Chapter Eleven
“She’s one of ours,” said the lithe female shape stepping from the shadows. The living room flooded with the cloud of fresh-cut pine, a splash of the sea, and the tingling feeling one only encounters near ice. The loose fit of her burnt-red bohemian pants swished around her, clinging to the wide curve of her hips as she came forward. “I know you can smell it on her.”
Silas took a defensive step forward as if squaring up for battle. “Barely! It has to be, what, an eighth? If that?”
“It’s enough,” the woman said. She was too beautiful to be real, as if she’d emerged from a painting. She turned to me with both grin and apology as she said, “I’m sorry we had to meet this way. Cute place, by the way. I’m Fauna.”
She extended her hand as if I was meant to shake it, and my eyes bulged at the gesture. I struggled to keep from raking my hands through my hair, convinced the mad-scientist fluff wouldn’t make me look any saner.
“Who the fuck are you people!”
I could barely even look at the ethereal woman who stood in my room with supernatural grace and beauty. She was little more than curved lines and incomprehensible splashes of brass and diamond. None of it made sense. Part of me longed to slip into ignorance once more. It would be so much nicer to resume believing they were fictional.
Silas muttered to me, “Told you there might be something in your closet.”
The woman shot him the middle finger before offering me a sympathetic pout.
I must have looked as shell-shocked as I felt.
Fauna’s icy white hair was divided by a block of copper. Her pale skin was smattered with freckles of both ginger and pearl. She did indeed look every bit her namesake, like a baby deer had shifted into beautiful human skin with an attitude. She folded her arms over her chest and sank her weight into a hip. I was caught between the desire to throw on all the lights to soak in every detail and the gratitude that only the hall light and orange glow from the city illuminated the parties before me.
“This isn’t how I wanted to see you again,” he said to the woman called Fauna.
“And I’m not convinced I wanted to see you at all.” She blew on her nails as if banishing dust, then extended her five fingers, examining her handiwork.
“I like what you’ve done to your hair,” he said. And I couldn’t tell if his tone was mocking or sincere.
She winked as she said, “Of course you do. Change is fabulous. I’ll take it from here, Silas.”
He planted his feet. “She said she wanted—”
“Let me tell the story, sweetheart,” Fauna said to Silas, waving for him to stop talking. Rotating to me, she explained, “Silas here went back to his overlord after your little encounter.” She looked back at the man and narrowed her eyes into predatory slits. “Oh, you don’t think we know already? Don’t be thick.” She returned her gaze to me as she said, “Anyway, his power-hungry divine was thrilled to hear that such a curious human wanted to bond to his special angel.” Her fingers tapped against her bare arms impatiently as she continued. “It would have been so convenient to have the Prince’s favorite plaything bound to you. Your master would have loved that. Take the time you need to lick your wounds. We applaud the effort, but she’s ours.”
“We have a claim to her.” His retort was like metal sharpened over iron.
Fauna guffawed, gesturing for him to reconsider his words. “What claim! That she asked you first out of desperation? Listen, sweetie, blood is thicker than empty wishes.”
A muscle ticked in his jaw. His bright, golden eyes darkened into a flat shade of cold amber as he said, “We have a claim from infancy. She was dedicated.”
I could have sworn Fauna rolled her eyes so hard that it made a popping sound. “Your master makes such a fuss about free will but sends out his little slaves to make more little slaves and have newborns undergo ceremonies, or splash some water or sign life-debt contracts for him long before they know their own name. She’s made no such dedication.”
Through clenched teeth, he pressed, “She didn’t have to. As a baby—”
“Give it a rest.”
I couldn’t decide who to look at. My vision swung between them like the clacking, pendulous silver balls of Newton’s cradle, unable to fix on either. They were discussing me? And what did it have to do with my childhood? I looked between the couch, the blank TV, the island. I wondered how long it would take me to run to my bedside table and what cocktail of meds would bring me back to reality.
“This isn’t your fight, Fauna,” he said, doubling down.
“I disagree.”
Silas hedged, trying a new tactic altogether. “Tread lightly. I don’t think the Nordes want to get involved. It’s not your war.”
She scoffed, though even her sarcasm kept a light, airy tone. With a voice like starlight, she said, “How about you let us decide what we do and do not want to involve ourselves in, mmkay?”
In the time I’d known him, Silas had worn a few masks.
He had been baffled when I’d first connected with his gaze many months ago. He’d bristled with agitation when standing between me and the pulpy remnants of the Cheshire cat. The self-assured look he’d worn into my apartment had vanished as a new frustration painted his features.
He locked onto me, burrowing through my glaze of confusion with eyes, which burned like matching halos. “Marlow, you wanted to see beyond the veil? I can do that. You want powerful angelic allies? I can offer that. You want—”
The word didn’t just trigger me. Fauna reacted as my stomach churned.
“‘Angelic’! Okay, we’ve had enough of you. Your would-be pawn and I have some catching up to do.” Fauna laughed at the heavenly moniker as she set to work. She planted her hands against his chest and shoulder, shoving him through the door. “Out you go! I have a long-lost citizen to talk to.”
