Dave reaches his hand and grasps hers.
In a flash, the lights go out, blanketed by an oily dark smoke, billowing around them. His hand is like ice, immediate, frigid, his skin hard like stone or marble.
He drops her hand, and Aimes immediately recoils away. The thick dark smoke disappears, as if it was never there. The lights blink back on, as if there was never any change, as if that didn’t fucking happen right in front of her.
“Do you see what I mean?” He sits back, as if that didn’t just happen.
Does she see what he means. She shakes her head, her mouth dry as a bone. “What are you?”
“A draugr. German. We guard locations near to where we died. I’m not going to hurt you, I’m not that type of person.” He stares at her, hands steepled together. “So when I ask what you did, do you understand me?”
Her heart feels like it’s about to pound through her shirt, thudding against her skin. “I only hooked up with a stranger, that’s it. Everything else was normal, I swear...you died?”
His face crinkles, as if she’s the weird one. “You slept with someone? That’s what you think…” And his eyebrows raise, quick. “Did he take you to a room with a wooden bed frame?”
She nods. “But you died, though?”
He waves his hand, as if that isn’t a giant fucking big deal in this conversation. “Did he give you sweet dandelion wine?”
“He called it Dolce. But you’re dead?” The urge to sink back in her seat is almost overwhelming.
A look of profound discomfort crosses his face, like he’d rather do anything else than ask the question. “Did he have sex with you in five positions? Ending with him on top?”
She hesitates, her stomach falling.
He must’ve read it on her face. “Oh my god, really?”
They sit there, staring uncomfortably at each other, Aimes’s skin crawling like there are bugs reaching to get out. “But you’re dead?” She blurts out.
“Only technically, it’s a long story.” He leans forward again, and Aimes leans back, not wanting that black smoke or to see his skin as stone again. “I’m not...that was a trick, to show you things, it wasn’t supposed to scare you.” He rubs his brow. “I am very unqualified for this discussion.” And his voice is whiny. He is whiny about this.
What the hell.
She hugs her arms to herself, still in front of the computer, with the code beeping in front of her.
“Okay.” She says, out of a lack of anything else to say, “okay, you guessed it, it was weird sex with a stranger. What does that have to do with why people are staring at me?”
“Do you know who he was? Was he just a stranger?”
She shrugs, and the movement feels hollow, sort of enforced casualness in the surrealism of the moment. “He said his name was Jake.”
He nods, a motion that was as empty as possible, his eyes wide. “Jake.”
“Yeah.”
They sit in silence, before he sighs explosively. “Man, you got the short end of this deal.” He reaches for his cell phone, and it’s such a modern piece of technology in this moment that it’s a bit of a shock. He scrolls through his phone, then looks up at her, surprisingly eager. “I’m going to call someone more qualified here.” His voice is small, more like a mouse than whatever the hell creature he showed her just a few short minutes ago. He stands, dialing on the phone.
Out of lack of anything else to do, Aimes stares at the computer screen, then, numb, opens up the code and makes the switch. It’s the easiest fucking switch to do.
Marked her. Like she was some sort of tree to mark, like a dog pissing for his territory. Either that or Dave just pulled the biggest prank on her she never would’ve thought he was capable of.
Dave slides back into the door, fitting his phone back in his pocket. “I’ve called my friend Katya. She’s on her way.” He says, muted, then raises an eyebrow at the computer. “You fixed it?”
“Am I in any danger?” She hugs her arms to herself.
“Do you want to stay here?” He asks kindly, “in my office, to wait? So you don’t have to be in the library main?”
She nods, and he rests a light hand on her shoulder. “My friend Katya knows what to do, you’ll be safe, and….and there’s an entire community out here that can be there for you.”
“An entire community of people who had sex and are now somehow marked?” She wrinkles her nose.
“No, that’s really, really rare, but...people who can be there for you.” He grips the hand briefly, then lets her go. "She's driving in from Sherman Oaks, it'll take her a bit."
