Kicking It

by Faith Hunter

  I blinked my eyes open and realized only one was willing to stay that way. It didn’t matter. I didn’t need sight to know that what he offered was ambrosia and that it would heal me faster than any hospital. Also, that it was highly addictive, and that like any addict, I was always ready to quit, but not right now. Not when I needed it so badly. I didn’t fight it.

  “Saved you,” I said a second later, through still-swollen lips. “That make us even?”

  “Oh, did you now?” he asked, his gaze ridiculously tender. “And who put me in danger in the first place?”

  “Splitting . . . hairs,” I answered.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “What am I doing here? Where’s Gareth?” Already, talking was easier, and if I wasn’t mistaken, my other eye was starting to open.

  “The police raided the place before I could get him loose, so I grabbed you and got out. I knew if they saw you first, they’d insist on paramedics and the hospital, and I didn’t know if you had that kind of time or whether you could even recover from all the spider bites without the ambrosia. But I left the panel open in the elevator and Arachne’s own key in the lock so that they could find him.”

  And the audience . . . What had they seen? How much of it would they believe?

  He shrugged. “I was more worried about you.”

  I was breathing easier now, and the numbness that had overtaken my body was starting to burn off like the morning fog.

  “Thank you,” I said finally. It was long overdue. I was usually too busy being pissed off at him for something or other.

  “You’re welcome,” he said, looking down at me with something a lot like love. But those he loved tended to meet bad ends . . . worse than becoming spider food. Turning into a tree or ending up with an arrow through the heart or the power to see the fate of Troy but not affect it . . .

  I looked away, wondering whether Detective Armani had been in on the raid and what he’d think when he heard the tale of the fembot who’d kicked spider ass.

  RED ISN’T REALLY MY COLOR

  BY CHRISTINA HENRY

  This story takes place between the events of Black Night and Black Howl.

  The envelope sat in the middle of my dining room table. It was creamy white, made of some kind of fancy paper that I would never be able to afford. My name, Madeline Black, was written on the front in beautiful calligraphy.

  Beezle, my gargoyle, perched on my shoulder. We both contemplated the envelope in silence.

  “So, are you going to open it or what?” Beezle finally said in his gravelly voice.

  “I’d prefer not to,” I said.

  “Okay, Bartleby. Then can we stop staring at it like it’s a bomb that’s about to explode and do something productive, like make dinner?”

  “Dinner?” I asked, glancing at the clock. “It’s only one o’clock. You just ate lunch twenty minutes ago.”

  “But the arrival of an unexpected messenger with a missive from your great-great-grandfather has disturbed the delicate balance of nutrition to energy inside my body, and now I’m starving again,” Beezle said.

  “I’ve got news for you. There’s nothing delicate about your body,” I said, approaching the table. “And pizza is not generally considered a nutritional superfood.”

  “I wasn’t going to say we should eat pizza,” Beezle said.

  “Yes, you were,” I said. “If it’s not pizza, it’s wings, doughnuts, cinnamon rolls, Chinese food, or popcorn.”

  “Ha!” Beezle said, floating off my shoulder on his little wings. “Popcorn is a superfood. It’s whole grain and everything. I think Rachael Ray or Katie Couric or Oprah or somebody said it was good for you. I’m making some now.”

  “One bowl!” I called after him. “And adding half a pound of butter does not mean it’s still health food.”

  I reached for the envelope with my right hand and turned it over. The coiled snake tattoo on my palm tingled, an exact match of the symbol pressed into the seal of the envelope.

  The mark of Lucifer, my many-greats-grandfather.

  I’d gotten the mark by using a sword made by Lucifer and tapping into some long-buried power inside me that tied me to his bloodline. I didn’t love having it. It identified me as one of Lucifer’s own, and there are many good reasons why an association with Lucifer is less than desirable. Starting with his list of enemies, which was far too extensive. And all of them liked to find ways to hurt him by hurting me.