Thieves’ oil and sea spray, masculine and feminine, frankincense and pine, angel and other, they were glitter and glow sandwiched between the kitchen appliances and the electronics of my very human living room. I tried to swallow, only to realize all the moisture had evaporated from my mouth.
I wondered if they’d notice if I reached around to pinch the bare flesh of my arm. Once. Twice. I had to have fallen asleep in the back of a cab after I left Nia’s, tumbling from one bizarre nightmare into another. I bit down on the inside of my cheek, hoping for a similarly rousing effect, wishing this were a dream.
Nothing changed, save for the painful rush of iron as blood filled my mouth.
Fauna gave Silas a hard push while I remained statue still, mere steps from my front door.
Silas was her physical superior in every way. He was nearly three times her size and knit entirely of battle-ready muscles. It certainly wasn’t force that urged him from the door. He planted his feet as he made his final plea. “Citizen is right,” he said, latching on to the last thing she’d said as he petitioned me for my attention. “Fauna is barely more than a civilian.”
“You’re one to talk,” she bit, teeth clenched as she pushed.
He had eyes only for me as his tone switched to pleading. “Let me take you into this, Marlow. You’ll enter the veil with a substantially higher ranking, access you can’t even imagine. You don’t know what you’re giving up if—”
“Hush” was all Fauna said as she gave him a hard, final shove. Even in her exertion, there was something intangibly mesmerizing about every move. When Silas’s feet crossed the threshold, he did not stand in the hall. The man vanished altogether.
I stared after the empty particles where he’d been as the door swung shut.
She slumped against the closed door and breathed in relief. “Useful sigils—true sight, that is. I haven’t seen that particular bit of art in the better part of a thousand years. The Prince’s idea, I’d guess?”
I stared at the gorgeous, chaotic creature.
“The Prince?” I repeated, devoid of comprehension.
Fauna cocked her head curiously. I struggled to look back, too overwhelmed by her celestial beauty. She took a few appraising steps toward me. When my face betrayed no connection, hers lit. “Are you to tell me you don’t…no, no, of course. That makes a lot of sense. We’d wondered why you hadn’t taken his offer. Sure, sure, he’s not one to brag. Though it would be easier for everyone if he had.”
She stepped away from the wall and slid onto the cream couch with ghostly grace. She patted the seat beside her, offering my own sofa to me. Every tap of her hands reminded me of the tinkling of silver bells.
Despite her effortless elegance, she remained utterly nonchalant.
“I don’t think I want you to be real,” I said to the embodied dream.
She rested an elbow on the back of the couch, relaxing her head onto her fist. Her lips quirked into a tilted smile as she asked, “Would you prefer this to be in your imagination?”
I squeezed my eyes shut and I said, “What I prefer doesn’t matter. I’ve been desperate to get back to Caliban, to access this world, but you…you can’t be real.” I opened my eyes, and yet she remained.
“I have evidence to the contrary, sweet pea. Come sit by me.”
“Who are you?” I asked. And because I didn’t know what else I could possibly do, I complied, quietly taking a seat several cushions away.
Despite her loveliness, a threatening undercurrent told me that if she wanted, she could rip my esophagus from my throat with a single snatch. The only thing I could do was ask my questions and hope for the best.
“I’m Fauna,” she repeated. “I’m…hmm. I’m trying to decide which words might strike a chord with you. What did you study again?”
Was she asking me about my college major? I’d forgotten entirely. I wasn’t even sure I remembered my own name. Between the shock in the basement and the baffling events that had unfolded in my living room, I wasn’t positive I could identify tits from toes.
Finally, a semi-intelligent thought came to me.
“Double major,” I responded reflexively. The normalcy of the question caught me off guard as I recited an answer I’d given a million times, from panels to interviews to first dates that went nowhere. “Literature and linguistics. With concentrations in Spanish and Nordic studies.” Would she ask for my résumé next?
She flashed a starlit smile at that and asked me in Norwegian, then Swedish, then Icelandic which of the Scandinavian languages I spoke. She lost me when she switched to Old Norse, though I caught most of her words, even if I couldn’t respond.
“How many more could we do? Faroese? Finnish? Danish?”
“I can read Danish,” I said. “I didn’t touch any of the others.”
She tilted her head to the side, silver and copper tumbling over her shoulder, the shortest layers pooling near her collarbone as the rest tumbled below her breast. “Isn’t it lovely, how the blood calls to you? Here you are in the godforsaken American Midwest, and—forgive me if I’m wrong, but—your mother gave up her language, right?”
I dipped my chin numbly. It was true. My mother had wanted only English spoken in the house. The more she rejected our heritage, the deeper I’d dug in my heels. My grandmother had been delighted when I’d been able to hold a conversation with her at long last. My mother’s chagrin was an emotion I’d never truly understood, but I also hadn’t tried. Everything I did was disappointing to her.
I opened my mouth to ask Fauna how she knew about my mother but closed it again wordlessly. I wasn’t about to win a Pulitzer for my journalism anytime soon, as I couldn’t form a coherent thought beyond reverting to denial. If she truly was a product of my imagination—which I still wasn’t sure whether or not I hoped she was—then she’d know anything I knew.