"Man, I should've just met here out there, I'm in Burbank." Aimes exhales.
Dave forces a laugh. "Don't worry, she drives fast."
4
Dave leaves her alone in his office with a cup of coffee. Which is great cause her fingers feel like they're about to fall off, they're so freezing.
Logically, Aimes knows that her fingers getting cold means she's close to freaking out. But the knowledge of that does nothing to stop the feeling.
If she hadn't seen the smoke and the gray skin, she'd be calling bullshit on this whole thing. What kind of person, creature - supernatural - whatever marked someone by having sex with them? And what the hell does marked even mean? Does it just mean that people can tell she hooked up with someone?
She swivels back and forth in her chair, the action satisfying in the way it only is when you're on the verge of a panic attack.
The door slams open with a bang, and Aimes jumps, jarring her elbow on the desk.
In strides one of the more lovely women she has ever seen. And she lives in Los Angeles, home of the stars and vapid beauties.
This woman has jet-black hair cut severely at her chin, and beautiful blue eyes, the type of blue eyes you see from Photoshop. It’s the color blue you find on primary color wheels, or on the blue screen of death.
She spares Aimes a glance, her face pointed and sharp, and she purses her lips together. "You the unlucky one?"
Again it feels like the floor is dropping out of her. "I don't..."
"Do you want coffee? I want coffee. Come on." And she turns on her heel and strides out the small office again, her shoes clomping on the ground.
Aimes eyes them. She’s wearing combat boots, for some reason. Combat boots with a full black suit and a tie, the suit cut so sharp, as if to create a look that she is a knife.
She doesn’t look back as she rounds the corner, and Aimes scrambles up in her chair to follow.
The woman takes her down to the coffee cart right outside the library, then wanders around the tiny library garden.
The woman levels her with an evaluating glance, like the schoolteachers of old, that lasts far too long. "Dave says you had no idea," the woman says, her voice soft, not fitting her face or her body or her clothes. "That you've never been aware of the others before."
Aimes shakes her head, her curls of course falling out of the ponytail. "This sounds like fiction."
The woman shrugs, a careless motion for such a put together person. "Fiction comes from somewhere."
They're silent, strolling through the dried plants and sipping coffees.
"But seriously, fairies?" Aimes bursts out.
"Fairies and gods and ghosts and vampires. Such is the world we live in." Her lips twitch upwards into a smile.
"Which one are you?" Aimes bursts out. Obviously not vampire, cause she's out in the sun, but...
Again, the small smile. "One hundred percent a normal human. Katya Rinne, I specialize in human and non-human interactions or the government." And now, only now, after they have been pacing around for a few minutes, does she extend her hand.
When she extends her hand, her suit jacket pulls back, and Aimes catches a glimpse of a pistol strapped against her waist.
"Aimes Salinas, nice to meet you." Aimes takes her hand after a split second, cause you don't want to piss someone off with a gun. "I apparently had sex with the wrong guy."
"Did Dave tell you what that meant?" The friendly exterior drops again, leaving the severe mask.
"No, just that he was unqualified to talk about it." Aimes pulls her cardigan closer to her, chilled despite the southern Californian sun. "He said I was marked?"
"Putting it mildly." She glances down at her coffee cup, as if steeling herself. "Do you want this quick or do you want this gentle?" She demands, voice clipped. "Cause I could do this gentle, but it'll take a while."
"Quick." Cause fuck this waiting and fuck all the people staring at her.
"He magically married you and now knows wherever you'll be, wherever you go, and whatever you'll do." She says as if she was discussing the weather. "Your life will be longer, it'll be harder for someone to kill you, and it'll be impossible to kill him unless you die first. Anyone even remotely involved with the community can tell someone marked you. But," she stops, looking into Aimes' eyes and facing her. "What he did was very morally ambiguous, and if you tell people what it was you will face heavy scorn."
