Chapter 6
Burned Feathers
Iris
The next day
Nullivex. Guaranteed to dispel magical inconveniences. I stare at the innocuous bottle on the shelf and force myself not to scream.
The packaging is cheerful. It’s mint green with rounded edges and has a small embossed star I assume is meant to be reassuring. The font says, Take me. I am a perfectly normal pharmaceutical response to your situation. My situation involves a reality this peppy lettering was never meant to reflect.
“That’s not a terrible choice, darling,” a voice says from behind me. I turn to find a siren eyeing me knowingly. “But this is a better brand. Milder on the human body.” She reaches past me, lifts a different bottle, and holds it out.
I take it by reflex and manage a smile. “Thank you.”
“The star on yours is purely decorative,” she explains. “With this one, you actually get your money’s worth.”
Then she moves on down the aisle and disappears around the corner. I’m left holding the better brand and trying to remember how to breathe normally in a public space.
The sensible thing is to focus on the bottle.
I’m good at sensible. I’ve been good at it for twenty-five years, which is why last night was so inconvenient. Somewhere between the smoke going up and the part that came after, I misplaced the skill entirely. I found it again around four in the morning.
That was when I realized that, after my hookup with Rakan, heartbreak was the least of my problems. We didn’t use protection. And I had absolutely no idea how djinn contraception works.
Before I could lose my mind to panic, I remembered the pharmacy.
I only knew about this place because of Mary. A few weeks back, she and a dryad I recognized as a semi-regular sat down to talk at Mary’s usual table. I caught maybe thirty seconds of their conversation before the espresso machine needed me.
“I know Agatha’s Satchel is a little difficult to get to,” the dryad said, “but by Gaia, there’s no place better to get rarer products.”
I filed it away without intending to, never thinking it would mean a thing. But it did.
That brings me here on what should be a normal Saturday morning. I begged off work for two hours to solve my problem. To make sure I don’t become a single mother to a djinn baby. What a way to start my weekend.
The hag at the desk doesn’t look up when I approach.
Her name tag reads Agatha. She has deep-set eyes, a heavy brow, and nails that could disembowel a golem. I set the bottle on the counter and refuse to stare.
Agatha picks it up and runs her wrinkled fingers over the label. “First time with this brand?”
I paste on a shaky smile. “First time with everything here, I’m afraid. Any advice?”
Agatha produces a paper bag from somewhere below the counter. “Take it with food. Not because you have to.” She drops the bottle in and folds the top twice with crisp, efficient movements. “Because you’ll feel better if you do.”
She doesn’t bother telling me the price. Maybe she knows it doesn’t matter. I don’t ask, either. I hand her my card, wanting nothing more than to run away from this place and its strange kindness.
Agatha runs the card and then slides it toward me along with the bag. “Have a good morning,” she says. She hasn’t quite dismissed me, but she’s already turning toward her next customer.
I take advantage of the chance to make my escape. Nobody pays attention to me as I rush outside, bag in hand.
The street greets me with deceptive normality. At first, it seems just as bright and busy as my own neighborhood. But this is still the monster district, and it still feels somehow… other.
The architecture is the same, but the scale is slightly off.
The doorways are taller than they need to be.
The shop windows display objects with no obvious explanation.
A centaur moves through the crowd ahead of me with two foals trailing behind him.
Unlike my customers at The Daily Grind, they look perfectly at ease.
The foals don’t seem inclined to climb on anything, at least.
I tuck my paper bag under my arm and join the foot traffic. I’ve been to this neighborhood maybe a dozen times, and I still do the same thing each visit. I walk a little more carefully, half-expecting the city to reveal some rule it forgot to mention.
I’m still doing it when I stop at the corner and find Rakan looking back at me from a magazine stand.
Titan and Trade is perhaps the most well-known business publication in the world. Rakan’s face takes up most of the cover, composed and too perfect to be real. The pull quote sits just below his jaw. “Three thousand years teaches you that very little requires urgency.”
I stand there for a moment longer than I mean to. The man on that cover has never rushed for anything in his life, or so the quote would have you believe. The man from the night before chose not to rush. But was that all a lie?
Before I can tear myself away from the magazine stand, a scream comes from the alley to my left. “No, please! Have mercy!”
There’s no time for thought. Instinctively, I rush in the direction of the sound. My glasses fog up, and I walk straight into a wall of smoke.
Normal smoke disperses. This clings to me like it’s alive. You don’t belong here, it seems to say. The reasonable part of me agrees with it entirely. But the scream is still echoing against the bricks. And I’m terribly familiar with this type of smoke. What is happening?
