I found Hexe exactly where Giles said he would be—sitting by himself in the farthest booth, in the deepest corner of the room, where the shadows were so thick there was no need to draw a curtain for privacy. Judging from the empty wrapper crumpled beside the brass hookah at his elbow, he was smoking Dragon Balm.
“What are you doing here?” He scowled, looking up at me with the same cold, distant eyes I’d seen the night he’d supposedly been mugged.
The last of the anger that had spurred me on my quest disappeared, to be replaced by unease. Although his features and voice were still the same, there was something imperceptibly “off” about the way he spoke and moved—as if I wasn’t talking to Hexe himself, but rather a clever simulacrum.
“I want you to come home, Hexe.” I cringed at the sound of my own voice. It sounded so weak—almost wheedling; like a mother trying to coerce an unruly child to go to bed.
“What for?” he grunted.
“It’s really important that we talk,” I said, shifting about uneasily, aware that the hurdy-gurdy player had halted and our conversation was now perfectly audible to everyone seated nearby.
“Why? You can talk to me here,” he retorted.
I stepped inside the booth and sat down opposite him, pulling the privacy curtain shut as I did so. “Look, I know you took money from the baby stash.”
Instead of looking surprised or ashamed, Hexe merely shrugged his shoulders, his face as unreadable as a mask, while his silver-gloved fingers drummed against the tabletop, as if waiting for me to say something interesting. I wasn’t really sure what his reaction would be when I confronted him with the truth, but I certainly hadn’t expected it to boil down to “So?”
“Hexe, please—this is serious. We need to talk about what’s going on with you, and I’d rather do it at home.”
“What’s going on with me, huh?” he sneered. As he took another hit, the water pipe gurgled as if it was laughing. “I’ll come home when I damn well feel like it, and not because you nagged me into doing it.”
There it was. The “why do you have to be such a bitch?” card. The one that every other boyfriend had played—usually just before the end of the relationship. I felt my heart sink as if it had been filled with lead. I didn’t dare say anything for fear I would lose what little control I had and start to cry. That’s all I needed at that moment—to be dismissed as an overemotional pregnant woman. And I definitely didn’t want to freak out in public, only to find it splashed all over YouTube by the time I got home. Fighting back my tears, I yanked back the privacy curtain and angrily strode toward the door, hoping with every step that Hexe would come to his senses.
I was halfway down the block when I realized he wasn’t going to follow. That’s when I started to cry.
I’d never felt so overwhelmed in my life. The framework on which I had chosen to build my new life was suddenly crumbling underneath me, in a way that was all too familiar. I had committed myself to Hexe to a degree I had never done before. Until now, the trust I had in him was as pure and strong as that of a child. Even on those occasions where I had been leery of the choices he made, I still knew that his decisions were born from genuine concern for both me and the baby. But now—?
I remembered how Lady Syra and Dr. Moot spoke about Esau—about how he had once been a good friend and loving brother—a healer, just like Hexe. But then he lost his wife, and anger and bitterness dragged him down the Left Hand path until he became a misanthropic, racist, homicidal zealot who wouldn’t think twice about killing his own flesh and blood. Was that what was occurring with Hexe now that he had lost his Right Hand magic—?
Just then the image of Hexe’s silver-clad hand drumming its fingers against the table, as if waiting for something to happen, flooded my mind’s eye. Hexe may have been depressed and frustrated after Boss Marz maimed him, but the cold, distant look in his eyes didn’t appear until Madam Erys tricked him into donning the Gauntlet of Nydd. If the Trojan spell on the gauntlet could somehow turn Right Hand spells into Left Hand magic, maybe it was also capable of doing the same thing to the wearer as well.
Upon reaching the house I was greeted at the door by Beanie, who licked the drying tears from my face as I hugged him. It was way past my normal bedtime, and I had to be at work the next day. I changed out of my clothes and crawled into the big, empty bed, feeling both emotionally and physically exhausted. Over the last few weeks my pregnancy had really started to affect my body—my feet and ankles had started to swell, along with my breasts, and my lower back felt like it had been whacked with the flat of a cricket bat. But my physical discomfort was nothing compared to the gnawing fear that I was losing Hexe—not to another woman, but to something dark within himself.
