"The bazaar looks bigger than last time I was here," I said.
"It's not," Maddox said, absently. "It's the same size pretty much. It's your perception that's different. I can't say that's a good thing."
"How big is it, really?"
He shrugged. "Big enough. It's more like a piazza. It's enclosed by the buildings," he said. "This outer market is the public area where the cheaper stalls are and where Kindred gather. Mind you, those ones who tend to socialize are the ones who tend to come from your ninth world. The vampires who have sentience, the bogeymen, the merpeople, and mothmen. Shifters of all sorts, as you've already seen."
"You're not from my world," I said, testing.
"Some from the other worlds come too, but they don't tend to hang around the external piazza, the market as you call it."
"They're the ones in the buildings." I scanned the facade of the smokey stone that surrounded the area.
He hesitated before answering. "Rent tends to cost more," he said evasively but pointed out nine alley entrances. "As you go deeper into the streets the more the rent costs."
I was willing to bet I knew why. It didn't take a science degree to figure out that the deeper in, the older the building, the darker the magic, and the worse the trade, the more the price.
And the scarier the Kindred.
We had crossed the piazza and were aiming for a street entrance that seemed to be sparser populated than the others. The stalls were cloistered in shadow and seemed to absorb the morning sun. I hesitated to call the light sunlight. It didn't seem right, especially since I couldn't catch sight of the star at all.
"What's after the buildings?" I wondered aloud.
He hitched one shoulder up as though he needed to adjust it in the socket.
"Shadows," he said. "Shadows and nothingness. But you'll never make it that far, so don't worry."
I recognized a stall from my last visit and meandered toward it. Like a human market, the stall had open wares. Bowls of eyeballs and cauldrons of congealed viscera. It had made me nauseous last time. This time, it was mildly interesting.
Maddox hooked my elbow and tugged me away.
"Try to fight it, Isabella, won't you?"
"Fight what? Oh, the 'leaking'," I said and put air quotes around the word. "You're putting too much energy into my soul or lack thereof. I think this is way better."
Way better. Indeed. He was looking much better too. The T-shirt did nothing to camouflage the frame I knew was beneath the fabric. He wasn't limping anymore. With each step, he seemed to move a little more freely. The great gouge that I knew was in his shoulder made just a small dimple in the grey fabric.
"I think we should go back to your office," I said. "You look...tired."
He peered down at me and I waggled my eyebrows suggestively.
"No need," he said, completely ignoring the overt flirtation. "We're already here."
Here, turned out to be a tall tower with a nondescript door, made out of a wood with a strange looking grain. It had a knocker in the middle and a long iron bar with a prying iron to bolster it shut. I'd been to Rome with Scottie once and it reminded me of the ancient locking methods those most ancient doors were equipped with. I wondered how old this door was, and exactly why the lock would be on the outside.
"Shouldn't that be on the inside?" I said.
"It might be if he was afraid of people breaking in. It's rather the other way around, I'm afraid."
He rapped twice on the door as I tried to work out what that meant.
"It's locked," came a throaty voice from the other side.
Maddox hummed to himself as he touched various spots on the iron bar. A sound like a locomotive barreling down its tracks rushed over us along with a sudden wind that took my breath.
"Hold on," Maddox said and I did exactly what he asked, clasping him instinctively by the arm as we were whipped into what felt like a twister.
"And try not to stare," were the last words I registered before my entire body felt vacuumed from the inside out.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
MY SKIN CONTRACTED painfully. Maddox's arm around me was the only thing that kept me from screaming. The liberation I'd felt from emotion, apparently was not devoid of worrying for survival. Now that I stared down the brink of my own death, I felt acutely afraid. Terrified, even.
And then it was over, and we stood on the inside of what looked like an old-fashioned watchmaker's shop had a one-night stand with a blacksmith's forge. It was a tight fit. The entirety of the shop couldn't have been more than twelve-feet sideways and ten-feet deep. Several clocks of all sorts hung on the wall behind a broad, lead glass display case. Cherry wood cuckoo clocks with ornate carvings, companioned smaller round-faced industrial ones.