  Thanks to my unwanted family ties, I’d recently gotten sucked into a major diplomatic-mission-gone-wrong in one of the local faerie courts. In the process I’d managed to make a personal rival out of the faerie queen, Amarantha. I had enough on my plate without being chased down by angry fae every time I stepped outside of the house.

  And now there was an envelope from Lucifer. I was sure that I wasn’t going to like what was inside. I tore the seal and withdrew the folded paper.

  The paper was actually made of linen. Where does one even find linen paper?

  I read the message inside, my eyebrows drawing closer together with every word. Then I tried to crumple the fancy linen into a tiny ball but succeeded only in making the letter look like it needed ironing.

  I went down the hall to the kitchen and tried to slam the letter in the trash in a satisfying way. The expensive paper just drifted softly into the can.

  Beezle was buried in a bowl of popcorn on the counter. And when I say “buried,” I mean he was actually buried. My gargoyle is about the size of an eight-week-old guinea pig. He fits in my coat pocket. So he can actually disappear into a serving bowl full of food—at least until he eats it all, which takes a surprisingly short amount of time.

  He was facedown in the bowl. I could hear the sound of his stone jaws crunching away at the kernels on the bottom. The only visible parts of him were the claws on the tips of his feet. I grabbed one of those claws and yanked him out of the bowl, thus spilling popcorn onto the counter. He glared at me indignantly, swallowing the food stuffed in his beak.

  “I’m in the middle of something here,” he said, flapping his little wings and wrenching his foot out of my grasp. He floated up to my eye level.

  “Lucifer wants me to find the Red Shoes for him,” I said. “I don’t want to go on another mission for Lucifer that’s sure to go haywire. I don’t even know what the Red Shoes are.”

  “What you don’t know could fill an encyclopedia. If people used encyclopedias anymore,” Beezle said.

  I ignored him. “How am I supposed to find these things? And what makes these red shoes more special than any other pair of ruby slippers?”

  “The Red Shoes are a legendary artifact,” Beezle said. “Nobody knows exactly how old they are, or where they originated. They are generally associated with the fae, but they didn’t make the shoes.”

  “Oh, good. More faeries,” I muttered. “Why does Lucifer want them?”

  “We-e-e-e-l-l-l,” Beezle said slowly. “Supposedly the wearer of the Red Shoes will be forced to dance without stopping.”

  “Until?”

  “Until nothing,” Beezle said. “Even if the wearer dies, or their limbs are cut off, the shoes will continue to dance.”

  I had a horrible vision of amputated feet, still bloody at the ankles, gaily moving in the steps of a jig.

  “So Lucifer is sending me after an ancient torture device disguised as attractive footwear,” I said.

  “You’re surprised by this?” Beezle asked.

  “No,” I said. “But I don’t think it’s a good idea for me to get mixed up in any more faerie nonsense, do you?”

  “Lucifer thinks it’s a good idea, or else he wouldn’t have asked you,” Beezle said.

  “He didn’t ask,” I said through gritted teeth.

  “He respects your strength. So he wants to test it,” Beezle said.

  “I don’t test well
,” I said.

  “I don’t think you have a choice,” Beezle said.

  “I have other stuff to do,” I said.

  Beezle snorted. “Like what? Sit around and moon over your non-relationship with Gabriel?”

  “I have souls to collect, as you well know,” I said, ignoring his jibe about Gabriel. My relationship with Gabriel was too complicated to think about. “Sacred duty as an Agent of Death and all that.”

  “You have time in between soul pickups to investigate,” Beezle said. “You only collect one soul a day, at the most, and the rest of the time you’re at home driving me crazy when I want to watch Telemundo in the afternoon.”

  “You can’t even speak Spanish,” I said.

  “You don’t need to speak Spanish to understand telenovelas,” Beezle said. “They are awesome in any language. And most people think it’s a good idea to give Lucifer what he wants. Or else . . .”

  “Yeah, I get it. Let’s not attract any more attention than I already have, right? I don’t even know where to start,” I said. “It’s not like Lucifer sent a picture of the shoes with that letter.”