I take two steps in. At Rakan’s will, the street sounds cut off the exact same way the club music vanished last night. I swallow around the knot in my throat. I want to call out Rakan’s name, but for whatever reason, I can’t bring myself to.
The light in here is wrong. Shapes are visible but unclear, and each step deeper feels like another mistake. One I can’t erase with Nullivex.
The first thing to become clear is the wing. It’s bent at an unnatural angle that makes me flinch. Even without wings of my own, I can tell that must hurt.
The wing’s owner comes into focus slowly.
She appears to be some kind of harpy. Maybe a hybrid of sorts, because she doesn’t look like any harpy I’ve seen in the coffee line.
Her wingspan is much grander, and her face looks almost…
sculpted. It’s symmetrical in a way that living faces aren’t—beautiful, yet not.
There’s something wrong with it that I can’t name.
But it’s definitely not the face of a harpy.
The woman hasn’t noticed me. Her eyes remain fixed on a certain dark point in the smoke. “Please. Have mercy. I know I made a mistake. I’ll do better.”
A dark silhouette steps up to the fallen harpy. He stands with his back to me, completely still, while the smoke seems to move around him. His obsidian horns curl over his head in a way that’s nauseatingly familiar.
He doesn’t answer her, and that silence is a condemnation in itself. The harpy knows that, too. She tries to push herself upright, her broken wing scraping against the cobblestones. “I didn’t understand what I was asking for. I beg of you. I have a daughter.”
The man tilts his head at her, as if regarding something he deems beneath him. “You had a daughter when you made the wish, and it changed nothing,” he says.
The voice is the same one that murmured endearments in my ear just last night. Suddenly, I’m aware of just how vulnerable I am, standing like this out in the open.
To my left, half-hidden in the smoke, there’s a dumpster. I duck behind it and pray no one will see me.
Outside my hiding place, the harpy is still trying to defend herself. “I only wanted… I didn’t know it would—”
“You knew.” The man cuts her off. “You were well aware of what you wanted and what it meant. The ignorance you’re claiming now does you no favors. And it will not save you.”
The harpy shoots to her feet and snarls, her beautiful face twisted into something grotesque. Perhaps she means to attack him, to resort to violence now that words haven’t worked. But in a fight, she doesn’t have a chance.
When the fire comes, it’s blue, the color of something deep underwater. Impossibly, it’s hot and cold at the same time. It carries with it the scent of anger, sand, and ancient spices. I cover my mouth to keep myself from screaming.
The harpy screams in my stead. Her screech ricochets off the brownstone walls like a bullet, so loud it’s deafening. The fire engulfs her in seconds, but she doesn’t immediately burn up.
The air fills with the scent of burning flesh and burned feathers. And throughout it all, the man—the djinn—is standing there, watching.
And then it’s over, and the harpy is completely gone. There’s a scorch mark on the cobblestones where she was, and nothing else. Not her bones. Not even her ashes.
The djinn—Rakan, I realize with a choked sob—stands in the smoke, staring at the mark. It’s almost as if he’s admiring his handiwork. He murmurs something under his breath that I don’t understand, then vanishes.
I stay behind the dumpster, still frozen.
I want to say it’s solely because of horror. After all, I just watched someone get violently murdered. But that’s not the thing that hurts the most.
The smell of the smoke still clings to the back of my throat, almost more suffocating than the stench of the dead harpy. Last night, he called me a diversion, and I thought that was terrible. But this… This must be his true face.
I’ve never seen the blue fire before, but that doesn’t mean anything. Perhaps that’s something he saves for special occasions or for moments when he’s feeling particularly cruel.
“You’re wrong,” a part of me protests. “This is Rakan you’re thinking about. He wouldn’t kill anyone.”
Except he obviously would. And besides, what would I know about Rakan’s character? I slept with him once and made him coffee for a few weeks. That doesn’t exactly make me an authority on his morals.
I can’t understand anything anymore, but the scorch mark on the cobblestones taunts me. The harpy said she had a daughter. Somewhere in this city, there’s a child who’s going to wonder where her mother is.
I’m the only person who knows the answer, and I know I have to do something.
My legs carry me out from behind the dumpster. I stand in the open alley, and there’s nothing left to argue with myself about.
The pharmacy bag is still in my hand.
I don’t know why that’s the thing that gets me moving. It’s absurd, maybe, that I witnessed all of that, still holding a paper bag from a hag. But somehow, it anchors me. I take a deep breath, set the bag down, and retrieve my phone from my jacket.
My hands are steadier than they should be. I dial.
It rings twice before someone picks up. “911, what’s your emergency?”
I close my eyes and turn away from the alley. “I want to report a murder,” I say, and I’m proud that my voice doesn’t shake. “The killer… The killer is Rakan Al-Rashid.”