Chapter Fourteen
I was struck by how medical it smelled.
The chemical scents of astringent and dried blood filled my nostrils from the moment I stepped through the door. I’d expected dark rooms, leather jackets, skulls, and the sort of intimidating figure who might have stepped off the streets from a motorcycle gang. The music was a little too loud, but it was the sort of alternative rock I liked. Glass cases full of jewelry greeted me. Elaborate art dotted the walls. A girl with a swirly spike in her gauged ear and an inked sleeve of herbs and spices smiled at me as I entered. She was in a lovely shade of mustard and wore the sort of embellished, floral broach I’d seen only on grannies in their late nineties. She looked up from her phone and flashed me her teeth.
“Do you have an appointment?” she asked, voice chirping up over the bass that thrummed through the building, both music and receptionist fighting to be heard over the constant buzz from somewhere in the back.
“Do you take walk-ins?”
She nodded. “Can I see the size of your piece?”
I showed her and she offered me a reassuring look. “You’re lucky,” she said. “Nick is busy, but Mikey is scheduled for a regular who always shows up an hour late, and we’ve barely opened. He should be able to squeeze you in. But even if the piece only takes twenty minutes, we still charge one-hour minimum. Got it?”
She shouted for Mikey after my nod in confirmation. She slid a form for me to sign my life away before I lay down in Mikey’s chair. He examined the folded piece of paper.
“That wizard movie?” he asked.
I closed my eyes in a soft chuckle, making an on-the-spot decision as to whether or not now was the time to grandstand about ethical consumption of media. Instead, I landed on responding with, “Absolutely not.”
“Sacred geometry, then? One of those chakra things?”
I made an apologetic face. He was trying, but I wasn’t ready to be loose-lipped. “Not quite.”
“This some demonic shit?” he asked. Mikey was a man in his late thirties covered in a series of disconnected patchwork tattoos, not unlike someone collecting Girl Scout badges.
We were surrounded by paintings, prints, and charts, presumably from the artists who worked at the studio. Some were intricate mandalas or lovely watercolors; others were big-breasted purple women with horns poking up from their glossy hair in 1950s pinup poses. An enormous mural of the four horsemen of the apocalypse lined one end of the shop, showcasing a skeletal army of conquest, famine, war, and death. Maybe they’d be fine with devilry. I tore my eyes from the painting to look at the man who waited patiently for my answer.
I looked as nonchalant as I could. “It might be. Can you make the circle better? I did sort of a bad job.”
“Are there any other changes—”
“No!” I said a little too forcefully, jolting up as I did so. I made myself relax before lying back down. He raised his eyebrows at me, so I calmed my tone before saying, “The only thing I want perfected is the circle around it. Other than that, you can’t change a single thing. Not a line, not a shape, nothing. Okay?”
He shrugged as he dipped the needle in ink. “It’s your tattoo, boss.”
I swallowed as he lowered the humming piece of machinery to my arm, pausing on my forearm. He hovered on the flat spot just below my elbow crease.
“You ready?”
I didn’t know, truth be told. I’d gotten little splashes of ink before; that wasn’t the problem. The conversation-starting sun and moon on my opposing ring fingers that had connected Taylor and me on the streets of Buenos Aires had hurt, but the pain wasn’t stopping me.
This wasn’t a tattoo.
This was a folded piece of paper in the back of my pocket that had allowed me to see the Cheshire-cat smile of a parasitic entity. It was the sigil that had existed above my door for longer than I could possibly know. If Fauna was right, it was the very thing that had let me see Silas even in a basement of nightmares.
Maybe I’d need to bond myself to someone in order to lift the veil and see the things that existed beyond mortal sight…
Or maybe…
“I’m ready.”
“Remind me to make an adjustment to the wards so I can come and go. I did too good of a job on your doors and had to sweet-talk your doorman to let me up. On that note, he should probably be fired. He thinks pretty girls can’t be hitmen? Sexist.” It was Fauna’s greeting as she breezed in like a tornado. Her outfit was a little different today—now in a cutoff, oversize band T-shirt that showed most of her midriff and something that might have been mandalas on her pants. They hugged the small of her waist, then tumbled in loose, hemp crinkles over her hips until they reached the floor. She looked like she’d just stumbled out of a music festival. I had no idea where this creature was getting her clothes.
