Wicked Misery (Miss Misery)

by Martin, Tracey

  His hands were clasped in front of his body, and he had no weapons on him. Brown eyes glanced between the blade and my covered face. “Why not?”

  “I don’t like violence.” Said the woman holding a knife to the unarmed man. Hello, irony.

  “That’s too bad. I’ve made some good money betting on them. What do you do for fun?”

  Meet weirdos in the Common at midnight? “Sports. Sports bars are okay. Hanging out outside Fenway after a Sox loss is better.” Hey, there was nothing illegal, immoral or even icky about that, and the buzz from thousands of disappointed fans was wonderful. Not to mention guilt free and not in violation of anyone’s privacy.

  Nonetheless, Note-writer’s eyes seemed disappointed. He rested a hand near my boot. I flexed my foot and placed the tip of the knife by my heel.

  “I never thought about that. I’m not into sports. There’s a Match coming up soon. You should come with me.”

  “I told you—I don’t like violence.”

  “Maybe you’ll change your mind by then.”

  “Don’t count on it.”

  He sighed. “I thought you’d be more fun, all things considered.”

  “Sorry to disappoint. I’m not fun. No one who knows me thinks I’m fun.” Alas, when you got a buzz from other people’s unhappiness, it put a crick in your social life. I’d all but given up on dating, and Steph was the only person I hung out with regularly. Probably because she had as many issues as I did.

  “That’s a shame.” Note-writer backed up, staring warily at the knife.

  It crossed my mind that I could jump down there after him. I wouldn’t need a weapon to knock him to the ground, yank off his mask and search for a wallet. But it would take violence and I’d feel like an utter hypocrite. My only other option was to use my gift to magically seduce him, but even if the imp’s sting wore off in the next couple seconds, it would be of little use. If this guy was like me, and it sounded like he actually might be, he’d have more resistance to magic than the average human.

  So I remained where I was, squatting in the gryphon’s shadow, wondering if my reluctance was a mistake. But after all, the worst thing this guy admitted to was discovering my identity by accident. Besides, a guy who enjoyed the Meat Matches was not a guy who’d turn me over to the Gryphons.

  “I’ll call you later about the Matches,” creepy Note-writer said.

  “You know my phone number?”

  “No, but I know your name. I’m sure I can find it. Or you could give it to me.”

  “Nope, I don’t give out my number to guys whose names I don’t know.”

  He failed to take the hint, not that I’d planned on giving him my real number anyway. “You’re pretty psycho to be carrying around so many weapons, you know.”

  I rested the knife’s blade against my chin. “Smart. I’m pretty smart.” Especially when such a creepy guy discovered my identity. Even creepier, he might not be the only one.

  Chapter Five

  Bridget was late. I’d scored us a tiny table by the coffee shop’s window, and leaned back in my seat to better observe the crowd. Gryphon headquarters loomed across the street, loomed being subjective. It was shorter and squatter than the buildings surrounding it, yet it gave off a kind of presence. Maybe it was the Doric columns or the enormous granite statues of the half-lion, half-eagle creatures. Maybe it was just knowing that Boston’s bureau of the magical FBI was contained within those walls, lots of people with power, both literal and political.

  Lots of people who once rejected me for not being normal.

  Lots more who wouldn’t want me roaming the streets if they knew what my gift gave me the ability to do.

  I balled the paper from my sweetener packet into a hard nub and squeezed until my knuckles whitened.

  The tall buildings surrounding us trapped the street in shadow this time of the morning. Combined with the coffee shop’s tinted windows, everything took on a dreary, gray hue. I wouldn’t have been surprised if half the people passing by were depressed. Mmm…sweet depression.

  When the guy at the table nearby left, I reached over and grabbed his copy of the Globe. The front-page article on the serial murders contained nothing new, alas. No mention of addicts or anything else of that sort. The only interesting tidbit was a photo of the newest victim. She resembled the other three—twenties, average-to-slender build, brown hair. Good thing I wasn’t a vanity addict or I’d start worrying.

