Chapter Fourteen November Twenty-fourth #2
“Good, good. I did not like the city, but of course, one goes where one is believed in, where one draws one's assignment. Still, no need for me to waste two weeks in that cramped, treeless concrete desert. I will stay farther north until nearer to the night. What about you? Where are you assigned?”
“Uh, sorry?”
“You are confused?” He looks at me again, and something is changing about his expression. Like something is clicking.
I wish I could share whatever revelation it is. “I’m from Alaska, originally,” I finally spit out.
The stranger laughs, and I back up farther.
It’s not a nice laugh. At least, I don’t think it is.
It mocks, and his eyes are now peering underneath my hood, which has tipped backwards a little in the chilly gusts that blow across the Night Market.
“Oh, schwesterl, I had not observed you closely. You’re not a troph?enkind. You are a besch?mtenmannskind!”
“I’m not what?”
“Troph?enkind. A trophy child. When a krampus takes a pretty maiden and keeps her until she submits to him and bears him children. Then she is made his bride, and his children are raised as full krampus, not half-human.”
I stare. Wait. Does that mean that if my birth father had wanted to, he could have taken my mother with him—and me? He could have raised me? I would have grown up in a family, in a community?
He is still speaking, slowly wagging his head at me, dark horns jingling faintly.
I see there are tiny silver chains wrapped around the base of each horn.
“But you— You have made yourself blend in with the humans, yes? Not for ease of hunting, but for ease of hiding. You are a shamed man’s child.
Your mother was a naughty one, yes?” He smiles broadly, and his eyes rake up and down me, stopping at the boots I’m wearing.
“A pretty one, young and foolish. You are not the trophy. You are the punishment.”
I say nothing. I want to run. I want Artie. But I also want to know more. “What about it?” I whisper, defiance in my tone.
“Ooh, I didn’t mean offense,” he says with a faint sneer.
If that was kind, I’d hate to be on this guy’s bad side.
“In some ways, it is quite the legacy. You are often the most vicious, the most keen to take to the hunt. You have so much to prove. I imagine you have all the human men believing you are sweet and showing you their naughtiest natures, so that you can fully wield your punishment on Krampusnacht. There are many clever besch?mtenmannskind, you know.”
Krampusnacht. I’ve heard of that, of course.
It’s a night when certain cultures say that krampus comes and punishes naughty children.
I’ve pored over legends from all across Germany, Bavaria, Austria, and other European countries.
When researching, I saw that it’s become a festive time, with parades and dancers, drinking and laughing.
No one is truly afraid. But if the legends are true—they should be.
Children kidnapped and beaten. Killed. Missing. Even eaten, in some legends.
Monsters are just legends, and we’re real. So I think that the horrors of the krampus legend must be true, too.
I swallow hard and remind myself that I love the way Artie tastes because I love him. When I’m around other human men, like kindly Dr. Vaughn or Mr. Wymark, I feel nothing but grateful for their help.
I’m not a monster, not like the krampuses in dark tales of death. The “monsters” in this town are not evildoers, either.
“This is Pine Ridge. It’s not a place for wicked monsters. We live in harmony with our human neighbors. We don’t—”
“Argh.” He lets out a cry of disgust. “When my acquaintance said it was a haven for monsters, I did not press him for many details. I’m usually so much more attentive, but I was chosen for New York City at the last minute.”
I look around for my friends, but I don’t see them. All around me, people move freely—but no one seems to notice the two of us.
Wonderful. The blessing and curse of being “invisible” to most humans. I don’t want to make a scene, but if someone’s going to get this guy to go away, or set him straight, I guess it has to be me.
“You didn’t get the full picture. I th-think you should go home. Ask for a new assignment,” I say in a voice that barely trembles.
“Well, schwesterl, you needn’t worry. Our kind do abide by the rules.
Your little town will be safe, and I will move along, higher north.
I will just make sure I cover the city on our night, take our annual payments, and return home.
If you ever want to see where you could belong—if you were taken as a bride, of course—I will be happy to show you.
I am Blase, but the way.” His eyes sear along my body again, and I feel like he sees beneath my hood, beneath my clothes.
