Chapter 1

My job that morning was to banish a demon, but I was determined to finish my cup of coffee first.

I sipped my java in front of Demetrios’s warehouse in Sunset Park, enjoying the panoramic view of the Manhattan skyline and the New York harbor. I stared at the Statue of Liberty, which appeared the size and shade of a toy soldier at this distance. A warm breeze caressed my face. Next to me, Demetrios was shaking like a leaf.

“What in the world are you thinking, Conrad?” Demetrios spoke in his typical rapid-fire fashion. “You’re just going to go in there, alone, to face this infernal thing? Without any help or backup from others at the Watch? Without even a priest? This is all kinds of crazy.”

“I can handle it,” I said, projecting casual confidence. “You did ask for this to be resolved quickly, and it’s not like I haven’t dealt with an occasional demon before.”

In fact, I’d never even seen any demons. I was not in any way whatsoever equipped to deal with a supernatural being of that magnitude. That was the bad news. The good news was, in my two decades with the Watch, I’d never once heard of a demon showing up in Brooklyn. Even if one arrived, it wouldn’t be slumming in Demetrios’s warehouse. And if, by some miracle, a major baddie from Down Below decided to take up residence there, Demetrios wouldn’t have survived the encounter long enough to come crying for my help. Something else was going on, but if the guy with the thick checkbook expected the job to be extremely dangerous, who was I to dissuade him?

“Quickly, yes,” said Demetrios. “You wouldn’t believe how far this has made us fall behind with the deliveries. My customers are screaming bloody murder. On top of everything, there’s a shipment of Sumatran persimmons that is already beginning to rot. I hope you really know what you’re doing. I don’t relish the thought of having to scrape what’s left of you off the container walls.”

“That’s the Demetrios I know and love. Sentimental to the end. Here, hold this.” I handed him the empty foam cup and headed for the entrance.

The warehouse was packed with every kind of package and crate imaginable. The huge metal shipping containers were clustered in the center, with just enough room left to maneuver them in and out. Around the edges, mountains of smaller parcels occupied every available nook and cranny, arranged in an order apparent only to Demetrios and his staff.

I primarily knew Demetrios as a wholesale trader in magical goods, but that was only a fraction of his business. Metal racks in his warehouse were crammed with imports, everything from Ecuadorian melons to Taiwanese vacuum cleaners. The place looked like the world’s most overstocked Costco. There were plenty of nooks for whatever was haunting the building to hide in.

I walked past a tower of knock-off toys destined for dollar store shelves. Boxes labeled Tackle Me Emo and Hangry Hangry Hipsters stretched toward the warehouse ceiling atop the sturdy foundation of cases of Poke-a-Moon cards. A pungent odor of rotting fruit wafted through the aisles.

Since I didn’t know what sort of trouble to expect, I brought as many weapons, charms, and amulets as I could carry without making my reliance on such tools apparent. I’ve made a lot more enemies than friends over the years and having any of them learn that I was powerless without my trinkets would be incredibly dangerous.

Only one out of every thirty thousand people is born gifted. They can perceive auras, recognize supernatural beings for what they are, cast spells, and imbue their magic into artifacts by enchanting physical items the way batteries store electricity. I could perceive perfectly; casting was another story. I could use up stored magic as well as any gifted but could never recharge the metaphysical battery of even the simplest of charms. In a secret world filled with superheroes and supervillains, I was the magical Batman: a grumpy and possibly somewhat unhinged vigilante with no special powers, who relied on his gadgets to keep up with the Super-Joneses. Except I didn’t have Batman’s riches, or a mansion, or even a butler. Them’s the breaks.

Not even my superiors at the Watch knew about my disability. They wouldn’t have kept me around—possibly with extreme prejudice—if they ever found out. So, I pretended to be a badass wizard and did my job well, giving no one cause to think otherwise. One day I hoped to find a cure for my condition. Or, failing that, a damn good explanation for it.

I worked my way through the labyrinth of packages until I heard faint growling sounds emanating from a few aisles over. I unholstered a revolver which was loaded with silver bullets doused in holy water. Cliché, I know, but in my experience only the most effective solutions get to become clichés in the first place. Weapon drawn, I advanced slowly toward the noise. I turned the corner of a ceiling-high shelving unit stocked with waffle makers and found myself face to face with a Lovecraftian nightmare.

