CHAPTER THREE
Demonhunter Oleander Keen adjusted his spanking new jacket, making sure to center the line of brass buttons and keep his bright sash perfectly level around his slim waist. He cut a fine figure, he decided as he observed himself in the looking glass, freshly washed, his dark hair slicked to his scalp in a proper soldier’s cut – the sides shaved short, the top rakishly long – his navy coat spotless, gingham trousers tucked in his high, black boots but bloused just the right amount.
A shining saber rested at one hip, a blunderbuss at the other, the brass fittings polished to mirror brightness.
Both looked brand new, though the saber had been put through its paces.
He was no dandy, untried or untested, no demonhunter in name only.
He’d faced more than one – many more. Demons didn’t frighten him, not First Rank DH Keen.
“Oh, look at you, my brave boy! Such a dashing young officer!”
His mother’s excited utterance brought a shade of rose to his high cheeks.
He spun away from the mirror, nearly knocking into it with his saber before adjusting his belt to hide his embarrassment.
Of course, his mother would catch him mooning over himself in the mirror.
She was always about. Always concerned for him. Always underfoot in her worry.
It’s her house. Guilt tempered his embarrassment, and he swallowed the annoyed retort he felt on his tongue. Mrs Keen did not truck with any backtalk.
First Rank DH Keen did not fear demons, but he had a healthy respect for his mother.
His assignment to Havenside had been so rushed and unexpected he’d had no choice but to stay with her.
He couldn’t afford to live anywhere else in the city on his pay grade, and by the Branch he’d tried to find a place in the few hours’ head start he’d been given.
Alas, returning home had been his best option.
Maybe next year he’d be able to afford a place of his own – if he remained assigned to Havenside, of course.
Demonhunters went where they were called, fulfilling their noble duty.
“Come have breakfast, Boo,” his mother said, giving him a little wave as she turned and headed down the hall. “Can’t have you hungry on your first day. Ack, can you imagine having a growling stomach in front of all those tough PKs?”
“All right, Mother. I’ll be right down.”
“You’d better! Don’t want you to be late because you spent all morning fussing with your outfit like some debutante on the way to a cotillion.”
Oleander sighed, but he took one last look at himself before following her.
In a way, he felt like a debutante, about to be presented to polite society, to the real world.
This was his first official job since leaving the Citadel.
His first assignment not as a cadet, but as an officer.
He wanted to be proud; he deserved to be proud. Even to be a little full of himself.
It would be a lot easier if he weren’t living in his boyhood home, the papered walls and carpeted steps worn and familiar, the rooms looking smaller than he remembered, crowded with pictures and secondhand furniture, thick with memories both good and bad: a doting mother, a grim and distant father forever angry and stressed, always struggling to pay the bills, to put food on the table, reeking of gin.
Oleander Keen had always wanted more than this.
Even as a child, he’d known his house was smaller than the houses of his school chums. His house was nowhere near the ocean, with its pleasant breezes and popular beaches.
His house sat on the wrong side of the railroad tracks.
His neighborhood had long ago been dubbed “Otherside”.
He was set apart always by circumstances, by location, by birth.
Nevertheless, peacekeepers did well for themselves sometimes, so it was his hope he would too. One day.
His mother had laid out a feast for him: grits and biscuits, thick slabs of bacon, fried eggs and hot tea.
He grimaced, both repulsed by the sight of so much food and tempted by it.
The aromas tickled his nose and set his mouth to watering.
He tugged at his sash, tightening it. He’d earned his trim figure through hard work and privation.
Spurred by the cruelty of his classmates at Clem Prep, he’d fought to shed his soft layers and reveal the athlete beneath.
His mother had never understood why he’d suddenly hated her cooking.
“I usually eat a slice of toast and have a cup of black coffee, Mama,” he said, dithering beside the kitchen table, the same one he’d sat at as a boy, his hand on the back of a wooden chair with uneven legs and a creaky seat. He dithered because, Goddess damn him, he wanted to eat .
“Nonsense.” She moved about the tiny kitchen, putting eggs and raw bacon back into the ice box, stacking dirty pots by a sink full of steaming soapy water.
Efficient in her efforts, bustling happily.
