The Demons of Wall Street

By Laurence Raphael Brothers

Nora Simeon hates demons.

But as an investigator for the secretive Commission, the organization that regulates financial sorcery in New York City, she deals with the creatures a lot more than she'd like. Her latest case has her on the track of a rogue demon, escaped from magical bondage as an analyst for a leading investment bank.

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Mirror World Publishing
• Release date: Mar 17, 2020
• ISBN: 9781987976625

Laurence Raphael Brothers

Laurence Raphael Brothers is a writer and a technologist with five patents and a background in AI and Internet R&D. He has published over 40 short stories in such magazines as Nature, PodCastle, and Galaxy's Edge. His noir urban fantasy novellas The Demons of Wall Street, The Demons of the Square Mile, and The Demons of Chiyoda are available from Mirror World Publishing.To learn more about the works and world of Laurence Raphael Brothers, you can follow him on Twitter at @lbrothers or visit his website, laurencebrothers.com.

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The Demons of Wall Street

Nora Simeon Investigations #1

Laurence Raphael Brothers

E-BOOK EDITION

The Demons of Wall Street (Nora Simeon Investigations #1) © 2020 by Mirror World Publishing and Laurence Raphael Brothers

Edited by: Robert Dowsett

Cover Design by: Justine Dowsett

Published by Mirror World Publishing in March 2020.

All Rights Reserved.

*This book is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual locales, events or persons is entirely coincidental.

Mirror World Publishing

Windsor, Ontario

www.mirrorworldpublishing.com

[e-mail]

ISBN: 978-1-987976-62-5

This book is dedicated to my friends and colleagues at Seventh Prime, whose companionship, support, and critical advice has meant so much to me over the years. I'd also like to thank the members of Codex, without whom this novella would never have been written.

CHAPTER 1

I was working the action of my compact Ruger, pretending to shoot people I knew, when my phone rang. The ringtone was the opening to Night on Bald Mountain so I could tell who it was without looking at the screen. Also, the phone answered itself and switched to speaker. It wasn't programmed to do that.

Mother, I said, what is it? I imagined her face floating in front of me, aimed, and pulled the trigger.

Nora, dear, would it hurt to be polite?

To you? Yes. I keep hoping if I was offensive enough maybe she'd just leave me alone, but it never worked.

I just wanted to let you know, dear, you have some work coming your way.

I thought we had an understanding. I don't need your money, especially not for some stupid make-work job.

Nora, please, this is not my idea. And it's not makework at all. This is the Commission's assignment. I just thought it would be nice to let you know about it in advance. I expect you'll have a case before the day is over. Your first in quite some time, if I'm not mistaken.

Yeah, well. Thanks, I guess.

Don't mention it, dear. And good luck. I think you'll need it.

She hung up. Talk about politeness. But she was a big one for last words. I felt a point of heat in my chest; it was Spark, responding to my irritation. So I walked over to the little clay pot by the window where it hangs out while I'm at the office and sprinkled some more crushed incense to show I wasn't angry at it. Not that I thought Spark really understood that kind of thing, but I liked to pretend it did anyway. And it settled down, too; the spike of fiery heat became a pleasant emanation of warmth before fading away completely.

It wasn't half an hour before someone knocked on my office door. I couldn't be sure it was a Commission agent. I do get drop-in clients from time to time, and sometimes people who aren't clients at all. I slotted a magazine into the Ruger and put the gun back in its clamp under my desk. You never knew. Then I hit the button to unlock the door. It made a thwocking noise loud enough for the person on the other side to hear.

The man who entered paused uncertainly. He was looking around at a tiny, bare space just big enough to wedge in an assistant or a secretary and their desk. If I had an assistant or a secretary, anyway.

In here, I said, and he stepped through the doorway into my inner office. It wasn't much bigger than the outer one, a mere cubbyhole, but at least it had a window looking down on 35th Street. For what that was worth.

Ms. Simeon?

I figured he was a Commission agent; he looked like one, anyway, in his conservative gray suit with its thin red pinstripe. They liked to think they project an aura of authority, inherited from their bosses, but really, it was more like smug self-satisfaction at being in on the big dark secret behind all the finance of midtown and Wall Street.

Yup.

The man pulled a device from a pocket that looked like one of the pistol-grip bar-code readers they use on checkout lines. He pointed it at me, which made me antsy to begin with, then pulled the trigger, almost blinding me with a laser glare. I came this close to blowing him away because I had the Ruger in my hand under the desk. And then a moment later, when I realized what he was doing, I almost had Spark set his hair on fire. But I managed to restrain myself for the sake of the hundred grand a year they pay me as a permanent retainer. That was pretty much my entire income.

The fuck? A little warning first, asshole!

Sorry, he said, not sounding apologetic at all. ID. Retina scan.

Yeah? What about you? How do I know who you are?

He produced a thick envelope from his jacket pocket and put it down on my desk. Heavy parchment bound with a gold ribbon and a double wax seal. This should be enough. Good afternoon, Ms. Simeon.