  “I can help with that,” Beezle said. He flew out of the kitchen, into the dining room and to the small table that I had set up as a computer desk next to the front door. He pushed the keyboard forward to make room for his belly on the table and then started tapping at the keys.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “Best place for rumors is the Internet,” he said.

  “You think the Internet is a reliable research tool to find the location of a mythical artifact?”

  “It’s not a myth if Lucifer wants you to find it. He must know for sure that the Red Shoes are real. And you would be surprised at how many immortal creatures have Twitter accounts or hang out on message boards. Just because you’re too analog to enter the twenty-first century with the rest of us doesn’t mean that ancient beings disdain social media.”

  “Just make with the Google,” I said. “You can mock my tech skills later.”

  “What tech skills?” Beezle muttered, his claws flying rapidly from the keys to the mouse.

  He had several browser windows open and clicked back and forth between them so quickly that I couldn’t begin to follow what was going on. I thought it wisest to back away slowly and wait for him to triumphantly present me with the required information.

  Fifteen minutes later I stood in the kitchen, peering hopefully inside the refrigerator. No food had magically appeared there since the last time I looked.

  “I got it!” Beezle said, flying into the kitchen with a slip of paper clutched in his little fist. “They’re right here in Chicago.”

  “The shoes?” I asked. “Why would they be here?”

  Beezle shrugged. “Because the creature that currently possesses them is living here temporarily.”

  “And who—or what—would that creature be?”

  “That would be Sammy Blue,” Beezle said. He seemed to enjoy teasing out the suspense.

  “Are you going to tell me what’s so special about Sammy Blue?”

  “Sammy Blue just happens to be an ambassador from Amarantha’s court. Her favorite ambassador, in point of fact. The one that she trusts with her most sensitive matters.”

  Amarantha. Of course it would have something to do with Amarantha.

  “So what’s this guy here for, anyway?” I asked. “Lucifer considers Chicago to be his territory and he’s not been very happy with Amarantha since she tried to have me killed. Isn’t she defying some ancient law about not crossing into another court’s borders without permission?”

  “Technically, she’s not here. Her ambassador is. So they’ve got some wiggle room there, ancient-law-wise. Sammy is here to negotiate with some local witches. Amarantha apparently wants to retain their services,” Beezle said.

  “Gee, you think she’s looking to get some spellthrower to put a curse on me?” I asked.

  “Probably. That’s the kind of effect you have on people.”

  “When I go to see Sammy Blue about these shoes, what are the chances that he’ll go into a berserker rage once he sees me?”

  “Hmm,” Beezle said, tapping his finger on his chin. “You humiliated and disrespected his beloved monarch in a very public way. Then, when Amarantha tried to have you killed by proxy in the Maze you didn’t even have the decency to die there the way everyone else in history has done.”

  “Yes, I’m annoying that way. I refuse to roll over and let some bully in a designer gown step on me.”

  “It is annoying to royalty. They’re used to getting their way. Especially the fae.”

  “In summary, diplomacy is unlikely to be an effective tactic for extracting the shoes from Sammy Blue.”

  Beezle gave me an exaggerated look of surprise. “Was diplomacy even an option? I just thought you would do what you usually do—insult everyone present, break the furniture, set the building on fire.”

  I had no snappy comeback for that one. Beezle had listed the extent of my skill set.

  “What kind of a name is Sammy Blue, anyway? He sounds like a small-time drug dealer with a toothpick hanging from his mouth.”

  “Sammy is short for some flowery fae name that starts with ‘Sam.’ I can’t remember it exactly. And Blue is a nickname that Amarantha gave him. See, Sammy likes to strangle people who make him unhappy.”

  “He likes to see them turn blue,” I said.

  “Yes,” Beezle said. “He likes to see them turn blue verrrry slowly. As in hours and days kind of slowly.”

  “Great. So I’ve got to take the Red Shoes from a faerie psychopath who enjoys killing people by degrees and already has a reason to dislike me.”

  “Pretty much,” Beezle said. “I’ll get your coat.”

