The Fox and the Falcon (No Other Gods #2)

Chapter Five

Dox/doxx [ d?ks ]: verb

Doxing/doxxing, doxes/doxxes, doxed/doxxed: transitive verb.

To publicly identify or publish private information about someone, especially as a form of punishment or revenge .

Example 1: The republican senator doxxed the sex worker, outing her despite having enthusiastically and consensually solicited her services, in order to ruin her life and save his spineless, pathetic, sorry ass.

Example 2: Doxxing gets sex workers killed, and is never, under any circumstances, okay.

I slammed the door behind me as I slid in beside Fauna. We’d only been in the car for two minutes before the driver commented that we smelled like we’d had a great time, which meant we were sweating rum. Fauna promised him that I’d tip him twenty dollars if he pulled over at a grocery store for her to get candy, which shouldn’t have surprised me. He laughed, thinking it was the munchies. I rolled my eyes, knowing she was a lunatic without need for an occasion.

The driver cranked the music while we waited for the angelic, freckled supermodel to breeze into the grocery store, allowing me to feel the music’s bass as bud and booze hummed in my cells. I closed my eyes and relaxed into the vibrations until Fauna returned. She’d collected a handful of candy for herself, but pushed a newspaper-wrapped bundle into my arms.

I opened my eyes to look up at both her and the present.

Sunflowers .

She held my hand and sat with me for the rest of the ride in uncharacteristic silence. I wasn’t sure if it made what I was feeling better or worse.

We were out of the car and into my apartment before I’d fully had time to process the events of the night. My friends had met Fauna. She’d mentioned Caliban. I’d been doxxed on the news by a politician.

Holy shit, I’d been doxxed, I’d been doxxed, I’d been doxxed .

And it wasn’t even the worst thing to happen to me this week.

I clutched the sunflowers uselessly against my chest as Fauna rushed to the television. She immediately began mashing buttons until she pulled up the same episode that had been cut short at Nia’s house.

“Fauna—”

“You didn’t even say thank you. Look what I got us! Because we’re—”

“We’re sunflowers,” I finished for her, accepting the newspaper-wrapped bouquet. I didn’t bother to ask how she’d paid for them. She was the sort of person I assumed walked down the street and received things for free. The paper crinkled as I hugged the loosely wrapped flowers to my chest.

“Your friends are lovely, by the way. Darius was a great cook. Nia and Kirby are both way cooler than you. I see why you like them. I don’t totally understand why they like you, though.”

My vision blurred. My life was crashing in around me from every direction. I couldn’t stop picturing Caliban behind bars, regardless of what her contact had said of his voluntary presence amongst their gods and goddesses. Our impending trip to the Phoenician realm filled me with terror. I didn’t want to go to Hell without him. I certainly didn’t want to be in Heaven. And now, after years of being careful, after years of protecting myself, the mortal room had been destroyed for me.

The Nordic realm was the only answer.

“Fauna, I know you love to make fun of me, but…”

Her face fell the moment she looked up at me. “Hey now…is this about Geoff Andrew Christiansen, at 1577 North Gold Coast, who goes jogging alone in the Lincoln Memorial Gardens every morning, passing the Chess Pavilion at roughly five forty-eight a.m.?”

“I…”

“I know I’m mean to you,” she said, “so I think you forget a few things. One: I’m smart, I’m capable, and I love you. And two: I’m a motherfucking goddess, and have very important friends on both your side and mine.”

“How did you…?”

“The less you know, the better. Now, can you leave this to me and come watch cartoons? In the words of the little boy: get your shit together, put it in a backpack, and take it to the shit store. Or, whatever he said. I’d know the line better if you’d let me listen.”

So I did.

I had Geoff to thank, in a way. Without his asshat fuckery, I wouldn’t have been able to force our timeline forward.

I gave Fauna space to giggle and snack through the rest of the episode while I grounded myself in the shower. I’d been doxxed. But so had he. He’d outed me to humans, yes. But in doing so, he’d outed himself to gods. I lathered my arms and legs with honey-scented bodywash as I let myself think of the best part of the evening.