He turned and left before I could say anything more. I hated these guys, but not only did they pay my rent, there wasn’t much I could do about cutting ties. When you're let in on the secret, they keep track of you. You're either with them or against them, and against them tends not to work out that well. And oh yeah, my mom? She was more than just with them. On their board of directors. Fuck my life.

Right. So there was this fancy envelope on my desk. The first wax seal was the Commission's, a caduceus with the snake in an S around the rod to make a dollar sign. Occult wisdom and profit combined. Cute. The second seal was blank. I put my thumb up against it and both seals split neatly down the middle. The nicest thing that would have happened if someone else tried to open it was the envelope catching fire.

I read through the enclosed material quickly because the ink was going to fade, or the paper fall apart, in a minute or two. Could have scanned it with my phone, but probably that would have cursed the electronics, so I contented myself with making a few notes on a legal pad.

The whole first page was pretentious bullshit. Whoever it was at the Commission liked to pretend they were old-time British admiralty. Wherefore fail you not in the execution of our commands except at your peril. Et cetera. The meat of the case was distressingly thin, but it was my kind of work. Rogue demon. Broken contract. The creature somehow managed to sever or refute its binding, escaped from the secure sorcery floor of the Goldman Sachs headquarters building on West Street. Geomantic scrying had failed to narrow down its location, but the demon was thought to be in New York City somewhere. My job would be to track it down and then return it, banish it, or destroy it, in diminishing order of preference. My personal preferred order was the reverse. I hated infernals. I had a contact, a vice-president at Goldman Sachs, the creature's supervisor, and that was it.

I'd just finished noting down Ms. Sakashvili's contact info when I felt a sudden urge to turn away from the document. When I looked back it was a sudoku puzzle. It had always been a sudoku puzzle. Fucking Commission. I hated their little games.

When I called, she picked up on the first ring.

Sakashvili. Cool, clipped delivery, just a hint of an accent.

This is Nora Simeon. I assume you've been informed who I am.

Ms. Simeon. Yes, I have.

I need to speak to you in person. How about in an hour, at your office?

Impossible. Staff meeting. I can give you a slot on Tuesday.

Today was Thursday. For me this was one of the few joys of taking on a case from the Commission, pushing people around who normally wouldn't give me the time of day.

An hour from now will be fine, I said. Or if you like, I can mark you down as intransigent in my report to the board. And I don't mean the board of Goldman Sachs.

A pause. I imagined she was gritting her teeth, trying to control her breathing.

Just as you say. I'll see you at 2:30. Please don't be late.

I wasted ten minutes getting ready to face the outside world, always a problem for me. I didn't say goodbye to Spark when I left; it was always with me wherever I went if I needed it for something. I didn't smoke, though, so needing it was pretty rare.

It was a sunny autumn day in Manhattan. Not too bad. Ten minutes from my office to Penn Station. Thirty more on the #1 train down to Chamber Street. And another five minutes to walk the two blocks through the mix of tourists and bankers to the hulking, godawful Goldman Sachs HQ on West Street. Right on time. Except for having to pass security. Oh well.

Approaching the entrance plaza, I saw the shiny neo-brutalist skyscraper was practically festooned with security cameras. Lots of plate glass out front, with poster-color murals on the walls, but also lots of square corners and surprisingly simple decor. I suppose they must have made a conscious decision not to show off. I walked up to the front desk, because I knew getting through to Sakashvili wouldn't be as simple as looking her up in a directory. And indeed, I went through two iterations of unenlightened security people before someone showed up who knew who I was, who she was, and was authorized to take me to her.

The man who finally arrived to meet me was 6'6", wedge-shaped, buzz-cut, in a black business suit, and he had a curly wire connected to his earpiece. I was surprised he wasn't wearing sunglasses, but the bulge beneath his lapel was certainly part of the costume. He didn't say a word to me or the regular security guards, just nodded his head slightly, and I followed him into the elevators. We went up to the 25th floor, got out, walked past another security desk with no words exchanged, and entered an elevator for which access to the floor had to be unlocked with a passcard carried by my guy. I was thinking of him as my guy at this point, imagining what he'd be like in bed. Domineering at first, probably, but that wouldn't last. By the time we got up to the executive floor, I'd already gotten to the point of our breakup in my little fantasy. It involved a romantic sunset on the High Line and an exchange of gunfire. I was just working out what I'd be wearing at the funeral when we got out and transferred to yet another elevator, this one requiring a key to enter. My guy left me then, and I left off daydreaming for the moment.

This elevator was obviously secured against etheric influences, with planetary amulets embedded in the walls and what looked like a silver hexagram engraved in the floor. But it was a little too shiny to be silver. I crouched and sniffed the metal. My nose tingled with negative ions. Stabilized azoth warding circle. Fancy and expensive. A demon who got into this elevator without a sorcerer escort would be banished and incinerated simultaneously.

I went down, down, down, with no indication of the passage of floors except a flashing arrow by the elevator control bank. At last the trip was over, the elevator door opened, and there I was in an underground atrium that practically reeked of magical wards. Sakashvili was waiting for me.

You're late, she said. Younger than I was expecting: mid-twenties, my age. But I guess vice-president