by Dia Reeves
“But you,” she said, “you’re different. Not from here.”
“We’re from Portero. The Mayor sent us here for…for some of your milk. She didn’t tell us—”
“Portero?” The sphinx’s face flushed. “Her. That Revelry.” The flash of heat disintegrated into cold ash. “Go ahead, then. Take as much as you like. A promise is a promise.”
Now that Jimi was face to face with the sphinx, he realized what he had been tasked with—to take the milk of a woman whose baby had been killed. His brain went to a weird place. An alternate world where a sphinx was visiting Alexis and asking to borrow her milk.
He knelt and put his hand over her paw.
“I’m Jimi Elba and that’s Ophelia Jones and on behalf of our town I want to apologize for how you’ve been treated. We’ll take you back with us. I swear it.”
The sphinx seemed surprised. “I can’t remember the last time anyone wept for me. You’re…sweet.” She petted his head. “Very sweet, but you shouldn’t dally here. Take the milk while you can.”
Jimi didn’t want to take any milk, but he hadn’t come here for himself. People were counting on him: Carmin, the Mayor, and—even though she didn’t know it—Ophelia.
She had her back to the room, hiding her emotions as always. He called to her. “Bring the bottles.”
For a moment, Jimi didn’t think she would, but then she was kneeling beside him, pulling the bottles free of her pockets.
“We’ll make it right,” he said, to Ophelia as much as to the sphinx.
“It doesn’t matter.” The sphinx leaned forward. “None of this matters.”
Ophelia seemed to be waiting for him to start, so he reached out a sweaty hand, wiped it dry on his jeans. Reached again.
He’d done something similar during a class trip to a Charter dairy farm when he was a kid. He knew how to do this. Warm milk streamed into the bottle, white and frothy, with this great smell like sunshine and cinnamon. Which made him feel evil, lusting after the milk of someone whose baby had been killed. Someone their mayor knew was in trouble but had clearly been exploiting for a while.
When the bottles were full, Jimi said:
“Ma’am, do you have a name?”
More surprise. “Sekhmet. No one calls me that here.”
“There’s an exit right outside the zoo. You can live in Portero, or I can ask the Mayor to open a door to your world so you can go home.”
“I don’t want to owe her any more favors.”
“I’d be the one in debt. A debt I’ll gladly pay for your sake.”
“The booji won’t allow anyone to leave.” Her calm façade began to melt. “They need us, spend all their time and money destroying the best parts of us to create something unspeakably worse for themselves.”
“They aren’t here now,” said Ophelia. “Even if the place was swarming with them, so what? Claw them to death if they come near you. I’d rather die than let somebody push me around, and death isn’t so bad.”
“She’s the expert,” said Jimi, enjoying Ophelia’s assertive side.
“You speak like children. All creatures want to live.”
“Is this living?”
Sekhmet’s reaction, like he’d slapped her, made Jimi regret opening his mouth. Though he’d spoken true. Ophelia was right—death was better than slavery.
“They’re here, sir.”
Jimi and Ophelia crouched together before Sekhmet as the door filled with…
??????
“Yes, sir. Both of them.” A voice full of hisses and pops and missing consonants. Two in the room with them, the others waiting outside.
“You tarried too long.” The sphinx sighed behind them. “The booji have come.”
Such an appropriate word for these things in their human masks with painted on white skin and blond hair and round blue eyes, vacant and doll-like. The masks were misshapen, barely able to contain the lopsided masses they attempted to hide. The booji had dressed in khaki pants and shirts with tons of pockets, as if on safari. All they lacked were pith helmets. Long black sticks were strapped to their utility belts, and blunderbusses, antiquated shotguns with flared muzzles, gleamed in their gloved hands. It should have been comical.
Except the blunderbusses were aimed at Jimi and Ophelia.
