Chapter Thirty-Three
I can only assume Azrames meant to make a better first impression on the Prince of Hell, but the moment he saw my face, he burst out in a laugh so cruel that I wanted to punch him. I had the worst case of blue tubes in the history of womankind, and I was ready to make it everyone else’s problem. “Now is not the time to fuck, Marlow” and “We have a goddess to defeat and a sigil to break” and “Stop trying to stroke my dick or I’m going to make you pay for it later” were followed by “Now I’m going to make you pay for it much later and add a new day of deprivation every time you’re difficult.”
I’d stomped like a brat from the hotel room to the lobby, which I knew Caliban found infuriatingly charming. I could feel his grin all the way behind me as I blazed an angry, sex-denied trail to where my partner in crime undoubtedly waited. Azrames was on the computer when I walked in. He jumped to his feet and choked on his laugh, doing his best to swallow down the particularly rude brand of humor he saw in my pain. Despite his best efforts, I could still see it brimming in his eyes like tears as I glowered.
I threw an angry, introductory hand between them.
“Az, meet the Prince of Hell. I call him Caliban, but I’m thinking of changing his name to Cocktease. Caliban, this is Azrames. He’s the Patron Saint of Women, or something.”
Azrames cleared his throat and made a tense bow. “Correction: I work with the Patron Saint of Women. She’s called Betty in this cycle. I can’t take credit for her work.”
Even under the ugly, flickering lights, both men could have been gods on the runway. Az’s skin should have been greenish in the light, but alas, I doubted the man ever had so much as a bad hair day. And Caliban…well, I was still pretty frustrated over how badly I wanted him to rip off my clothes. Looking at him now, chiseled from starlight itself, I had trouble staying mad. Still, there was work to be done, though being sandwiched between two of Hell’s finest made focusing a challenge.
If the men saw the drool dripping from my lower lip, they pretended not to notice.
Caliban’s brow lifted. He tasted the name. “Azrames… Did you go by Farefax in the first century? I want to say it was until…”
Az’s face lit. “Ten sixty AD! Yes!”
I folded my arms over my chest. “Have you two met?”
Azrames looked like he’d met a celebrity. His glow was almost sweet enough to distract me. Almost.
“No, no. I was still going by Farefax when I met Fauna in the Viking Age.”
Pride glinted off of Caliban’s smile. “You were well known and deeply valued. I was wondering why I hadn’t heard anything.” He extended a hand.
Az’s eyes widened.
Caliban fought an obvious smirk at Azrames’s reluctance to take his hand. After a comical pause, the men shook.
“I already liked you, Farefax, but now that I know you’ve been taking care of Marlow and know her Norde—”
“Know,” I snorted. “Oh, sorry. He knows her in the biblical sense.” I giggled at my own joke as I looked between the demons. “Anyway, they’re star-crossed lovers. I’m not totally sure what Fauna is to me, other than my sugar-addled bully of a Nordic nymph, but apparently Hell and the Nordes have excellent…relations.”
Caliban’s smile remained as he released Azrames’s hand. “Hell has good relations with all realms but one. We’re either lauded as partners or politely ignored, which is how we like it.” He jutted a thumb to the catatonic clerk staring blankly at the wall over our shoulders. The man hadn’t so much as blinked since we’d entered. “That your handiwork?”
Azrames dipped his chin. “Indeed, it is.”
Caliban clapped him on the shoulder once. “Then I know he deserved it.” He frowned, then slipped his arm around my waist as if to comfort himself. It seemed to work, if only slightly. “This isn’t how I imagined the day Love finally wanted to end her mortal cycle, but alas, here we are, and we have a lot of day ahead of us. Shall we stick around this little haven? Or do you want to meet the Phoenician goddess standing between us and a good time?”
It was my turn to frown. “Could you two do what Fauna does? Step into mortal bodies?”
They exchanged looks. Azrames shook his head. “I can’t speak for the Prince, but I don’t have that ability. I’m strictly behind the veil, as you’d say—between your sigil and fae blood, you’re the exception, Marmar, not the rule. Nymphs and the like are known for the corporeal forms. Fauna’s lucky that way.”
