Chapter Twelve
“Well, well.” Alessia grinned, voice still every bit the familiar cadence of a winsome politician. “Take a seat, won’t you?”
Her room was nothing like the sad, blank-walled prison we’d been corralled into.
The walls of books, the velvet draping over the windows, the wood paneling, the plush carpet, the glittering chandelier, and the mahogany desk made me wonder if this was the sort of office a conductor might have in Phantom of the Opera.
I looked into my paper cup at the water within to reassure myself I hadn’t been drinking something else entirely.
Maybe the imaginative spiral stemmed from writer brain.
Maybe I’d been so disconnected from reality that I was ready to allow any nonsensical thing to make sense.
I’d need to figure out a grounding exercise before I went wholly insane.
I would have forgotten what was expected from a polite exchange if Duchess Vapula hadn’t physically shoved me.
I stumbled forward, a cat landing on its feet, hand extending on instinct. “It’s an honor to meet you,” I said, and I meant it.
She shook my hand with the firm reassurance of someone expecting her bill to be passed.
“And I, you. Please, please.” She gestured to the seat across the desk as she relaxed into her own.
She crossed her legs and leaned back into the chair, propping a single finger on her chin as she appraised me.
“Merit Finnegan. Do you want to know what I like about you?”
I frowned. “Is it the whole…Prince’s human thing?”
Her jovial posture collapsed entirely as she rolled forward in her chair, propping both elbows onto the desk. “For fuck’s sake, no. I like your name.”
“My name?” I repeated, hating myself for how tongue-tied I became in every situation that mattered. Give me a computer and I was a wordsmith. Set me before an immortal being and I was a child looking at her mother, thrust back into powerlessness.
“Merit,” she repeated. “We choose our own names, you know. I chose Alessia so I might be seen for what I am: a defender. I intend to spend every day living up to my name. The one you chose for yourself… You want to be seen for what you’ve earned.
You worked for your books. You were in the trenches in your other modes of employ.
And now here you are, earning your merit in something else entirely. I suspect I know why you’re here.”
How was I supposed to explain that I needed something from her yet didn’t know what? Would she respect strength, even if it meant bluffing? Would she prefer honesty, even if it made me look like I’d been shuffled around without agency?
I took a stab somewhere in the middle. “Heaven’s angels would like to see me burn, and they’re not the only ones. I believe you have something that could save my life—mine and my friends’—and I’d like to know what I can do to be worthy.”
Green velvet crinkled under the dim, flattering light as Alessia relaxed once more. “I’d like to help you, Merit. You stand for inversion: something long overdue. And you’re right. I have what you need.”
“Is it a weapon?” I dared the question.
She chuckled, then reached into her blazer, fetching an ornate mirror from the breast pocket. She popped it open, surprising me with a tiny, plastic bag of white powder and a little metal straw.
Alessia cracked open the bag, poured the dust onto the mirror, and used a credit card to organize the substance into a thin, white line.
Her eyes glimmered as she passed the mirror toward me. “Care for a bump?”
Holy shit. I was about to do hard drugs with Medusa.
“Oh, um, no thank you,” I hedged.
No cocaine for me, thanks. I don’t need to pop into a k-hole right now, but thanks for the offer. No crushed Adderall, thank you for offering. I’m just here to save humanity.
She made a face, put the straw to her nose, and inhaled the powder. After a quick pinch of her nostrils, she said, “You’re recruiting gods. Well and good. You’ll need as many as you can get. However, you’re going about this wrong.”
I swallowed, speaking through a desert-dry throat as I asked, “And what would you have me do?”
I needed a solution to the axe hanging over my head, not nose beers.
She got up from the desk, carrying the pocket mirror to a terrarium in the corner of the room that I hadn’t noticed before.
She tapped on the tank and an electric-green snake slithered toward the glass.
Alessia lowered the mirror into the tank with one hand, stroking the serpent’s head with her free fingers.
It opened its mouth as if poised to strike, venom sparkling on menacing fangs.
“You know my lore, Merit. What do I do to my enemies?”
