by C. M. Cevis
“I assume it was you that we have to thank for that lovely experience?” Luna asked.
The deep voice chuckled. “Indirectly, yes. But it wasn’t me who kept you bound, nor was it me who didn’t notice that you were a woman of… extenuating circumstances.”
Luna and Liza exchanged a look.
“Right, extenuating,” Liza mumbled.
“Stop stalling and tell me what you want,” Luna said. Unable to sense a damn thing about the voice, she stood, readying as much of herself as she could without breaking the connection that she and Liza were using to hold onto Amie. The last thing she wanted to do was leave Amie or herself with an open unconnected line around whatever this thing was.
“Yes, of course. What I saw while I was rattling around in that cavernous brain of yours told me that you were not one for foreplay.” The words somehow conveyed an insidious smile.
“So get on with it,” Liza snapped. She had put herself beside Zelda with the intention of pulling from Luna to protect her if needed.
“I assume you want to know who was able to put you in that coma, as well as how they were able to keep you there without the aid of your sister.”
Luna hesitated. “You do not sound like the type of being that would offer information freely.”
“I am wounded, fair witch,” the voice said, spitting out the final word with such force that Luna almost winced. “You judge me without knowing anything about me.”
“Fine,” Luna said, bracing her arms on the table. “Tell me your name.”
“You may call me Cabsi, if you must.”
“No. We asked for your name, not what we can call you,” Liza responded.
The voice laughed, a deep, cavernous sound that seemed to shake the room. “You must take me for a fool if you think I’d allow you that kind of power over me.”
“So you’re a demon, or something akin to one. Good to know,” Luna said, settling back down into her chair. “Those, we can deal with.”
“You would do well not to underestimate me,” the voice hissed, clearly a bit offended.
“What do you want, Cabsi?” Luna asked again. “Either tell me or prepare to be banished.”
“I want to strike a deal, as these things go. In exchange for the name of who kept you in that coma for three weeks. All I ask is that you do what you want to do anyway: kill him.”
Liza just rolled her eyes and muttered, “Demons. Obsessed with killing.”
Luna scoffed. “No one ever said we wanted to kill whoever it was. Maybe we just want to talk to the person.”
“For what reason?” Cabsi asked. “To find out why? I will spare you the bother: He did so at my command.”
“Then shouldn’t it be you that we kill?” Liza asked.
“You would do well not to underestimate us,” Luna said with a smirk.
“Boy, whoever your partner was must have really pissed you off to send you running to us,” Liza laughed.
“Should we really be taunting whatever that voice is?” Zelda hissed, eyes still darting around as if trying to locate the origin of the voice.
Luna shrugged. “If it were here to hurt us, it would have done so. No, it’s here because it needs us to do something that it can’t.”
“It wants us to take out its partner. Problem is, we aren’t hitters,” Liza said.
“Not anymore,” the voice said, cutting off the chatter.
In the silence that followed, Luna closed her eyes. “We will not be killing your partner, Demon Cabsi. If you want him or her dead, do it yourself.”
“Make sure to make the death spectacular so that we know it was you,” Liza said. “We will still have some unfinished business, and a calling card is helpful when hunting.”
The voice grunted. “You have made a mistake.”
“Sounds more like you have,” Luna replied. “Have a wonderful night, hun.”
There was a screech like some sort of dying animal, the lights flickered once again, two of the light bulbs in the chandelier exploded… and then nothing. A heaviness seemed to lift, and everyone took in a deep breath.
“It’s gone,” Luna whispered.
“What in the holy hell was that?” Amie squealed.
“Something I didn’t count on. The wards on the house would have kept it from entering normally, but by opening myself tonight, he was able to enter.”
“Sounds like we need to look into body wards,” Liza said.
Luna nodded. She’d poked into them a few years back but hadn’t actually done any. Time to find those notes.
“I’m so sorry that this took away from the two of you tonight,” Luna said, looking from Zelda to Amie. “I wanted to give you both as much time as I could.”
“It’s alright. Seems like you have some pretty hefty issues of your own going on,” Amie said with a friendly smile.
“Like a three-week coma. Was this recent?” Zelda asked.
Luna swallowed her embarrassment. “Less than a month ago.”
“Luna!” Zelda gasped.
“I’m fine, I promise. It wasn’t a medical coma, so I recovered quickly.” At least, physically she had.
Her house guest eyed her. “That explanation does not ease my concern at all.”
“It’s… fine, I promise,” Luna responded. The fatigue was starting to kick in, and if she didn’t sleep soon, she’d get more and more short-tempered.
“Let’s wrap this up then, shall we?” Amie said, as if she could hear Luna’s thoughts. She turned to Zelda and gave her a stern look. “Dump my ashes somewhere, Z. Dump them and move on.”
Zelda’s eyes widened, but she nodded. “Alright,” she whispered. “I’ll leave the ashes here, and go home to move on with my life.”