Caliban nodded slowly. “I can, but I don’t think it’s a good idea. I…stand out. Right now, we’re trying to evade the public eye.”
“Won’t the goddess be able to see you?” I asked.
“Undoubtedly. But I’ve kept a low profile so far, and we don’t need the entire town buzzing about it before we get there.”
As I was the only human visible to the public eye, I would, of course, be driving. I escorted us to our beat-up chariot. Caliban opened my door whether or not the world around us noticed, which made me bite my lip.
He was real, he was real, he was real.
I would never get sick of those three words.
He leaned across my lap and buckled my seatbelt for me before closing the door, and I knew it had little to do with my safety. I couldn’t speak for my other lifetimes, but I’d never let him interact with me outside of the darkened shadows of my dream-like states in this age. I’d never given him free rein over me. He was making up for lost time. He wanted to touch me every bit as badly as I wanted to touch him.
Azrames, to his credit, was the sort of person—demon, entity, fae—who could be comfortable in any situation. Normally, in such close proximity, I’d be able to smell his smoke. Instead, there was only the fresh perfume of the forest. Az slid into the back while Caliban took the passenger’s seat, relaxing his hand behind my headrest as I pulled out of the motel and pointed the compact car toward downtown.
Once again, I found myself disturbed by Bellfield’s too-perfect charm. I glared at each grassy hill as if it were my personal enemy, blaming every uniform blade of grass for what it had done to Caliban—and simultaneously faulting it for the reason I couldn’t get laid. I couldn’t fathom what stories the residents told one another as to why their city had the most bizarre landscaping in North America. Maybe they thought it was quirky to live in a blessed, lush small town with perfect weather and a cornucopia of produce every season. Perhaps they’d grown attached to their little dots and lines and bumps.
I frowned as I drove, listening to Caliban’s cool delivery of driving instructions with one part of my brain while contemplating the seal with the other.
While it had taken a minute to see it on the satellite image, I knew that we lived in a day and age where most people had searched their home from space at one time or another. Airplanes existed throughout the state, even if Bellfield lacked a major airport. I’d been warned about the orchard, but the grain fields had to require agricultural planes. Surely, people had to have seen how peculiar the shapes were from the top down.
“What’s on your mind, Love?”
I blinked twice. The first was over my surprise that he’d been able to read my emotions, and the second was that I’d been dense enough to be surprised. He knew me better than anyone, in all forms and shapes and lifetimes.
Without fighting the logic, I exhaled and shook my head. “The residents—the humans, that is—they can’t be ignorant to this shape. It’s enormous. It’s unmissable. And even if it just looks peculiar from the ground-level, it’d be ignorant to assume none of them had seen it from the air. What story have they been told?”
I looked up into the rearview mirror in time to see Az’s eyes darken.
Apparently, I’d brought up an excellent point.
We didn’t have time to discuss the answer before Caliban gestured toward the sort of driveway that could have existed in a horror movie about a haunted asylum. Except…it wasn’t. While the gate was wrought-iron and protected by gargoyles, and though the ostentatious fountains, exorbitant stonework, and manicured lawn hearkened back to old money, the building was entirely modern. Sterile, even.
I was suddenly aware not just of how cheap the car looked but of how poor I looked.
I’d grown up in poverty. I was used to the looks, the sneers, the sniffs as someone told me with their eyes that I wasn’t worthy to breathe their air. I’d left that life behind the moment I’d met Taylor and sworn never to return. I should have been pulling up in my Mercedes while wearing clean, bespoke lines. I wished Ianna had dressed me for this place. Instead, I was still in a thin tee, leggings, and the button-up of a filthy motel clerk. His compact car was the icing on the cake. It was the trailer park all over again.
We idled three rows from the entrance and eyed the building.
Wild Prairie Rose: A Venus Clinic.
“It’s a hospital?” I asked breathlessly as I stared at the building. It had to be ten stories high and made of steel and glass. It angled out with sharp, modern architecture. Even from the parking lot, I could see the elaborate art within the lobby—the only floor that had not been mirrored for privacy. It wanted to be seen.