Aimes blinks, her heart skipping a beat, like a band where the drummer trips and falls.
"Married?"
Katya shrugs, then gestures to a bench. "Sit, it'll be better." When Aimes hesitates, she gestures more emphatically. "Seriously."
Aimes sits, her legs feeling numb, the tops of her thighs shaking against her jeans. Katya sits next to her, despite the fact that her suit will show dust fast. Aimes can't tell the last time someone cleaned the benches in the library.
"Yes, married. It's...it's a relatively obscure ritual that some creatures can do to ensure their loved one does not die easily."
"I just met him at a bar. It wasn't even a nice bar." Aimes says, mouth dry. "I was just looking to hook up with a guy, not..."
"That's the unethical part," Katya says, "When this happens, which is very rare, it's usually after many years of knowing each other, and a lasting relationship. Even then," her lips twist, "even then, most people view it as cowardly. Against the natural order of things."
"So what can I do about it?" Aimes asks, looking at the dusty concrete so she doesn't have to look at the dying garden anymore. "I'm just...I'm tech support for library systems, I'm not anyone's deep and lasting relationship."
Katya lays a hand on her shoulder, and even her fingernails are perfect, with a deep blood red polish. "You are now."
Katya takes her to an office that was exactly like every government office that Aimes has ever been to, and Aimes has been to a lot.
Aimes reels around, feeling like everything is slightly off-kilter, the world being a smidge too ridiculous.
At the office, a cute little secretary smiles and makes dimples at Aimes as Katya leads her past. The secretary’s hair seems a smidge too perfect, and it crawls up Aimes arms and skin and--
Katya closes a door behind them with a click. "She's a succubus. No, she won't have sex with you. Yes, she very much so wants to." Katya sits behind a desk, leaving Aimes the folding chair on the other side.
Katya starts to type, leaving Aimes to stare.
"I'm pulling up a directory of possible people, so we can get in contact with them." Her fingers hesitate over the keyboard. "Dave said you didn't have a name, do you have a phone number?"
Aimes shakes her head, miserable. "I gave him mine. He said his name was Jake."
"That's probably false. Hair color?"
"Black. Or dark brown, it was dim lights."
"Or he could be a shapeshifter," Katya adds with a tight grin. Because of course shapeshifters exist.
"Then why --"
"It could weed people out. Skin color, eye color, height?"
Aimes hugs the cardigan to herself even more against the chill of the air conditioning. "White, gray I think, and tall?"
"Any accent?"
Aimes shakes her head. "I mean, we were in Kansas City, but he said he was passing through."
“Great." Katya stretches out the word to three syllables. "Any defining physical characteristics?"
"He was thin?" Aimes shrugs.
"I meant tattoos or scars." The room was bare, and Aimes desperately wishes that it was decorated, something, so she could stare at anything else. "Not that I saw."
"And you saw a lot of him, too." Her lipsticked lips twitch.
Aimes quirks up an eyebrow, at the sudden show of personality. "Well, how sex went, that is what that entails."
Another twitch of the lips. "Was it at least good sex?" She's not looking up at Aimes as she types.
"It was a hotel hookup, while I was on a business trip, that's it."
Katya' eyebrows flew up, and she swivels away from her computer to deliver entirely too awkward of eye contact. "Aimelie, the sooner you start to think of it as not just hotel sex, the better," she says, her voice grim.
"Aimes," she says, back of her neck prickling. "I prefer to go by Aimes."
"What he did, without your permission or knowledge, is a crime. It's deeply personal, and it's looked down upon even when the people involved are lifelong partners. It's an anomaly and deeply, deeply unfair to you."
Aimes nods, out of a lack of anything else to do. "Well, it's just a marriage thing, right? You have to have divorce in your world."