She’d barely entered the apartment, her stolen rose-gold card still clattering to the island, before her eyes sharpened. She sniffed the air once, then fixed her eyes on me with laser focus. She stormed toward me with the threat of a thunderhead, descending on me before I had enough time to do anything other than close my laptop and shove it on the cushion beside me.
She grabbed my wrist roughly and yanked the sleeve up over my elbow. I yelped against the yank of fabric on raw skin. Her eyes froze on the red, raised welt that stung below the fresh black ink. She stared at it for a long while with inscrutable emotion. When her eyes lifted, a small, appreciative smile tugged at the corner of her lips. She was quiet for a while before she said, “Maybe you’re not such a dumbass after all.”
“Will it work?” I breathed, looking from my swollen tattoo to her sparkling doe eyes.
“Lifting the veil without a bond? A true sight sigil still won’t let you jump realms, but when it comes to seeing things humans shouldn’t, there’s only one way to know. Shall we test it out?”
I barely had time to grab my purse from the counter.
“Where are we going?”
“Where’s your sense of adventure?” She grabbed my hand, and I followed in her wake as she tugged me from the building. The receptionist was an attendant from the original rotation and knew better than to interrupt my mayhem, so she said nothing as I was dragged through the lobby. Fauna led me to the parking garage and gestured impatiently for me to open the door. I obliged but frowned as I tapped the card to the garage.
“Can’t you bring me with you? When you go places, I mean?”
She looked at me uncertainly. “I can go, but you’d have to stay behind. And as long as you’re a person of interest for heaven, I don’t know how wise it is to leave you alone. I assume you got the tattoo to circumvent the bond so you can see shit? You’ll need an escort, but it’s smart work, ace. Still, unless you connect yourself to one of the fae, you can’t leave your kingdom on your own.”
“And oh, what a mighty kingdom it is,” I grumbled as I procured my keys. I unlocked the car and immediately regretted driving.
Fauna hadn’t lost an ounce of her enthusiasm for the radio, the windows, the hazard lights. She also seemed to get a kick out of reaching around me to yank on the wipers.
“You’re like a toddler! Stop touching things!” I smacked her hand as I eased out of the garage.
She gasped. “Excuse me! I’m a deity! You do not hit me; you worship me. Now, quick—make penance and I may yet be benevolent. I’ll accept your sacrifice in the form of sweets. Can we stop by a candy shop? You know chocolate-dipped strawberries? Where can we find one?”
My irritation dissolved into a stifled giggle. “You’re ridiculous.”
With a dainty shake of her head, she said, “You think I’m kidding. Just you wait until I bring pestilence and suffering on the land.”
I shot an unamused look over my shoulder as I took the on-ramp and changed lanes to head downtown.
“So, deity, where are we going?” I stopped her in the middle of her raised finger. “Other than strawberries. We can get those after you explain why you dragged me from the apartment. I assume we’re on our way to test out the sigil?”
“Oh, right. Give me your phone.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Give it to me!”
With no regard for either of our lives or safety, Fauna nearly caused a four-car pileup as she lurched into my pocket, causing me to jerk the wheel into the neighboring lane. I overcorrected with a white-knuckle grip on the wheel. An angry Escalade driver lay on their horn until Fauna flicked her fingers with annoyance. To my surprise, the noise stopped.
“Did you do that?” I asked.
“Get on your knees later, peasant,” she responded. “Now, what’s your password?”
“I’m not going to—”
“Oh! I don’t need it. You have a video call coming in.”
“Don’t!” But I didn’t have time to stop her. She’d already accepted the call.
“Holy sh—oh my god. Hi, hi!” sputtered the startled voice on the other line.
“Hi, Kirby,” I said dryly while I drove, not needing to see the screen to know exactly how poorly the interaction was going. “Meet Fauna.”
