My head bounced off the seat. “Ouch.”
“Sorry.”
“Obviously, I'm removing this damn tattoo at the first possible opportunity.” Growing up with a dad who twisted the truth to his own ends and couldn’t even go to the grocery store without getting something out of someone, even a smile, left me with zero tolerance for people trying to pull a fast one. Especially on me. So someone inking me without my knowledge or consent? Fuck that.
Knowledge was power and right now, I had a decided lack of both. I rested my head gingerly against the head rest. The back of my skull pounded like a bitch but there was no vertigo.
Rain pattered against the windshield and the wipers were a rhythmic hum, but Moriarty’s cold interior kept me from falling into a sleepy daze. At least the tray was nice and warm on my lap.
Priya fiddled with the radio dial, turning up the volume as she launched into “Shoop” by Salt-N-Pepa. She nudged me with her elbow until I joined in, the two of us rapping our little hearts out, busting out the moves we’d made up to go with it. It was our happy song and I was helpless to resist.
Singing away, we hit our Commercial Drive neighborhood. While still branded as Little Italy with its banners hanging from the streetlights and crosswalks decorated in red, white, and green, its population was actually far more diverse. After Canada opened its doors to a fresh wave of Nefesh refugees several years back, the area had become quite the magic hub. A lot of the newcomers were from the Middle East and Africa and preferred the mild weather out here to the rest of the country.
Priya braked at a red light, rapping along with Big Twan, while I stared out the window at the massive cherry tree in the yard at Green Thumb Nursery that was doing its hourly magic cycle through the four seasons in defiance of the actual weather. In contrast to all the other trees with bare branches lining the sidewalks, this cherry tree was transitioning from spring to summer, ablaze in sumptuous pink petals that were already falling gently to the ground to make way for green leaves.
Outside the store, one of the employees in a jacket with the Green Thumb logo silkscreened on the front wrestled a large ceramic planter into the back seat of a car. Its owner, a bald woman with multiple piercings, adjusted the front seat.
I’d seen the employee around before. He’d shaved the stupid hipster beard he usually wore but the real change to his appearance was the smudgy shadow flowing sluggishly out of him and into the woman that had depth and an oily viscous texture, pulsing with malevolence.
I started.
Beside me, Priya rapped away like nothing was wrong.
The woman broke into a coughing fit, some essential part of her seeming to fade, all while the employee cheerfully assisted her with her purchase.
I grabbed the handle, intending to roll down the window and yell some kind of warning, when the shadow paused its movement.
Neither completely free of the man nor fully possessing the woman, the weird ghostly creature swiveled as if seeking something out, then stretched a tentacle in my direction.
My skin prickled, iciness permeating my core, and I fought the urge to wrap my arms protectively around myself to keep my heat and my soul from being sucked out. Instead, I practically choked the handle to keep that window sealed tight.
Five seconds until the light turned green and we could get out of here.
I yawned, staring out the front window with feigned disinterest and keeping every ounce of tension out of my body.
The smudgy tentacle drew closer.
The rest of that shadow was now only attached to the Green Thumb employee by the thinnest of tethers, having gone mostly inside the bald woman. Black lines slithered along her hands and across her face, yet none of the pedestrians walking by noticed.
Oblivious, Priya sang the final chorus.
Two seconds.
Come on, green light!
The tentacle plastered against my side of the car, pushing on the glass.
My stomach roiled and I stuffed my shaking hands under my ass.
A tiny tendril of darkness seeped into the car…
And snapped backwards into the woman, whose features were momentary obscured by the shadow, a dark wraith standing in the rain.
The smudge broke free of the man entirely. He clutched his heart, convulsed, and fell to the ground, his expression a vacant stare.
The shadow had possessed him, used him up, and discarded him.
The shadow had killed him.
It was now housed completely within the bald woman, though there was no sign of it on her person or in her behavior. Like any concerned citizen, she had already dialed 911, yelling about a heart attack, but it was too late.
Priya turned to look–
The light turned green.
“Go!” I yelled.
Priya hit the gas and we moved on.
“What happened? Was that guy all right?” she said.
I couldn’t catch my breath. Just seeing that thing, I’d lost a tiny piece of myself.
“Hey. You’re pale and sweating again,” Priya said.
I wiped my brow with my sleeve. “Residual shit from the blow.”
Because that couldn’t have been real. But my shoulders didn’t crawl down from around my ears until we were within a couple blocks of home and the front window of Muffin Top came into view.
Priya and I automatically checked out the new display. They’d recreated the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party with vintage wooden painted dolls lining the table. Teapots magically hovered in mid-air in front of the guests, pouring piping hot tea into delicate china cups, while brightly iced cupcakes marched up and down the center of the table, and jam tarts in the shape of hearts swooped around the dolls. A giant Cheshire Cat smile faded in and out above it all.
