Chapter 7 Jules
Jules
I spin around in a circle, my damp towel slipping, my hair dripping cold water down my back.
The bathroom is gone. Vanished. No shower, no sink, no cracked mirror.
Just this long, dark corridor of stone stretching in both directions, lit by torches that hiss and spit in their iron brackets.
Their shadows lunge and twist across the walls, like giant, distorted hands reaching for me.
It reminds me of the hallway scene in the Phantom of the Opera movie, where the Phantom is leading Christine down into his dark underground lair. Only I don’t see any sinfully sexy yet menacing Phantom here—I’m all alone.
“What the hell…?” I ask aloud.
My voice sounds small, swallowed by the stones.
I clutch the towel tighter around me, but it’s too short and there’s a gap running down my side.
Every icy draft seems to find it, licking over my bare skin.
My damp hair is plastered to my shoulders, trickling water down my spine.
I shiver so hard my teeth nearly chatter.
To forestall panic, I try giving myself a pep talk.
Okay, Julia. Breathe. This has to be a dream. Any second now you’re going to wake up in your crappy little bed, Mr. Mittens purring against your cheek, and you’ll laugh about this while scrolling TikTok in the morning.
Maybe I fell asleep with Midnight Hunger in my lap and this is my brain’s way of mocking me. Yeah. That has to be it.
But then—
“Well now,” a familiar voice says, smooth and strange, “And how are you this fine evening, my lovely queen?”
I nearly leap out of my skin. My heart thuds against my ribs like it’s trying to break out and run away.
Apparently I’m not alone anymore.
A man stands a few feet down the corridor, watching me. For a moment my brain refuses to make sense of him. Then it clicks—he’s the lab tech. The same guy who drew my blood earlier today. Only he’s not wearing his starched white coat anymore.
At least, I think it’s him. He looks… different.
He looks wrong.
He’s draped in a long leather duster coat falls almost to his booted feet.
The coat sways when he moves, and I see glimpses of strange trinkets glinting inside the folds—chains…
bones…things I don’t want to identify. He’s tall but too thin, all sharp angles and wiry muscle, like a scarecrow brought to life.
His long brown hair hangs in tangled waves to his shoulders, streaked with silver like early frost.
And then I see his face.
Five gold teeth gleam at me from the shadows—two on top, three on the bottom. They wink every time he grins. His skin is brown with a strange olive-green cast, like bruised fruit. Pushing up through his tangled hair are a pair of elongated ears, pointed like a wolf’s.
But his eyes… oh God, his eyes.
Slitted pupils, glowing faintly in the gloom. Cat’s eyes. I remember I had that thought when I first saw him in Mr. Philben’s office but then I decided I was imagining it.
Turns out I was right the first time.
I stumble back a step, my hand clutching the towel so hard it bites into my skin.
“Do I—do I know you?” My voice cracks. “Were you at my office today?”
“That I was, my Curvy Queen.” He bares those golden teeth in a wide grin. “You offered me a cup of your piss, as I recall.”
He reaches into his coat and pulls out a heavy goblet made of dull metal etched with strange runes that writhe faintly in the torchlight. He offers it to me with a mock-bow.
“Care to make good on that promise?”
My jaw drops.
“What?” I sputter. “No! I’m not going to pee in a cup for you!”
He sighs dramatically, and shakes his head as though I’ve just let him down.
“Ah, I thought that offer was too good to be true. A pity. A cup of piss from an Abundant Queen would fetch me a sack of gold in the Night Market.”
I just stare. First in shock…then in disgust.
“No. Absolutely not,” I repeat.
“Very well then.” He shrugs, sliding the goblet back into his coat as if this is just business as usual. “Since you won’t piss for me, we’d best be on our way. Unless you want to stay here in the In-Between.”
He turns, his long coat flaring, and begins striding down the corridor.
For a moment I just gape after him, rooted to the spot. This is insane. I must have fallen asleep with that damn vampire book and now my subconscious is punishing me. But the cold stone beneath my feet feels too real. The smell of smoke and old metal is too sharp to ignore or pass off as a dream.
Before I can stop myself, I hurry after him, clutching my towel with one hand and trying to cover myself with the other.
“Wait a minute! Where are we going? How did I get here? I can’t stay here—I need to go back home!”
He glances over his shoulder, those gold teeth flashing again.
“Too many questions, my queen. One at a time, if you please.”
I jog to keep up, the towel slipping dangerously with every step.
My bare feet slap the cold stone, and each sound echoes like a drumbeat, chasing me through the dark.
My gut tells me the further I follow him, the further I get from home.
But what choice do I have? The door that led me in here has completely disappeared.
“Where are we?” I demand.
