by Nazri Noor
Dionysus nodded at me, the wreath of leaves tattooed along his temples drifting and wavering, as if blown by an unseen wind. “I would offer you something more potent to drink, but I think that my business bends enough of your human laws without violating the one about underage drinking, yes?” Then he turned to Florian, the brilliant white of his teeth standing out against the lustrous olive of his skin. “And you. I suspect that you have brought your own wonders for me to sample.”
Florian nodded politely. “Indeed I have. My name is Florian. And this is – ”
“Mason Albrecht,” Dionysus said, making a rotating hand gesture, as if to tell us to get on with it and move the conversation along. “The nephilim. Yes, I’m familiar. There’s been a fair bit of chatter about you in the arcane underground of late.” He winked at me, his wreath and the black curls of his hair bobbing in time with the motion. “The gods talk, you see. They gossip. I heard it through the grapevine.”
God of wine. Grapevine. Very clever, I wanted to say, but again, there was no point risking offending someone who could potentially become a new ally, or, at the very least, someone who could enable us to pacify our landlord for another month.
“I don’t really have much of a reputation to precede me,” I said, looking away as I rubbed my shoulder, lowering my chin just a little, as if to show submission. What little I knew of gods told me that they enjoyed flattery, that they liked to have the upper hand. I was happy to give Dionysus that if it meant that our conversation would go more smoothly. “It’s Florian here who has all the goods, and the talent. He’s great with nature magic. Comes with being a dryad.”
Dionysus’s eyes trailed from Florian’s head to his feet, then back up again. All the while, his perfect smile never wavered. “Yes. A dryad, indeed. Please, show me your magic.”
“With pleasure.” Florian reached for his own glass of water, supporting its base in one hand, twiddling his fingers over the rim. At first it looked like he was just waggling and gesturing at random, but tiny things started falling out of the palm of his hand and his fingertips, sinking into the glass. The water itself was spinning, the way it might in a blender.
It was happening too fast for me to figure out, but I thought I caught glimpses of petals, little berries, and seeds falling into the frothing whirlpool. The liquid itself had changed in color, taking on a reddish hue, very much like wine. The churning died down, and the foam on the liquid’s surface settled, leaving a ruby-red glass of something that, even from where I was sitting, smelled like an orchard on a summer day.
I ventured a glance at Dionysus’s face. The god was grinning from ear to ear, clearly thrilled by the spectacle.
“Very impressive,” he said, bending in to peer more closely at the glass, setting down his own goblet on the table.
Florian stretched out his hand, offering the glass to the god. Dionysus accepted it eagerly, lifting it up to the light to observe the fruit of Florian’s labors.
“Beautiful clarity,” Dionysus said. “No visible impurities. Wonderful color.” He lifted the glass to his nose, sniffing gently, his eyes going wide with surprise and delight. “It smells remarkable. What is in this?”
Florian folded his hands behind his head, leaned into his chair, and winked. “Trade secret,” he said.
I was expecting the worst, but Dionysus only laughed, apparently charmed by Florian’s bravado. “Very well. I shall taste it.” He brought the glass to his lips, stopped short, then lifted a finger. “But if this is poisoned, I suppose you wouldn’t mind very much if I ordered my maenads to rip your bodies to pieces, eh?”
Dionysus laughed. Florian laughed, too. I sat there in silence, trying very hard not to piss myself. But when I saw Dionysus’s lashes fluttering as he tilted the drink past his lips, his throat bobbing as he swallowed the entire glass in one long, uninhibited gulp, I knew that we’d won.
“This is,” Dionysus started, stretching out the moment for emphasis. “This is absolutely sublime.” He kissed his fingers. “Superb. Very nearly as good as something I could make myself, in fact.”
Florian’s grinned from ear to ear. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“I will purchase your entire stock for my bar.”
My jaw dropped. Good thing Dionysus wasn’t looking at me then. I was pretty sure my eyes were lighting up with dollar signs.
“That’s fantastic,” Florian said uncertainly. “But about that.”