I fell asleep with the sound of his silver fingers drumming, drumming, drumming in my ears.
* * *
Suddenly the lights were on, rendering me as blind as the owls standing guard atop the four-poster. Hexe was standing by the bed, looming over me like a vengeful ghost, his face contorted in munted rage, smelling of tobacco, hashish, and safflower. His gauntleted hand flashed like the scales of a fish as he snatched away the bedclothes, leaving me exposed, wearing nothing but a pair of panties and a camisole.
“How dare you come hunting me down like a nagging fishwife, embarrassing me in front of my subjects?” he thundered.
I clambered out of bed moments before he grabbed the edge of the mattress and upended it onto the floor. Beanie, who had been sleeping at the foot of the bed, gave a frightened yelp and quickly scurried for cover under the nightstand.
“Why shouldn’t I take that money?” he bellowed. “You’re living rent free, aren’t you? I’m just taking what’s owed me!”
“Hexe, please, calm down! Just listen to what you’re saying!” I pleaded as I moved away from him, trying my best to stay beyond arm’s reach. “Something’s wrong with you!”
“Of course something was wrong with me, you stupid nump! But it’s all better now, see?” he said with a nasty laugh, holding up his gauntleted right hand and wiggling the fingers in parody of a wave.
“No, Hexe—that’s what’s making you act this way! The gauntlet is cursed! It’s perverted your magic and now it’s trying to do the same thing to you! You’ve got to get rid of it, Hexe!”
“You’re the one who’s crazy if you think I’m going to surrender my hand!” he snapped. “You’ve got no idea what you’re asking me to do!” Suddenly he lunged forward, his right hand moving with the speed of a striking cobra, grabbing my upper arm. For the first time since we first met, his golden eyes with their cat-slit pupils seemed genuinely inhuman. “You’re always yammering about how much you ‘belong’ in Golgotham—but the truth is you’ll never know what it really means to be Kymeran. It doesn’t rub off, no matter how hard you try.”
“Hexe, please, let go! You’re hurting me!”
“So what are you going to do about it?” He smirked, his gloved fingertips digging deeper into the flesh of my upper arm.
I don’t know who was more surprised when I punched him. My months of working as a blacksmith came in good stead as I landed a hard enough blow to his jaw to stagger him. The moment he let go of my arm I darted past him and ran out of the bedroom and headed down the hall to my studio. I closed the door behind me and I felt it shudder as he threw his weight against it, trying to force it open.
“Let me in, Tate!” he barked, rattling the doorknob like a tambourine.
“Go away!” I sobbed as I hastily secured the locks. “Just leave me alone, Hexe!”
“You can’t tell me to leave! This is my house!”
I cried out in alarm as he struck the door with his gauntleted fist, causing one of the upper panels to split. I backed away as the second blow shattered the panel entirely, allowing him to reach the lock and kick open the ruined door. I realize this might sound deluded, considering the situation I found myself in, but although I was surrounded by power tools and other equipment, I did not move to arm m
yself because I knew the man that I loved was still in there somewhere. If I could just say the right word or do the right thing to trigger his reemergence, to replace this angry stranger with the man I loved and who loved me in return, then everything would go back to the way it should be. . . .
As he moved to cross the threshold, there came a clattering sound from up the hall. Hexe frowned and turned his head to look in the direction of the noise, only to be sent flying beyond my field of vision.
“Leave her alone!” Octavia bleated.
I stepped out of the studio to see Hexe lying sprawled on the second floor landing. The cruel, distant look had disappeared from his eyes, to be replaced by one of dazed confusion. “What in seven hells is going on—?” he groaned.
As I moved to go to his side, Octavia blocked my way with her arm and shook her head. She then turned back to address Hexe in a stern voice. “Get out of here—go take a walk.”
“Tate—what’s going on—?” Hexe’s eyes widened and his voice trailed off as he caught sight of the livid hand-shaped bruise that now adorned my upper arm.
“I mean it,” Octavia said, stamping one of her cloven hooves in emphasis. “Or do you want me to knock some more sense into you?”
