by Jenn Bennett
“Uh-huh, I remember.” I didn’t, but whatever.
“Well, she said the rumor going around school is that Yvonne is only allowed supervised visits with the son a couple of times a year.”
I grabbed the box cutter off the bar counter and broke down the empty boxes that were accumulating at my feet. “That’s a little weird. He mentioned that he had custody.”
“Yeah, and you don’t see a father getting that very often, do you? I think it’s fishy. Anyway, how did you meet him?”
Kar Yee walked up to the bar and took a seat. “Who did you meet?”
“Lon Butler.”
Kar Yee squinched up her face. “Who?”
“The famous photographer from La Sirena,” Amanda said in exasperation. I should have known she’d be a wealth of gossipy tidbits; if you listened to her weekly reports from the home front, you’d think that La Sirena was populated with nothing but soap opera characters with elaborate backstories.
“Aren’t there like a billion photographers in La Sirena?” Kar Yee stuck her hand inside the box of rice crackers that I’d just opened and scooped out a handful.
“That’s not sanitary,” I chastised. She shrugged and began munching.
Amanda made a frustrated noise, then proceeded to tell her about the model/ex-wife; Kar Yee hadn’t heard of her either. “He’s a local celebrity,” she finished.
Kar Yee gave me a sidelong glance as Amanda’s back was turned. “Whatever you say.” She swiveled her chair around to face me. “Did you call Lisa?”
“Yeah, she’s subbing for me tonight and tomorrow. I also called Heidi and asked if she’d help Amanda for a few hours tonight during peak hours since that concert will be letting out around midnight.”
“Well, I guess you’re off the hook, then.”
I glared at her. “I’m half owner, you know. I don’t need your permission.”
Kar Yee formed her hand into the shape of a yapping mouth repeatedly opening and closing.
I picked up the stack of flattened boxes and set them down on the bar in front of her. “Get your hands dirty, why don’t you?” I motioned toward the back door with my head. She grumbled and begrudgingly peeled herself off the bar stool to haul them out to the alley.
“Speaking of tips,” Amanda said, “we had a party of six last night and guess how much they gave me for a two-hundred-dollar tab?”
I put my hands on my hips and blew a stray hair off my forehead while checking the bar area to make sure I hadn’t missed anything. “How much?”
“Sixty dollars, baby!”
Half the patrons didn’t tip even twenty percent. “Good job,” I praised, then partially tuned her out as she continued to tell me how one of them had invited her to some party across town.
A flutter went through my stomach as she talked, then a familiar voice filled my head.
May I show myself?
My guardian, Priya. It almost never came to me uninvited.
“No!” I whispered. “Hold on!”
Amanda stopped talking and gave me a strange look. “No? You don’t think I should go?”
“Huh? What—I didn’t mean that. Sure, you should go. Why not.”
She relaxed and continued filling up the toothpick bin. “Yeah, I think I will. Like you said, why not. Have you ever dated a customer?”
“Excuse me, I’ll be right back.” I tried not to bolt from behind the bar. I headed toward Kar Yee’s office, heard her on the phone, and switched directions toward the restroom. Once inside, I locked myself inside one of two stalls.
“Okay,” I whispered. “You can appear now.”
Priya emerged from the air, its image so transparent, I could barely see it.
We are being sought, it said plainly in my head.
“You and me? By whom?”
Searchers have been cast into the Æthyr. I am having difficulty hiding from them.
“What kind of searchers? You mean servitors?” Sometimes Priya’s communication skills aren’t the best.
No. Litchen, Priya insisted. Small insect Æthyr beings. They are commanded by demon host in the Æthyr.
Shit. My heart sped up.
“Are these searcher insects on earth too?”
No, only on my plane. They cannot be summoned to earth.
“It’s got to be the Luxe Order. Can you avoid the insects? They can’t injure you, right?”
I am doing my best to avoid them. If they kill me, I will be reborn in a new form and seek out a renewed link with you again, if you will wait for me.
