by Sarah Kuhn
“That’s reporting?” Scott said. “A shitty picture and a bunch of half-assed suppositions and exaggerations?”
“Yeah, I incinerated one pair of shoes, not the whole department,” I said. “And as for this karaoke thing . . .” I turned to Lucy. “Kevin’s got to be Maisy’s source, right? Did you threaten him when you asked for a spot in the contest?”
“Of course not,” she said. “I mean, he was a bit reluctant at first. I believe his exact words were, ‘Call me when Aveda can do her superhero theatrics while also singing Cher’s ‘Believe’ over a track of AC/DC’s ‘You Shook Me All Night Long’ and hitting every note without autotune.’ But I wore him down. And possibly said I’d start a rumor about unsanitary kitchen practices if he didn’t give in. I’d hardly call that a threat, though. I certainly never said I was your minion or that you told me to—”
“Right, right,” I said, shaking my head. “But no one supposes and exaggerates like Maisy. Especially when she’s got what she thinks is a story.”
I took the phone from Aveda and studied the screen. There were two photos accompanying the post. In the first one, I was confronting Maisy in the Nordstrom shoe department: eyes wild, hair flying, pointing at her in a way that was decidedly threatening while she cowered behind Nate. This was when I’d told her to keep her “grabby hands” off Aveda’s escort. Shasta must have snapped it when I wasn’t looking. The second image was a lovely shot of me shooting fire at Aveda’s head.
I should have been embarrassed by how unhinged I looked in these photos. But, honestly, I was kind of proud. Because I also looked . . . cool. Powerful. Like a worthy colleague for Michelle Yeoh/Invisible Girl and Co.
“What’s that?” Nate asked, pointing to a spot on the first photo.
He took the phone from me and tapped the screen to zero in on Maisy’s left hand, which she had brought to her chest, as if clutching invisible pearls. The back of her hand seemed to have some kind of black blotch on it.
“Is it a tattoo?” I said. “I know Maisy Kane’s super alternative, but that doesn’t seem like her brand of alternative.”
Nate tapped the screen again, enlarging that spot of the picture. It appeared to be a tattoo of a crude symbol, a line with four hash marks through it.
Where had I seen that before?
“The hand!” I blurted out. “That same mark was on the hand that attacked at the mall.” I stared at the screen, a hunch forming in my brain. I took the phone from Nate and handed it to Bea. “Do we have any photos of the Tommy Thing?” I asked her. “Or shots from the Yamato YouTube video?”
Bea’s fingers flew over the screen. “Let’s see . . .” She pulled up a series of freeze frames from the video.
“There.” I jabbed my index finger at one of the pictures. “He has the tattoo, too. I didn’t get a good look at it ’cause I was too busy running away from him.”
“So there are odd things in a couple pictures, so what?” Aveda cut in. “Can we please get back to what’s important?”
“Which is what, your image?” Scott said. “Unbelievable,” he muttered under his breath.
Ignoring them, I turned and stared into the sink. Maybe the Aveda statues were a red herring. Or maybe they fit into the picture in some way I just couldn’t see yet. But the tattoo was an actual solid connection that linked Maisy, Tommy, and Stu.
Three makes a trend.
“So these three all have this mark,” I said, facing the group again. “We’ve hypothesized that Stu was somehow turned into a freaky demon-human hybrid and maybe Tommy was, too. Does this mean Maisy is also part of that crew?”
“You know . . .” Lucy paused thoughtfully. “She and Shasta are always there. In all of the instances connected to the new breed of demons: Whistles, the benefit, the mall. The Yamato, too: we didn’t actually see them, but Shasta told us they were there. It’s under the guise of reporting on Aveda, but . . . whenever these weird demons appear, they’re on the scene.”
Lucy met my eyes. She’d gone pale. “That night at The Gutter—remember how we had that encounter with Shasta? And then right after, she approached Stu Singh.”
“Whispered in his ear and shit,” I said, remembering.
Lucy nodded, going even paler. “Do you think she was recruiting him into this cult of demon-human hybrids? And is she one, too?”