“You are pretty enough that one could almost overlook your deformity. After all, sons and daughters would not be born with your disfigurements—and you would soon take to the kill. You weren’t raised among our kind, were you? ”
I shake my head, throat frozen, backing away slowly. I could run.
But then I wouldn’t know.
All my life, I’ve hungered to know things that were kept from me, and Blase is telling me so much at once, all because of a chance meeting—and I don’t believe in chance, not anymore. I believe that things happen for a reason. Laurel. Artie. My new family. My friendship with Lesha.
Lesha and her nephews and nieces. In New York City.
I have to keep him talking. “I was raised by humans. My mother’s husband. Do you... Do you know where these women who have the shamed children go?”
“Oh, yes. They go mad. They will be punished in many satisfying layers.” Blase gives a single, pleased nod.
“First, they will carry the shame of their adulterousness, and the wrath of the man they have shamed, then, the shame of this half-human child, and when all of this hits them and buries their soul in guilt and rage—then they will go mad. The brain will shrivel, and they will die—unless of course a krampus takes pity on a comely maiden and keeps her for himself.”
He paints a horrible picture, a picture that makes me want to vomit. All I say is, “I see.”
“You should come with me to the city this time, Miss—”
“Imogene.” I don’t give him my last name, or Artie’s.
“Ah, Imogene. Pretty name for a pretty thing. You haven’t been with your kind.
You haven’t been allowed to be free—have you?
” He points at my head and clucks his tongue.
“You will see. Revenge is waiting. You will kill the ones who harmed you, and then you will see how good it feels to deliver retribution.”
For a second—just a second, there is something tempting in his words. A spark of pleasure when I think of hurting Barton.
But I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to hurt and kill people. I wouldn’t want my baby girl thinking of me the same way I’m forced to think about my mother—as someone who hurt her, who left her, who abandoned her. Choosing vengeance over Artie and Laurel?
I mouth the word “No.”
Blase sniffs the air around me and frowns. “You smell like... Like another of our kind, but muddled. Are you hiding another besch?mtenmannskind?”
“What? No!” I feel sweat trickle down the back of my neck. Laurel.
“Then you are trying to turn another of our kind against tradition! Do you know what bad children become? Bad adults! Like the man who hurt your mother, and hurt you, I daresay.”
“Or they meet loving people who help them, and they don’t become anything bad. They become website coders or nannies or English professors.”
“Spoken by one raised in ignorance. You and those like you will always find out in a most horrible way that they were meant to be with our kind. You rebellious ones just delay it.”
“Rebellious or not, I’m not hiding anyone you need to be concerned about,” I say coldly.
“You should just... browse the Night Market like you were doing, and I’ll do a little research about our traditions.
” I stall for time. I want to keep him here—for a very short amount of time.
Just enough time to call Artie. Libby. Milo.
The Night Watch needs to take him out of town, or back to where he came from.
Or end him. So he cannot kill a child.
My maternal instincts flare, and I know I flash a snarl.
Blase’s eyes light up. “Oooh, my pretty pink flame! You are magnificent even at the thought of violence. Tell me, were you envisioning the horrendous human who cut away your pride? What pretty curls of horns you would have had,” he purrs, taking my arm, daring to touch my hair.
I jerk back, and now I hear startled voices around me. “I was thinking that you—you don’t know me. Or what I was thinking.” I hold off on making threats. I want him to stay here. I want him to be caught.
I want to punish him for the lives he’s thinking of taking.
And that scares me. How bad I suddenly want it.
Wait, Imogene. No! That’s like punishing the “bad children.” Not offering them a chance to learn, to grow, to become better people.
But there’s a difference between killing a killer who already has blood on his hands and killing a kid who cheats on his math test or doesn’t eat his vegetables.
Blase looks surprised, and he sniffs me again. “Human. Human and besch?mtenmannskind! You have another little abomination in your life. You have lain with a human and made another impurity!”
Strength that I fear to use is flowing in my arms. In my hands. I itch to claw the horrified expression from his face. “She’s not an impurity!” I growl.
“If she comes from an inferior human—”
“He’s not! Neither of them is anything wrong or bad! I love my husband and my daughter!” I hiss. “You’re the one who should be ashamed. How can you call a sweet little girl an ‘impurity’ when you don’t even know her?”