by Matt Wallace
She’s watching them all with a heavy look of judgment on her angular face.
“Where the fuck did you come from?” Cindy asks, genuinely shocked at the woman’s sudden presence.
“I repeat,” Luciana says stiffly, “none of you should be here. This is Mr. Allensworth’s private residence.” She peers down at Bruno. “And you’ve murdered his favorite pet.”
“So, the bastard is still kicking,” Cindy says. “Allensworth, I mean.”
“Oh, Mr. Allensworth is quite well, I assure you, and very much looking forward to seeing you all again.”
Cindy looks at Ritter. “I thought Lena said she stuck a butcher’s knife through this bitch’s mug.”
Ritter nods without comment, scrutinizing Luciana closely.
Her face, neck, and skull are all unblemished. Her dark hair is perfectly coiffed. She appears to be the exact opposite of someone who was stabbed under the chin with a very large blade.
“Weapons free?” Marcus asks Ritter, ready to open fire on the succubus.
Ritter shakes his head. “I think you’d be wasting the shot, little brother.”
He picks up a small yet surprisingly heavy decorative snuffbox from a nearby side table and tosses it at Luciana.
The object enters her abdomen and passes through her as if she’s not even there, breaking open on the cabin floor behind her.
She frowns. “That was an antique, from the New Orleans brothel that once served as the Sceadu’s early American headquarters.”
“She’s a fucking ghost?” Moon marvels.
“I am a noncorporeal human,” Luciana corrects him.
Cindy shakes her head. “Damn, girl, you really are Evil Jett, aren’t you?”
“Allensworth still has you on the dangle, even in death,” Ritter says, and he sounds almost sympathetic to her plight.
“My contract extends beyond this mortal coil, and I am fortunate it does, believe me.”
Ritter is quiet for a moment, his wheels turning, and then he says, “If you’re here, then you’re guarding something, and I’m guessing it’s important.”
“Is that why you’ve committed this act of breaking and entering, not to mention destruction of private property? In the vain hope of gaining some advantage over Mr. Allensworth?”
“Tell us where we can find proof of what he’s planning,” Ritter says calmly, “something we can present to the Sceadu. Help us and I’ll find a way to free you, I promise.”
Luciana laughs, and it’s as though someone with secondhand knowledge once explained to her what laughing is supposed to sound like.
“My dear boy, I am quite happy with the terms of my current contract. I do not imagine I would fare well unbound on the other side of things.”
“Being evil as fuck in life does that to a bitch,” Cindy says with unabashed rancor.
Luciana stares dispassionately at her. “I am going to kill you all now,” she pleasantly concludes. “Rest assured your colleagues at Sin du Jour will not linger behind for long.”
From inside his jacket, Ritter quickly and deftly unfolds an old-fashioned Polaroid camera on a nylon strap and aims it at Luciana, the flash blinding them all as he snaps a picture of her.
When the gold-tinted veil over their vision parts, Luciana is gone.
Ritter removes the instant photograph produced by the camera and waves it briefly to help dry the image.
“That’ll bind her for a while at least,” he explains, tossing the photograph of Luciana staring into the camera hatefully across the room.
“You do come prepared, my brother,” Marcus says with a grin.
“Impressive shit, dude,” Moon adds.
Cindy rolls her eyes. “Oh, stop sucking his dick and let’s get a move on. Those guards won’t be fucking around with those charges forever.”
Ritter conceals a grin of his own and walks through the high, broad arch on the other side of the great room. The space beyond illuminates automatically just as the foyer and great room did.
The space is dominated by a gargantuan slab of carved onyx serving as the top of a U-shaped desk. A rich, oxblood leather chair with a throne-like back rests between its flanks, and smaller chairs have been placed in front of it for visitors. The room’s picture windows are totally covered by blackout curtains that appear thick enough to stop bullets.
“This must be the dude’s office,” Moon observes, obviously trying his best to come across as astute.
“Good catch, Moon,” Cindy says sarcastically.