The stucco walls had yellowed with age. The metronome of ticking was subtle but vibrated in my solar plexus like it was my own heartbeat.
Maddox urged me forward and I realized I'd been inching backward again toward the door. I checked to see how close I was to bolting, and realized the door had disappeared altogether.
"Oh, fuck me," I whispered, and Maddox grabbed my hand, directing me toward the rather musty smelling display case to where a thin man, with a neatly trimmed goatee and a bowler hat, stood patiently awaiting our business.
He might have been handsome but for the port wine birthmark that mottled his skin from the edge of his temple all the way beneath the collar of his shirt. He laid one palm on the case and I could see the birthmark hadn't stopped at his collarbone but stretched all the way to his fingertips. There wasn't a hint of grime in his nails.
The edges of the stain were mottled, as though he'd been dipped in scalding water and the inflammation never receded. I wondered if it went all the way to his toes.
"Is that a birthmark?" I asked, pointing at the crimson coloring that covered his skin on one half. "Or is it a tattoo?"
Maddox groaned deep in his throat, but the man only smiled.
"It's neither, and I earned it," he said. "Very painful too I might add. Sort of like the way Achilles got his invincibility, except I wasn't dipped in the river Styx but in the fires of Hell. I'll tell you about it sometime if you would be so kind as to come again without your lover for a visit. We could have...tea."
The way he said it I got the feeling tea was a euphemism. For what, I couldn't fathom. It certainly wasn't sexual. He had a most earnest look in his eyes that was anything but lecherous.
Maddox shuffled slightly sideways, edging me directly in front of the proprietor.
"He's a harlequin," he said, as if that could explain everything.
A gleam lit the man's eye as he ran his palm over the top of his display case.
"There have been very few in the history of the whole nine worlds," the man said helpfully, eager, it seemed to talk. "Only one per hundred generations. It grants me certain...abilities."
His smile at the end of his admission was enough to make me want to smile too even if I didn't particularly feel like it.
"He can harness a soul," Maddox explained. "I let him set up shop here so he can make a living without running completely amuck and getting himself killed or worse."
I couldn't imagine what this spritely man could do if he ran 'amuck', but I guessed it was bad enough that Maddox felt he needed to lock the man inside his shop. Neither was indicating any more than that, however. It might have been a simple renter and landlord relationship, but Maddox's tone indicated more. And the locks and bars on the outside made it abundantly clear that what appeared to me as a spritely gentleman, might be something completely different.
I read the understatement the way artists read an underpainting. He didn't want the soul merchant wandering around outside his bazaar.
"You're leaking," the man said to me as his rheumy-eyed gaze landed on my face. "And you smell of brimstone."
"I've been hearing that," I said.
He gave me a pensive moment of study, running his index finger along the lead glass of his displa
y case. I thought I saw smoke trail away from his touch, but it was so subtle, I might have been imagining it. The smell of incense wafted out from the corners. It left me with the impression of a ventriloquist throwing his voice except he was doing it with fragrance. I rubbed at my nose as it had started to itch.
"I'm surprised to see you here, Maddox," he said, peering up at the man who towered over him by about a foot and a half. "After all this time. I know you're not the type to purchase soul magic for yourself."
Was that a hint of bitterness in his tone? I was trying to suss it out when he spoke again.
"You refused my services before, Maddox. What could possibly bring you here to me now? What could you possibly want in this generation that you would come to me for the same thing you refused me for an eon ago?" he said. "Is it for your lover here?"
Yup. Most definitely bitterness. These two had history.
But this was the second time I'd been called Maddox's lover, and I was getting tired of enjoying the notoriety without any of the fun.