The creature resembled a ten-foot-tall bulldog with several rows of jagged teeth protruding from its oversized mouth. It stared at me with cold fish eyes and emitted a low rumble from deep within its ugly-as-sin belly. I breathed a sigh of relief as I studied the telltale shimmer barely visible around the critter’s frame. Definitely not a demon.

“Nice doggie,” I told it as I holstered the gun and rummaged through the inner pockets of my trench coat. Moving very slowly so as not to spook it, I withdrew a plastic pill bottle filled with orange powder.

“Cujo wants a treat?” I asked in a soothing voice as I struggled momentarily with the childproof cover.

Visibly annoyed with my apparent lack of desire to run away terrified, the critter let out a thunderous roar that, I hoped, Demetrios could hear outside. While it was busy posturing, I took a pair of quick steps forward and flung the contents of the pill bottle, aiming for its midsection.

The monstrous visage quivered, gradually losing its shape, and blinked out. At my feet lay a furry little animal that looked like an ugly koala bear. It was knocked out cold by the sleeping powder. The Sumatran changeling snoring on the ground before me was a harmless creature. Its species projects images of big, scary monsters in order to repel predators, but they’re all bark and no bite. Poor thing must’ve gotten into the persimmon shipment and munched the long journey away, happy in the container full of its favorite snacks. The potent orange mix would keep the changeling dormant until I could get it to a buddy of mine at the Bronx Zoo who cared for a menagerie of supernatural animals.

I checked the rest of the building to make sure there were no more changelings. Also, just to be nosy. Demetrios’s shipping company handled arcane imports from all over the globe, and I was always curious to know what he was up to, even if I had to search past the pallets of slow cookers and shelves filled with auto parts to find anything noteworthy. After a sufficient amount of time spent wandering the aisles I took off my trench coat and wrapped it gently around the changeling. Carrying the bundle under my arm, I exited the warehouse.

“That was one nasty hellspawn.” I smiled at Demetrios, who was pacing nervously outside. “See, it even made me break a sweat.”

“Is the demon gone now? Did you banish it?” he demanded.

“It will not be bothering you again,” I said with utmost confidence.

Magical items don’t come cheap, and given my unique situation I burned through them faster than an average teenage girl used up her cell phone battery. Demetrios would pay me handsomely for a morning’s work, and all it cost me was a vial of sleeping powder. What’s more, he would tell anyone who cared to listen about how I went one-on-one with a demon and won. So grows the legend of Conrad Brent.

I glanced at the check he handed me and frowned. “You seem to have left off a zero.”

With the infernal threat gone, Demetrios was quickly recovering his wits. “It’s what I’ve always paid you,” he said. Was that a note of annoyance I detected in his voice?

“Some jobs are easier than others,” I said. “And while you can’t put a price tag on a quality exorcism, you should at least try. Because, believe me, you don’t want to be calling your exterminator next time you find yourself in this sort of a predicament.”

I’m not a greedy man, but money is a useful resource and you wouldn’t believe what some people charge for top-grade arcane artifacts. Haggling over the bill was yet another problem Batman didn’t have to deal with.

Demetrios crossed his arms. “You’re getting more than most people earn in a month.”

Sensing a losing battle, I changed tactics. “I’m just as happy to be paid the balance in information. You hear all sorts of things that might be of interest to the Watch.”

His wallet safe for the moment, Demetrios relaxed. He scratched his chin, pretending to think, even though we both knew he could rattle off a dozen factoids about the illicit goings-on around the city if he wanted to.

“The Kwan brothers are back in town,” he said. “They’re trying to offload a shipment of cursed coins—”

“Yes, my associates in Manhattan are already on it,” I said. Inability to tell a demon from a changeling aside, Demetrios was no fool. The Kwans were his competitors—sort of, they weren’t really in the same league—and having the Watch take them out would benefit him. “Tell me something I don’t already know.”

“There’s a new high-end fortuneteller in Williamsburg,” said Demetrios. “Bilking the mundanes and making waves. I can track down his name and address—”

I waved him off again. “If the only thing getting hurt is their bank account, I don’t really care.”

The Watch has one very specific mandate: to protect the mundanes. Any conflict between magic users, no matter how bloody, is outside our purview, which is perhaps a good thing given our limited numbers. We focus on defending the most vulnerable. Vampires treating the New York City subway system as their personal cafeteria? Werewolves in Central Park? Wizards using mind control to entice baseball fans to root for the Mets? We come down on them like a ton of supernatural bricks. But we don’t care about tarot readers.