  “Sorry I’m late.” Bridget startled me as she dumped a Gryphon-issued messenger bag on the chair across from me. “I’m going to grab something to drink. Be right back.”

  She didn’t leave me any chance to acknowledge her. The line at the front of the shop wormed and wiggled as she joined it. A customer or two offered up their spots, but Bridget dutifully took her place at the end. I snorted into my latte. Gryphons—half the population feared them because they wielded magic, and the other half worshipped them for it. Personally, I’d yet to meet one sporting a halo.

  Not that the name Angelic Order of the Gryphon had anything to do with some divine mission. Not these days anyway. During the Middle Ages, the Gryphons had started out as a religious order—priests with swords—and no women or infidels allowed. There was no pretense of law enforcement then, no attempt at preds and humans living in anything other than a state of perpetual war.

  It wasn’t until the Gryphons signed the Accords with the magi that they were forced to acknowledge that women and non-Christians could wield magic. And that those groups had been doing so quite successfully, thank you, in their own villages and countries for hundreds of years without Gryphon interference.

  Even then, Gryphons continued to act more like loose societies of warriors than the international magical law enforcement agency they were today. It wasn’t until the twentieth century, when the U.S., Britain and other democratic societies bent under pressure to acknowledge that preds deserved some basic rights, that the Gryphons had reorganized. The Accords had been amended, spelling out what constituted legal versus illegal uses of magic, granting preds the right to contract with humans for souls, and codifying the purpose, structure and legal reach of the Gryphons. Now, everyone had to at least pretend to play by laws.

  These days, all magically gifted humans, which accounted for about one fiftieth of one percent of the population, were tagged by age six, regardless of religious affiliation. Those whose gift developed properly—that is, didn’t disappear around age eighteen—became Gryphons. No one knew why for sure. The predominant theory was that the first humans obtained their magic from the magi under the condition that they could only use that magic for humanity’s good. It made as much sense as anything since gifted children invariably wanted to be Gryphons when they grew up. Those whose gifts faded ended up being happy doing something else.

  Me and my cursed gift were the exception.

  “Finally!” Bridget flopped in her seat and pulled a clump of mousy brown hair out of her face. “You should try the vanilla green tea chai here. It’s fantastic.”

  “Now you tell me.”

  Bridget smiled, a gesture that never quite extended to her eyes. Dear, quiet, serious Bridget. She didn’t have much of a sense of humor, which was why she was my only friend from our days at the Academy whose company I could tolerate. Melanie, Julie, Kevin, all my happy friends? I’d cut them out of my life in one giant hack job the day I’d been kicked to the curb.

  It wasn’t their fault. They weren’t bad people. Just the opposite. Their love of life made me ill. They’d gotten the dream—wore the black-and-gold uniform, learned the secrets of magic, and were held up as saviors of my race. All because no one had screwed with their gifts.

  Really, the way I blasted my misery to the world it was amazing a horde of preds didn’t hang around me like groupies. No wonder Lucen encouraged me to stop by more often. I was an emotional feast for the taking.

  “What?” I’d totally missed whatever Bridget had said.

  “I asked how are you, bu
t it looks like you’re as tired and out of it as me.”

  “Too many long hours chasing this serial killer?”

  Bridget didn’t move as she stared at me for a good five seconds. “I didn’t think the cops were officially calling it a serial case yet.”

  “I don’t think the cops are working on it anymore.” I raised an eyebrow.

  “Ah. So this is what you wanted to discuss? Jess, come on.”

  “Come on what? Look at the photos of the four victims. I could be any of them.” If I were an addict, that was.

  “So could I. So could a thousand other women. You’re not worried about this. Aren’t you a black belt or something? What do you really want to know?”

  I sipped my coffee, trying to decide on the best way to tackle this. Subtlety had never been one of my strengths. Meanwhile, Bridget was watching me expectantly. No sense hemming and hawing. “Rumor has it that the victims were all vanity addicts. True or false?”

  “Where did you hear that?”

  “At the diner. We get a lot of cops in there.”