“Um”—Kirby coughed on the word—“I guess I caught you at a bad time. Nia said you had a friend and I thought we were being left out, but I see you’re busy, and, um.” They continued their flustered rambles. I could practically hear their shade of crimson through the pixels.
“Kirby!” Fauna beamed. “What a quirky name. It’s not one I’ve heard before, and I do love names. Thank you for giving me a new word on my tongue to play with.” Fauna winked.
“It’s not their real name.” I rolled my eyes. “It’s—”
“Tut, tut,” Fauna cut me off. “Chosen names are the only ones I’ll accept. Don’t be handing out things that aren’t yours to give.” I glared at the cars ahead while she prattled on. “But Kirby, be a darling and tell me, where can we find a confectionary? Will you search for an address and text it to me? Marlow is uncooperative.”
Kirby stammered. “You…you want me to find a candy shop?”
“One with chocolate strawberries, please and thank you. And make it close to downtown. We’re going to be in the arts district, just past the university.”
I arched a brow at Fauna’s knowledge of the city before shouting to my friend, “Sorry. She’s pushy. You don’t have to look up the address of a—”
Kirby had already found a location and begun to give detailed destructions.
“You’re an absolute treat,” Fauna cooed. “Thank you, peaches. I hope we get to meet soon. Now I have to hang up before Marlow commits deicide.” She ended the call and beamed at me from the passenger seat.
“Were you really just trying to get my phone to look up candy shop addresses?”
“I have a sweet tooth,” she pouted. “Plus, I’m doing you a favor. And you hit me.”
“I barely touched you.”
She ignored my rebuttal.
“Now,” Fauna said cheerily, “without being the rudest person alive and sharing a birth name, how did that doll come across the name Kirby? I’m still tickled. The only Kirby I’ve heard of was that round cutie from the show? Or the game? You know, the human game—”
I smiled sadly at the memory. “Yeah, that’s why they got their name.”
I changed lanes and appreciated Fauna’s uncharacteristic patience as she waited.
“It’s kind of a weird story. Are you sure you want to hear it?”
“We have time before our exit,” she said, “and what’s time for if not to collect stories?”
I made a face. I waited for a long moment, listening to the hum of the engine, the whir of the tires, and monitoring her perfectly still form from my peripherals before I released a weary breath. Eventually, I said, “It was my eleventh birthday, and it was a shitshow. I don’t want to go through all the details, but I wasn’t very popular growing up. I don’t know why I’d thought it would be a good idea to invite all the kids in my class, but only ten showed up.” I chuckled darkly, thinking of the seventy-two invitations I’d made on construction paper. I’d spent the entire day before decorating cupcakes with my mother and helping her clean the yard so we could play red rover or have balloon fights, with the naive optimism that the entire class might come.
“And you played the game?” she prompted, voice softening as she observed the slump of my shoulders.
I sighed. “Kind of. This girl, Nancy, she’d gotten me a present—well, her mom had gotten the present—and when I opened it, she decided she wanted it. It was a stuffed bear, and I told her she’d given it to me for my birthday and couldn’t have it back. It was mine.”
“Sounds like Nancy was a little bitch,” Fauna mumbled.
I agreed, “Yeah, but that didn’t stop my dad from spanking me in front of all of my friends while in my party dress for being selfish. Anyway, it freaked nine of them out so much that they called their parents to come pick them up. The party was over. I never celebrated my birthday again.”
Fauna’s jaw dropped. “Fucking gods and goddesses, Marlow. When you said it was a shitshow, I didn’t realize you were about to traumatize me.”
I urged the car to the right-most lane and shook my head, keeping an eye on the green exits. “It ended up being okay. Kirby was the only one who stayed. They’d brought their gaming system to the party, and we played that cartoon fighting game. I kicked their butt as ten different characters. As the princess, as the fox, as the spaceman—almost all of them. They chose the Kirby character over and over again. They had no fighting strategy. They’d just wiggle to the edge and try to spit me out. It was the only thing that made me laugh all day. And the next day when they called the house phone and my mom picked up, they said to tell me that Kirby was calling. Their nickname stuck.”
