Wicked Misery (Miss Misery)

by Martin, Tracey

  Disgruntled, I brought up the rear as we marched down the block, still trying to weave a convincing argument for doing just that. Worst-case scenario, I could always call the Gryphons myself, but that brought its own share of problems. Mainly, that my only evidence connecting Pete to the murders was my own quasi-crimes, and I’d have to explain my curse. It might be worth the risk, but I wasn’t eager to find out.

  Three male furies who were passing by took in the scene with confused faces. The thickest of the bunch, a walking nightmare with red hair and matching eyes, slapped Lucen on the shoulder. “I hear you’re closed for a while. When are you opening for business again?”

  “Check back Saturday night,” Lucen said, scowling. Friday was my D-Day. Either we’d have resolved this mess by then, or Saturday wouldn’t matter.

  “Excellent.”

  The one on the right, who wore his black hair in spikes that made his head look like a mace, ran a finger over Pete’s forehead.

  Devon smacked his hand away. “Our property. Back off.”

  “No harm meant,” Mace-head replied. He and his friends made a show of checking me out, but apparently I wasn’t worth harassing while they were outnumbered by satyrs. Small miracles.

  “What do they care when you reopen?” Devon asked as Lucen unlocked the door. “They never come in.”

  Lucen narrowed his eyes at the three crossing the street. “No, they prefer to hang around outside. They wait ’til the humans leave then rile them up until they’re brawling in the street or pissing their pants as they run away. Those assholes are bad news. I tell Dezzi, but she doesn’t want to pick fights with Raj without more evidence that it’s hurting my business.”

  The satyrs muttered in sympathy. Had I the mood, I would have laughed. They almost sounded respectable.

  Devon called Dezzi, and plans were made. Naturally, I had no say in any of them, so I silently vented my frustration at Lucen in a one-sided argument that involved much swearing. How much of what I was actually thinking made it through I couldn’t say, but he clearly got the gist of my emotional opinion. Either that or he threw a dishtowel at me simply for glaring at him.

  “I already explained our position,” Lucen said. “Drop it.”

  I pulled the dishtowel off my head without a word. All this glaring was starting to give me eye strain.

  Devon hung up the phone. “I’m taking Pete here to Purgatory while we wait for his friend to call back. Dezzi wants to meet later. She said she’ll call.”

  “That’s it?” I jumped up.

  “Not much else to do in the meantime.” Devon beckoned to the two other satyrs, and they pulled Pete to his feet.

  “Yeah, there is more we could do.”

  “No Gryphons. Just relax, right.” He took a set of keys from his pocket and winked. “I’m happy to help if you need a way to pass the time.”

  I switched my glare from Lucen to him, and Devon laughed.

  “What’s Purgatory?” I demanded of Lucen after Devon and the others left with Pete. The name sounded vaguely familiar.

  Lucen grabbed a soda from his fridge and offered me one. “You hungry?”

  I was actually, but I wasn’t distracted so easily. “Purgatory. Wait, isn’t that a club?”

  “Yes. Devon’s part owner.”

  “You’re kidding. I’ve been there.” It had been years ago, which was why the name hadn’t immediately registered. I’d gone a few times with Steph before deciding that ear-splitting music and overpriced drinks were not my idea of a good time.

  Neither had been watching overweight guys dance around in leather thongs. Purgatory wasn’t strictly a fetish club, but it did manage to attract the city’s freakier crowds, along with the generally disenfranchised twenty-somethings who wanted a place to dress in vinyl and fishnet without standing out.

  It was also ideal grounds for a large chunk of the illegal, magical drug trade. I’d never made it through a night there without someone trying to sell me hell or F. And come to think of it, all the F drug dealers had been lust addicts.

  Really, I should have known satyrs would own a place like that. If it weren’t for the fact that I’d never seen a pred hang out there, that was.

  “Why doesn’t it surprise me that you’d have gone there?” Lucen said.

  I didn’t deign to answer, still too annoyed by the Pete situation.

  “Jess, you have to understand—”

  “No, I don’t. I get it—you don’t play by the laws. I don’t have to understand anything else, and frankly, I don’t want to.” I took a huge bite from my sandwich—the fridge hadn’t improved it—to keep from saying anything else.