The dark glance she gets speaks volumes. "It's a 'magical' marriage." She actually does the quotation marks around the words with her fingers. "Nothing is easy in this world, nothing is set up to make things work out." She looks away, back at the computer, and it's awkward again. "We are going to try to track him down, get him to answer for this."
"What..." she trails off, a lump in the back of her throat, "what would happen then? Would we..."
"It'll be uncomfortable, being away from him for a while. This marriage, this bond it...it was designed for people to be close for forever." Katya sighs, deep.
This now sounds like medical symptoms, and her head swims again. "Do you have any other questions about what he looked like?"
Another raised eyebrow, but she hmms and continues on. "Did he have any jewelry?"
"Cufflinks! He had these cufflinks, they had a symbol on them, but..." She slumps. "I couldn't draw it. I might be able to point them out, I don't know. They were...out of the ordinary. We joked about them."
"He was charming?" Katya watches her, face not revealing anything.
Aimes nods, and Katya types something in, then sits back.
"A symbol. A symbol and a name that's not coming up with any of our sources." She smiles, brittle, at Aimes. "I'll compile a list of magical symbols.”
There's a lull, and Aimes feels like she's floating. Like the moment is more than unreal, one of those moments where you both remember for the rest of your life but is also a blur. Like the moment you find out your sister died, or that there was a terrorist attack and the world was at war.
"At the printer in the front is a package of info for you. I'm having Miri print out a primer of not-natural beings and the culture, as well as a compilation of magical symbols. I would...I would officially recommend you read them and pay attention." Katya shoves a form over to Aimes. "Fill this out, we need to know how to contact you."
Katya catches her by the arm as she stands to leave.
"Obviously, this sort of thing relies on secrecy." She says, her voice low, like lowering her voice is the key to getting Aimes to understand that this shit is serious.
Like she hasn't already figured out that this bullshit has some sort of secrecy pact to prevent mass panic. Like she can tell anyone without laughing herself out of the room before she can complete a sentence.
Still, she nods, and Katya smiles in satisfaction at the answer.
Miri hands her the pages with a dimple filled smile, and Aimes walks out with a bunch of stapled papers and no real direction of where to go.
Back at the library, Dave avoids her glances with a guilty scowl, burying himself in helping a group of preteens find their homework. But it's okay, she's not sure she wouldn't slap anyone who talked to her at that moment.
5
She approaches the packet like she would battle plans, or unfamiliar code she has to fix, or a program that she needs to know immediately and intimately; she approaches it with wine and feeling sorry for herself.
She pours herself a glass of her very favorite rose before approaching the packet of papers.
She changes into pajamas, bakes some cookies, and downs a bit too much of the wine before starting. Cause her mind is fried and the entire world is not what it should be and she deserves it.
She sees the word werewolf and immediately closes it and breathes hard out of her nose.
Jesus Christ all this for a one night stand in a cheap hotel in Kansas City. All this cause she was feeling lonely and fucked up that Rocky hadn't texted her back.
She sets the pages down and stares at her wall.
Fuck.
Rocky.
It's not like he'd view the idea that she's somehow magically married to this random dude very well. He didn't even like her working with dudes. He didn't even like it when the librarians were guys, he was that much of a jealous boyfriend.
Over-jealous, Trixie often says. Way over-jealous and controlling.
Aimes takes another big gulp of the wine, and opens the packet again. Cause at least that wouldn't judge her for being torn up over a guy.
Jesus Christ he's going to flip. If he ever decides she’s worth dating again.
The packet is...not bad. Clinical. Like those informational packets you get when a family member gets cancer, where it says everything in non-dire terms and with friendly diagrams. But it does a good job distracting from the inevitable rage spiral Rocky would devolve into once he found out about this.
There are gods, Demigods, fairies, monsters from all aspects of mythology, all categorized and viewed by the US government, all living in secret among them. They make up, apparently, .03 percent of the world population, focusing more in large cities because that's where the support structures are, because apparently they need support structures. Massive support structures.
Marked by the Demigod Page 3