  Bridget borrowed my stalling technique, taking long sips of her chai. A twinge of something, annoyance or general unhappiness, had zipped through her mind when I mentioned vanity addicts. She was trying to decide whether to tell me the truth.

  No matter. I could sense her deception, but I’d prefer if she simply admitted everything. To that end, I put on my best somber, responsible and concerned face. Probably, I just looked constipated.

  Bridget’s shoulders slumped as she relented. “Yes, they’re all vanity addicts. But please, don’t go around confirming those rumors. The less the public knows, the less crazies we’ll have coming forward to confess. It’s one of the reasons we haven’t been releasing all the information we have.”

  “Gotcha.” I twisted the ring I wore around my middle finger. All the information, huh? “Anyway, someone choosing to target the sylphs’ addicts could have serious repercussions, I’d think. Do you know if all those addicts belonged to the same master, or were they spread out? ’Cause I can’t imagine the sylphs taking that lightly.”

  “They had different masters, so far as we can tell. The sylphs aren’t exactly cooperating with our investigation.”

  That was hardly any wonder. The only times Gryphons ventured into Shadowtown were to rescue ghouls and addicts, arrest or kill preds, or bust illegal magic operations. Humans and preds might be living uncomfortably side by side these days, but relations were hardly cordial. At least half the Gryphons I’d met during my time at the Academy longed to return to the good old days when the Order had the right to kill preds on sight. Many preds, I suspected, wouldn’t mind the same arrangement, just with them doing the killing.

  “You’d think the sylphs would want to cooperate if those were legally obtained addicts.”

  Bridget shrugged noncommittally. This wasn’t getting me anywhere. Subtlety could bite me. “So what other information aren’t you releasing to the public?”

  “I could hardly tell you, could I? But that’s about it.”

  “Nothing else earth-shattering?”

  “Nothing else earth-shattering.”

  Everyone’s anxiety rose when they lied. Not consistently, and not always the same way, which was why polygraphs weren’t perfect. But it rose, and the taste of that particular anxiety was one all of its own. Kind of like burnt toast. I didn’t care for it, but I could identify it better than any polygraph. And the bigger the lie, the stronger the flavor.

  Which meant Bridget was holding back at least one huge piece of information. That couldn’t be good.

  Most importantly, did it have anything to do with why the sylphs had harassed me?

  Despite my best attempts to focus on the murders, Bridget cleverly directed the conversation to other topics, mainly the possibility of me returning to the Academy to discuss life outside of the Gryphons. I told her I got the letter and would think about it.

  I exited the coffee shop without much more insight than I’d entered it. In a pissy mood, therefore, I set off for my next errand—new charms.

  I’d meant to get them refilled on Wednesday, but one of the Tallyho’s waitresses had called out sick and I took an extra half shift instead. Charm refilling cost money, and I could use the pay. Truthfully, though, I never enjoyed going into The Feathers, so I’d procrastinated.

  Stepping out of the human-dominated areas of the city and into The Feathers was every bit as jarring as stepping into Shadowtown, albeit for very different reasons. No lack of color or life here, and no lack of garbage. The wise and allegedly benevolent magi were slobs.

  Slobs with tacky taste in décor, mind you. I stepped around a pancaked rat and crossed under the grand arch that read The Feathers.

  Colorful storefronts stretched up the long, straight street. The streetlights were painted red, and flags with pictures of crows, owls and falcons flew from them. Street vendors hawked their wares from gaudy carts. In the intersection ahead, a young magus on a bicycle and a human cabbie started shouting as they almost collided. Distracted by the near miss, I stuck my foot in a patch of something wet and sticky.

  Swearing, I scraped the side of my sneaker on the curb. No one with half a brain wore sandals in The Feathers.

  As I removed the crap from my sneaker, someone else—also on a bicycle—hit a bump, and his bags smacked me in the back. I stumbled into a magus purchasing something from a street vendor.

  “Sorry,” I muttered, hoping the guy who hit me rode into a light post.

  “Not a problem,” the magus said.

  We stared at each other. The magus was an owl shifter, and a couple feathers around his pointy ears twitched. He had deep-set but kind eyes. Familiar eyes.