With that the look in Hexe’s eyes abruptly changed again, reverting to the previous cold, hard stare. I automatically took a step backward as he glared at me. “I could use some fresh air,” he sneered. “It smells like a barnyard in here.” He turned and headed down the stairs and, a few seconds later, we were rewarded by the sound of the front door slamming.
Octavia heaved a sigh of relief and then turned to look at me. “Good thing I switched shifts with a friend of mine, or I wouldn’t have been home for that. Did he hurt you?”
“Not really,” I replied. “The door got the worst of it. But thank you for stopping it before it could get really ugly.”
“It’s nothing I haven’t had to do for my sisters, time and again. All men are alike, at some point. It’s just that satyrs are at their worst all the time.”
“The thing is, Hexe isn’t like that. No, I mean it—truly he’s not. Something’s happening to him—I just don’t know how to explain it, but he’s genuinely not himself anymore.”
“Is it drugs?”
“Not exactly,” I replied.
“Do you have someplace where you can go?” Octavia asked gently. “Somewhere outside of Golgotham?”
I blinked in surprise, taken aback by the question. “Do you think that’s really necessary?”
“Do you trust him not to do it again?” the faun countered.
Up until that moment, the thought of leaving Hexe had not crossed my mind. But now that the subject had been broached, there was no banishing it. I went into my studio and stared out the window that overlooked the street. I could see Hexe trudging away from the house, fists jammed deep into the pockets of his coat. At this time of night there was only one place he could be headed: the Stagger Inn.
Chapter 20
As I stepped out of the elevator, the only things I noticed about the hallway were that it was very long and that there was no way to tell one doorway from another. The entire apartment building was also very quiet, which was to be expected at a quarter to four in the morning, and the sound of my footsteps and the clickity-click of Beanie’s toenails seemed incredibly loud in comparison. After a few moments’ search, I finally found the apartment I was looking for—marked by an adhesive sticker shaped like the Loch Ness Monster pasted just below the peephole drilled in the door. I set down my suitcase, tightened my hold on Beanie’s leash, and pushed the doorbell. A minute or two later a decidedly disgruntled male voice, still thick from sleep, spoke from the other side.
“Who is it? Don’t you know what goddamned time it is?”
“It’s me, Adrian—Tate,” I said, standing back so that he could see for himself through the peephole.
“Who is it?” asked an equally sleepy female voice.
“It’s Tate.”
There was a sudden rattle of locks and deadbolts being turned, followed by the door opening. Vanessa stood in the tiny foyer of her apartment dressed in a faux leopard-skin bathrobe, with her bright red hair sticking out in every direction. Standing behind her was her husband, Adrian, dressed in a pair of pajama bottoms and armed with a T-ball bat.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, already reaching out to pull me inside the apartment. “Has something happened?”
“I left Hexe.”
The control I’d held over my emotions from the moment I packed my bags and allowed Octavia to escort me to the taxi stand opposite the Gate of Skulls finally dissolved into a torrent of tears.
“Oh, sweetie—I’m so sorry!” Vanessa said as she slipped her arm about my shaking shoulders and steered me from the front door and into the living room.
As I let go of the leash, Beanie trotted ahead of me and jumped up onto their couch, making himself immediately at home by burrowing under the throw pillows and falling sound asleep. “I’m sorry. I should have called first, but I wasn’t thinking straight,” I managed to apologize between sobs. “Oh, God, Nessie, what am I going to do?”
“You’re going to sit down and tell me all about it,” she said solicitously.
“Oh, Nessie, it was so horrible—Hexe came home munted and we got into this terrible fight about money—”
“He was whated?” Adrian frowned. He had set aside the T-ball bat and was standing off to the side with the same awkwardly consternated look on his face that all men get when the women around them begin to weep.
“He was messed up on some kind of Kymeran drug,” I explained. “The next thing I know he’s screaming at me about money, and then things got out of hand. . . .”
“Did he hit you?” Vanessa asked, her voice suddenly hard as flint. With her bright red hair and her flashing emerald green eyes, she reminded me of one of Golgotham’s leprechauns rolling up his sleeves in anticipation of a fight.