Priya was nothing if not loyal. “Thank you, Priya. Is there any way I can help you? A spell I can do to fortify or hide you better?”
The spirit shook its birdlike head. The air undulated. I merely wanted to warn you.
“I appreciate that. Please keep me updat—”
Litchen are scouts for their host demons. If they find me, our link can be used to locate you, and their host can be summoned to earth in a physical body. The host can harm you.
Great. That’s all I needed. “I’ll put up a continuous ward around me somehow.”
Priya faded. I must go now. Guard yourself. I will do my best to stay hidden and keep our link safe.
“You always do,” I murmured as Priya disappeared, leaving me alone in the brightly lit restroom.
8
Not long after Priya left, Lon called at the bar, catching me right before I left. He didn’t say much, just gruffly asked me to come out to his house. My first reaction was to insist that we meet at a restaurant or some other neutral location, but he refused, claiming that he had books to show me—rare books that couldn’t be carted around. My curiosity got the better of me.
However, now that it was getting dark and I was lost in the woods, that curiosity was quickly dying. I pulled over to the side of the road and put my car in park so that I could study the GPS screen without running off the road.
“Turn left in two hundred feet,” the computerized voice said in a cheery voice.
“There is no turn in two hundred feet, you bitch,” I yelled toward the screen. “Zoom out.” Nothing happened. “ZOOM. OUT,” I said again, louder, before the screen responded to the voice-activated command. I studied the roads on the map; they didn’t exist. I was stuck on the side of a small mountain, in the middle of the woods, at night. Beautiful.
I held down the button to turn off the GPS, then put the car in gear and began following the road up the mountain, hoping I could just find it on my own; I wished that I’d written down the verbal instructions Lon gave me over the phone. The road was narrow and made hairpin twists as it snaked back and forth up the rocky, heavily wooded landscape. After five or six of these sharp, steep turns, I found one road branching off, but it was headed down the mountain, not up, so I kept going.
Just when I thought I couldn’t go any farther, the road suddenly ended and turned into gravel, then a few feet away, the iron gates to his house appeared, just as he’d described; I stopped in front of them. A small speaker box sat atop a bent pole. I rolled down the window and pressed the button.
“Umm, hello? It’s Arcadia.”
I waited for a response. Nothing. When I leaned out the window to press the button again, a buzz sounded and the gates began swinging open.
The gravel driveway was steep, but at least there weren’t any more twists. Who the hell would choose to live way up here and navigate all those dangerous curves every day? A mentally unstable person, I thought, that’s who. After a short time, my headlights fell on a break in the trees and his house came into view.
“Well, well, well,” I muttered to myself. It certainly wasn’t a mountain cabin. The modern house was constructed from dark gray stackstone with clean, horizontal lines and large plate-glass windows. Several of them were brightly lit from the inside, radiating a pleasant orange glow.
The driveway curved into a loop. Gravel crunched under my tires as I drove to the front of the house and parked.
A set of dark red double doors marked the ent
rance. No doorbell that I could see, so I knocked cautiously and tugged my purse higher up on my shoulder. With a force that suctioned wisps of my hair forward, both doors flung inward and orange light flooded the stone-paved entrance.
An adolescent boy stood inside the open doorway. Taller than me, he was lean and gangly, all arms and legs. Dark brown hair rose up in a mass of long, frizzy spiral curls that defied gravity and sprung out several inches from his head in all directions. His skin was the color of a chocolate milk shake.
“Hi,” he said, unabashedly looking me over from head to foot, his eyes lighting up with curiosity when he spotted my halo.
“Hello.”
He looked so much like his father—same green eyes, same long face and high cheekbones. A few things were different. His race, obviously. He was also skinnier and longer than Lon, which wasn’t surprising, I supposed, his mother being a model. His halo was the normal demon green, not gold and green like Lon’s.
“What’s your name again?”
“Arcadia.”
He scrunched up his nose and smiled. “Arcadia, that’s right. What a weird name. It sounds like you should be a movie star or something, especially with that crazy silver halo of yours and that Bride of Frankenstein hair.”