She’d been smiling since he’d appeared on her doorstep the night before, orders in one hand and a rucksack over his shoulder.
She’d been living here alone for nearly a decade now.
Tall and rangy like him, her silver-shot hair in a high ponytail, wearing a house dress he recognized and the apron he’d given her for one of her birthdays, she looked no different than he remembered but for a few more lines around her eyes and mouth.
She hadn’t changed. Nothing had changed. Just him.
“I can’t send my only child off on his first day of work without a full belly,” she scolded him gently, then came to the table and pulled out his chair. “Sit. Eat. Enjoy a good meal. I know the Citadel makes you all live on scraps.”
Oleander found he couldn’t disobey a direct order from his mother. He sat. He ate. And it was as glorious as it smelled.
Which was why when he stood before his new chief for the first time, it was with a belly fit to burst through his smartly tied sash.
“First Rank DH Oleander Keen.” The chief was reading through Oleander’s orders and sounded both curt and vaguely pleased. “You’re from Havenside?” he added after scanning the rest of the papers, his eyebrows lifting.
“I am, sir.” He clicked his heels together at attention. “Grew up in Otherside.”
“Ah, a townie,” the chief murmured in an offhand sort of way, not registering the insult. Luckily, Oleander didn’t need to hide how the term made him stiffen as he was already at attention. His stomach gurgled unpleasantly.
Chief Roger Dewey was a relatively young man to have achieved such a high rank, his short hair still dark brown, his shoulders firm and square, his belly flat and his chest full. Here was a man Oleander could proudly serve.
“You went to Clementine Prep?” It was somewhere between a question and a statement. There was doubt in his tone as he peered at him, but also a hopeful lift, as if it would please him to know Oleander went to Havenside’s most prestigious school. Even if he was a townie.
“I did, sir.” Oleander understood his doubt.
Most students went on to become barristers or surgeons or businessmen, not PKs, even elite PKs like demonhunters.
But university had been out of reach for the likes of him, even with a degree from Clem.
The Citadel, however, had been a viable path.
“I attended under a scholarship,” he added, feeling the explanation was necessary even though it filled him with vague shame.
But why should he be ashamed? He’d earned that fucking scholarship, every cursed coin.
“You must be quite clever.”
“I did well at my studies, yes, Chief.”
Dewey grunted. He tossed the orders onto his pristine desktop.
The varnished wood sparkled in the sunlight from the leaded windows looking out over main street.
Carriages and horses passed by below, orderly and polite.
Like all of Havenside. Even the rougher districts like Otherside exuded a certain charm with its clapboard houses and tree-lined avenues, peeling paint and crumbling curbs notwithstanding.
“Well, I need a clever DH right now,” Dewey said. “Which is why I requested one, among other things. You’ve heard about the missing sister, I’ll assume.”
“I have, of course. A terrible business.”
“She’s been found.”
Oleander blinked, inferring immediately from the chief’s grim tone that this was not a happy thing.
And he’d been specifically requested? A demonhunter was not often sent to such a peaceful town, and he’d been wondering at his assignment.
For a while, he’d thought it a sick sort of joke, or even a punishment, sending him to the hometown he’d fled – a quiet place ill-suited for an ambitious demonhunter – but now he understood.
“Murdered, I presume. You suspect a demon had a hand in her death?”
Dewey pushed back in his chair and stood. “Sorry you won’t have much of an orientation, DH Keen, but this case takes utmost priority. If a demon is involved, as I suspect, we cannot let it lie. Once an incursion gets a foothold in a place like Havenside, it’s almost impossible to root it out.”
Oleander nodded, still processing his circumstances when the chief blew past him and out of the office.
He scrambled after him, catching up to him in the bullpen, crowded with uniformed PKs and secretaries in civilian dress manning desks and clacking on noisy, newfangled print machines.
Havenside might be a sleepy town, but it was rich, and money bought all sorts of advancements.
“I’ve dealt with incursions before,” he said, matching the chief’s long strides, though it took some effort.
Damn his full belly. He ignored the ache at his belt.
“In Fairview. Rooted out a nest of serpentines under a basilica. They had the bishop there in thrall to them. Nasty piece of business, I can tell you.”