“What are we looking for?” Marcus asks his brother.
“Anything,” Ritter answers, distracted. “Everything.”
“Right.”
Ritter scans the walls. There are several large oil paintings set in frames that probably cost as much as a midsize car. He recognizes a triptych by Bosch depicting the creation of the world, and imagines some museum curator believing they have anything other than a copy on their wall. Ritter begins to move slowly around Allensworth’s desk, examining each object resting on the gleaming onyx surface. There are several slender, lethally sharp letter openers arranged atop a velvet cloth that look more like Masonic ceremonial daggers. There’s a globe the size of a cantaloupe, made of glass, filled with what appears to be violet petals.
Ritter’s gaze pauses on a large ink blotter crowned with a statue of a black crow, its wings spread and its pointy beak raised high. It’s a crude rendering that was painted long ago, and now the paint is chipping and peeling in many places. The statue looks to Ritter to be older than any other object in the room, and that’s impressive enough, but what’s captured his eyes are the gilded runes embossed along its base. It’s a language Ritter doesn’t recognize.
“That’s something,” he says.
“What?” Cindy asks.
Ritter frowns. “I don’t know. I need Hara. He knew most every damn language ever spoken or written on this planet. But I’d lay odds that thing does something.”
“Last time you said some shit like that, we ended up engulfed in Henley’s playpen balls and sucked into a cave full of clown zombies.”
“Zombie clowns,” Moon corrects her.
“I’m not having that discussion again!” she snaps at him.
“It doesn’t matter,” Ritter reprimands them both. “I can’t decipher it.”
“Then what do we do?” Marcus asks. “Google Translate?”
They all stare at the statue atop the blotter in silence for several long moments, no one seeming able to come up with a plan.
Then, casually, Moon reaches out and grabs the statue by the crow’s head, pulling it back.
A mechanical hiss issues from somewhere beneath the desktop, and Moon steps away as the entire gargantuan piece of furniture rises from the office carpet, elevating almost seven feet on long steel pistons attached to the bottom of each corner. It stops rising when a machined platform fills the hole in the floor left by the desk. A small console is bolted into the platform, a simple lever affixed to its surface.
“Holy shit, it’s an elevator,” Marcus says in disbelief.
All three of them stare at Moon, speechless, none more gobsmacked than Cindy.
He only shrugs. “You guys overthink shit sometimes. Everyone’s seen the same movies, y’know? Even a dude like Allensworth.”
Ritter claps Moon on the shoulder, though his expression remains ever passive. He motions for them all to join him on the platform beneath the desk.
Marcus racks his shotgun and Cindy unsheathes her tomahawk before following. Ritter waits until they’re gathered and pulls the lever. The desk hisses at them once more and begins descending. It proves to be a short ride, as the office quickly gives way to a windowless subterranean chamber with concrete block walls and only a single, bare lightbulb dangling from the ceiling on its cord illuminating the cramped space. The lift stops as the platform beneath them touches down on the dirt floor.
“I don’t like this shit,” Cindy says immediately. “There ain’t no way o
ut of here. We’re about to trap our damn selves.”
“Wire this thing and send it back up, just in case,” Ritter instructs her.
Cindy nods, quickly retrieving several items from the pockets of her tactical vest. She reaches up and begins working on the bottom of the desk.
As she does, the rest of them step off the lift, squinting into the darkness of the dimly lit space.
“It looks like an old converted fruit cellar,” Ritter observes.
“That stink ain’t old fruit,” Cindy insists as she affixes a high-explosive device to a motion sensor and attaches both to the top of the lift.
Marcus grunts. “It’s shit.”
“All right!” Cindy announces, yanking the lever and stepping off the lift as it begins to rise. “We’re covered.”
Ritter nods, reaching up and taking hold of the cord attached to the single lightbulb.
“What’s that sound?” Moon asks. “It sounds like . . . indigestion.”
Ritter directs the bulb’s light onto the far side of the cellar. The pale, syrupy illumination trips over a series of iron bars. A prison cell has been installed in the subterranean space.
