Tea with an Angel

Baal was where the map said he would be. When I rang the doorbell, he opened the door with a cup of tea in his hand. The steam made arcane patterns in the air. Baal wore glasses and a cardigan that made him look like a retired professor instead of an angel. Maybe he had been a professor for a time. The angels all had to make a living since God had abandoned them to the mortal world.

"I thought you guys would have stopped answering the door by now," I said. "Given what usually happens when I come knocking in the night."

Baal studied me for a moment, then sipped his tea. "Would it have made a difference?" he asked. "Could I simply have fled out the back once you'd found me?"

"Probably not," I said, which was a lie. I wasn't exactly mortal, sure, but that didn't mean I could be in two places at once. There'd been more than one angel who had slipped out the back door on me before. I didn't like to advertise that fact though. It made them think I was soft.

"So," he said, and blew the steam from his tea.

"Yes," I said, keeping an eye on the symbols that danced in the air between us.

"I don't suppose we could talk about this like civilized beings," he said.

"That's a laugh to call yourself civilized after what you did at Gomorrah," I said.

"I was under orders," Baal said, frowning.

"I've heard that one before," I said.

"Very well," he said, "why don't you just tell me what I can give you to make you go away?"

"Not this time," I said. "Not unless you know how to stop a play from killing people."

Baal looked up and down the street, but it was empty of anyone who could save him. "Which play?" he asked.

"How many plays are there that can kill people?" I asked.

"You'd be surprised." He turned and walked down the hallway of his home. "I imagine you're going to come in one way or another," he said over his shoulder.

I took that as an invitation and followed him. I made sure to close the door behind me and lock it. There were three locks. It was almost like he was expecting trouble. Well, one could never be too safe with people like me roaming the streets.

The walls of the hallway were lined with bookshelves that held every sort of book: mass-market paperbacks, encyclopedias and dictionaries, art books, travel guides. There wasn't any order to them that I could tell. The living room Baal led me into was more of the same, only here the books were older tomes, bound in leather and other types of hide. I tried not to let my eyes linger on the titles. That way lay madness.

The couch was covered in stacks of newspapers and magazines, but two chairs were free. Baal motioned for me to sit in one so of course I sat in the other.

"Can I offer you a tea?" Baal asked. "Or perhaps a stronger drink?" He looked at me like he knew what I'd been up to after he'd lost me at Potsdamer Platz. Maybe he did know. The angels are a mysterious bunch. Even I don't really understand how they work. Hell, they're probably mysterious even to each other.

"I'm not here for a drink," I reminded him, and he smiled. See what I mean?

He sat in the other chair and blew steam from his tea again. More arcane symbols danced in the air between us.

"What exactly are those?" I asked.

"They are not unlike the aroma of a tea, in their way," Baal said.

"That is not like an answer, in its own way," I said.

"It's an ancient blend that took considerable effort to acquire," he said with a sigh. "In fact, it can no longer be found in this world. I could no more describe the symbols to you than I could describe the aroma to a man with no sense of smell. Are you sure I can't interest you in a cup?"

I shook my head. "Thanks, but I've learned my lesson about otherworldly drinks." Although it had taken a few times for the lesson to really sink in. I looked around at the books again. "You work in publishing or a library?" I asked.

"University professor," he said. "Emeritus."

I smiled, too. At least I still had a gut sense about angels in some ways.

"So," he said again.

"Hamlet," I said, cutting to the chase. "It's killing people."

"Is there a new production causing riots?" he asked. "Or perhaps a travelling show with a cast of demons and their minions?"

I winced at the mention of demons. I'd had one too many run-ins with their kind over the years. "I think it's more like some sort of curse with the play itself," I said. "People keep dying from accidents during productions." I didn't mention the faerie or Amelia. Or sweet, sweet Morgana. I didn't want any of the angels to know about my deep, dark secrets. I'd never live it down.

"Perhaps it's the Macbeth curse," Baal said. "An old superstition among thespians."

I knew what he was talking about, thanks to centuries of drinking until dawn in various pubs with actors and other characters of ill repute. Anytime something goes wrong in a production of Macbeth, actors always lay the blame on the mythical curse. Only it's not mythical, as Baal and I knew.

It was all because of the Witches. Any respectable Shakespeare scholar will tell you the spell the witch characters use around their cauldron in Macbeth is a real one - Shakespeare stole it from the actual Witches. And yes, they deserve the capitalization. There are witches and then there are the Witches. They appreciated Will's act of supernatural plagiarism so much that they gave him another spell gratis: the curse.

It's normally a harmless enough thing. Some actor says the name "Macbeth" backstage in a production without thinking and starts the spell running. Soon props are falling apart and actors are breaking legs and candles are igniting curtains. You know, the sort of things that can also be caused by excessive drunkenness, which actors are also known for. But the faerie production I'd seen had been Hamlet, not Macbeth.

"Not a bad guess," I said, "but it's the wrong play."

"Not if someone was infected with the curse during a previous production of Macbeth," Baal said. "Perhaps they brought it with them to this new play."

The symbols from his tea had made it around the room and now circled his head. I continued to keep an eye on them.

"Curses can infect people?" I asked. That was a useful piece of information, although I wasn't quite sure yet how it was useful.

Baal shrugged. "Magical curses are by their very nature unpredictable," he said. "Sometimes the spell latches on to actors and follows them to other plays. It can even move from player to player. Usually, the actors develop a bad reputation and stop getting work, and that's the end of that. But not always."

This is why it's good to sometimes talk to angels rather than just kill them outright. Occasionally, they have something interesting to say. Occasionally.

"So what do you do to get rid of the curse?" I asked. "It doesn't sound like the sort of thing where a prescription can help."

"No, in these cases an intervention is usually necessary," Baal said.

"I'm guessing that means more than throwing salt over your shoulder or running out of the theatre and spinning in a circle three times," I said, thinking about the usual antidotes. Actors loved their silly rituals, even though they rarely seemed to work. Sometimes I think it was the faerie who came up with them, having a little fun at the expense of mortals. They had a long history with the theatre, the faerie did.

"It would definitely require something more dramatic than that," Baal said. "Sometimes it is best to fight witchcraft with things darker than witchcraft."

He eyed the bookshelf beside us, but I held up a hand before he could reach for anything.

"We're not going to even open any of those, let alone read the words in them," I said.

Baal raised an eyebrow. "Are you still wary about books of power because of what happened to Marlowe? That was some time ago."

"And he's still dead," I said. Well, more or less dead. Things were always complicated with Marlowe.

"From what I heard, he was mostly responsible for his own death," Baal said.

"He had a lot of help from a book," I said. "If you could even call it that." Most books were just books but some weren't. Some books were other things entirely.

Baal considered me for a moment. "Have you tried talking to the Witches?" he finally asked.

I sighed. "I was hoping to avoid that. That's why I'm sitting here talking to you."

"There are worse things in the world than the Witches," he said.

"And there are a whole lot of better things in the world, too," I said, although I may have been overly optimistic about that.

"Perhaps you should seek out -" Baal said, but I cut him off before he could finish.

"I'm not going to him for help again," I said.

Baal nodded and returned his attention to his tea, and we shared a moment of silence while I thought things over. I ended the moment with another sigh. There was no getting around it. I was going to have to meet with the Witches. This night just kept getting better and better....