“It’s a private fertility clinic,” Caliban said quietly. “One of the most exclusive in the country.”
Venus. I pictured a naked woman, covered only by her impossibly long hair, standing in a clam shell while angels and humans alike tended to her. The second pantheon novel, Kingdoms of Salt and Sand, had been a conflation of Greek and Roman mythology. Venus was the goddess of love, beauty, desire, and, of course, fertility.
The breath left me as I remembered Dagon’s words. I repeated them quietly. “Astarte. She is called the one who conceives but does not bear.”
Caliban nodded gravely. “She’s a fertility goddess.”
My heart was doing odd things in my chest as I looked into the rearview mirror to see Azrames’s pained expression. The Phoenician had an element of violence that her Roman counterpart did not. I looked to my companion for confirmation. “Sex, love, and war, right?”
Caliban squeezed my hand. “I don’t know if I can let you go in there.”
I stared back into his silver eyes as I remembered the uncomfortable way the fish god had eyed me as he’d told me I was just her type. “Her priestesses were prostitutes,” I said, hating the way the word felt on my tongue. We’d barely begun to call it sex work in the modern era. She wouldn’t see it any other way.
I threw the car into reverse and left the grounds faster than either of the men could blink. I gritted my teeth as I pushed my foot to the accelerator.
“Love—”
“Mar—”
“If I’m just her type? Then it’s time to live up to the role.”
I’d spun out of the clinic and torn through the town, Monaco Grand Prix style.
I scrubbed from head to toe in cheap hotel soap, then wrapped myself in a towel, hair still dripping as I used the room’s phone.
“Hi, Venus Clinic? Yes, my name is Merit Finnegan. Mhmm. Yes! I’m glad you love the series. Oh, yes, it’s always so fun to meet a fan. Mhmm. I’ve just popped into town and would love to be seen. No, it has to be today. Yes, I understand she’s very busy. Would you be a doll and give her my name? Tell her who I am and then see if she still needs me to make an appointment.”
I stepped back into my filthy clothes and raked my hair out with my fingers, leaving the phone wedged between my ear and shoulder. Classical music scored my short wait until the receptionist was back on the line.
I used Merit’s clout and Maribelle’s authority as I said, “Oh, how kind of her to extend office hours. I’ll be there at five on the dot. Yes, yes. That’s right, South American lore. Oh, thank them for me! That’s so sweet. Mhmm. Yes, yes. All right. I’ll see you at five.”
My escorts asked no questions as I led the charge. The men talked quietly to each other—whispered battle plans on angels and Phoenicians and fertility—but seemed most interested in what I was doing as I marched them from the motel and back to our car, eyes set in determination. We were at the precipice of something terrible, and here I was, leading the charges. They kept curiously quiet as I navigated through the town.
I parked and walked past three shops until selecting one that looked precisely pretentious enough to be monochromatic and overpriced.
The saleswoman may have narrowed her eyes at me when I’d entered the store, but it took one moment of my posture and bored superiority complex for her face to flash with attentiveness. I was a veteran to the game. Excuses were weakness. If I wanted to enter her establishment with wet hair and my tits out, that was her problem. I put her in her place with a look that could drop the temperature in any room. I flicked out my card, holding it nonchalantly between two fingers.
“I need two changes of outfits, a bag, and black heels.”
“Price range—”
I sneered as if her question offended me.
“Right away, ma’am.”
“And your perfume?”
She gave me a worried look.
“Do you have anything that smells less…cheap?”
I’d appraised the town well. The picturesque qualities reminded me of my findom days in the upper-class resort town of Vail—of meeting wealthy clients on their wealthy ski chalets while their wives and children waited at home. They’d buy me cashmere and order the nicest vintage and I’d play the role required, holding their elbows as we walked from shop to shop, each more exorbitantly priced than the last. The more money I spent, the more important they felt.
This town may not have been surrounded by mountains, but I understood its bones. It was built on prosperity; whether through the blessing of an ancient god or the exclusivity of a wealthy clinic, money flowed through the city. Perhaps Azrames and I had found the only shitty motel in the entire vicinity simply for the long-term rentals of the staff employed by the elite. The Bellfield Inn reminded me more of my childhood than any kid wanted to admit. But even the poor needed a hovel to be shoved into so that the affluent could wander about prosperously.