“What the hell—” Cindy begins, and then stops, half-shocked and half-repulsed.
The cell isn’t empty. Ritter casts the bulb’s light on a lumpy, misshapen form covered in dull and withered scales.
“Is that . . . a demon?” Cindy asks.
“I know you,” Ritter says to the cell’s occupant. “You’re dead.”
“Many knew me,” the demon says in what sounds more like rusty rakes being digested by a whale than the voice of a sentient being. “And feared me. Long ago.”
“Who is he, dude?” Moon asks.
“He’s the Oexial elder who choked to death on a chicken bone at Lena and Darren’s first gig before he could blow the whistle on that fake angel meat,” Ritter says. “This is Astaroth.”
I HAVE ALWAYS BEEN HERE
Lena isn’t certain when they became the sounds of home to her, the shuffling and rattling that never fail to welcome visitors to Boosha’s small corner of Sin du Jour that is equal parts apothecary, test kitchen, and arcane junk closet. Lena can’t count or fully recall the number of late nights she’s wandered past the always-open door to hear the ramshackle chorus of Boosha puttering around inside, attending to a dozen simultaneous and seemingly random tasks that never seem to involve organizing the room’s contents, at least to the eyes of every outsider. In a chaotic environment of constantly morphing rules and circumstances, Boosha has remained an immutable constant, an anchor for Lena’s work life and even, at times, her sanity.
All these thoughts tumble around Lena’s mind with the occasional banging of sneakers tossed into a commercial dryer as she finds herself approaching Boosha’s door after hours.
The first thing Lena sees upon entering the cramped, musty space is Boosha’s gnarled blackthorn lectern. Its slanted face is hosting yet another cracked leather tome opened to wrinkled parchment pages inked with some extra-human form of language only the ageless hybrid inhabitant of these quarters has the ability to read. It was from that lectern and those crumbling old volumes that Boosha taught Lena and Darren so many lessons about Sin du Jour’s eclectic clientele and the world as it really exists, so much larger and terrible and wondrous than either of the young chefs could’ve ever imagined.
In this room, Lena learned about goblins, the most beautiful of all God’s creatures, who munch on rare gemstones for a snack, and about demons, the inhumanly spicy food–loving rival clans of hellions fighting the same generational and cultural war against one another with fire and axes that humans wage every day using social media. In this room, Lena learned about the forgotten guardians of the Earth called elementals, about centaurs and satyrs and subway trolls and a secret litany of other supernatural creatures, their history, and above all else, what they love to eat.
Boosha is hunched over a bulbous black iron pot that is half as high as she stands. Her mountain of white hair always reminds Lena of an elderly version of the Marvel Comics character Medusa. The pot sits on a lopsided wooden frame she probably hammered together herself. The gas heating element whose oil-smelling flames tickle the pot’s underbelly is older than Lena and probably the last two generations of her family. A viscous concoction several shades of drab and sickly green (not unlike Boosha’s skin tone) bubbles and steams inside the pot. It smells of too-sweet onions and something acrid and starchy and ashen like burnt potatoes.
Boosha is stirring the contents of the cauldron-like pot with the longest, slimmest wooden spoon Lena has ever seen. It looks like a pool cue broken in half.
“You no sleep enough,” Boosha comments without preamble, ignoring Lena in favor of focusing on the syrupy goop she’s sloshing around the pot.
“You never sleep,” Lena points out.
Boosha grunts. “Is not the same. Sleep is food for the young. Is not food I need now.”
Lena has no idea what that means, but she knows asking won’t bring any clarification.
“What are you doing?” she asks instead.
“I make soup.”
It occurs to Lena then that she’s never actually seen Boosha eat, not really. The ancient-looking creature never joins the staff for family meal. Lena has only watched her taste test the arcane and often ancient recipes they prepare for clients of various and equally ancient species.
It further occurs to Lena how little she really knows of the matronly hybrid at all.
“Boosha, can I ask you something?”