“Okay, let’s slow down for a minute,” I said, holding up a hand and trying to get my thoughts in order. “I don’t know about Shasta. She doesn’t appear to have the tattoo and it seems like she’s fulfilling her usual role, supporting and enabling Maisy, so even if she’s part of this—”
“She wouldn’t say boo unless Maisy told her to,” Bea finished.
“Right,” I said. “Let’s go back to the idea of Maisy, Tommy, and Stu being connected. Tommy and Stu look clearly transformed, but Maisy . . .” I frowned. “She doesn’t look different. She still looks like her aggravating human self.” In my head, I called up the image of Maisy waving her stupid recorder in front of my face the day before, trying to capture every moment on video. I’d missed the tattoo. Had I missed anything else? I’d been pretty close to her, had even grabbed her hand . . .
“Her hand,” I said out loud.
Everyone looked at me quizzically.
“I thought my fire had burned it,” I said, remembering how her skin had looked flaky, patchy. “But she brushed it off, acted like it didn’t matter. And it didn’t look quite burned. It just looked different. Like . . .”
“Like the skin on Tommy? On the disembodied hand?” Lucy said.
“Yes,” I said. “But not that extreme. It wasn’t all over her body, just in that one spot.”
“As if she was controlling it, maybe?” Nate suggested. “Does that perhaps indicate that Maisy has a higher level of power than the other oddities we’ve observed?”
I heard Bea inhale sharply. “Evie,” she said slowly, “Maisy’s outfit yesterday at the mall was all yellow, right?”
“Yes. What does that have to do with this?”
“What does any of this have to do with anything?” muttered Aveda.
“Did you see that new stone from Whistles?” Bea persisted.
“Yes?”
“Yellow,” Bea said, “could also be interpreted as . . . gold.”
The Golden Princess.
I stopped breathing for a minute. Those three simple words acted as a trigger, forcing our scattered observations into a connected whole. I saw a picture coming together, a mishmash of images arranging itself into a possible solution.
“The yellow outfit,” I muttered out loud. “The tattoo. Her patchy skin. And . . .” I paused as another memory rose up in my head. Maisy and Shasta in the bathroom at the benefit. Me in the stall, trying to hold back tears. Them cackling about my dress. Maisy saying she wanted to transcend Aveda’s celebrity status. She didn’t just want to be a star, she wanted to be . . .
“A princess,” I said out loud.
I’d thought she was putting on airs. Now their conversation seemed to indicate something much more sinister.
“And in her blog post,” Bea said, waving her phone around. “She said she was going to be ‘crowned’ at the karaoke contest.”
“Holy shit,” I said. “Maisy Kane isn’t just connected to this new demon threat. I think . . . I think she’s in charge.”
“She’s a freakin’ demon princess,” Bea breathed.
“A good hypothesis, considering the data,” said Nate.
“I agree with you one hundred percent, darling,” said Lucy.
“I guess that sort of makes sense,” Aveda said reluctantly.
“How generous of you,” Scott retorted.
“So obviously we’re not going through with this karaoke debacle anymore,” Aveda said. She tried to give her “that settles it” smile.
Only this time th
at did not fucking settle it.
I turned and stared at the sink again. So clean and silver and shiny. I imagined the drain was a portal to another world—not the Otherworld, but some dull dimension where everything was nice and mundane and there were no superpowers or superheroes or bloggers who were also pissed-off demon princesses. Five days ago I would’ve leapt through a portal to that world without a second thought.
But now? I was surprised to find I had absolutely no desire to. Zero, zilch, zip. I couldn’t dredge up even the tiniest bit of longing for a mundane alternaworld. I wanted to save the crazy, colorful, occasionally fucked-up world I was already living in.
Was that personal growth or insanity?
I decided I didn’t care.
“Yes, we are,” I said, turning away from the sink. “Karaoke debacle is on.”
Aveda glared at me. “Have you forgotten who’s the actual boss, here?”