It was the longest I’d ever witnessed Fauna be silent. She remained perfectly still for a long moment before she said, “I’m sorry that happened to you.”
I shrugged as I’d been trained to do. One had to slough off tragedy quickly in order to keep conversation moving. “Pain builds character. Plus, we ended up dating a little in high school. Swapped v-cards and all that. But, it’s better this way. We’re more than friends now. We’re family.”
The skin around Fauna’s eyes crinkled as she smirked. “Of course, your best friend is an ex. I love queer culture.”
I kept my eyes on the traffic, smirking all the while. It was hard to argue. Staying friends after a breakup was something of a cliché. “Now, are you going to tell me where we’re going? Right now, I’m just angling my car toward—”
“Oh, shit, that’s right. Your trauma was distracting. Take the next exit. We need to pay a visit to a friend.”
I was surprised and confused when she told me to wait in the car, until I realized she’d tricked me into taking her to the sweets shop first. I narrowed my eyes at the box in her hand, but she wrinkled her nose at me and informed me that grouchy car companions don’t get strawberries.
The drive from the 1950s-style confectionary to her second destination wasn’t long. Ten minutes later, we were hunting for a parking place. Fauna enjoyed how easily traffic made me curse, delighted by each new obscenity as I searched for a place to parallel park, yelled at assholes in luxury vehicles, and told one man exactly what I thought he could do with his own mother. Finding an open place on the street in the arts district was impossible, and she still hadn’t told me why we were here.
Fauna practically leapt from the car before I’d even taken it out of gear.
“Grab the box!” she shouted as she took off.
I scrambled to unbuckle my belt and pour myself out of the car to yell at her, but she was already halfway down the block. I jogged to catch up just as she yanked open an aged, wooden door to what appeared to be a metaphysical shop. I paused just long enough to read the glass. Daily Devils had been stenciled over the window in large, gothic lettering. The shop had popped up over the summer in my searches for answers, but it had no online presence and hadn’t listed a phone number. I might have visited it on my own, given enough time and frustration. Now I trailed behind Fauna as the tinkling of an antique bell sounded our arrival.
Crossing the threshold meant stepping into a cloud of incense. I blinked against the smoke while searching trinkets and bobbles and shelves for the source, but it seemed to be coming from everywhere and nowhere. Bundles of juniper and sage, rows of candles, and stacks of crystals lined the window. Every wall was cluttered tightly with brown, green, blue, and clear bottles containing muted liquids, oils, powders, leaves, and herbs. Enormous, thick curtains had been draped from the ceiling in bundled tufts, giving me the sensation that I was somehow under deep, dark waves. I’d barely had time to take in the store as the shopkeeper came out from the back. The tight curls of her short, peppered hair were a shock of silver on warm features. Warm, brown skin was lined with her years, speckled with spots from age and the sun alike.
Fauna whipped off her sunglasses just as the shopkeeper’s face dissolved into a smile as radiant as the sun itself.
“Fauna!” She gasped, weathered hand clutching at her heart.
“Betty, you beautiful, perfect butterfly!” Fauna ran to the woman’s side and snuck behind the counter, wrapping her in a hug.
“My goodness, what are you doing here?” Betty asked. “I haven’t seen you in…what’s it been?”
Fauna looked off into the distance while she calculated. “Has to be…one hundred and thirty years?”
Betty’s eyes widened incredulously. “Has it really been that long?” She stepped out of the hug and beamed, slapping Fauna on the arm. “And yet here I am looking like an old bag of bones while you’re even lovelier than the day I met you.”
Fauna turned to me and said, “See? That’s how you talk to me.”
“She hit you too,” I muttered as I approached, fingers still wrapped around the cardboard box of fruit and sugar.
“I brought you presents!” Fauna said, glowing. She wiggled her fingers for me to hand over the box, then opened the top for Betty’s appreciative gasp.
“You remembered!” The woman sounded like she might cry while she eyed the strawberries.
“As if I could forget a single thing about you.” Fauna said, looping her arm through the woman’s bent elbow. “Betty, this is Marlow, my human tag-along. Marlow is a nitwit and has no hope of surviving in the world yet has somehow found herself in something of a conundrum. Marlow, this is Betty. Betty is perfect, has never done anything wrong, and is cooler than you’ll ever be.”