She scoffs. “All you do is ask.”
“No, I know, but . . . can I ask you something . . . you know, personal?”
Boosha nods impatiently, skimming the inside walls of the pot with her spoon.
“What you are?” Lena asks, adding quickly as Boosha looks up at her with slit, offended eyes, “I mean, where do you come from?”
“Have always been here,” she answers simply.
Lena’s brow wrinkles. “What?”
“I have always been here,” Boosha repeats, slower, as if Lena were dim or a small child. “I will always be here.”
“I don’t understand what that means.”
Boosha’s lips tighten in frustration. “Why you must understand? Do you ask these questions of grass or water or road outside?”
“I want to know,” Lena says. “I feel like I should’ve asked a long time ago. You’ve taught me so much.”
Boosha’s pestered expression softens.
“This place,” she begins, more patiently this time, “is place for teaching.”
“You mean . . . the buildings? Or do you mean this room?”
Boosha shrugs. “Do not know. Maybe both. I know only this is place made to teach those who need to know. Like you, like your friend. Even Chef Bronko when he first comes here. He did not know. Is why they give him this place to cook for them. This is place made to teach.”
“And you . . . you’ve always been here? Even before Chef Luck took over?”
Boosha nods. “I help to teach him, others who come before, others who will come after. That is all.”
Lena takes a deep breath, absorbing those words. “I’d ask more, but I’m guessing what you just said, that’s as much as I’ll ever understand, huh?”
Boosha actually smiles at her. “You good girl. You no worry. You know what you need to know. And like I say before—”
“You’ll always be here,” Lena says.
Boosha nods, still smiling.
Slowly, Lena smiles back, her eyes drifting from the withered, slightly inhuman features of Boosha’s face to the surface of her bubbling soup.
On impulse, Lena dips the barest tip of her right pinkie finger into the concoction and brings it to her lips, suckling it.
Her face practically implodes, and she sticks her tongue out, retching.
“That is fucking atrocious!”
Boosha hisses at her. “Language!”
“I’m sorry, b
ut that is vile. You’re going to eat that?”
“No. Is not for eating.”
“Then what’s it for?”
“Seeing.”
“Seeing what?”
Boosha shrugs. “Whatever soup shows you.”
Though she continues trying to work it out, Lena momentarily forgets about the awful taste in her mouth.
“Jett said . . . she said you knew Hara wasn’t going to come back from Gluttony Bay. Is that true?”
“Knew one would not come back. Did not know who.”
“But how?” Lena presses. “How did you know? The soup?”
Boosha shakes her head. “Not soup. Am made to know things. Sometimes see more than what is in books. Like Romani. Have little Romani in me.”
“You have a little of everything in you, don’t you?”
Boosha stares openly at her. “Is part of being made to know.”
Lena licks her lips tentatively before asking, “Do you . . . do you know how . . . I dunno, all of this is going to end, I guess? For all of us?”
“End is always the same.”
Lena sighs. “Boosha, c’mon with the riddles. You know what I mean.”
“End is always the same,” Boosha repeats, insistently. “Some will die. Some will live. Some things will stop. Other things keep going. End is always the same. Do not need soup to see that.”
“That’s real comforting, thanks,” Lena says, her sarcasm not lost even on Sin du Jour’s perpetually oblivious taste tester.
“Knowing is not meant to be warm blanket,” Boosha insists. “Knowing is only truth. Truth is like life, like death. They are all what is. That is all they are. You must choose what happens between.”
Lena tries to laugh, but it comes out more like a moan. “What’s scary is I actually think I know what you mean.”
Boosha reaches up and pats her cheek with a hand that feels as soft and thin as silk.
“You will make do,” she says.
Lena sighs. “So, if you don’t see the end in the soup, then what do you see?”
Boosha dips her long wooden spoon into the murky depths and draws from the bottom of the pot, ladling what’s settled in the soup atop its swampy surface. She repeats the action several times, stirring the soup in between and peering into the pot deliberately.