My friends knew about Caliban. He was real, and now they knew it, too. Well, they knew a version of the truth, and for now, that was more than enough.

I stepped onto the cozy bath mat, scrunched the water from my hair, and wrapped a towel around my chest. I touched my hand to my heart and was surprised to find that it was still beating. I could do this. We could do this.

I left a trail of wet footprints from the bathroom into the living room and asked the most pressing question on my mind. “Does time pass at the same rate for the Nordes?”

She beamed at me. “Look who’s happy and clean! It’s good to see you smile. Thanks for trusting me. Now, onto the Nordes: you’re asking all the right questions, and I have no answer.”

I shook my head, uncomprehending.

“That’s the fun!” she sang. She seemed to have fully accepted that our new reason for visiting the Nordic realm freed her from breaking an oath. I’d been the catalyst for a glorious, painful loophole. Irreverent once more, she continued, “Sometimes no time passes at all. Sometimes a day. Or a week. Or a month. Some humans even wake up backward in time when they return to the mortal realm! Perhaps if we’re lucky, we’ll go see some Nordes and then pop back into the mortal realm like forty-five minutes before what’s-his-face makes his speech. Maybe he accidentally trips and falls on his way up the podium. Maybe, I don’t know, his head hits the corner of the stage in a super unfortunate way. Brain matter everywhere. So sad.”

I blinked, struggling to understand what she was saying. “But…you don’t know? There’s no way to tell?”

She rested her elbow on the back of the couch, propping her head in her hands as she said, “Well, not to the linear-minded. So, ready to meet your great-grandfather?”

“Definitely not.”

“That’s not a no,” she said brightly. “We leave in five.”

I looked around the apartment and wondered what I had to do, what I had to prepare, what I needed to get ready before disappearing. I was panicked, drunk, and my place was a mess. If I was leading the charge against Fauna’s initial advice, I needed a moment to pull myself together.

“Make it twenty.”

She laughed. “It’s an expression. We’re not going until the show is over.”

“I swear to god, this is the third episode in a row you’ve watched.”

“Welcome to binge culture, baby.”

A bright, animated blur of colors continued to fill the screen. The lasers, portals, and swirls of pink nonsense made it feel like I was watching a drug-addled fever dream.

“It’s a cartoon for stoners,” I said, slathering a thick layer of judgment over the final word.

“Because your body is such a temple?”

I looked at the show. She was right. I was still wasted.

She gestured pointedly at the television. “People love to learn about gods, right? Why not learn from the things we like? Maybe there’s a reason I’m obsessed with this cartoon.”

“Right, that would be in line with every other assumption I have about your very sane, reasonable choices.”

She gestured to the screen enthusiastically. “The makers of this show? Geniuses. I mean, they’re dickhead human men and I endorse nothing about their personal lives, but in terms of dimensions? It’s the closest you humans have ever come to understanding the fae realms. Everywhere! At all times! Everything! It’s infinity, Mar. I mean, they’re doing it for comedy, just like your show about couples marrying without seeing each other, or that one where no one cleans their house for ten years—one, because humans are stupid, and the other because they don’t get free medical help, and all the other things that make for good television in dystopian mortal society. But this cartoon allows for all of us. The old gods and the new, the human realms and the immortal. The blended and the—”

The two-dimensional figure belched with a beer in one hand and a science fiction tool in the other, and I couldn’t help but narrow my eyes at her infantile taste.

Undaunted, she went on, “Plus, the grandpa’s lines are brilliant. You know how I love a smartass.”

“Are you sure it isn’t that you relate to his issues with addiction?” I asked, snatching the chocolate bombs from her hand while the tiny cartoon grandfather downed another beer on the screen.

“Fair point,” she conceded.

“So, not five minutes?”

She looked at the clock, then back to me. “Five minutes is relative. Change into whatever you have that most resembles my day-to-day outfits so you blend in. We’re a relaxed bunch. And don’t touch my chocolate bombs. I’ll see you when the episode’s over.”