I laughed. That was better than the skunk comments I usually got. “Nope, just a lowly bartender.”
“Do you like classic movies?”
“Sure.”
“Ya know which one I’m talking about? Bride of Frankenstein? Elsa Lanchester had her hair kinda like that. She was really the Monster’s bride—Frankenstein was the doctor. People always screw that up.”
“Wow, I’m impressed. I dressed up as her last year for Halloween.” I pulled up my hair to better show him the bleached-white strands that contrasted against the dark.
“Yeah, that’s it! Cool,” he said brightly. “You’re human, right? My dad said you weren’t demon, but you’re not a savage either, so I should just treat you like another demon.”
“Yep. I’m human, but I can see your halo. What’s your name?”
“Jupiter.”
“Jupiter?” I teased. “Talk about a weird name.”
He grinned and leaned against the doorway, his arms crossed over his chest with a geeky sort of grace. “I know. Stupid, right? I was named after some poet—not the god. I hate poetry.” He rolled his eyes and made a fake vomiting noise. “You can just call me Jupe. That’s what my friends call me.”
“And you can call me Cady if you want.”
“Cady,” he repeated, as if he were trying it out on his tongue. He was barefoot and dressed in jeans and a loose white T-shirt that fell at a crisp angle from his bony shoulders.
“Whoa, is that a charm?” He reached out to grab my necklace. I instinctually jerked back—I don’t like people invading my private space, and I’m not a hugger—but he didn’t seem to notice. He leaned closer and inspected the small metal pendant, holding it in his flattened palm.
After my worrisome visit from Priya, I realized I needed more continuous protection than my tattooed sigils offered. They were convenient, quick fixes, but because they wouldn’t hold a permanent charge—allowing me the flexibility to turn them off and on at will—they required a constant influx of Heka to power; the longest I’d ever powered one was about an hour, and I passed out afterward. Seeking something more substantial, I dug out an oldie-but-goodie charm I’d created a few years back, at a point in my life when paranoia was getting the best of me. It was a basic deflector, which should keep me safe from hostile magical attack, and, with any luck, hidden from anything malicious originating from the Æthyr.
“Did you make this? Is it magick?” Jupe asked.
“Uh, what? Magick?” I said, as if he were crazy, pulling the pendant away from him and tucking it under the neck of my shirt.
“Yeah, magick. Dad told me you’re a real magician. That’s so cool!”
“He did, did he?” Shit, what the hell was I supposed to say? How much did he tell his son about me, anyway?
“I’ve read tons of books about famous magicians like Aleister Crowley. I have some questions for you—”
Lon’s hands appeared on his son’s shoulders and pulled him backward. “Don’t talk her ear off yet. You’ll scare her away before she even gets in the damn door.”
“Hi,” I said, smiling. He smiled back and an unexpected feeling of relief flooded through me. Call it instinct—or fool-ishness—but I was instantaneously confident that I could trust him; all my worries about his discretion over my true identity vanished on the spot.
“Come on Jupe,” he said, “where are your manners?”
“Huh? Oh, come inside. You’re letting flies in.”
“Jupe,” Lon chastised.
“What? That’s what you always say.” As his father wearily shook his head, Jupe grabbed my arm and pulled me inside; I guessed my no-touching rule was out the window too.
Their house was much larger than mine, but still comfortable. The foyer opened up into an expansive great room with a floor-to-ceiling stone fireplace at the far end and a wide, curving metal staircase to the right with gray, slab-stone steps. The decor was minimalist and modern, lots of blond wood and stainless steel—like something out of an IKEA catalog, but higher-end. Very tidy and clean.
“Nice,” I remarked.
“You want a tour?” Jupe suggested with great enthusiasm.
“She doesn’t want a tour,” Lon said. “This isn’t the Louvre.” Jupe frowned, then his face brightened again. His pale green eyes were not as intensely colored as his father’s, but they were bigger and enfolded by thick, downy lashes. Quite arresting. “We’re having mashed potatoes for dinner. Do you like mashed potatoes?”