Betty’s eyes sparkled as she said, “You’re exactly as I remember you.”
I struggled to understand the sight before me, but that was nothing new. I’d had trouble coping with most of what had occurred over the last several days. “How do you two know each other? Does she also…?” I stopped myself from asking if Betty had fae parentage. I didn’t know what was and wasn’t polite.
“Betty freed one of my sisters. She was running her craft in a seaside town in…Svalsbard?”
“Tórshavn.”
“Gods and goddesses,” Fauna exclaimed, “that’s right! Time flies. Betty was in Arran two centuries ago. We are in luck that such a flawless treasure made it to your sorry city, Mar. Tell me, mythologist, why didn’t you include selkies in your first book?”
I blinked in surprise. “Your sister was a…selkie?”
Fauna made a show of frowning at me. Not just her mouth, but her brows, the shake of her shoulders, the pucker of her cheeks all underlined her glare. “Selkies! The first Pantheon novel was all about Norse mythology, but you couldn’t be bothered to include selkies?”
“They’re more Scottish folklore…” I began to argue but snapped my mouth shut as Fauna’s eyes became unimpressed slits.
“You’re bad at your job,” she told me matter-of-factly. “The Faroe Islands are every bit as part of the Nordes as I am. And if you know anything of selkies—”
I nodded, recalling the lore. “A human can hide their seal skin so they can’t return to the sea. It’s an old folktale people told to explain feelings about women being forced into marriages. It was a feminist tale.”
The matching faces of disappointment looking back at me had me biting my tongue.
“See, Betty? She’s hopeless. Yet here I am. And in need of a favor.”
Betty patted Fauna’s hand as she went to the shelves, scanning her bottles. “Anything for you, dear. Do you need something for your friend’s intelligence?”
Fauna snorted.
I opted to speak up for myself. “I’m looking for someone.”
The smug, self-assured look faded from Fauna’s features. She watched my face thoughtfully.
“A…a friend. No, he was more than that. He was…is…so much more than that. And I asked him not to come back, and…I need to undo it. I didn’t believe he was real when I said what I said. Not truly. I need…”
Betty turned to me, kindness in her eyes. She reached for me, clasping me in warmth as she held my hand with one of her own and covered it with the other. Tenderness coursed from her to me like the same warm honey I liked to stir into my coffee, turning bitterness into something sweet.
With a gentle frown, she said, “It’s a mistake you’ll have to learn from, Marlow. Names, commands, promises…they have power that those of us having a mortal experience don’t understand. Humans aren’t like fae, sweet one. We can lie. We can break our word. We don’t need consent. Some suggest that the human kingdom is the true hell, and I often wonder if they’re right.”
The incense suddenly became too strong. I struggled to see through the cloud of smoke before I realized it was just the glaze of my own impending tears. Betty was the first human I’d ever spoken to about Caliban, even if I hadn’t said his name—hadn’t said anything, really. She’d validated me. She’d recognized my experience and my pain all in one gentle piece of advice.
“Are you still working with Azrames?” Fauna asked. Her tone was gentle enough not to break my reverie, but there was a new edge to her question.
Betty’s happy smile returned. “Of course I am! It’s better in this lifetime than ever before. Business is abundant in the city. And the internet? I’m not even on the damn thing, but one client tells another tells another. It’s remarkable.”
Fauna propped her elbows against the counter and rested her chin on her hand as she looked at me, explaining, “Betty is one of the few witches I know who work with a demon. They make quite the team.”
I balked at the sentence. Imagining the bartering of souls and the gnashing teeth of hellhounds, I couldn’t stop myself from asking, “What could a demon want from a business partnership?”
Betty’s lip pressed into a line. She gave Fauna a look.
Fauna complied, albeit impatiently. “Marlow, why might a detective arrest a criminal?”
“Um…because it’s their job?”
I could tell she muttered idiot before trying again. Betty kept her polite chuckle to herself as Fauna continued, “It’s not just for the money. You know human psychology better than this. Tell me what a detective gets out of solving a case.”