He taps one long, bony finger against the side of his nose.
“We’re in the In-Between—a magical tunnel of my own devising, designed to hop us from the Human Realm to the Shadow Realm. Don’t worry—it’s stable, so it is. I’m the best Realm Hopper there is, if I say so myself.”
“The Shadow Realm?” The words sound absurd—like a romance novel come to life.
“Sure, the Shadow Realm.” He says it as casually as if he’s naming a suburb.
“’Tis the land where all who aren’t human dwell.
You have your Demons from the Carnal Bazaar…
your Dragons from the Gilded Warrens… The High Fae live in the Briar Court, and of course the Necromancers hole up in the Hollow Necropolis. ”
He shudders theatrically.
“Scary fuckers, they are. I’d steer clear if I was you, my Curvy Queen.
Then there’s the Shifters—they call their territory the Savage Den, and it’s rightly named for a more savage lot of fuckers you’ll never see.
And of course…” He spreads his arms wide, his coat billowing.
“The place I’m taking you—The Bleeding Court. ”
I stop dead, appalled.
“The Bleeding Court?”
“Yes indeed. Got to get through the Nocturne Gates and the Central Hub first, but we’ll manage. Old Whistler can smuggle anyone through.”
“Whistler?”
He nods, tapping his chest proudly.
“That’s me, girly. Whistler the Realm Hopper, at your service.”
“This is insane.” My voice comes out breathless. “These places you’re naming—they sound like something I’d read in a paranormal romance novel!”
“Well, I guess you could call us paranormies if you like.” He shrugs his bony shoulders, leather duster creaking with the motion.
“But we’re real enough. You humans just forgot us.
Legends and tales, that’s what you think we are—but we’ve been here all along.
It’s just harder for us to get to your world since the Magistrate took control and locked the Realms down. ”
I’m only absorbing about half of what he says. My head is spinning while my stomach twists. A bad dream—this has to be a bad dream.
“So—the, uh, the Bleeding Court.” My voice wobbles. “What kind of place is that? And why are you taking me there? Can’t I just go home?”
“Afraid not, girly.” He shakes his head firmly, his long gray-brown hair swinging. “You see, I’ve been paid a king’s ransom to bring you to the Don of the Crimson Syndicate and I don’t intend on giving a single bit of that gold back.”
“What?” My voice jumps an octave. “There must be some mistake! Why would some… some weird supernatural Mafia Don want me? You must have grabbed the wrong woman!”
“Oh no—you’re the right one.” His grin gleams, golden teeth flashing in the firelight. “The Don has been watching you for ages in his little magic mirror. You’re the one, my Curvy Queen.”
I open my mouth to demand more answers—to ask who this Don is, why he’s spying on me, what the hell any of this means—but before I can, we reach the end of the corridor.
A wooden door looms before us, bound in black iron, the kind of thing you’d expect to see in a medieval dungeon.
Whistler raises a bony finger to his lips. “Now hush. We’ve arrived at the Nocturne Gates. Before we pass through, you’ll need a disguise.”
“A disguise? As what?”
“Why, as anything that won’t catch the Magistrate’s eye, girly. For if he notices old Whistler sneakin’ in a Curvy Queen, all Hell will break loose—and not in a good way, like at the Carnal Bazaar.” He grins. “Hell’s kind of fun over there. But not here—here we must be safe and secret and silent.”
He sweeps open one side of his long coat, revealing pockets upon pockets, bulging with strange things.
Poking out of the various pockets I glimpse a shriveled bird’s claw…
a vial of black sand…a string of teeth…and a knife made of blue glass.
In another pocket, a clockwork mouse ticks and whirs in place on a spring.
I also see a jar of something pulsing faintly red.
The smell of mildew, incense, and burnt hair wafts out in a sickly mix.
Whistler digs through the pockets, muttering to himself, until he pulls out… a plain paper envelope.
“Ah-ha!”
“What’s tha—” I start, but my words cut off in a shriek as he suddenly yanks my towel away.
“Hey!” I cry, clutching myself, outrage and shame burning my cheeks. “Give that back you pervert!”
He ignores me completely, tipping the envelope into his palm. Glitter—silver and gold—spills out in a sparkling heap.
Whistler puffs out his cheeks and blows.
The glitter whirls toward me in a shimmering cloud. I squeeze my eyes shut, not wanting to get it in my eyes. For a moment I feel nothing—then a million icy pinpricks scatter across my skin…sinking in…melting into my bare flesh all at once.
“There now,” Whistler says smugly. “That’s better. Nobody will guess you’re a Curvy Queen with that glamour on you. In fact, nobody will even guess you’re human. Well then—open your eyes, girly.”
I blink, look down at myself—and scream!