There was a lineup out the door for the treats these earth elementals produced.
“Ooh, Beatriz’s jam tarts. She wasn’t sure she’d have time to make them because Miguel was running a fever the past few days.” Priya pulled into park in front of the low building that housed a funky art gallery, a Greek restaurant, and our apartment on the second floor. “Want me to come up?”
I checked the time on my phone. “Nah. You’re barely going to make it to your meeting as is. Take the car. And feel free to tell them that phoning you at 3AM because they had yet another brilliant change is not acceptable.”
For the past six months, Priya had been coding some major database thing for a local high-end restaurant group. It made her eyes glaze over only slightly less than mine but it paid the bills.
“I can’t burn that bridge,” she said.
“Who said anything about going scorched earth? I’m talking about setting some boundaries.”
“It’s fine. The project is almost over.” She’d said that two months ago. Priya wasn’t even supposed to be working for them this week, given the sixteen-hour days she’d pulled all last week.
“How’s Krishan doing?” I popped my seatbelt open. “I haven’t spoken to him in ages.”
Priya glared at my abrupt change in topic. Neither her dad nor her brother Krishan had been happy about Pri’s decision to leave a steady paycheck and benefits doing I.T. at a large insurance company and go freelance, but they were also fiercely protective of the baby of their family. Krishan, a lawyer, had sat me down when Pri started working for me with a list of employment conditions until Geeta stepped in and saved me from further harassment.
“Don’t you dare call him,” she said. “I already had to endure a lecture from Daddy that I wasn’t eating enough at our last family dinner. Krishan is worse. He’ll demand a log of all my working hours and a sleep journal.”
“Tough love, baby. Remember, your client needs you more than you need them.”
“Yeah, yeah.” She smooched my cheek. “Call if you need me.”
“Will do and thanks.” I gave her another half of a cinnamon bun. “Laters, Adler.”
“Laters, Holmes.”
Balancing the tray in one hand, I ducked out i
nto the freezing rain that was sluicing down. My toes were numb and I sped up in anticipation of the lovely heat awaiting me inside.
“Ashira.” A fleshy red-faced man stepped out of the Greek restaurant to stand under its broad awning. The front window sported an Untainted Party decal of a fist squeezing a drop of blood. For a secular political party, they were impressively zealot.
“Vasilios.” My heart sank at the sight of the middle-aged owner and I fumbled my key into my building’s lock. The white metal door seemed dingier than usual and someone had kicked a dent into the corner. “In kind of a rush here.”
“Maybe you could talk to your mother? Put in a good word for me to cater the next Party fundraiser?”
Oh, Vasilios, oversized portions of lamb and roast potatoes did not possess the correct cachet, not to mention, way to gender stereotype.
I drew myself up to my full five-feet-eight inches and poured every ounce of disdain that I could into my voice. “You want me to ask Talia, a Senior Policy Adviser with the provincial Untainted Party, about catering?”
Just because I didn’t subscribe to the Party’s racist views (or whatever hatred of Nefesh was, since the argument over appropriate wording had been going on as long as the hatred itself) didn’t mean I’d stand for his sexist assumptions.
Vasilios stepped back. “No?”
I smiled thinly. “I didn’t think so.”
Unlocking the door, I climbed the long, narrow stairwell as fast as my poor leg allowed, darting glances over my shoulder as if that smudgy thing might suddenly loom up behind me. At least I was no longer greeted by the smell of vinegar and bleach now that my former neighbor, Mrs. Hamdi, had moved into an old-age home.
There were only two suites above the ground level storefronts and I hurriedly unlocked the door on the far side of the tiny landing.
The two-bedroom apartment that Priya and I shared had a weird layout, and only really got sunshine on one half, but it boasted original fir on the floors, windowsills, and doorframes, and was, most importantly, a vaguely affordable rental unit, which here in Vancouver was a rare commodity.
I double-bolted the front door, sidestepped the hurricane of Pri’s belongings scattered throughout the apartment to test that the windows were firmly locked, and only then toed out of my motorcycle boots, lining them up by my closet before collapsing on my neatly made bed. I let the warmth of my baseboard heaters seep into every icy part of me.
As it was mid-afternoon, my room had hit its darkest point. Later when I was trying to sleep, I’d be blinded by the security light on the building across the alley that made every night feel like an alien abduction and gave me some really interesting dreams. For now, I cocooned myself in the gloom, munching on cinnamon buns directly off the tray and cataloguing my possessions alphabetically: alarm clock, book, comforter, all the way to zipper, a self-soothing habit I’d fallen into in my youth.