"He's a virgin," I said, with as much undertone of bitterness as he'd used, except I stuck out my hand in greeting. Might as well get this thing moving along. "Isabella Hush."
The man looked at my outstretched hand for a moment then proffered his closed fist instead.
"I don't shake," he said. "The palms are too sensitive. But I will—what do the humans call it?—Fist bump?" He knocked his knuckles against mine. "I am called Adair in your ninth world vernacular."
He took a moment to scan me, I could swear I saw him lick his lips but it was so quick, and the room almost seemed to fragment and re-glue itself back together, as though a segment of time had been cut out of a video poorly. I had the feeling that someone had moved my hair or adjusted my shirt.
"As I was saying," Maddox said. "We are in need of your services."
Had he said it? I wasn't sure. I watched Adair for signs that he'd missed something too.
"Obviously," he said. "Or you wouldn't be here."
Nope. No indication from those two that time had just farted, but I was sure I'd seen it.
Maddox went tense beside me at the rebuke and I thought I saw him pinch the bridge of his nose. He didn't like Adair, it was obvious, but he was making a great effort to be civil.
"As you can see, Isabella is leaking her soul energy." He swept his hand over the air in front of me. "She isn't usually so..."
"Rude?" Adair finished helpfully.
"Oh she's rude," Maddox said. "But I was going to say she has lost enough of it that she doesn't think she needs it back."
"And you find that troublesome, I'm guessing," he said as he looked at me again, this time thumbing his lips thoughtfully with the hand marked in crimson stain. "Well, as you can see, I have a nice collection of soul stones. Some of them still quite fresh. She might feel a bit of deja-vu now and then for the ones that are very fresh, but nothing quite so bad as to make it insufferable."
"I don't want to buy a soul," Maddox said in a way that made it sound as though whatever the energy was in each of the stones, he believed in his marrow that it was filthy black magic. "I want hers back."
The man laughed. "Then you've come to the wrong place. I don't have it."
Even as he sighed with longing, I noted that the clocks, all pointing to one minute past twelve, transformed into small orbs that looked very much like the ethereal globes of Lucifer's menagerie. I backed up instinctively as they began to glow.
I wanted nothing to do with that sort of magic. Even without my conscience, I didn't relish the idea of housing someone else's energy stored for god only knew how long in some energy ball.
I'd seen what Lucifer did with those orbs and the souls within and even without a soul, my cell memory was so averse to them, my skin flushed with the heat of adrenaline as I fought the urge to bolt.
Maddox's hand snaked out to grab me by the elbow as I retreated toward the place where the door had been. He pulled me beside him and held me there, a comforting arm slung around my shoulder, while at the same time using me as a physical accusation against the man.
"Isabella has been bitten by a ferryman," he said, ignoring my attempts to loosen myself from his grip. "You sell them. You purchase souls. Where else would I go?"
"I barter in soul magic, yes," the man said, grooming his goatee with his fingers. "And I admit to providing a ferryman or two on occasion. I don't do that sort of magic for just anyone. I mostly deal with those ferrymen abandoned here after their task is done. There are very few available unless you know where to look. That's the problem with ferrymen. They can be very costly to acquire. "
By costly, I gathered he meant something he thought was more valuable than money.
"I offer simple transference via these amulets," he went on. "Vampires buy them now and then. Mostly, to reclaim their humanity if they've lived so long, they begin to yearn for the sun. They always regret it and return here to barter that energy away again once they've worn it out. It's never worth my time by then, but I can always combine it with another if I need to."
He looked at me with interest. "Human soul magic doesn't last long even when transplanted into a body that was once human. That sort of thing takes much, much more powerful magic. Is that what you are, Isabella? A vampire who has the sun-sickness? You don't smell like a vampire. But the brimstone fragrance that clings to you is fairly overpowering, so I might be wrong."
He dug into his display case as he spoke and pulled out a small tiger eye ring that glowed as though lit from inside. He turned it over in his hand once, then laid it out on the case.