  I pulled on my black wool overcoat in defense against Chicago’s winter wind. Beezle put a scarf around his head, horns, and belly in a complicated wrap that made him look like a gargoyle mummy. His stony hawk’s eyes peered out from layers of brightly colored knitting.

  I slung my sword over my shoulder. I had magical ways to defend myself, but I’d discovered pretty quickly that a pointy object is a great way to get someone’s attention.

  We determined that it would be best if I did not attempt to contact Sammy Blue before going to visit him at his temporary quarters in a fancy Loop hotel. No sense in giving him warning so he could set a trap for me.

  Beezle crawled over my shoulder and tucked into my inside coat pocket. I was certain he would promptly fall asleep, and sure enough, a few seconds later I heard the buzz saw rumble of his snore.

  I pushed out my wings and flew out the kitchen window. The wings are part of my Agent’s legacy. I can’t be seen by ordinary mortals when I’m flying. Which is a good thing, as I’ve noticed people have a bad tendency to kill what they don’t understand. Supernatural creatures can sometimes see me, and sometimes they can’t. I’m not really sure if it has to do with their magic or mine. It was unlikely I would be camouflaged from any fae I encountered, though.

  Sammy Blue’s hotel was a five-star type near the Magnificent Mile, the sort of place frequented by celebrities and other people with a lot more money than I would ever have. As the doorman opened the glass door, I slipped in behind a woman wearing a silver fox fur coat and carrying several shopping bags. The lobby was more or less what you would expect—crystal and marble and silk, oh, my—and the air was redolent with the scent trails of many expensive perfumes and colognes.

  Once inside I paused. I knew Sammy Blue was staying here, but Beezle hadn’t given me a room number, and this place was far too huge to wander around and hope I bumped into someone who looked fae-like.

  I could retract my wings, go to the front desk, and ask for him by name. Of course, I was dressed as my usual grubby self—black boots, faded jeans, black sweater—and security would
probably remove me on sight for dirtying up the lobby. At the very least the concierge would notify Sammy Blue of my presence in the hotel, and I definitely did not want to spoil the element of surprise.

  Getting Sammy’s room information from the front desk computer was my best bet, but there were three people moving back and forth in that space, and all of them seemed to spend a lot of time consulting the computer. My window of opportunity would be limited to the length of time it took the clerk to collect a receipt from the printer or hand over a room key.

  The tricky thing about being invisible is that, well, you’re only invisible. You occupy the same space, and people can certainly feel you passing or hear any noises you might make. The average person will assume they imagined a sigh, or that there is just a draft in the room. But I would have to be extremely careful. If I accidentally bumped into anyone and they raised a fuss, it would be impossible to get the information I needed.

  I moved off to the side of the lobby, hoping to find some clear space to extend my wings. My thought was to hover above the desk until my chance arrived. There was a lounge/bar area off the main lobby and a little alcove with a chair tucked to the side of the doorway. I made for the alcove, automatically glancing inside the lounge.

  It was a good thing I did, because I saw the faerie sitting at the bar. His face was a dead giveaway. I’d never seen a faerie that wasn’t more beautiful than the sun. His face could have been carved by Michelangelo. He was impeccably dressed in a designer suit, and was receiving plenty of admiring glances, which he ignored as he stared blankly at the television above the bar.

  There was only one reason for a faerie to choose solitude in a room full of interested parties. He was waiting for someone. His seat faced the door, which looked directly out onto the lobby. No one could pass by without his noticing. I hoped I could slip in without attracting his attention.

  I moved down the three steps into the room, prepared to run after him if he saw me and bolted.

  Which, of course, he did.

  He locked eyes with me when I was about ten feet from him. His eyes were a startling violet, really and truly purple, and for just a second I paused. And while I paused, shocked by his fae eyes, he shot off his barstool so quickly that any human watching him would know he was not of this world. I’d assumed he’d head for the lobby and take the first elevator up to Sammy Blue’s room, knocking over as many people as he could in the process. But I guess I was the only one who operated that way. He snaked toward the back of the lounge in between the fashionable people moving through the room.