Demetrios thought for a moment before offering up another tidbit. “The Traveling Fair is coming to Queens next Friday.”

Now that was interesting. The Traveling Fair was an exclusive auction house, sort of a magical Sotheby’s. They dealt in high-end arcane items and weren’t too particular about how dangerous their wares might be or whose hands they would end up in, so long as the buyer could afford the tab. They set up private pop-up events in places like New York, Paris, London, and Tokyo. Attendance was strictly by invitation, and only the invited bidders knew where and when the auction would take place. That helped with security, and to keep the unwashed masses away. Frankly, I was surprised someone like Demetrios knew about it. He must’ve been on the lowest rung of the invitees and even so, doing better financially than I had suspected. And yet he had the temerity to argue over my payment!

“What sort of outrageously overpriced crap is on offer this time?”

Demetrios fished out a folded postcard from his wallet.

The card was printed on fancy, thick stock and embroidered with the logo of the Traveling Fair. It was a crest or a minor Romanian baron, hinting at the Fair’s humble origins two centuries ago.

“Let’s see.” Demetrios squinted at the cursive font. “They’ve got a da Vinci manuscript outlining his views on arcane weather manipulation, an Etruscan ring of invisibility, and a mudlark.”

I was so stunned I nearly dropped the changeling I still held bundled in my trench coat. “A whatlark?”

“Oh, I’m sorry. That’s the term they used, but mudlarks known by many other names, such as middlings or voids. It’s a person who can perceive magic but is impotent to create it.”

Of course, I knew what he was talking about. I was what he was talking about. A middling. A mudlark. A scavenger. There were a plethora of terms for a person like me, none of them flattering. But I’d never met another, nor knew of another who was alive. As best I could tell, while the gifted appeared roughly once among every thirty thousand humans, the odds of a middling were well north of one in a million. And the smart ones were hiding.

I couldn’t express any of those things, so instead I just said, “Jesus, why would anyone want to buy a middling?”

“They’re anathema to many of the traditionalist groups,” Demetrios said, looking at me like I was an infant who needed really simple things explained to him, slowly. “Some will pay good money for a chance to kill a middling.”

No kidding. There were cults and covens and secret societies whose members would be all over something like that. The Salem witch trials were all about finding and exterminating a single middling who was rumored to be hiding in that insignificant little town. As far as I knew, there was no actual middling. They did manage to hang several real witches, though.

It weren’t just the crazy cultists. Superstition against the middlings ran deep within the gifted society. The Watch wouldn’t protect them as they weren’t considered mundane, despite their lack of innate ability. Early in my career I had spent sleepless nights trying to figure out who among my colleagues might try to kill me if they ever learned the truth.

I was showing too much interest in the subject and needed to backpedal. “I suppose there are people and eccentric enough to throw money away on all kinds of nonsense. The ring of invisibility though, that’s something I could actually use.”

“You don’t seriously think you could afford the winning bid on it, do you, Conrad?”

I looked him in the eye. “Perhaps if you paid me a fair wage for demon-slaying I could.”

That deflated Demetrios pretty good.

“Tell you what,” I said. “Hand over the invitation and we’ll call it even. I may not be able to afford the ring, but I’d enjoy window-shopping. And rubbing shoulders with all sorts of interesting people. Could make a load of useful connections, meet clients willing to pay top dollar for my services.”

For all its power and influence, the Watch was a volunteer organization. It was more a neighborhood watch, as the name implied, than a police department. Its members had to earn their own living, which meant getting people like Demetrios to pony up the cash for services rendered. But I was also expected—and willing—to hunt monsters and bust ghosts pro bono when necessary. As such, my excuse for wanting to attend the Traveling Fair should have sounded reasonable. When Demetrios hesitated I added, “Come on. It’s not like you are going to bid on any of those things.”

He sighed theatrically and handed over the invitation. I said my goodbyes and deposited the changeling onto the back seat of my car. At some point I’d have to drive it to the Bronx, and then figure out how to rescue a fellow middling from a bunch of bloodthirsty fat cats. But all of that would have to wait. I had a packed schedule, and my day was only starting.

I was going to need a lot more coffee.

Preorder now: [Amazon] [B&N] [Bookshop.org]