Chapter 23
The booji marched Jimi and Ophelia out of the clanging elevator and back to the reception area, which was no longer deserted. Dozens of booji filled the space in regimented rows along the wall by the gates. A lone booji stood before the reception desk. Clearly the leader, because while his mask was the same as everyone else’s, he was the only one in a suit. A very nice suit. So nice, Jimi thought he might be Ophelia’s dapper gentleman, except the suit was so ill-fitting. Like the masks, the awkward, bulging shape of the leader’s body could barely be restrained, not even by fancy French seams.
Jimi and Ophelia were jerked to a halt before the leader, who examined the milk bottles one of the booji passed him. The leader examined them briefly and then set them aside on the reception desk.
“What is the milk for?” His voice was more natural than his compatriots, cultured.
“The Mayor asked for it.”
“Who?”
Jimi had to stop being surprised that the Mayor wasn’t a worlds-wide celebrity. “The leader of our town asked us to come here to get milk. For a party.”
“What town is this?”
“Portero.”
“Ah.”
Maybe Portero was the celebrity.
“Is this mayor named Westwood?”
“He’s not the mayor,” said Ophelia dryly.
“You know him, but he didn’t send you?”
Jimi and Ophelia shook their heads, and while the leader’s mask remained as dull and bovine as ever, his drooping shoulders screamed disappointment.
“Then why are men in the Laboratory? Are you not men?”
“No.”
“Yes.” Jimi spoke over Ophelia. “We both are. Top of the food chain.”
“Lies!” said the booji who’d surrendered their milk to the leader. “They came through the beast door.”
The regiment along the wall erupted, outraged.
“Men entering through the beast door?” The leader pressed his gloved hands to his fake rosy cheeks. “I’ve never heard of such a thing.”
“No one has! They should be killed, resurrected, then killed again!”
The leader raised his arms to silence the shouts of agreement. “Let’s not be hasty.”
“But the law!”
“What better way to serve the law than with their flesh? Because of them our children, or perhaps our children’s children, will bring forth the great unmasking.”
“No, we won’t,” Jimi said. “I lied. We are not men. We are beasts. Definitely beasts. That’s why we used the beast gate. Our flesh is useless to you. Would actually set you back about four or five generations.”
“Beasts?” The leader circled them. “Fully dressed? Drinking from bottles? Speaking?”
“I didn’t say we weren’t classy.”
“If you’re beasts, prove it.”
Jimi took off his shirt and released his wings. Ophelia did the same, without the need to disrobe.
The booji gasped at the sight of their wings, drew away as if afraid of contamination. A reaction Jimi continued to find hurtful.
The leader, less repulsed, clapped his gloved hands together. “Marvelous! Men with wings; we’ll put them on display immediately. New DNA and a new exhibit. A chance to speed up the unmasking and bring back the visitors.”
A burst of static from the wall speakers made everyone jump. Not static—speech.
The booji turned to the sound, deformed nails toward a magnet. Then an alarm, blaring like the tornado siren that sounded once a month back home.
Now the leader was repulsed, facing the speakers, fists clenched. “Mocking us? When they are the hideous ones. When they can’t even speak the language of men or
walk upright. And now threats? They’ll learn their place soon enough. We will educate them.”
He gestured imperiously to the armed booji. “Take them below. We must prepare for war.”
Jimi and Ophelia stood wing to wing as the booji moved in on them.
“The war has already begun.”
Sekhmet came bounding out of the elevator along with the centaurs, the satyr, and one of the mermaids still dripping and unsteady on pale human legs. They were immediately surrounded and penned in with Jimi and Ophelia before the desk.
Jimi beheld this miniscule cavalry, exhausted and resigned instead of spoiling for a fight, and knew this would not end well.
“A war,” Sekhmet continued, voice strong at least, and louder than the siren. “For our freedom.”
The leader held his hand to his heart, wounded. “After all I’ve done for you, the money I spend for your upkeep, and this is how you repay me? Take them below, quickly! All of them.”
Some of the booji came forward with leashes, but the band of rebels evaded them, scrambling until the booji corralled them near the entrance gates.