I could swear it was pulsing.
"It will cost you, a fair bit, I'm afraid," he said. "It's been used a few times, but it will let you see three sunrises before it wears out for good."
By wears out, I guessed he meant the soul was extinguished. I shivered for more than the thought of it dying in three days.
"That's not why we're here," Maddox said. "I told you. I want her soul back."
"And I told you I didn't purchase it."
He leaned across the counter and inhaled deeply of the air in my general direction. He spoke through a curled lip as though he was revolted by whatever he scented on me. "She doesn't have my carrier magic."
This time, when the video burped, I caught sight of a scaly curled tail whipping behind him and then it was gone. The residue of whatever soul I had left suffered the urge to cross itself, even though I wasn't Catholic.
Maddox didn't seem fazed.
"The box was from your shop," he said, and I snapped my attention to him. He'd said the box had come from a simple first quarter shop. He'd lied to me. I watched his face as he laid his palms down on the counter and leaned toward Adair.
"It had your handwriting on it."
"Doesn't mean the ferryman was purchased here."
"There is nowhere else to purchase one."
Adair canted his head at Maddox. "Perhaps it wasn't purchased at all."
He indicated me with a pointed finger. "She smells of brimstone more strongly than carrier magic. Perhaps the ferryman came from the other side."
The other side. Brimstone. I was feeling a bit faint at the thought of what it might mean, but Adair didn't stop talking and let me recover. I had to lean on Maddox with each new word.
"What bit her is no ordinary ferryman, of that I can assure you," he said. "It was one that can carve out a place in your soul as it leaks. I smell the void as much as the brimstone. Someone wants to take her place. But that someone was sloppy, as though they were ill-prepared. It was rushed."
"Why would they do that?"
The man shrugged. "Perhaps to make a closer fit for their own soul." He looked at me with a gleam in his eye that told me he found the whole thing fascinating.
"Do you know of anyone in hell who might want to swap places with you?"
I couldn't speak. Not at first. It was Maddox who asked the question I couldn't get out.
"Is that possible?"
"You know it's possible," Adair said and leaned across the counter, a mirror of Maddox's posture.
Maddox shook his head as though he'd been mesmerized by Adair's gaze, and perhaps he had been. I certainly felt time shift again.
He sagged backward and rocked on his heels. "Can you tell if that's what is happening to Isabella?" he said.
Adair crossed his arms as he considered it. "I'll only know if I can study her," he said, and inhaled deeply again. "I can't get anything from here. You need to come out back."
I cringed at the thought of going any deeper into the shop. Not after the glimpse of tail I'd seen. Apparently, Maddox was of the same mind.
"You can diagnose her here."
"That kind of diagnosis doesn't come cheap," he said cannily.
"I have a grimoire," I said and pulled it out from beneath my arm. I laid it on the display case with a sense of victory. I knew it would come in handy. "Can we barter that?"
Adair recoiled from it so fast, he leapt away from his display case and knocked one of the soul stones from the wall. The tiger eye clattered to the floor. It blinked once and then went out like someone had turned off a switch.
"That filthy thing." He crossed his arms over his chest. "I'd suggest you burn it."
"But it's perfectly fine," I said, looking down at the book. "It's valuable, surely."
He curled his lip. "Valuable for whom?" he said. "I know the book. I know the author. Keep it in your possession and see what payment you eventually get."
I plucked the book from the counter, uneasy about the foreboding nature of that warning, but pretty sure he wasn't going to let me just leave it there. Plus, how much worse could all this get?
"If you won't barter the book, then what will your diagnosis cost?" I said.
He thumbed his chin as he studied me. "No need for a diagnosis," he said. "Just a bit of advice."
Maddox made a thoughtful, I knew it, type of sound deep in his throat. I ignored it in favor of getting what we needed.
Soul Merchant (Isabella Hush Series Book 5) Page 15
