Chapter 1 #2
My dress can be thrown on over my blouse.
Or Nora’s blouse, which I’ve stolen to look presentable.
Then I’ll shimmy the blouse down and off.
No, wait—it could snag on the dagger strapped to my ribs.
Britannia silver would eviscerate the blouse, and Nora would eviscerate me.
Luckily, only I inherited the hunter gene from my father, otherwise that wouldn’t be a joke.
I’ll unbutton the blouse first and pull it through my dress’s neckline.
Pants always come off last, even after shoes, meaning there will be an unavoidable period of time in which I am barefoot on the Astera subway.
Vile, but alas—the things we do for love.
Thankfully, by the time I’m ready for my acrobat-level quick-change maneuver, the railcar’s crowd has thinned out a bit.
Probably because we’re heading farther and farther south toward the Chasm.
Nobody from up here goes down to Babylon, the neighborhood where Penny and I live.
Especially not at this hour—assistants at the Windsor rarely leave before eight.
After graduating from Belaire, I didn’t quite have the GPA to attend a decent college. My mother was beside herself, of course, but it’s not like I could tell her I missed half my finals because a vampire was drinking his way through the city’s strip clubs.
After my gap year became gap years, I’d wanted to apply to entry-level jobs at photography galleries.
There’s a smattering of cool ones in Babylon, but—to nobody’s shock—my mom was not jazzed about that idea.
I think she said something like I didn’t spend every dollar I had on Belaire so you could look at other people’s pictures for a living.
However, Nora’s wife, Fiona, stepped in a year ago and offered me a job as her assistant. She’s the Windsor’s head curator, which basically means she’s a history buff who gets to travel the globe, say the word gala a lot, and wear high, clacky heels every day.
As the subway car moves over the Erebos Bridge across the Chasm, my bags begin to slide.
Despite having a cocktail dress currently overhead, I save them from escaping with my outstretched foot, like it’s a frog’s tongue on an errant fly.
For a rare moment in which my tampons and sweaty Pilates clothes don’t spew onto everybody’s shoes, I am awash in warm appreciation for my heightened hunter reflexes.
Though I pray the second dagger strapped to my thigh didn’t poke through my slacks. I can’t afford another pair this month.
Eventually, the dress is on, loafers replaced by sensible heels, and there are no injured subway citizens to show for it.
My eyes find my shoes, and I twist my ankle for a better look.
In my head, my mom says, A stiletto wouldn’t kill you.
In-my-head-me replies to her, Actually, it might.
Have you ever chased down a demon in a six-inch?
Two sprained ankles have taught me that a platform heel is the only way to go.
I peer up at the remaining stops ticking away on the digital banner. Three more until Babylon. I check my hair using my phone camera and pull the long night-black strands into a low bun. Smooth my brows. Examine my teeth. The phone reads 8:51.
Dinner was at 8:00. I can probably be through the doors of Cobwebs by 9:07, which isn’t too terrible for me. Maybe Penny won’t even notice.
The smell of bacon pulls a growl from my stomach. A woman at the end of the railcar is munching a breakfast burrito with one hand as she holds on to a double stroller with the other. Her eyes are drooping closed as she chews.
A breakfast burrito at 8:00 p.m.—my kind of lady.
I reach into my bag and grab my half-frame camera to discreetly snap a shot of the mom and her burrito. There’s exhaustion there but also the joy of a perfect bite when you need it most. It’s incredibly human, and, as I often try to remind myself, so am I.
The train slows to a halt and a few more passengers file in and out. One stop left. Thank the lord.
“They’re sleeping, so…” the mom says. When I peer back over, a man in a grease-stained jumpsuit is scooting closer to her, asking to see her kids. He’s shifty—eyes darting here and there, scratching hastily at his arm. I hear the noise like his nails are inside my brain.
Scratch, scratch, scratch.
I try to tell myself he’s just a poppy addict or a mugger from STC—South of the Chasm.
But then shivers break out across my skin, and my heart sinks.
I can almost hear kind, forgiving Penny ordering a red wine for me and saying to the waiter, “She’ll be here any minute…
She has a really demanding job.” I wonder if they already sang her happy birthday.
But this scratchy, shifty man is no junkie nor mugger. I know it immediately, like realizing I’ve crushed a beetle underfoot. The vibration beneath my skin. The gut-twisting desire just as insistent as it was back then.
My stop finally arrives: 14 Babylon. I watch as the rest of the passengers file out.
Goodbye, you lucky bastards.
The metal subway doors close, and now it’s only me, Burrito Mom, and a demon.
My two silver daggers tingle pleasantly against my skin, and I stand, grateful for my sensible heels.