HOME | DD

Description
“You’re Ms. Summers?”

“That’s me.”

“… you sound older over the phone.”

“Yeah, I get that a lot,” said the teenage girl as she nudged her way past the contractor and into the building, followed by a scrawny man wearing gloves, a ski mask, and mirrored shades.

“So where was the body again? Sub-basement, was it?”

“Look…” the contractor interrupted, skepticism filling his voice, “You got a permit or license for this sort of thing? I don’t want no meddling kid wasting my time here.”

Angie Summers’ face twitched in anger, just a little bit, before regaining her composure.

“Well Mr. Carlucci, if you need proof… Tibs, the paper please,” Angie got to work unpacking her gear while her silent assistant showed the contractor last Thursday’s edition of the Paragon Times. The headline read “TEEN QUEEN OF NECROMANCY STRIKES AGAIN!” with the photo clearly showing Angie posing atop an overturned Chevy as skeletons and zombies ran amok around her.

“Are you kidd- SWEETMOTHEROFGOD!!!”

Carlucci had glanced back up at the thin man to find hollow, empty eye sockets staring back at him from behind that ski mask.

“Tibia, put your shades back on,” Angie calmly chided. Her skeletal minion complied and she looked to the horrified contractor with a smile. “Let’s get down to business, shall we?”

Several minutes later found the unusual trio entering the sub-basement of the dilapidated building. Angie’s experienced nose quickly picked up the smell of burnt flesh. Flash-fried human flesh, to be precise. As Carlucci flicked on the power lamp at the foot of the stairs Angie beheld a corpse, thoroughly burned, lying in a mystic circle inscribed on the floor.

“Alright, time to get to work,” Angie said, shucking off her backpack and quickly pulling out a few odd items: a mummified seahorse skewered on a stick, a tuning fork etched with runes, and a brightly painted pocket calculator.

Carlucci looked at the items Angie had pulled out and blinked. “A seahorse? Are you serious?”

“Trust me Mr. Carlucci, seahorses are actually quite magical,” Angie said as she started scanning the room, “You don’t expect evolution to produce such an odd creature, do you?”

The contractor stopped to think about that as Angie examined the corpse. “Let’s see… half-life resonance puts Mr. Extra Crispy here at… hmm, around 1875 or so. Ooo, hold on…”

Angie reached down and grabbed the corpse’s hand, wiping clean a gold ring on one of its fingers and peering at its crest. “Tibia, get me Book #46 please,” Angie commanded.

The skeleton pulled the requested book from one of its own bags and handed it to Angie. Scooting closer to the lamp she cracked the well-worn tome open and started flipping pages. Carlucci peered over her shoulder to look: the text looked Arabic of some kind, and the illustrations depicted fanciful images of genie-like beings.

“Aha, well this is ironic,” Angie chuckled as she read, “Turns out our friend was a member of the Brothers of Fire.”

“The who?” Carlucci asked. He felt stupid asking, but he was completely out of his depth here.

“Sorcerous society from Persia/Iran,” Angie explained “they thought fire-related magic was the only ‘true’ magic, which is like saying the one true use of computers is to play Minesweeper.”

“So what, um, happened to them?”

“Eh, they tried hunting down other magic users in the country for decades until the British Empire rolled in. The Brits caught them and thought it’d be funny to burn them at the stake Salem-style. But this guy…” Angie mused as she returned to the corpse, “This guy must have escaped and hopped a boat out of there, probably into French territory, before winding up here…”

“But how did he die? The guy looks barbecued.”

“That’s a good question,” Angie said as she consulted the seahorse and tuning fork, “The Brothers were supposed to be diehard elementalists, but the seahorse is picking up a lot of summoning magic.”

“Summoning? Y-you mean like demons?” Carlucci asked a bit nervously, thinking about those stories the news did on the Circle of Thorns.

“I don’t think so. Infernal summonings usually have a permanent stink of sulfur and brimstone. Here, aside from the decomp…” Angie trailed off, sniffing the air curiously, “Does it smell spicy in here to you?”

“Me? Um, I dunno, but…” as the contractor tried to smell past the odor of death… actually, there WAS a spicy smell, ever so faint.

“Paprika, I think,” Angie said as she looked around the room, poking around in the debris and detritus before a glint of silver caught her eye.

“Here! Tibia, move this pile here,” Angie commanded. As her undead minion did so it revealed part of a second mystic circle, done in powdered silver. Most of the dust had tarnished but some of it retained their sparkle in the lamp light.