“How soon can you have fifty bottles ready?”
“Ah,” Florian said. “We currently have zero bottles.”
“But we can fix that,” I stammered. “How about this. Florian produces as many as he can, and we’ll bring them over. I’ll personally deliver the – ”
“My dear nephilim,” Dionysus said, casting a hand around his empty bar. “We are revelers, drunks, and savages.” Then, holding his other hand to his chest, he added: “But we’re not animals. I refuse to begin serving a new product to my customers without assurance that I will be receiving a steady supply. Frankly, your complete lack of preparation in this area doesn’t fill me with confidence. What is the point of doing business with you if you cannot guarantee stock? Please. Prove that you can refine your process. Generate fifty bottles of this delicious brew, and we will speak again.”
“I could make ten, fifty, a hundred.” Florian folded his arms, frowning. “But what guarantee do we have that you’ll honor our bargain?”
Dionysus laughed. “Must I repeat myself? I am a god. This is a business. We will honor our end of the deal. We aren’t animals, as I said. We won’t simply offer our customers just anything that might affect them quite so negatively. Do I look like my name is Circe?”
“Fine,” Florian huffed. “Fine. Fifty bottles of the good stuff.”
“To be delivered to the Amphora before the end of the month. You will be paid then, the same as the rest of my suppliers.”
My ears quirked. That wasn’t soon enough. We needed money yesterday. “Um, sorry to interrupt you guys, but is there any way to get an advance on that?”
The look Dionysus gave me was frosty, but his voice was even colder. “Absolutely not. I run a business, Mason Albrecht. Not a charity.” He sighed, rolled his eyes, then dug his hand somewhere inside his shirt, which, I should have mentioned, was open down to his navel. How he stored anything in there was anybody’s guess.
Dionysus pulled out a small suede pouch, extending it towards me. I accepted, doing my best not to mention anything about how warm it was.
“What’s this?” I said, weighing the pouch in my hand. “It’s very light.”
“Consider it a gift,” Dionysus said, cocking one eyebrow at Florian. “Your dryad friend here will find them especially interesting.”
Some minutes later, after saying our grudging goodbyes, I finally pulled on the pouch’s drawstring, too curious to contain myself any longer. My heart fell into my shoes when I saw the five kidney-shaped lumps waiting in the pouch’s dark recesses.
“Beans?” I said. “He gave us beans?”
“They’re magic beans,” Florian told me at the apartment, after giving the five lima-looking motherfuckers a proper examination. “These are pretty rare. Very useful.” He shook them like a handful of dice, holding them up to his ear so he could listen to them rattle. “Blessed by Dionysus himself, it sounds like.”
I groaned, throwing myself into my bed. “And I suppose that if you threw them out the window, we’d find a magic beanstalk leading up into the clouds by morning. Then you and I can go climb it, kill a giant, and steal a goose that lays golden eggs. And a lady who’s also a harp, or something. Raziel can come play her. It’ll be a party.”
Florian glowered at me like I was the dumbest person alive. “Don’t be stupid. That sounds ridiculous. This is real magic.”
I grabbed my pillow, pushing it over my face as I groaned. Maybe if I pushed hard enough I’d suffocate. That’d solve the problem of paying the rent pretty nicely. Forever.
; 21
My heart raced as I stared through the car window, watching the house for signs of Monica Rodriguez. I was in a ritzier part of town, me in the passenger seat, Quilliam J. Abernathy gripping the steering wheel with two leather-gloved hands, his engine shut off.
“You’d think that a less flashy car would have been the right choice for this,” I told him.
Fine. The leather seats were comfy, and the interiors smelled clean and warm from the little pot of air freshener on the dashboard – spiced vanilla – but the thing was way too snazzy and unsubtle for a stakeout.
Quilliam sniffed and turned up his nose. “On the extremely slim chance that someone recognizes me, I’m not risking the possibility of being caught driving something – pedestrian.”
“You don’t have to worry. No one will ever recognize you with those ridiculous sunglasses on.”