“No. But what we’re facing is bigger than that. It’s bigger than you, it’s bigger than me. It’s about saving this city from the clutches of a hipster demon princess who . . .” I hesitated. What was Maisy’s endgame?
“She might be trying to take down Aveda to prime San Francisco for invasion, as you suggested earlier,” Nate said, as if reading my thoughts. “Or perhaps she’s set on turning the entire city into demon-human hybrids. Or maybe that ‘you need three’ stone was meant for her and—”
“And she already has the three she needs to take over!” yelped Bea. “Stu, Tommy, and herself!”
“But Evie took out Tommy and Stu,” Lucy said. “Er, part of Stu.”
“We don’t know if I took them out for good,” I said.
“Maybe it doesn’t matter if you took them out,” Bea said. “Maybe all Maisy has to do to gain ultimate power is, like, create these weirdo hybrid things. In which case, she can still totally count Tommy and Stu in her number.”
“Okay, okay,” I said. “So it’s safe to say that none of these are good options. Whatever Maisy’s up to, it’s not going to end well for us. Or anyone in San Francisco. We have to go through with the karaoke plan.”
I looked at everyone in turn. Aveda was frowning hard, but the others looked intrigued. Hopeful. Even Bea gazed at me as if what I was saying was at least as rousing as Bill Pullman bellowing, “Today, we celebrate . . . our Independence Day!”
“Who’s with me on this?” I asked.
Slowly they all raised their hands. Nate, Lucy, Scott, Bea. Everyone except Aveda. She kept glaring at me, a weighted silence settling between us.
“I see,” she finally said, her voice like ice. “I guess there’s a new boss in town.”
She turned and stalked out of the lab as fast as her crutches would allow. I suppressed a sigh. I’d deal with her later.
I turned back to everyone else.
“I don’t care if Maisy’s a demon princess with a whole army of disembodied hands at her disposal. I don’t care how many shitty, unflattering pictures of me she posts on her blog. And I don’t care that I really can’t sing.”
I drew myself up tall.
“Maisy can have the internet, but she can’t have the city: not while it’s under the protection of Aveda Jupiter. Let’s take that blowhard blogger bully down.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
THE NEXT WEEK whizzed by in a blur. We all went about our business and Aveda mostly avoided us, holing up in her room and mainlining way too many reruns of Toddlers and Tiaras. She claimed to have come around to my Big Maisy Takedown Plan, but her overall demeanor was listless and disinterested, as if the act of nodding her head in agreement was a lot of fucking work.
A couple new portals opened up around the city, but the resulting demons were of the boring, non-hybrid sort. I used them to practice my newfound ability to call up fireballs. Lucy taught me a few handy fight moves, including something called the running punch, wherein I hopped in range of my demon target, jammed my fireballed hand against it, then hopped off in the other direction. This technique nicely compensated for the fact that I still couldn’t throw the fireballs.
On the research front, Rose told us the disembodied hand’s DNA didn’t have any matches in the system. But I just knew it had to be Stu. Meanwhile Bea reported that Tommy Lemon was still supposedly in the Andes and the Aveda statues were no longer being sighted around town. After menacing many a citizen—including me—the statues appeared to have vanished entirely.
Oh, and Nate and I had lots of sex. My newfound fireball control meant I was more confident about trying things out spur of the moment. There was even a day where we came very close to doing it in Lucy’s car, which we’d borrowed for a routine grocery run. But the idea that we were in semi-public and semi-visible to every judgey eye in the Bay Area put a crimp in my passion. The stick, as they say, does not fall far from the mud.
Still, I was having fun. Our orgasms-only arrangement was pretty much nothing but fun.
We also tried to draw Maisy out in the vain hope I might be able to take down her demon ass before the karaoke contest. But she remained unmoved by Bea’s tweets documenting where one might find Aveda Jupiter if one were so inclined. In fact, the usually ubiquitous Maisy Kane was barely seen in public at all. Even her blog posting was light. I started to wonder if she’d given up and returned to the Otherworld.
Until three days before the karaoke contest, when Bea received an obnoxious email with an even more obnoxious demand.