Amie smiled. “Good. I won’t ever leave you, not fully, even if you can’t see me like you can now. You are my soul mate, Zelda. I don’t know why people think that status only applies to romantic love, but it doesn’t. I won’t ever be gone.”
Zelda smiled, peace coming into her expression. “Alright.”
“Promise!” Amie snapped.
“I promise.”
“Alright. Now let’s let these girls get back to whatever that interruption was before something goes wrong and they aren’t prepared to deal with it. That thing sounded angry.”
“He did seem pretty pissed,” Liza mused. She took Luna’s hands and, as carefully as she could, withdrew her power. Amie faded from sight, blowing kisses to a crying Zelda.
She turned to them once her friend was gone. “Thank you both.” She smiled through her tears.
“Of course,” Luna and Liza said together. But Luna’s mind was already somewhere else.
Cabsi. What in the world kind of name was that?
~*~
“It’s Somali,” Asher said from where she stood on the other side of the living room. Luna turned and looked at her, surprised.
“Somali? How in the world did you know that?”
Asher flipped over the large hand-bound book in her hands and turned it towards Luna. “Here. He’s a small-time minor deity that came to the future United States with the people who lived in one of the towns that worshiped him.”
Luna leaned in and started reading. “It means scarecrow, as he was the deity that kept their food supply safe from scavengers, both human and not, as long as his fee was paid.”
“What fee?” Liza asked.
“It’s not really clear. Something having to do with stealing something from dreams,” Luna replied absently as her eyes continued down the page.
“Or a coma?” Liza asked.
“Probably.”
“Does that mean that the coma was to allow Cabsi to take from you?” Asher asked.
Luna shrugged, not looking up from the page. This was new territory for her.
“Maybe his partner put you into that coma for Cabsi, but because you’re powerful and have me, you were able to break free,” Liza thought out loud.
“That would explain why he isn’t too h
appy with his partner right now,” Luna replied.
“But it doesn’t tell us who the partner is. There is still someone in this town powerful and dangerous enough to do what was done. And they’ve got a deity on their side.”
“Kind of,” Luna made a face and turned the page of the book Asher still held. “This deity sounds minor enough to really be nothing more than a pain.”
“So, a demon?” Liza asked.
“About the same amount of annoyance, yeah.”
“What’s the game now?” Asher asked. “Do we find out more about Cabsi, or do we find out more about the partner?”
Luna stood and sighed, frowning. “At this point, we take what we can get. Both the demon and the partner are priorities.”
“I have no idea where to start on either,” Liza said.
Asher looked down at her book. “Let’s see what other lore we can find about Cabsi. Hopefully that will give us something to look for, like what he needs in a human for this task.”
“Sounds like a good idea to me,” Liza said, turning back to the old book she’d been thumbing through before Asher had gotten her attention.
“Sounds like the only idea we have.” Luna chuckled.
Liza winked. “Same thing.”
32
Gideon was awake, though he wasn’t sure why. Something in the room had woken him, and he looked around in the darkness. Silence until—
Scraping at the base of the door that led to the hall.
“Hello?” he called.
The scraping, like tiny claws on wood, continued until the door opened with a slow squeak. The hallway was too dark enough to see anything more than a darker silhouette—a tall, lithe figure that stepped into the room.
Moonlight illuminated Lianna’s face as she smiled smugly. “You are free, little prince, but only until sunrise. Be back in this room by then, or the witch’s spell will close again and you will be left to explain what you were doing outside of it. I will not come to your rescue.”
A thrill of freedom shot through Gideon, and he stood. “I assume you’re doing this only so that I can hold to my end of our deal?”
Lianna snapped her fingers and the magic restraints he’d been wearing since he arrived fell to his feet. “You assume correctly.”
Gideon glanced down at the leash, relishing the feel of his magic at his fingertips. “Will that reactivate as well?”
“Your mother’s people do not have magic so strong that I cannot disrupt it. Once you place it back onto your body, the magic will reactivate. When the spells lift tomorrow night, the restraints will fall off again.”
He repressed a shudder. Putting that thing back on wouldn’t be easy. “And the ghost?”
“I will distract her, don’t worry.”
Gideon ran his hand along the back of his neck. “Alright.”
“Now go, and give me what I desire,” Lianna said, turning her back to Gideon as she left. “Or rot here alone.” She disappeared into the darkness of the hallway.
~*~
Gideon saw the appeal of the town, even in the middle of the night where very few were out and about. Until he became familiar with the place, it was easier to stay in public places. A man was closing his convenience store, and another younger man working in a locksmith shop. And then he found the woman.
The outer lights of the ice cream shop were off, showing that it was closed for business, but the lights inside were still on. She stood behind the counter, methodically counting the money in the register.
Sometimes on occasions like this, he would simply slip through the front door and appear on the other side of the counter, as if it wasn’t the middle of the night and he was supposed to be there to order whatever it was the place sold. Tonight, he wasn’t in the mood to play. He slipped around the back, and after making sure that the small alley street and ran down the back of the building was indeed abandoned, he slipped through the back door.