This was after dark, mind you, significantly past midnight. The jury was out on whether death witches even slept regular hours, but Quilliam had a point. Monica was only human, after all, just another flavor of mage. It was better to take her out under cover of darkness, with less chances of attracting unwanted attention at night.
What choice did I have left but murder, really? We’d considered Florian’s talents for making coin. Now it was up to me to pull my own weight. And Florian didn’t have to know about this one. I was fine with carrying the burden of killing the brujas on my own.
Still, I had to stop thinking of it as murdering the Rodriguez witches. I was just stealing an artifact. Leonora would kick the bucket, but not before taking Monica down with her. Their blood wouldn’t be on my hands. Sneak in, snip the Obsidian Rose off its bush, then sneak back out. Done and done.
“We’ve waited long enough,” I told Quill. “Time to make a move.”
“Right,” he said, unlocking the car doors. “Good luck.”
I blinked at him, then frowned. “I thought you were coming with,” I hissed, hearing the mounting urgency in my own voice. The inside of Quill’s car lit up with the pale golden glow of the glyphs on my skin.
“What? I promised no such thing. I’m not getting a cut of the fifteen K you’re getting from Leonora, am I?”
“So I’ll give you a cut,” I said, testing the waters, knowing that he wouldn’t bite.
Quilliam raised his nose. “Do I look like someone in need of money? I’m independently wealthy.”
I leaned in, narrowing my eyes at him. “Then why are you so invested in this? In me?”
He shrugged. “This is a test. Have you thought about that? Maybe I’ve got more work for you, and I want to see if you’ve got the chops.” He tipped his glasses down, glaring disapprovingly at my chest. “And don’t get so damn emotional, especially in there. You’ll blow your cover.”
I pouted hard even as I fought to tamp down my anger, and the light of my sigils faded. “I can’t do this alone.”
“You can, and you will.” Quill groped around in his jacket for a moment, then pulled out a silvery contraption. “Here. Use this.”
I took the piece of cold metal, frowning. “Please tell me these aren’t just regular garden shears. Tell me they’re enchanted and that they’ll protect me from death magic. Something. Anything.”
Quill glowered at me. I felt like we were caught in some never-ending frowning contest. “It’s just a pair of shears. Should make the job easier. Plus you’re only trying to steal the damn thing, not vandalize the poor woman’s rose bushes.”
The car’s interiors glowed again. “She won’t care because she’ll be dead!”
“Pipe the hell down.” Quill nudged me in the shoulder. “Go on. Get out of here. And don’t you ever forget that your good friend Quilliam J. Abernathy volunteered to be your getaway driver at no cost to you whatsoever.”
I grumbled as I clambered out of his car. I pushed the door shut, but not before I caught Quill grumbling on his own. “See if you can find a rideshare willing to do that for you. I could be at home, reading.”
Jerk.
With my teeth clenched and the garden shears gripped in one hand, I made a beeline for the Rodriguez house. It wasn’t a tough place to break into at all. The garden walls were just trellised fences, the kind with slats in them that made it convenient for both vines and people to climb up and over.
Easy peasy. I slipped into the garden without incident, my only real concern bringing one of the fences down with me. They were delicate, hardly sturdy enough to offer the house any real privacy and protection. And truthfully, that got me a little more concerned. It suggested that whoever lived in this house – a death witch, of course – was confident enough in her power that she didn’t need mundane forms of security.
Finding further proof that I was probably right only made me more nervous. Looking around the compound, I couldn’t really see any signs of a security system. There was no whir and click of cameras, no glint of their lenses up under the eaves. No dogs, either. I stayed close to the ground, scanning the gardens for something – a chained up guard zombie, a chattering skull that relayed security footage directly to Monica’s brain, anything – but the coast was clear. Monica was either really relaxed about this sort of stuff, or she had other protections in place.
I was leaning heavily towards relaxed, however, mainly because the Obsidian Rose was just sitting out in the open. Quilliam had briefed me about it, passing on Leonora’s instructions. The Rodriguez house was full of greenery, a garden that the family had always been very proud of. The Rose, he said, would be found opposite some glass doors leading into the back of the house. That was the biggest risk, of course, that someone hanging out near the patio would spot me.