Sekhmet snapped at the leash, at the hand that held it. “I am not an animal!” The leash seemed to anger her as even talk of her dead baby hadn’t.
“You’re not a man,” said the booji, narrowly avoiding her claws.
“Neither are you.”
The contempt, like acid, burned through every booji in earshot. They hissed at her, a sound incongruous with the vapidly smiling masks. The booji holding the leash dropped it and aimed his blunderbuss at Sekhmet. Fired.
Sekhmet leaped, powerful legs propelling her over the booji and his blunderbuss. No one else within range of the shot managed to escape its devastating effects. Several booji and the mermaid disappeared from the waist up. The gated entrance also disappeared except for a few zigs and zags of metal and a cloud of dust.
Jimi’s ears rang, but at least the ringing drowned out the blare of the siren. He looked for Ophelia, coughing. Didn’t see her.
The leader stepped over the sludgy remains of his compatriots and knelt beside the mermaid. Her legs had become a fish tail once more and flopped wetly. Green, brackish fluid leaked from what remained of her and smelled of the sea.
“Idiot!”
“You heard what she said,” the booji with the smoking gun explained. “We are men. We are!”
“Of course we are.” The leader stood. “But we’re too close to the great unmasking to risk harming our investment. Now seize them, and know this: the next one who fires a gun will be fed to the menagerie piece by piece.”
One of the booji flew across the room, one and then another—curtesy of the centaurs’ hooves. A fourth, a fifth. Then chaos.
The booji traded the blunderbusses for the sticks at their waists, used them to prod the centaurs, who dropped, sizzling from electric shock.
Jimi was still looking for Ophelia through the dust and frenzy. Caught sight of her as she raced out of the ruined entrance. While he waited to see if she would pop her head through the jagged hole in the wall and wave impatiently for him to follow, someone put him in a chokehold. Jimi remained calm. Or he was in shock. The result was the same—he kept his cool. Used his left stinger to stab a khaki-covered thigh. Just a little venom. A few drops, then stop.
The booji released him. Didn’t burst or die. Only fell, paralyzed.
Jimi could do this. He could stand here and fight for Sekhmet; he was the one who’d stirred her up in the first place. Fighting would give him something to do other than wonder whether Ophelia was ever coming back. She hadn’t even taken the milk, but then what did she care if Carmin got to go to the Revelry—she didn’t need the hourglass beetle.
Jimi reminded himself that he liked Ophelia’s knack for self-preservation. And he did. It made him happy that at least one of them would survive this trip.
Maybe happy wasn’t the right word.
Sekhmet’s rebel horde, though tiny, was managing well against the booji onslaught. The satyr, like the remaining centaurs, put his goat hooves to use, kicking anything that came near, but his thick horns, curving back over his head, did the most damage. Sekhmet had her claws, had turned the floor black from whatever hellish ichor passed for blood among the booji. No matter how many throats she ripped out, the rebels were outnumbered ten to one. Jimi decided his role would be to even out the battlefield.
He paralyzed four booji with his left stinger and was about to get another with his right stinger when it was seized. The pain was monumental but worse was the knife slashing down, to sever. To castrate.
Without thinking, Jimi reached back and wrestled the knife free. Sliced it across the booji’s face. Slit open the mask. Revealed the truth underneath: the clusters of eyes like black currants, the reptilian slits where a nose should have been, the black insectile hairs bristling.
The booji screamed, hid behind his gloved hands “Don’t look at me! I’m not ready yet!”
Jimi buried the knife in his throat.
As the booji fell, a cacophony arose behind Jimi. Yips and snarls. Caws and whinnies.
The sound arrested the booji who’d leashed and subdued all but Sekhmet, who lay dead near the elevator. The blasted entrance was choked with animals. The zoo animals he and Ophelia had passed on the way here.
The animals swarmed the booji, Ophelia flying before them, leading the charge.
The blunderbusses fired, despite the leader’s warning, but the animals didn’t give the booji an opportunity to fire their antiquated weaponry a second time.