  This was stupid. I shouldn’t pick fights with Lucen, or Devon, or any other satyrs. Even if they weren’t doing it for me per se, they were still helping me. Lucen in particular. Telling the sylphs I was under his protection had clearly cost him something with Dezzi. Since I didn’t know why he did it, I ought to be grateful. It just wasn’t easy when I had no reason to trust that his motives were at all benign.

  Lucen fixed us a snack, and the minutes passed in an uneasy silence. With the change in the sun’s angle, the kitchen was no longer light and airy. Shadows elongated on the floor, creeping ever closer to me. I inched my feet away from them. Lucen’s phone rang as I wiped mayonnaise from my fingers.

  “Lei’s almost finished with your disguise charms,” Lucen said, shutting off the phone. “You’ll need to go to her place so you can activate them.”

  “What do you mean by activate them?”

  “You ever use one before?”

  “No, but I thought you could buy these sorts of things off the street. How hard can it be?” Even cheap disguise charms cost way more than my budget allowed. As for good ones, they weren’t legally for sale without a permit. I had a feeling I would soon discover why.

  “Not hard, but it’s not like your other charms. You can’t throw one around your neck and reap the benefits. She’ll have to teach you.”

  Lucen insisted on walking me the three blocks to Lei’s shop. The harpy was a master charm maker who, according to Lucen, sold almost exclusively to other residents of Shadowtown. I supposed that explained why I hadn’t done much soul swapping with her before. Although a new shop would occasionally show up in my routine—like Wenda’s Wishes—most preds who sold magic to humans had been around long enough for me to have some familiarity with them. I’d cut deals with Lei only twice that I could remember, and both times the magic involved had been on a grand scale. Expensive.

  Good quality spells and charms, like good quality anything, cost more. Most humans who did business with preds got ripped off because they didn’t know any better. They merely knew they needed something done that went against the laws established by the Accords, and that meant they couldn’t purchase it from the magi. They went into Shadowtown expecting to bargain away their souls, and so they did. It was like walking into a car dealership and announcing how much money you had in your bank account. Fools and their souls were easily parted.

  Some magic, on the other hand, was genuinely expensive because of the work or danger involved in its creation. Like Gryphons and magi, preds were capable of making basic charms themselves but they preferred to leave the work to specialists when it came to difficult spells. Disguise charms, apparently, were tricky things. That explained the price. Powerful disguise charms keyed to an individual cost more than I cared to consider, and I wondered if Lei was getting paid for the work she’d put into mine.

  Yet another reason I shouldn’t fight too much with Lucen.

  Lucen trusted Lei enough to leave me with her unattended, and I spent the next couple hours hanging out in her charm lab. It resembled the charm labs I’d toured at Gryphon headquarters back when I attended the Academy. Which is to say it looked like a chemistry lab but smelled worse.

  After spitting in the concoction Lei brewed—she’d said blood worked better, but I’d refused—I sat around watching her put the finishing touches on the magica
l brew. Then she bottled it, dividing it evenly into five spell-proof containers, and beckoned me before a mirror.

  “We call these charms,” Lei said, “but they are really liquid glamour. You know the difference?”

  “Nope.”

  “A charm works on anyone. You want pink hair, say? I can give you a spell for pink hair. It’ll work on you or whoever else puts it on their hair, but it’s a cheap illusion. It’ll wear off fast and may not look completely believable. These—” she held up one of the containers, “—will respond only to your chemistry. They won’t merely create an illusion, they’ll create change, something more believable, and they’re capable of creating any effect you choose. But you must direct the power. That’s what I’m going to teach you.”

  Lei brought over the cauldron that contained the charm’s dregs. “Enough is in here to work with. Take some.”

  Warily, I dipped my finger into the clear, gelatinous slush. I might not be able to make charms, but I knew enough about what went into them that touching this residue made me somewhat queasy. Oddly enough, the charm goo cooled my fingers, but it was as sticky as it looked. Kind of like chilled hair gel.