“Oh great, another one?” Carlucci asked, wondering just how many more magical surprises were in store for him today.

“Looks like it,” Angie said as she sifted through the junk atop the smaller circle. Her fingers felt something cold and metallic and grabbed it, pulling forth… a solid metal smoking pipe.

“The hell is that… a pipe? Who the hell’d make a pipe out of metal like that?” Carlucci asked.

Angie turned the pipe over in her hands, noting that it was etched with beautiful swirling patterns that looked like bonfires. Then a random thought struck her and she turned to Carlucci.

“Got a smoke?” she asked.

“Aren’t you a little yo- nevermind,” the contractor quickly corrected himself as he pulled out a cigarette and his lighter, handing them to the girl without arguing.

“Middle-Eastern magic users were really rather creative when it came to summoning magical critters,” Angie explained as she ground the cigarette tobacco into the pipe, “They used all sorts of things to imprison the more unwilling ones; bottles, wind chimes, lamps…”

“Lamps? You mean…”

“Yep. Brace yourself for a magic carpet ride,” Angie said with a grin as she lit the pipe.

There was a flash and a cloud of smoke, as if a giant firecracker had been lit. Carlucci coughed and tried to see through the smoke. He could hear the girl coughing, and… and a third person coughing, too. But who…? Finally the smoke cleared and he was able to see… it.

It was short, barely a foot tall, and its (His? Her? It was hard to tell) skin was a charred black. It was scrawny of build, and its face had a button nose and wide mouth. Its fiery red hair was a mess of curls that seemed to move and flicker on its own.

The thing was gasping for air, as if it hadn’t had a lungful in ages. Once it had its fill it curled up before Angie, looking up at her imploringly.

“Thank you ever so much for freeing me, Mistress!” the thing chirped in a high, energetic voice Carlucci found both cute and annoying at the same time, “It was getting very boring in that pipe!”

“Just… what are you, exactly?” Angie asked. Carlucci noticed that the girl’s pet skeleton had quietly drawn a revolver from somewhere and seemed ready to use it if this genie sprouted fangs or something.

“I am an efreetling gen, kindling to his Eminence the Sultan of the Efreet, Lord of the City of Brass, Fuel of the Unquenchable Hordes, Most Puissant of Hunters, the Towering Inferno, the Smoldering Ditkat, the-“

“Okay, I get it, you’re a miniature genie,” Angie cut the little thing off, “Do you have a name?”

“Of course! I have many names but you can call me Sharara,” the little genie said proudly.

“So how did you end up in that smoking pipe, Sharara?” Angie asked.

“Well the last thing I remember I was going out on an errand when a summoning spell’s portal blossomed up nearby. My lord, an efreeti duke, lobbed a fireball through it and then for some reason grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and threw me in too!”

“Why’d he do that?” Carlucci asked despite himself.

“I wish I knew!” replied the gen, “after all I was right in the middle of handing out some of his coal to a bunch of grateful orphan salamanders, and I…”

“Wait, is coal, like, currency on the Elemental Plane of Fire?” Angie asked with an eyebrow arched.

“No, but it is fairly valuable seeing it’s made of trees. I just thought my master would appreciate the gesture of charity…”

Angie thought about that for a moment before pulling something from a pocket and handing it to Tibia. Glancing over Carlucci noticed it was a wallet.

“Would you like a new master, Sharara of the City of Brass?” Angie asked with a bit of an imperious note in her voice.

“Oh yes please! Especially if you let me keep that pipe… I’ve sort of gotten used to living in there, yes? Just, one thing…”

“Yes?” Angie’s voice had enough of an icy edge in it Carlucci took a step back.

“What is your name?”

Angie’s expression softened with practiced ease. “I’m Angie Summers. These other two… don’t particularly matter.”

“Well then Mistress Angie, I will be more than happy to be serving you!”

“Excellent,” Angie said as she looked to Carlucci, “Mr. Carlucci, you can cancel the fee for my services here, I’ve already found suitable compensation for my time. I’ll have some associates come by within the hour to clean up the carcass. Also, just want to remind you: You saw nothing here today. At all.”

Carlucci considered his options as Angie waltzed up the stairs, the little gen hopping up to perch on her shoulder. This was the information age, and who knows if this could be valuable...

Then Tibia bumped into him in following Angie, and he felt the hard, cold bone underneath that sweatshirt. Maybe some things should be forgotten after all...