Ophelia scooped the milk bottles from the desk, and slipped them into her pockets. Grabbed Jimi. “Come on!”
Sekhmet was still dead. One of those beasts Ophelia had brought was eating her liver.
Ophelia pulled him away from the carnage. Through the entrance. Outside.
Jimi thought night had fallen, but if so, it had only fallen over the laboratory. Swarms of giant wasps, circling in the sky, had cast a shadow upon the land. The venomous buzzing whirlpool swept into the House of Pain like dark water.
✽ ✽ ✽
“You’re still alive,” the Mayor greeted them, as Jimi and Ophelia fell from the doorway onto the ice.
“Barely.” Jimi remained shirtless but was so overexerted that he found the cave air refreshing. He retracted his wings and stingers though, which were more sensitive to the cold than he was.
“Where’s my milk?”
Ophelia carefully removed the milk bottles from her pockets and handed them over.
The Mayor sipped from one steamy bottle. “This is perfect. Sekhmet is a miracle.”
“Sekhmet’s dead.”
“Is she?” The Mayor sipped from the other bottle. When she was satisfied, the bottles disappeared and the Mayor sat in a chair that hadn’t been in the cave when they’d left. “Tell me what happened while I see to your hand.”
Jimi didn’t know what she was talking about until he looked down. Blood dripped from a deep cut in his right hand, staining the icy floor. From when he’d grabbed the knife?
Jimi knelt at the Mayor’s feet, as she directed, and submitted to having his hand held while she listened intently to their tale.
“And then Ophelia ran away and came back with an army of animals. How’d you do that anyway?”
“With the master key.” She handed it to the Mayor. “Used it to free them. I kept screaming, ‘Death to boojis.’ They seemed down for it.”
“Ah, well,” said the Mayor when they’d finished their tale. “Good milky fortune like that never lasts forever.”
“You should have rescued Sekhmet and brought her here. Instead of using her.”
“She isn’t Porterene; her welfare is not my concern. Nor anyone’s now. There.” The Mayor released Jimi’s injury-free hand. “Better get home before you freeze. The door is behind you.”
The golden double doors hovered over the blood Jimi had left on the ice.
“What about the invitations?”
> Before he could finish the sentence, an envelope appeared in his newly healed hand. A white card was inside printed with red foil lettering.
The Mayor of Portero cordially invites Jimi Elba and Guest
to attend the Revelry Ball at the Mayor’s Gray Road Estate on the evening of the 24th of December at 7 o’clock. White and Red attire only. Masks mandatory. Unmasking at midnight. Ticket enclosed.
Ophelia was holding her own invitation, beaming. “Thank you.”
Jimi retrieved their coats—he was starting to want his layers back. Ophelia seemed warm enough, wrapped as she was in her massive wings. The Mayor eyed them, with a look that reminded Jimi she wasn’t human. Never had been.
“You look different with wings.”
“So what?” Jimi didn’t like the emphasis the Mayor had put on “different.” “We aren’t ‘men’, but that doesn’t make us beasts either.”
“Men, beasts.” If eyes were windows to the soul, she had none. Only ice reflecting in her gaze as she looked over Ophelia. “It’s all food to me, and I’m particularly fond of wings.”
Ophelia hid her wings so well, Jimi wondered if she would ever find them again.
✽ ✽ ✽
Ophelia dropped Jimi home, which meant César’s house these days, and then followed him inside.
No one was home from work yet to cook for him, so he was reduced to raiding the pantry. Ophelia took off her coat without being told and washed up at the sink with dishwashing liquid. “You’re lucky. There’s always someone at my house. I’d never live it down if anyone saw me like this.”
She looked fine, but Jimi understood. She wasn’t fine on the inside.
Pasta. Rice. Beans. Blergh. “If I told you today was the best day of my life, would you think I was weird?”
“Nope.” She scrubbed at the oily stains on her hands. “I can’t remember the last time I had this much fun.”
“We milked a sphinx!” Jimi swung open the fridge door. “Who does that?”