“A sense of justice?”
Her face-framing curls puffed up in a cloud as she blew a dramatic huff of air. “Satisfaction. It’s an orgasmic satisfaction to know that you were responsible for solving something complicated, for cracking a code, for tackling malevolence. Now, humans barter mostly in money or materials, but a lot of fae prefer a different form of payment. Like devotion, or kindness, or pain.”
“He wants pain?”
“For the love of the deities, I cannot with this girl.” Fauna threw up her hands.
Betty sighed heavily. She looked at me seriously. “I help women. Mostly those in abusive relationships, be it with lovers or husbands or parents. They come to me when they’re in a bind, and Azrames gets the job done. The woman is set free, I pay my bills, and Azrames gets the victory of absorbing malevolence. The same way that a dam creates electricity from water or that we might get fire from wood. Malevolence does not feed malevolence. He’s paid by taking one thing and converting it into another. Something new. Something better.”
“Betty is the Patron Saint of Women,” Fauna said with the click of her tongue. She’d folded her arms over her chest and was leaning against the shelves. “You are the Patron Saint of Frustrating Everyone Around You.” Then to Betty she asked, “Would Azrames be willing to help us find Marlow’s Prince?”
Her brows lifted, eyes alarmingly clear as she tested, “When you say prince…”
“I mean Prince.”
Betty shuffled around the counter to lock the front door without another word. She flipped the sign from Open to Closed before beckoning us to follow her into the back room. I wanted to be alarmed at how quickly she’d reacted, but I had no basis for comparison. I picked my way through the shop, moving a curtain to the side as I ducked into her private office. I’d expected a round, velvet-clad table and a crystal ball but found merely a writing desk with a small, pretty—if a bit peculiar—altar. A number of candles, crystals, and one intricate, unfamiliar sigil decorated the space. A cup of tea sat on one side and a sealed, blue bottle of an unknown liquid rested on the other.
Betty lit a few of the candles. Low, ambient music continued to pipe through the shop. It wasn’t the relaxing spa music I’d expect from a yoga session or crystal store but, rather, the low, haunting pluck of a mandolin.
“Get the light, would you?” she asked Fauna.
The electric bulb winked out with the click of her wrist. Shadows filled any space that the orange glow couldn’t reach. Betty gestured for us to stand back. We gave her space while she closed her eyes and settled into a slow meditation. When she called to the demon, it was not unlike me calling a friend on the telephone. She spoke to him again with a calm, patient informality, then waited. Thirty seconds of nothingness passed. My nerves heightened as if every cell were on its tiptoes. I held my breath as one minute stretched into two. Three minutes, then five, then ten and still, nothing had changed. The anxiety must have been clear on my face, since a squeeze on my arm from Fauna urged me to remain silent.
Fifteen minutes passed before the candles flickered.
My sharp intake of air was the first noise in the room. There’d scarcely been an inch between me and the wall behind me, but I jolted so suddenly that my head hit the plaster as I stumbled backward, putting as much space between myself and the newcomer as I could.
A young man, scarcely older than Fauna, tucked his hands into his pockets at the far end of the space. My eyes struggled to adjust through the gloom, but aside from the yellow flicker of Betty’s flames, I could have sworn that the beautiful male was in monochromatic shades of black, white, and gray. He wore a black jacket rolled up at the forearms with a thin white shirt beneath. I swallowed, dragging my eyes away from the way the material left little to the imagination between the divots in his abs and curves of his pectorals. Large, thick silver chains in the form of one long rope lassoed into a single necklace, intermittently dotted with large, circular breaks in the chain. I’d intended to look only at the necklace, but my eyes traveled down the lowest rope to where a curious pendant—another circle with an interesting, complex sigil—hung just above the button of his pants. Even his steely skin was highlighted and shadowed as if he’d stepped from a world without color. Two obsidian horns, scarcely distinguishable above the youthful mess of his mussed, dark hair, poked up just above his temples.
“Hey, Az,” Fauna greeted. “How’s Hell?”