“It got bad, but not that bad,” I replied quickly. I reflexively touched my upper arm as I spoke, but since I had changed into a long-sleeved shirt, neither Vanessa nor Adrian could see the bruises. Although I had made up my mind to walk out on Hexe, part of me was still trying to protect him.
“It would have to be drugs, wouldn’t it?” Vanessa replied, with a shake of her head. “I mean, Hexe worships the ground you walk on! I can tell it by the way he looks at you, how he talks about you to others when you’re not around.” She leaned forward and took one of my hands and gave it a squeeze. “Look, I know this looks like it’s the end, but it doesn’t have to be. Before Adrian and I got married, we had a couple of big fights; I mean, real doozies. I almost called the engagement off over one of them. But after we gave each other a little space, and cooled down, we realized even though we drive each other crazy now and again, we couldn’t live without one another. Sometimes you’ve got to get shit out in the open for a relationship to grow, even if it hurts.”
“I know that, Nessie.” I sniffled, wiping my eyes with one of the tissues Adrian handed me in an attempt to be supportive while staying out of the way. “I love Hexe so much it hurts to think about him not being in my life. But this isn’t about just about me, and what I want, anymore,” I said, placing a protective hand atop my belly. “It’s like I’m watching him fade away while being replaced by someone I don’t know. I can’t stay in that house while he’s like that. And I certainly can’t bring a baby into that kind of craziness.”
Adrian shuffled into the living room, carrying a blanket and a bed pillow in his arms. “I’m going to crash on the sofa, and you can share the bed with Nessie,” he announced, stifling a yawn. “It’s a queen—you should have plenty of room.”
“I’ll do no such thing!” I replied, taking the bedclothes from him. “I’ll sleep on the sofa—you go back to bed with your wife. I’m pregnant, not made out of glass. Besides, I wouldn’t subject Beanie’s snoring and gas to anyone unprepared for it. I think it’s actually against th
e Geneva Convention.”
Since both Adrian and Vanessa had to get up to go to work in the morning, neither was in the mood to argue the situation, so they retired to their bedroom and left me to make a bed for myself on the sofa. As I went to the bathroom before turning in, I could hear their voices conversing in low tones. Although I could not make out the words, I knew they were talking about what to do about me.
I stretched out as best I could on the couch and Beanie snuggled in close against me, pressing his sleek little body against my swollen belly. Even though it had been weeks since the last time Hexe had slept alongside me, I still missed the heat of his body and the sound of his breathing. The thought of never waking up to find him in bed beside me again made my heart ache as if it were being torn apart with hooks. I remembered the cold, distant look in Hexe’s eyes and the sneering, ugly tone of his voice as he spoke barbed words full of venom, and how he seemed to take a perverse delight in saying things that shredded my self-confidence and self-worth. I tried to think of the last time I was genuinely happy, and my mind went back to the Jubilee, when he won a stuffed monkey wearing a plaid tam-o’-shanter for me at the Hit the Cats booth.
As the sights and sounds of that moment flooded my memory, I experienced what felt like a small, sharp kick in my midriff, followed by a second, slightly less enthusiastic bump. Beanie snorted in disgust and moved toward the foot of the couch, clearly resentful of having his beauty rest interrupted by a rumbaing fetus. I closed my eyes and pretended that Hexe had his arms wrapped about me, and that it was his hands, not mine, clasped across my belly, feeling our wondrous, nameless child-to-be tapping on the walls of his world, as if in search of a secret passage. The tears built until they turned my vision into a watery blur and spilled from the corners of my eyes.
* * *
The sound of movement in the room started me awake. I opened my eyes and frowned at the unfamiliar bookcases and coffee table before remembering where I was. I could hear Adrian and Vanessa moving around in their galley-style kitchen as they prepared breakfast before leaving for the day. Adrian taught Art History at NYU, and Vanessa worked for a pet cremation service, both designing and throwing custom pottery urns for dearly departed four-legged friends. Beanie hopped off the sofa and went trotting off to investigate upon hearing the toaster pop. I guess he missed the old breakfast routine as much as I did.
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