Description
“You’re Ms. Summers?”

“That’s me.”

“… you sound older over the phone.”

“Yeah, I get that a lot,” said the teenage girl as she nudged her way past the contractor and into the building, followed by a scrawny man wearing gloves, a ski mask, and mirrored shades.

“So where was the body again? Sub-basement, was it?”

“Look…” the contractor interrupted, skepticism filling his voice, “You got a permit or license for this sort of thing? I don’t want no meddling kid wasting my time here.”

Angie Summers’ face twitched in anger, just a little bit, before regaining her composure.

“Well Mr. Carlucci, if you need proof… Tibs, the paper please,” Angie got to work unpacking her gear while her silent assistant showed the contractor last Thursday’s edition of the Paragon Times. The headline read “TEEN QUEEN OF NECROMANCY STRIKES AGAIN!” with the photo clearly showing Angie posing atop an overturned Chevy as skeletons and zombies ran amok around her.

“Are you kidd- SWEETMOTHEROFGOD!!!”

Carlucci had glanced back up at the thin man to find hollow, empty eye sockets staring back at him from behind that ski mask.

“Tibia, put your shades back on,” Angie calmly chided. Her skeletal minion complied and she looked to the horrified contractor with a smile. “Let’s get down to business, shall we?”

Several minutes later found the unusual trio entering the sub-basement of the dilapidated building. Angie’s experienced nose quickly picked up the smell of burnt flesh. Flash-fried human flesh, to be precise. As Carlucci flicked on the power lamp at the foot of the stairs Angie beheld a corpse, thoroughly burned, lying in a mystic circle inscribed on the floor.

“Alright, time to get to work,” Angie said, shucking off her backpack and quickly pulling out a few odd items: a mummified seahorse skewered on a stick, a tuning fork etched with runes, and a brightly painted pocket calculator.

Carlucci looked at the items Angie had pulled out and blinked. “A seahorse? Are you serious?”

“Trust me Mr. Carlucci, seahorses are actually quite magical,” Angie said as she started scanning the room, “You don’t expect evolution to produce such an odd creature, do you?”

The contractor stopped to think about that as Angie examined the corpse. “Let’s see… half-life resonance puts Mr. Extra Crispy here at… hmm, around 1875 or so. Ooo, hold on…”

Angie reached down and grabbed the corpse’s hand, wiping clean a gold ring on one of its fingers and peering at its crest. “Tibia, get me Book #46 please,” Angie commanded.

The skeleton pulled the requested book from one of its own bags and handed it to Angie. Scooting closer to the lamp she cracked the well-worn tome open and started flipping pages. Carlucci peered over her shoulder to look: the text looked Arabic of some kind, and the illustrations depicted fanciful images of genie-like beings.

“Aha, well this is ironic,” Angie chuckled as she read, “Turns out our friend was a member of the Brothers of Fire.”

“The who?” Carlucci asked. He felt stupid asking, but he was completely out of his depth here.

“Sorcerous society from Persia/Iran,” Angie explained “they thought fire-related magic was the only ‘true’ magic, which is like saying the one true use of computers is to play Minesweeper.”

“So what, um, happened to them?”

“Eh, they tried hunting down other magic users in the country for decades until the British Empire rolled in. The Brits caught them and thought it’d be funny to burn them at the stake Salem-style. But this guy…” Angie mused as she returned to the corpse, “This guy must have escaped and hopped a boat out of there, probably into French territory, before winding up here…”

“But how did he die? The guy looks barbecued.”

“That’s a good question,” Angie said as she consulted the seahorse and tuning fork, “The Brothers were supposed to be diehard elementalists, but the seahorse is picking up a lot of summoning magic.”

“Summoning? Y-you mean like demons?” Carlucci asked a bit nervously, thinking about those stories the news did on the Circle of Thorns.

“I don’t think so. Infernal summonings usually have a permanent stink of sulfur and brimstone. Here, aside from the decomp…” Angie trailed off, sniffing the air curiously, “Does it smell spicy in here to you?”

“Me? Um, I dunno, but…” as the contractor tried to smell past the odor of death… actually, there WAS a spicy smell, ever so faint.

“Paprika, I think,” Angie said as she looked around the room, poking around in the debris and detritus before a glint of silver caught her eye.

“Here! Tibia, move this pile here,” Angie commanded. As her undead minion did so it revealed part of a second mystic circle, done in powdered silver. Most of the dust had tarnished but some of it retained their sparkle in the lamp light.