I watched the venom drip onto the mirror one sparkling dew drop at a time. I swallowed. “You turn them to stone.”
“Mmm.” She considered the familiar answer. “And if a god wants to save you from your fate, how might he find you? How might a god help a stone, if they are looking for something alive?”
“He—they—would struggle,” I said. I didn’t totally follow the conversational pivot, but as long as Duchess Vapula remained calm, I stayed the course. I pictured Zeus scanning the mountains for his faithful warriors, seeing only stone where a man should be. “Maybe they couldn’t.”
She shut the enclosure’s lid, carrying the mirror back to me. “And if you needed to hide from a god, a man, an angel…if you needed the peace of mind that only a stone could bring…what would you need?”
“I…um…”
“Do you take ice?” Alessia asked.
My eyelashes fluttered open and closed in confusion.
Alessia snapped her fingers, and the PA reappeared. She poured lime water from a pitcher into glasses on a silver platter. Alessia waited until the rest of us had our cups in hand, insisting on being served last.
The distrustful part of me suspected it had been poisoned, perhaps with the snake venom before me.
The intelligent part of her, understanding and alleviating the rightly-earned worries of women, clearly anticipated as much, toasting me gently before taking several generous gulps.
I did my best to remind myself that I was specifically in a haven for women as I brought the cold glass to my lips, soothing my tongue, filling my mouth, calming my irritated throat.
It hit the nervous stones that had never left my belly, easing them until they evaporated.
Balancing the still-wet venom on one side of the mirror, Alessia poured her mysterious powder onto the opposite mirror once more. This time, she pushed the set toward me.
“You don’t need to get high, Merit. You need to hide from gods. That’s what I’m offering. Let those who hunt you perceive only stone. Buy yourself the time you need.”
The snake…the powder…the tale…
“You want to turn me to stone?” I asked.
“I want them to perceive stone when they search for you, so you have the time to do what must be done.”
Realization hit me like a thunderclap.
I took the metal straw with a shaking hand.
I’d dabbled with illicit substances in my heyday.
I’d rolled on Molly in the club, gotten stoned with Kirby at their house, accepted shrooms from a stranger once at a concert, and done coke in the bathroom with fellow escorts who’d offered me a key.
Some experiments had led to excellent parties, and others, the worst nights of my life.
It had been years since I’d put anything up my nose.
I cast a cry for help toward Duchess Vapula, who only inclined her head.
Now or never.
I snorted the line, shuddering as the sharp, powerful grains hit my sinuses with an electric shock.
“And now, you’re gone,” Alessia said with a smile. She passed the bag to me. “It’s a temporary solution, but it should buy you a few days to follow through with your plan.” After a beat, her smile faltered. “What is your plan? Surely it’s more than recruiting deities and staying away from angels?”
I was still shivering from the poison, which was fortunate, because I knew my answer would disappoint her. Coming to her was my plan.
The PA handed her a fresh drink. She took my silence as an invitation to continue.
“There’s a rather charming parable that was adapted into a film,” Alessia said as she set her sweating glass upon a coaster. “Grasshoppers do very little work, as it were. They play and dance all summer. It’s the ants who toil and store the food.”
I’d heard this parable. It was an ode to labor—a condemnation of frivolity.
“I do love the films in your realm. Eternity is a long time, you see. The books, the food, the entertainment…well, they help make it bearable.”
I knew Fauna would have agreed, and my heart wilted at the thought.
Movies and drugs would have been right up her alley.
“In the movie,” Alessia said, “a particularly lovely point was made. Grasshoppers are bigger, yes. They’re quite strong.
A grasshopper can kill, and threaten, and eat or end an ant.
But grasshoppers are not pack animals—not like ants are.
A single ant is weak, but a colony is mighty. Do you see where I’m going with this?”
I took a gasping inhale, finally leveled out from the line. I reached for my glass of water, savoring the condensation against my hands as a reminder that this was real. I was alive.
I shook my head. No. I didn’t see its relevance. Not when I was doing white drugs with a legend.
“You’ve gathered a handful of grasshoppers, Merit. And they will matter. But where do the grasshoppers get their power? Who feeds them? Why are some pantheons so strong and others so weak? Why do some gods flourish and others wither? Tell me.”
