this incident to Employee Health. Do you want me to come with you?”

She waved me off. “I think I can manage an elevator ride to the third floor on my own, thanks.”

With my boss normal again and out of the way, I was all set to turn the Master’s Key in another lock and head back to the Very Black market to settle my wrath upon Happenstance and his coven. Something – the shyest whisper of a hunch – drew me up short at the supply closet door, however, and I let my temper cool a degree while I blindly followed my pirate’s intuition a few paces down the corridor.

A few paces was all it took. There, being carried on a tray into the elephantine freezer at the end of the hall lay Happenstance’s body. Neither Diane nor her remarkably healthy-looking zombie assistant noticed me, and I didn’t linger long enough to give them another chance. That the necromancer had moved the corpse was no surprise, but that in so doing she had revealed its exact location to me was purely pirate’s luck. I turned back and exited to the Very Black Market via the supply closet as planned.

I emerged into an empty alley and re-locked the door behind me, lest some ordinary person wander innocently into peril at my heels. ‘With great power,’ and all that. The Very Black Market is a dangerous enough place for the folks who have business there, and I wouldn’t bet a penny on the odds of any stray mundane escaping the place alive, let alone intact. That’s just not my kind of sport.

As I walked widdershins around the Market’s coiling main lane, I bribed the local urchins with stolen trifles and contraband candies. I was an urchin once upon a time, and I’ve remembered that there is no more direct access to the Very Black Grapevine than through the pleasure of those little pirates of the street. It was by their leave that the news of my return failed to precede me; the element of surprise can be bought on the Very Black Market, along with nearly anything else.

“Here, kitty, kitty,” I called when I came upon Happenstance anxiously twisting himself into ethereal knots around his witch’s ankles. He vanished in a vapor swirl, which ghostly reflex frosted his witch’s knickers and gave everyone else nearby a gooseflesh warning of the quarrel to come. A sensible few scuttled away into darker corners of the Market while the rest braced themselves for a good show. ‘Witch versus Pirate’ was going to headline the Very Black News’s midnight edition, for sure.

“Where is my Familiar’s body?”

“Where’s my fee?”

She tossed a small pouch at my feet. It obviously didn’t contain the ransom I’d demanded of Happenstance, so I ignored it.

“Don’t tell me you’ve gone solitary, Amy. Or did your coven finally get tired of rescuing you from the consequences of picking fights with bitches too big for your breeches?”

“Shut it, Sandy. You don’t know half as much as you think.”

“I know better than to send a housecat into a lion’s den.”

I heard invisible Happenstance hiss indignation behind me and to my left. The gathered crowd parted around the sound; they wanted to be spectators, not cat shelters.

“Why would you want to steal necromancer secrets, anyway? I mean, who needs zombies when you can apparently control living people just as well using sticky-note compulsion spells?” I could tell by the sudden grumbling around us that I’d scored a touch. Now I only had to keep the angry mob on my side; no mean feat for a known pirate.

Amy glowered but didn’t back down. “You can’t tell me that you’d prefer they keep their secrets.”

I shrugged. “I’ll admit that their dedication to recycling is a bit extreme, but who else has the degree of anal retentive attention to detail required to handle the sort of magic they wreak?” Perfect. All eyes on me. Nobody had ever heard it explained quite like that before, I was sure, but I had to bring the moment home before someone disputed my rhetoric. I leveled a gaze full of wryness at the witch and said, “I can’t remember the last time a necromancer lost one of their pets.”

Tick, tock, tick, and laughter bubbled through the crowd. The fight was over as far as they were concerned, but it didn’t hurt that some of the urchins had waited until my cue to chew the Mirth Mints I’d bribed them with. Real pirates bring their exit strategies with them.

After the crowd dispersed, I sauntered over to the boggled witch and her re-visible Familiar. “I can get Hap’s body back, but it’ll cost you, and I’m not just talking about my fee.” Then I delivered the worse news. “I can…but I won’t.”

Happenstance yowled as though he was no more sophisticated a creature than any mundane alley cat. Reincarnation is no fun if your memory remains intact, as Familiars’ did. Amy looked like she wanted to yowl, too.

“There’re more important things involved in this than your pride. More lives than Hap’s hang in the balance.” I stepped right into her personal space and started a staring-down contest I knew I was going to win. “And the next time you invite catastrophe to the Very Black Market, I’ll give you worse things to worry about than a zombie horde.”