  “Ms. Moore, a pleasure.” The magus extended a four-fingered hand toward me. “I didn’t recognize you at first.”

  Olef—my brain dredged up the name at last. He frequented the diner every Tuesday morning on his way to some business meeting, buying a cup of coffee and a walnut Danish to go. Seeing him outside of the Tallyho was weird. I didn’t think I’d ever run into him before.

  “You mean because I’m not dressed in some ridiculous wench uniform?” I asked, relieved that I wasn’t the only one surprised into stupidity.

  “Exactly. Funny, isn’t it, how we come to associate people with certain transient qualities?” Olef handed a five to the street vendor and took something warm and wrapped in a puff pastry in return.

  I repressed my gag reflex. Alongside the usual fare of coffee, pastries and hotdogs, in The Feathers one could purchase earthworm pie, mouse kabob and seven-seed pizza. At least that last one didn’t sound inedible.

  “What brings you to this part of town?”

  I finished cleaning my sneaker. “Charms.”

  “Indeed?”

  Most humans didn’t buy charms—or any sort of magic—except for special occasions, so Olef’s curiosity had good cause. Not to mention the type of charms I bought weren’t the usual ones. Among those who didn’t shun magic entirely, humans favored things like good-luck charms or protective charms. Or for those with medical issues, an all-purpose healing charm or a fertility charm could often produce better results for a lower price than traditional treatments.

  “One of my roommates is paranoid about the recent murders. So I volunteered to get us some magical protections.”

  “Oh dear.” The brown and white feathers that passed for Olef’s hair ruffled. “I do believe we have a serial killer on the loose, though I don’t expect the police will admit it for some time. It would explain the strange visions I’ve been having.”

  “Visions?” Some magi were well known for their clairvoyance and often worked closely with the Gryphons in magical crime-related matters.

  Olef nodded. “I’ve had a few. This killer targets women in your age range, it appears. You’d do well to take care, Ms. Moore.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that, but before I could ask more, Olef indicated he was heading into the library
down the next left. I filed my questions away and waved goodbye. It was probably best to concentrate on where I stepped anyway.

  I walked—dodged obstacles might have been more accurate—my way down the next block with my gaze cast resolutely on the ground. In that way I managed to avoid a steaming pile of dragon crap, a newspaper filled with rotting fish, and a stream of something purple leaking from a trash bag. The Feathers was dangerous in its own I-should-get-inoculated-before-entering kind of way. It was almost enough to make me long for Shadowtown’s evil fastidiousness.

  Outside the charm shop, I paused. The peculiar minty and citrusy taste of agitation headed my way. I glanced behind, and sure enough, two uniformed Gryphons were crossing the street.

  The magi stepped aside as the Gryphons passed, but they snuck glances at the humans’ backs. Some faces were scared. Others angry. Most were distrustful. Weird. The expressions on those birdlike faces made me feel like I was back in Shadowtown where dislike of Gryphons was the norm. But in The Feathers? No way.

  I didn’t recognize either of the Gryphons, and neither one gave me a second glance as they strode down the tiny, gritty side street. That was when I noticed the blades dangling along their legs. Gold symbols decorated the black sheaths, but those weren’t ornamental swords. The symbols on the sheaths were magical glyphs, and the blades inside had been forged in salamander fire—a technique that made the metal particularly lethal to preds.

  No wonder the magi appeared unhappy. This was no social or consulting visit.

  I peered around the corner. What looked to be a restaurant had propped open its door, and the Gryphons climbed down the five stairs and went inside. Curiouser and curiouser. What could possibly be going down in The Feathers that would have all the magi on edge and Gryphons brandishing the threat of lethal weapons?

  My mind immediately jumped to my conversation with Bridget and her monumental lie. Something earth-shattering. Something that might be related to all the serial-killing victims being addicts, a fact that only a few races would know. Like the magi. I sucked in my lip. Yeah, magi involvement would be earth-shattering and worthy of a cover-up until the Gryphons had a better grasp of what was happening. It might even explain Olef’s strange comment.