The jewelry shop gave me the same disgusted look when I entered, which changed to profuse apology when I picked out the first pair of diamond-encrusted pearl of earrings and handed them my black, metal card with no expense limit. Maribelle’s expression remained on the razor’s edge of dark and bored.
“Shall I wrap them up?”
“I’ll wear them out,” I said coldly.
The ATM around the corner sucked up my card and spat out my cash advance before returning my precious piece of metal. Fortunately, the blowout bar and makeup artist down the street required neither appointment, nor attitude adjustments. It was the sort of place that played pop music, painted yellow geometric shapes on the wall, and had Blow Me in neon pink scrawled across the far wall. They pushed a mimosa into my hand as I took a seat. I assumed the ambience was a pandering way for the well-to-do women of Bellfield to recapture their vitality.
My need to talk down to snobs would never extend to those in the service industry. That’s what sex work was, after all, and we had to stick together. I dropped the act while my hair was shampooed, blown out, and curled, chatting away while my face was painted. While I didn’t regret buying the overpriced perfume from the saleswoman, the gentle scents of cucumber that had gone into my scalp massage were more my preference. We kept it light, funny, and open as we gabbed about the world. Everything was honest, save for my name and the date of the information. I had them call me Maribelle, and we discussed my life and theirs right up until I left the country for South America. Before that, I was just one of them.
While my stylist gave me the spiel about how long she’d been pressuring her boyfriend for a ring, it made me examine my own nails. I wished I had time for a fresh manicure, but time was of the essence. Fortunately, my existing gel manicure, though a bit grown out, was unchipped and clean.
I caught Caliban’s eyes any time I wasn’t looking at my stylist. I ate up his look of approval like it was oysters and fois gras and caviar.
He loved every second of it. He leaned against the polished shampooing sink in his short-sleeved shirt of darkest black, crossing his arms and eyeing me with predatory evaluation. He winked at me from where he watched me, devouring me with his gaze from directly across the stylist’s chair. If she noticed my prolonged stares into open air, she said nothing. I nearly went into cardiac arrest when he casually approached to run a finger along my forearm, up my bicep, onto my neck. Chills covered my body.
The stylist stopped at my sharp intake of air. “Is everything all right, hun? Are you cold?”
He shot me a wink and returned to lean against the sink as I choked through an incoherent response.
I made a mental note to ask him to tell me about our interactions among humans in other lives, but whether we’d done it in the previous life or never before, the thrill on his face at watching me switch between skins was invigorating. Azrames was equally impressed, though I’d assumed he would have been desensitized to watching women jump through hoops to have their humanity acknowledged.
From the chair in the salon, I held Caliban’s gaze, loving that no one else could see the silver twinkle in those diamonds. I extended my hand and did my best to imitate Fauna’s doe eyes as I asked to borrow the stylist’s phone. She didn’t fight me on it, remarking on how often she shattered hers or dropped it in the toilet. I searched the only car rental in town and made a call. The man on the other end went from sounding bored to surprised to speaking with me as if I were the president himself.
“Steven, is it? Yes, that’s fine,” I said smoothly. “No, I want the upgrade. Is that the best you can do? No, upgrade. And how soon can you get it here? And tell me, Steven, how much does that number change if I tell you I’ll give you two hundred in cash to be here in the next fifteen minutes? Excellent, you’re a doll. See you soon.”
I tipped my stylist and artist three times their rates, offering parting hugs as if we were old friends. I used to say there was a special place in Hell for those who mistreated those who worked in service but was once again confronted with the turn of phrase. Perhaps I should start saying there was a special place on the bottom of the ocean, or in the Antarctic, or perhaps Ohio.
I stepped from the salon as a nervous-looking attendant in a polo handed me the keys to a champagne-colored BMW. I flashed him my most radiant smile and touched his arm, just for the joy of confusion, while I slipped him his promised tip.
“Now,” I said to my companions, “I have a fertility goddess to see. Time to get me pregnant.”