“Oh great, another one?” Carlucci asked, wondering just how many more magical surprises were in store for him today.

“Looks like it,” Angie said as she sifted through the junk atop the smaller circle. Her fingers felt something cold and metallic and grabbed it, pulling forth… a solid metal smoking pipe.

“The hell is that… a pipe? Who the hell’d make a pipe out of metal like that?” Carlucci asked.

Angie turned the pipe over in her hands, noting that it was etched with beautiful swirling patterns that looked like bonfires. Then a random thought struck her and she turned to Carlucci.

“Got a smoke?” she asked.

“Aren’t you a little yo- nevermind,” the contractor quickly corrected himself as he pulled out a cigarette and his lighter, handing them to the girl without arguing.

“Middle-Eastern magic users were really rather creative when it came to summoning magical critters,” Angie explained as she ground the cigarette tobacco into the pipe, “They used all sorts of things to imprison the more unwilling ones; bottles, wind chimes, lamps…”

“Lamps? You mean…”

“Yep. Brace yourself for a magic carpet ride,” Angie said with a grin as she lit the pipe.

There was a flash and a cloud of smoke, as if a giant firecracker had been lit. Carlucci coughed and tried to see through the smoke. He could hear the girl coughing, and… and a third person coughing, too. But who…? Finally the smoke cleared and he was able to see… it.

It was short, barely a foot tall, and its (His? Her? It was hard to tell) skin was a charred black. It was scrawny of build, and its face had a button nose and wide mouth. Its fiery red hair was a mess of curls that seemed to move and flicker on its own.

The thing was gasping for air, as if it hadn’t had a lungful in ages. Once it had its fill it curled up before Angie, looking up at her imploringly.

“Thank you ever so much for freeing me, Mistress!” the thing chirped in a high, energetic voice Carlucci found both cute and annoying at the same time, “It was getting very boring in that pipe!”

“Just… what are you, exactly?” Angie asked. Carlucci noticed that the girl’s pet skeleton had quietly drawn a revolver from somewhere and seemed ready to use it if this genie sprouted fangs or something.

“I am an efreetling gen, kindling to his Eminence the Sultan of the Efreet, Lord of the City of Brass, Fuel of the Unquenchable Hordes, Most Puissant of Hunters, the Towering Inferno, the Smoldering Ditkat, the-“

“Okay, I get it, you’re a miniature genie,” Angie cut the little thing off, “Do you have a name?”

“Of course! I have many names but you can call me Sharara,” the little genie said proudly.

“So how did you end up in that smoking pipe, Sharara?” Angie asked.

“Well the last thing I remember I was going out on an errand when a summoning spell’s portal blossomed up nearby. My lord, an efreeti duke, lobbed a fireball through it and then for some reason grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and threw me in too!”

“Why’d he do that?” Carlucci asked despite himself.

“I wish I knew!” replied the gen, “after all I was right in the middle of handing out some of his coal to a bunch of grateful orphan salamanders, and I…”

“Wait, is coal, like, currency on the Elemental Plane of Fire?” Angie asked with an eyebrow arched.

“No, but it is fairly valuable seeing it’s made of trees. I just thought my master would appreciate the gesture of charity…”

Angie thought about that for a moment before pulling something from a pocket and handing it to Tibia. Glancing over Carlucci noticed it was a wallet.

“Would you like a new master, Sharara of the City of Brass?” Angie asked with a bit of an imperious note in her voice.

“Oh yes please! Especially if you let me keep that pipe… I’ve sort of gotten used to living in there, yes? Just, one thing…”

“Yes?” Angie’s voice had enough of an icy edge in it Carlucci took a step back.

“What is your name?”

Angie’s expression softened with practiced ease. “I’m Angie Summers. These other two… don’t particularly matter.”

“Well then Mistress Angie, I will be more than happy to be serving you!”

“Excellent,” Angie said as she looked to Carlucci, “Mr. Carlucci, you can cancel the fee for my services here, I’ve already found suitable compensation for my time. I’ll have some associates come by within the hour to clean up the carcass. Also, just want to remind you: You saw nothing here today. At all.”

Carlucci considered his options as Angie waltzed up the stairs, the little gen hopping up to perch on her shoulder. This was the information age, and who knows if this could be valuable...

Then Tibia bumped into him in following Angie, and he felt the hard, cold bone underneath that sweatshirt. Maybe some things should be forgotten after all...