But I was there already, lurking in the bushes, my nostrils filling with the perfume of night flowers, the damp air of the evening settling like wet film on my skin. The Obsidian Rose was sitting in full view, its petals like shards of perfect black glass, its stem like that of a champagne flute, studded with wicked black thorns, wreathed in leaves cut out of midnight.
It looked so brittle and so delicate that I had to second guess using the shears Quill gave me, but that was clearly the best option. The Obsidian Rose, so he said, was transferred from garden to garden depending on which woman in the Rodriguez clan was designated its new grand witch, often the youngest as she reached a certain age. Brought to that heiress’s garden, the Rose would set down roots and integrate itself with the surrounding vegetation. That meant that its stalk would, at the very least, be as tough and as thorny as something from a regular rose bush. Seeing that everything was clear, I crept up to the Rose, set the jaws of the shears around its crystalline base, and snapped it off its stem.
That was what I’d expected to happen. The shears jammed right in my hands, as if the Rose’s stem was made out of an even harder metal. My chest thumped with fresh panic as I tried again and again to cut the rose out of its bush, the shears failing each time.
“Fuck,” I muttered under my breath, finally giving up and reaching out to the Vestments for a different tool that would help me. Did they have gigantic golden scissors stocked up in heaven’s armories? What would they even use them for, I wondered? I was about to find out.
But before the Vestments could respond, something slipped around my ankles and tightened, holding me in place. My blood froze. I shifted, fighting to break free, but whatever had looped around my feet had me locked there tight. I couldn’t risk falling over, either – I was pretty sure that was going to end in a pair of broken ankles.
A woman with black hair in beautiful, tumbling curls and lips as red as blood came strutting out of the darkness, her arms folded, her eyes flashing with displeasure. She wore a maroon sweater over some dark jeans, dressed not at all like how I imagined a bruja might look. Then again, Leonora had looked nothing like a death witch, either.
“Well, well,” said the woman who I presumed to be Monica Rodriguez, death witch and professional abuela torturer. “Now, who could be out here rustling in my favorite rose bush?”
>
“Lady, I’m not hassling your bush,” I said, giving myself the best drunken slur I could muster, which is kind of a challenge when you’ve never been drunk. I just had to pray that I was a really talented actor. “Just passin’ through. I dunno how I ended up in your yard, but if you could get this garden hose off my legs, I’ll be more than happy to get out of your hair and – ”
“What’s that in your hand, then?”
Damn it. I should have shoved the stupid shears in my pockets. Monica grabbed them from me, tutting as she snapped them open and shut some menacing inches away from my body.
“Liar,” she snarled. “I should use these to twist your cojones right off your body.”
“Whoa,” I said, instantly dropping the drunk act. “I’m really attached to those, lady. No need to get violent.”
“Then tell me why you’re in my garden.”
“Look,” I said. “I’ll talk if you loosen these restraints. It’s a really clever trap you’ve got going, but these rope things are really starting to hurt.”
Monica cocked one perfect eyebrow at me, then clapped her hands. Floodlights instantly came on from under the eaves and just above the sliding door. I looked down at my feet, and my jaw dropped in horror.
They weren’t enchanted ropes or wires. I was trapped in place by a pair of skeletal hands. Dry, bony fingers locked in a threatening death grip around my ankles. My socks had made it hard for me to tell from the texture, but now that I knew, my skin was absolutely crawling.
“We can stay here and stare each other down all night, gringo,” Monica purred. “Or I can make this quick. I can make those hands squeeze tighter and tighter, and see which breaks first: your spirit, or your legs.”
“Now, now,” I said, my hands shaking as I raised them. “There’s no need for violence. We can talk this out.”
“Then start talking. And while you’re at it, tell me why you brought an accomplice who doesn’t actually help, and whose only purpose is to gawk at you from across the garden wall.”