  “We’ll start with something easy,” Lei said. “Hair color. Pick one and visualize it. Then keep the intent in your mind and spread the spell throughout your hair.”

  I regarded the goo with apprehension, not wanting to put this stuff in my hair. I didn’t even use hairspray. Grow a pair, Jess. You’d need a special permit to buy this stuff legally, and more cash than your Dragon’sWing’s worth. Take advantage of this learning opportunity.

  Besides, Lei was waiting for me, her talon-like nails clicking against each other with impatience, and I didn’t like pissing off people who were more badass than me.

  So right. I smeared the goo around on my fingers, then ran my fingers through my curls. Blonde—I concentrated on the word and tried to visualize it as Lei said. Platinum blonde.

  As I mentally recited the word, the coolness in my hands turned to warmth. My skin began to tingle with power, and the sensation traveled up my hand. My eyes closed in concentration. When I opened them, I gasped at my reflection. Blondness seeped from my fingers into my hair as though my hands were coated in paint. It dribbled down the strands, bleaching the dark brown to a silvery yellow. The stickiness I’d once felt vanished, as did the goo. I’d never seen magic work this way before, and my jaw dropped.

  Hurriedly, I ran my hands fully through my hair until all the brown disappeared. “Whoa.” I shook my head and flexed my goo-free hands. Alas, despite my pale skin, I made a terrible blonde. “How long will this last?”

  “Approximately twelve hours, or until you remove it, which I’ll also show you how to do.”

  Lei lifted the hair off the back of my neck, and I tensed. Amazement died away, fear ebbing in its place. So far as I could tell, Lei wasn’t purposely exerting any influence over me. My protective charm didn’t react. Yet until this moment I’d been so focused on getting the disguise charm that I’d forgotten all about the fact that I was working with a pred.

  This was what—the second or third time in the past couple days I’d lost sight of that fact? How many times could my guard slip before the slip was fatal?

  Even as I worried, Lei’s proximity triggered my repressed jealousies. Visions of graduation day from the Academy leapt to the forefront of my mind, torturing me with images of my friends hugging and congratulating each other while I stood on the sidelines, clutching nothing more than a normal high school diploma and fighting back tears. Already they’d forgotten me. Already I’d become lesser.

  “You missed some,” Lei said, and her voice jolted me back to the present. “Stray hairs around your neck.”

  “How? The spell was doing the work on its own.”

  “It only seems that way. You must remember even the hair you can’t see.” She stepped away, and I relaxed slightly. But I didn’t drop my guard, not again.

  I lifted my hair to inspect for myself, stretching to see the back of my neck in the mirror. Wispy brown-black curls did indeed remain. Crap. “This would have been simpler with a generic charm.”

  “Yes, but a generic charm can’t do what I’m going to teach you next.” Lei opened a cabinet drawer and pulled out, of all things, a fashion magazine. “Most people aren’t artists, so it helps them to have a visual guide. Pick a face. You’re going to create it.”

  An hour later I emerged from Lei’s shop looking nothing like I had when I entered, which I had to admit was pretty cool. My hair wasn’t simply blonde, but dead straight. The smattering of freckles around my nose had cleared up. And I had the cheekbones, nose and eyebrows of some Cosmo model. Lei had even shown me how I could use the glamour—as she insisted I call it—to give myself an expert makeup job. Not that I was an expert in anything to do with makeup, but I sure as hell didn’t look like me.

  Lei promised the five containers she’d made me each contained enough potency to recreate not only a face but my total bone structure, and unopened, they should last about a year. I really hoped I made it through this week alive and unscathed with some leftovers. Odds were against me ever getting my hands on magic this powerful again.

  And oh, the fun I could have with this stuff.

  The sun had set while I was in Lei’s shop, and Shadowtown bustled with commotion. I suspected Lucen wouldn’t be pleased that I hadn’t called before leaving, but I seriously did not appreciate having an escort everywhere I went. With my unfamiliar face, I felt safe along the crowded main streets. In other words, no more vulnerable than any other human dumb enough to stroll around Shadowtown after dark. Still, I breathed a sigh of relief when I shut his apartment door behind me, and not just because an imp had chased me up the stoop.