“Uh, yeah …”
“Then you’ll like these. My dad’s a real good cook.”
“You’re supposed to ask her if she’s had dinner first, then ask if she’d like to eat with us.”
Jupe rolled his eyes. “Blah, blah. What he said.”
“Jupe.”
“Sorry. Would you like to eat dinner with us, madam, please?” Jupe said with a terrible attempt at something close to a prim-and-proper accent, which apparently in his mind was a broad mix of British and Australian.
“There’s more than mashed potatoes,” Lon added.
“I haven’t had dinner yet, so sure. Yeah.”
“Sweet! I’m starved, let’s eat, Dad.” Jupe paused, then shouted at the top of his lungs—quite impressive, I can tell you—“Foxglove! Come here, girl!” He whistled with his hands cupped around his mouth, and headed off into the next room, leaving Lon and me standing alone.
“Sorry he’s such a motormouth,” he said. “He doesn’t get it from me.”
“Really? Color me shocked,” I said dryly. He gave me a single grunt in return, which made me laugh. “He seems sweet. Cute, too. The girls are going to be all over him in a couple of years.”
“You think?” He looked over his shoulder at Jupe, who was well out of earshot and continuing to whistle and call.
“God yes—he looks just like you.” I realized, too late, what I’d just implied when one of Lon’s eyebrows slowly raised and the corner of his mouth twitched in amusement.
“Who’s Foxglove?” I quickly asked before it got too awkward.
“Our dog—a black Lab.”
“Ah.” Not a cat. Big points.
“She’s outside, but don’t tell Jupe. Looking for her will keep him occupied for a few minutes and give your ears a chance to rest.”
He grinned and turned away, then starting walking out of the room. I guessed that meant that I was supposed to follow, so I did. We walked under a wide archway into a kitchen with gobs of white subway tile and stainless steel countertops. A long, curved island sat in the center, bordered with six stools. As he walked around the island, he motioned for me to sit.
“Whatever you’re cooking smells terrific,” I admitted.
It really did; my stomach was trying to ea
t itself.
“Thanks.”
I waited for him to tell me exactly what if was, but he didn’t.
“The food’s not dosed like your cigarettes, right?”
“Like you’ve never dosed someone.”
“How would you know?” If he’d been snooping, asking around about me, God only knew what he’d heard. A couple of my regulars at the bar suspected that I concocted medicinals; had they been gossiping?
He gave me a mysterious smile, then turned away and changed the subject. “I’ve found ten albino demons so far,” he said as a timer went off. He took the large stockpot off the range and turned his back to me to dump out the contents into a colander. The infamous potatoes. “When we get finished eating, I’ll let you look at them and you can tell me what you think.”
“That’s great news.”
“Hold off on getting too excited. I’ve only been through a handful of goetias.”
“Oh?”
“It could take me days to finish with what I’ve got. If we can’t find it, I might know someone we can call.”
“Anything you can do to help is much appreciated. I know this is probably taking up a lot of your time, and you’ve got a job and your son—”
“I don’t have a shoot scheduled right now. Don’t worry about it.”
Lon smashed the steaming potatoes in a large bowl as the sound of a slamming door echoed in the distance. Jupe’s voice carried from somewhere in the house. “Goddamn dog, where the hell are you hiding?”
“Jupiter!” Lon yelled crossly.
“Oops, sorry,” Jupe replied. His footsteps thundered across the wooden floor before he appeared in the kitchen.
“No swearing around company.”
He flopped onto the stool next to me and spread his long arms across the counter. “I said sorry, jeez. I’m sure she’s heard it before.”
“I have … in the car earlier, when I was trying to find your house.”
Jupe looked at me with a strange expression, then got it, and laughed, rearing back his head. “See. She cusses too.”
Lon threw me a scolding look. “Not helping,” he mumbled.
“Don’t let him fool you,” Jupe said, “he drops the F-bomb like a billion times a day, but he only pretends it’s wrong in front of other people. H-Y-P-O-C-R-I—” he began spelling.