“You’re sure it’s from Maisy?” I asked, pacing the kitchen. “And she wants what?”
Bea looked up from her laptop. “As a show of good faith, she’s demanding a meeting with a representative from Team Aveda to ensure the rules of the karaoke contest are understood and adhered to.”
“So I’ll go as me. Or Lucy can go.”
“No.” Bea shook her head. “She says it has to be a specific representative.” Her gaze slid over to Nate, who was leaning against the counter. “It has to be him. Or she’s pulling out of the contest.”
“Ugh.” I blew out a long, frustrated breath. “How do we know she’s not bluffing?”
“Maisy Kane never bluffs,” Bea said. “It’s one of her Ten Commandments of Maximum Kane-osity.”
“I can go,” Nate said. “All I have to do is sit with her somewhere for an hour and pretend I understand karaoke, right?”
I was already shaking my head. “It could be dangerous. What if she chooses that moment to show her true demon-y colors?”
“Maisy can’t risk revealing herself before the big karaoke to-do,” Bea said. “That’s where she wants to, as she’s written on her blog, ‘show San Franciscans who the real superhero is.’” She looked at me. “She’s trying to rattle you before the contest. To make you give in to her demands and show you she’s in charge or whatever.”
Nate put a hand on my shoulder, forcing me to stop pacing. “Let’s not display any weakness. I’ll go.”
I frowned at him. I knew Bea was probably right, but I hated the idea that Maisy was getting away with something. And if I was being honest, I really hated the idea that she was getting away with something involving the guy I was currently having amazing sex with.
But it’s just sex, I reminded myself. Orgasm purposes only, remember? No need to get all crazy-possessive.
“Fine,” I said. “But it has to be in a public place, like a restaurant. And Lucy’s going with you. She’ll sit a few tables away, make sure Maisy doesn’t try anything sketchy. And I’ll position myself somewhere nearby. Just in case.”
Nate smiled. “Just in case.”
For some reason, his smile irritated me even more.
“I’ve seen a karaoke bar before, Evie,” Aveda said, casting a skeptical eye at our surroundings. The Gutter hadn’t opened for the day yet and the fluorescents were turned up high. In the wake of Stu Singh’s disappearance, the place was soldiering on. The piano sat on st
age gathering dust between its keys, a macabre reminder of Stu’s absence. Kevin had been forced to invest in an actual karaoke machine and was none too pleased about it. He also wasn’t thrilled about us hanging out in the bar before business hours—Kevin believed in preserving something he called “the sanctity of the karaoke space”—and he kept sending disgruntled looks in our direction while wiping down the bartop. I’d told him Aveda needed to “properly engage with the venue for her upcoming performance.” He’d grudgingly agreed, but apparently we had to put up with his snippy attitude as part of the deal.
Hopefully, it would be worth it. I figured if I showed Aveda the setup, she’d be able to visualize how heroic the Big Maisy Takedown Plan was going to make her look. Then maybe she’d stop sulking and get more enthusiastically on board with it. If I was going to pull it off, I needed everyone’s support.
Of course, I hadn’t thought a whole lot about how I was going to pull it off. You know, beyond “burn her.” Or maybe “singe her enough to subdue her so she doesn’t kill everyone.” And we still didn’t know what, exactly, being the Golden Princess meant. We didn’t know if Maisy was the same as the hybrids, whether she’d ever been human, whether she was at all human now. We’d talked through the possibilities so many times, my head swirled just thinking about it. Whenever I started to consider the fact that I was about to battle a possible demon princess, that the fate of the city and possibly the entire world rested on my shoulders, my chest seized up and my brain collapsed under the weight of it all.
So I was doing my best not to think about it. After all, I’d been the one to confidently declare I was going to take Maisy down, and I needed to keep up that bold veneer for the rest of Team Aveda.
The Gutter just happened to be next door to the trendy hole-in-the-wall Maisy had chosen for her big meet-up with Nate. Which was going on right now and which I was trying not to fixate on. I glanced at my phone. Lucy was supposed to text me if Maisy pulled any demon shit. Nothing yet.