She was still counting money. Gideon thought that odd, as it was well after business hours. But she simply seemed to be running behind in her nightly tasks, her motions calm. As she moved to the coins, Gideon stepped up behind her and readied his chosen illusion. All he needed was her attention and her lowered guard.
“Hello, my dear, have you been waiting long?”
The woman spun on her heels to face the unexpected voice, and her elevated heart rate thundered in Gideon’s ears. He loved that sound.
“Who are you?” she asked, eyes darting to his—and then staying there. The irises lost a touch of their light, and her face went slightly slack as Gideon’s magic took hold.
He stepped closer. “I apologize that we don’t have the time to go somewhere more comfortable. I can’t stay long.”
“This… is fine,” she replied, her voice soft and gentle, just the way it was supposed to be. But her body seemed frozen, as if waiting for his first move.
Gideon smirked. “Of course it is, my love.”
His lips met hers and then her arms wrapped tightly around his neck. The surrender came soon after, helped along by the magic that made her believe that the man before her was her lover, and that was the moment that he felt it take hold: The part of him that was tied to Lianna.
She would have her fill of the woman in his arms that night, and tomorrow he would do it again, feeding her the life that she needed to sustain herself. Just like he’d been doing for… he wasn’t sure how long anymore. This was the price he’d agreed to for the power he wanted, and he paid it dutifully.
What was a prince without immense power? Simple: A target. Gideon refused to be a target.
33
“Prince Charming is fast asleep,” Luna said as she walked into the living room and settled herself on the couch.
Liza looked up from her book. “He doesn’t normally sleep this late.”
Luna raised her eyebrows. “Normally? We just met him a few days ago, and he was already a prisoner. You realize we don’t actually know him, right?”
“Shut up,” Liza said, sticking her tongue out. “I just thought he was usually looking out the window by now.”
“There is literally nothing to do in that room other than look out that window, and at some point, that has to get boring. I’d start sleeping more too.”
Liza laughed. “Alright, I get it. Let’s hear Graham’s message.”
Graham had called Luna an hour prior, but she’d been in the shower and hadn’t heard the phone ring. Liza had been itching to hear the voicemail he’d left ever since, but Luna had wanted to get dressed first. The last thing she needed was for Zelda to wander in on her with morning breath and pajama pants on.
Liza came to sit next to her, and Luna held her phone up and hit play on the message.
Luna, I did some digging into your old friend Harlowe… he’s a real piece of work, which I’m sure you knew, but nothing has changed about that since you left. He’s still kicking around, seems to be setting his sights on some import rackets set up around the docks and downtown, near the main freight station. No idea what he’s trying to move, but whatever it is, he seems to think it’s important enough to piss off every family in the city that has their hands in shipping. He’s made a lot of enemies in the last few months poking around where they believe he doesn’t belong, but no one has taken a shot at him. I’m not sure why. It seems like several people want to, but something must be keeping them from pulling the trigger. That’s all that I was able to find, and none of it seems to tie to your brother or where he is. I did put some feelers out to see if there was any new info, and other than his people looking for him more seriously than they were before, there’s nothing. Sorry, Luna.
The call ended, and Luna and Liza exchanged looks.
“No ties except the last meeting Matt went to was at the docks about a new supplier,” Luna said.
Liza frowned. “I don’t like this.”
“Yeah. Me either. But I don’t know what to do about it.”
The two sisters sat in silence for a
bit before Luna got up and retrieved her laptop from the alcove of the side table where it had been charging.
“What are you doing?” Liza asked.
“Making a mistake, probably.”
Luna logged back into the system for the family and started searching rooms. She’d made note of the screen name that had told her about the docks meeting, and it was pretty distinct. She just had to hope he or she was around.
“There he is,” she whispered, clicking on the name in one of the small social rooms used to discuss innocent things like getting together for drinks or going out to the club together.
She hit the link to open a private message and took a deep breath.
Harry has been poking around in imports around the docks and around the main freight station. You said you and the boss were at the docks last time you saw him. Might be worth poking into.
Liza let out a loud breath that she didn’t need. “I hope this doesn’t come back to haunt us.”
“I’m sure it will in some way. But we have to do something.”
“Oh I agree, don’t worry,” Liza said, leaning in as the typing indicator popped onto the screen.
I’d heard some rumors that he was making waves, and not in a good way. Thanks for the tip. I’ll look into it. See what I can find out.
Luna sat back on the couch and crossed her arms. “Now we wait.”
~*~
Luna’s strolled through downtown, working through the information they’d gathered on her coma, her family, the gate, the demon… There was a lot going on, and the background noise of the town going about its business around her was peaceful.
“Hey Luna,” Valerie said, breaking into her thoughts.
“Hey Val.” Luna paused outside the quaint ice cream shop. Valerie was slowly setting up chairs around the two outdoor tables—and it was past noon. The shop usually opened at ten.
She took a step closer to her friend. “Are you okay? You’re never late opening up.”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” she replied, waving dismissively but not meeting Luna’s eyes. “Just really tired.”