“I can’t blame her,” Fauna said. “I’m sure the things she thought and felt were very scary for her. Generally, we like to leave humans with distant fae blood to their own devices. Unless, of course, some angelic asshole is trying to bond with a Norde just to fuck with the Prince.”
Her sentence was a word salad, so I took a stab at the piece I understood.
“Are you saying you’re fae?” I asked.
She offered a half-shrug. “Me, Silas, the Prince—what’s fae besides a word you’ve used to help understand facets of the preternatural?”
“Preternatural?” I repeated.
She made a sound of controlled patience. “Preternatural is for something beyond what is expected, which, for humans, we are. Supernatural is what humans prefer to use when talking about us, but it’s simply inaccurate. It’s a word for things beyond the natural, which the realms find rather egotistical of humanity. As if you’re the determining factor on what is and isn’t natural.”
“And…what exactly are you?”
Curls cascaded over her shoulder as she tilted her head. She chewed her lip for a moment. “Fae is fine as a catchall. I’m closer to what you’d consider an elf, I guess. Skogsr? is the technical term in our pantheon, but no one seems to know it. Basically, I’m a god you don’t care very much about. Maybe a nymph, if you’re using Greek…which, given your literary career, I suspect you might. Humans have created all sorts of nifty little words to help compartmentalize their understanding of our kingdoms. Like angels.” She said the word again and giggled. She surveyed the apartment as if seeing it for the first time. “I know I said your place was cute, but damn! What the hell do you do with a literature degree that affords a place like this?”
“I…I write books,” I said. “The Pantheon series…and before that…well…”
“Gods, we know you write; we just didn’t know it paid this well. I read the first one, mostly to see if you mentioned me. I was gravely disappointed with how you described álfheimr and equally disappointed that I was not your main character. But, all is forgiven. Wait, why the face?”
She studied me for a minute before recognition clicked.
“Oh! Money! Jobs! The sex work? We know about that, peanut. Congratulations, by the way. There isn’t a deity alive who doesn’t use sex as a form of worship—oh, no, I’m wrong. Silas’s owner has very particular ideas about sex. I wonder if that’s why all of his angels have sticks up their asses. They need to get laid.” She got to her feet and wandered to the neat line of books that had my name emblazoned on the spine. She plucked one from the row and smiled. “I suspect you have the Prince to thank for this, too.”
I didn’t have to ask what she meant, as it was a reflection of my own insecurity. I’d never believed I’d deserved success. There was no such thing as luck, after all.
“Well, shall we?”
I frowned. “Shall we what?”
She plopped my book to the table and gave me a tired look. “You nearly bound yourself to an angel so that you could see beyond the veil.” Fauna wiggled her fingers, hand extended toward me. “Are we bonding, or what?”
There it was again. That miserable lightning bolt through my core at her use of the word. Angel. Years of fists on pulpits, of fear of eternal damnation, of verses and pews and water and communion made me recoil. I realized it wasn’t that I wanted her to be fake. I’d been willing to accept hidden people and folk tales. I was ready for witches. But the church-heavy language had triggered something within me. I needed it to be fake. If angels were real, did that mean my mother had been right about everything? The stitches I’d sewn up around my childhood began to burst, every memory threatening to spill out as I stared at Fauna, quite certain I was going to be sick.
“Now?”
Her face twitched into wry amusement. “Do you have something better to do? From my understanding, you were so desperate to step into the veil that you tracked down a murderer, and from the smell of it, you encountered his attachment. Unpleasant little fuckers, aren’t they? But this tells me either that you’re dumb or that you’ve already let go of whatever expectations you had for this life. Knowing the company you’ve kept, I sure as hell hope it isn’t the former.”
My throat worked, struggling to swallow as if I’d taken a large pill without water. My heart stuttered arrhythmically as I examined her awaiting palm.
“My friends? My life? My job?”
“It’s not going anywhere. Come and go…if you want.”
I got to my feet uncertainly and looked at her patient hand, as still as a marble statue. I had seen hundreds of deer in my lifetime, even those yearlings with the red and white spots that I spied across her now. They’d frozen with the same unnatural stillness available only to something that had survived a lifetime of being hunted. Yet she had not treated the angel as if she were a creature of prey.
I looked beyond her into the pockets of shadow within the apartment, wishing Caliban would step out. But he wouldn’t be saving me from this decision. I was on my own.
“What will it be like?” I whispered.
She looked up into her memories, eyes wide and doe-like as she searched for an appropriate response. “Have you ever woken up from a dream and struggled to remember what was real? Sometimes it takes you a few moments to gather your bearings, to collect yourself, to come back into the present?”
I nodded.
“That moment upon waking, but forever.”
“That sounds awful.”
Fauna tsked. “And I assume you knew there would be drawbacks. Why else would you have spent nearly three decades of this life saying no? Though I guess, given your apartment and your success, your human life must be pretty satisfying. Live deliciously and all that.” Her hand fell to her side.
“No,” I replied. “It’s not.”
Her sparkle returned. She winked. “Most humans spend their lives asleep to reality. What do you say, Marlow? Are you ready to wake up?”