I battled with what I knew to be true.
The Phoenician realm was not the flashy juxtaposition of decay and modernity, the stylish, state-of-the-art buildings against gothic, lovely stonework, that Hell was. The Phoenician realm had been caught, stuck with only a trickle of resources, frozen where it had left off so many years ago.
Bellfield with its fertility clinic and topside empire had existed because Astarte had been innovative.
She’d used drugs in her own way. She’d found a new mode of relevance, a way to be elite, and coveted, and sought after.
She’d flourished in a world that had forgotten them.
She’d innovated and evolved, she’d adhered to the godly rules and regulations, she’d done everything by the book, and I’d killed her for it.
“Worship,” I said finally.
I would have guessed that Botox and blow were responsible for the way Alessia’s face remained free of crinkles when she relaxed into her grin, but I knew better.
A part of my brain fractured off, wandering into an off-handed comment Fauna had made long ago about fae and celebrities.
Alessia’s secret was better than a paralytic injection to the face.
She was immortal.
“Precisely,” she agreed. “Do you know my biggest annoyance?”
Is it rhetorical questions? Marching dust with strangers? I asked in the safety of my mind, flinching when her eyes narrowed ever so slightly as if I’d spoken to the room.
“It’s that we’ve sat around for three thousand years waiting for men to stop being villains.
We push gender-based violence as a men’s issue—and it is, don’t get me wrong.
Men are trash. Until now, my greatest aid to the vulnerable has been what I offered you: the gift of invisibility.
I will hide those in need from their enemies. But today…”
I was glad my glass had been empty, or I may have choked into it.
I’d said the same thing for years, but it was different entirely when coming from the lips of someone eternal.
She spoke with the elated chatter of someone who’d truly railed a line of Snow White, rather than whatever it was she’d given me.
“But we could end it all tomorrow if every woman believed in her worth, possessed a weapon, and was trained in how to use it. Give me six weeks and I’d end violence against the marginalized.”
“With drugs and violence?”
She slammed flattened palms into the desk, getting to her feet as she leaned forward.
The room seemed to shrink as she grew in presence and strength.
“With accountability! Gods, men, the strong, the powerful—they do what they do because no one pushes back. Either because they lack the strength or the resources or, worse, because they don’t believe they’re worthy of pushing back.
Merit, if you had eight billion people understand their worth, their own sovereignty, their power over the gods, the war would be finished before it started. ”
“That’s…” I couldn’t continue looking into her stunning, powerful face.
Her hazel eyes were too intense. Her posture was snake-like, ready to strike.
I turned in my seat, hoping the Duchess might have something helpful to say.
Her half-smile told me that no, she would not be participating.
The only one in the room who responded to my cry of distress was the PA.
She snatched the pitcher of cucumber lime water and refilled my glass.
I supposed it was as good as it was going to get.
“Less than ten percent of the population identifies as atheist,” she said. “But of the believers, most are on uncertain footing. They could be swayed. The truly devout, the unshakeable, they’re few and far between. If we aim for the middle, we have a chance.”
“You want me to get people to rally against their gods? That would first require me to get people to believe in their gods. Even believers—”
“I know,” she said, cutting me off. “Half of the people in their Sunday pews offer little more than lip service. There are cultural believers, familial believers, and habitual believers. Convince them of their gods, yes, but convince them of the other gods as well. Imagine the fear in the eyes of Christians if they believed Odin was a threat. See how Hindu temples would turn to fury if they identified Zeus’s combative presence. ”
I drained my water again in several gulps, shuddering at how the ice hit my teeth. The PA tried to refill my glass once more. I began to suspect she was my only true ally in the room.
“It’s impossible,” I said. “Religions have been bickering since the dawn of time. The best they can do is ignore each other.”
She let out a bright, delighted laugh. “Indeed, they have. Use the cover of secrecy I’ve given you and take the next step.”
“Which is what, exactly?”
She relaxed back in her chair, grinning from ear to ear. “You, Merit Finnegan, are in need of a siren.”