  The hallway and kitchen were dark, but a light shone in the living room. I wandered in there, wondering if Lucen was back from whatever meeting Dezzi was supposed to be holding. No sooner had I stepped over the threshold, though, then I caught the sound of footsteps moving upstairs. Guess that answered that question. Perfect. I’d show off my handiwork to him.

  I set my containers on the living room table while Sweetpea lunged at his metal cage. Odd. He’d never been that interested in me before. Maybe he didn’t like my new face? Or maybe he could simply detect how much magic I wore. I stuck my tongue out at the dragon, and he snorted a puff of smoke that rolled across the hardwood floor. He was too young to breathe fire, but perhaps taunting him wasn’t the brightest idea. I beat a retreat and bounded up the stairs.

  Halfway to the second floor, I paused. I could no longer hear Sweetpea shaking his cage. Instead, noises from Lucen’s bedroom drifted down the steps. Voices, both male, and both making very identifiable sounds. Oh God. My hand shook on the railing.

  Lucen hadn’t expected me back yet, and he wasn’t alone. He had an addict over.

  I felt like I was shriveling up inside. Or going to hurl. That was also a distinct possibility. The noise increased in volume, and I put my hands over my ears but couldn’t block out the sounds. The hunger and ecstasy was palpable, clinging to the air like the foulest cigar smoke. I swore I could taste it all on my tongue, or maybe that was just the vomit I was holding in.

  Damn it! I knew Lucen had to feed his addicts’ desires every now and then in order to keep them healthy enough to feed him. I knew what that meant. But I sure didn’t need to experience it firsthand.

  I backed down a step, but I was too late. If Lucen hadn’t heard me, then perhaps he’d felt the surge of rage that had burned through my veins. Whichever, the door to his bedroom opened, and he appeared on the landing, completely naked.

  “Jess?” He squinted at me even though he couldn’t see through the glamour, which could only mean he recognized my emotions. I didn’t like the implications there at all.

  He looked so deliciously good standing there too. Sweaty and hard and everything I’d have expected a satyr to be. But he was so fucking horrible—also everything I expected a satyr to be but d
id my best not to think about when I was around him.

  It took all my willpower to tear my eyes away. “You have an addict here? Now?” Did my voice have to tremble?

  “Just give me a… I didn’t think you’d be back yet.”

  “Obviously.” The word came out like a growl. How dare he? I was stuck here, hiding from my own people, depending on his help, and he was in his bedroom screwing some weak-willed, loser addict!

  “Jess!”

  I ignored Lucen as I bolted back down the stairs. He didn’t follow. Good. Power zipped through my extremities as I paced, heedless of Sweetpea’s renewed annoyance, and pulled myself together. No one could feed off Lucen’s addict but him, so my surge in power was due solely to my own anger. Normally, my freakishness disturbed me, but the magical hit tonight was a welcome relief because I needed to move. My mind churned with ideas for where to go, yet one thing was clear. I had to get out of here before I did something stupid.

  My bag from my apartment was in the living room, and I dug through it. Luckily, my wardrobe consisted of mostly black clothes and jeans, so even though Lucen and Devon had brought me some of my more revealing items, I could put an outfit together that matched.

  Upstairs, Lucen had returned to his addict, and my eyes burned with something like repressed tears.

  Come on, Jess. It’s no big deal. Just two people having sex. Get over it. How many roommates’ nighttime romps have you suffered through?

  Yet I couldn’t get over it, and logically there was only one reason why—Lucen wasn’t supposed to do this to me. For ten years, he’d kept his addicts away from me, and now, in just a few days, I’d run into two. First the woman at the bar, now the man upstairs.

  Lucen knew I despised what preds did to humans, regardless of his it’s-what-I-am crap. I thought he’d respected me enough not to subject me to his evil side. Damn it, he’d never touched me since I’d asked him not to. Some weak part of me must have thought he actually had a dollop of compassion hidden away in that cold, dark heart of his. Otherwise, why had he always pretended to be nice to me? Why had he been so quick to help me? Why the fuck had he been screwing with me—metaphorically—for the past ten years?