Once I’d finished, I looked at the large tapestry entitled Paris in the Moonlight, that was made up of abstract geometric shapes suggesting the Eiffel Tower at night. It dominated the wall across from my bed. I’d inherited it from my grandparents along with a cream antique sofa with carved wood trim and tufted upholstery. Neither were at all my style, but they’d grown on me enough to move them with me when I’d finally left home.
My freak-out abated, I then, to paraphrase Sherlock Holmes, eliminated the impossible. Since it was doubtful that I suddenly had some great ability to see evil creatures that no one else did, I deduced the improbable: that the entire episode had been some weird post-concussion anomaly and all I’d witnessed was a plain old heart attack.
Solid ground firmly in place once more, I pulled out my phone and dialed. “Hey, Talia.”
“Ashira, are you getting ready?” My mother issued instructions to her assistant about what time to bring her car around.
Today was Friday which meant…
Oh, shit. The gala.
Talia’s years of maintaining a positive attitude with my Nefesh father’s schemes had abruptly evaporated the day he abandoned us. Adam Cohen had been a Charmer–literally possessing the magic ability to charm people–and when he’d left, she’d slotted magic firmly under the category of manipulative things she refused to buy into, like religion. She finished her law degree, joined the burgeoning Untainted Party, and quickly became one of its major players.
Her political career wasn’t due to some fervent belief in the purity of human blood so much as it was an expression of her frustration and bitterness with her marriage and a determination to make sure that “appropriate checks and balances were kept on magic.”
I understood her, I just didn’t agree. Shitty people were shitty people. Magic was irrelevant as a factor. Plenty of Mundanes were criminals or plain dicks.
Talia had been sending me weekly reminders of this gala, since all her colleagues would be in attendance with their families and I was expected to be the dutiful daughter for the cameras.
I could play the concussion card to get out of going but then I’d have to listen to her bitch about how she didn’t need me to support Party values, but she did expect me to support her. That was the last thing I felt like doing, but I had questions about the tattoo, so what was the lesser of two evils: deal with my mother after the day I’d had or bail and wait even longer for answers?
“I’m coming,” I said. “But I want five minutes alone with you tonight.”
“Fine,” Talia said. “In return I want you to meet Josh Millstein. His father is considering a large donation to the Party and has been complaining about his son’s inability to meet a nice Jewish girl.”
“Two out of three ain’t bad, I guess.”
“Fake it, darling. The way you do your general love of humanity.”
“Unfair. I like several people very well.”
“Do we have a deal?” she said.
Everything was a negotiation with her, but to give my mom credit, she didn’t lie to me or play games. She’d been very clear about those rules after I’d come out of my coma and surgery.
“Deal. I’ll see you later.”
“Wear the dress I sent over.” She hung up.
I eyed the garment bag hanging in my closet like it was a striking cobra. Inside was a black-and-white sheath dress that Talia had deemed appropriately demure. She wasn’t wrong. When I’d tried it on, I’d looked like a boring penguin.
Any other time, I would have worn the dress as the path of least resistance, but tonight I was itchy and off-kilter. There was no way the tattoo was the end of this story. Something was coming, and whatever it was, I intended to meet it head on.
The game was afoot and this dress was toast.
Chapter 3
Two hours later, I glided into the well-heeled throng gathered at the Vancouver Aquarium located in Stanley Park in a floor-length, deep red gown that plunged daringly to my tailbone in the back and hugged my curves in the front. Even though I’d never admit it and be forced into more nightmarish shopping free-for-alls, I was grateful to Priya for “encouraging” me to buy it at a film and television industry wardrobe sale that she’d dragged me to.
My waves floated past my shoulder blades, hiding the shaved patch of hair with the tattoo, while my only jewelry was my bubbe’s–Talia’s mom’s–diamond-studded titanium stacking rings that I’d inherited along with the tapestry and sofa. I wore the shimmeriest touch of gold on my lids and a pop of red on my lips.
I even had red-painted toenails peeking out of the shiny black sandals that were the only heels I’d ever found that didn’t irritate my leg. Generally, I had to be cautious even with these if I didn’t want to end up hobbling around, but so far so good.
I checked my coat, stepped into the large circular foyer, and rolled my eyes.
Fundraisers weren’t just social outings, they were military campaigns. More than one poor event planner had suffered a nervous breakdown curating and divvying up space to entertain–and court–both Untainted Party members and the Nefesh e
lite.
Since tonight’s fundraising benefited a local non-profit that provided financial assistance to out-of-town families with kids undergoing treatment at Children’s Hospital, both communities wanted to help out. Or smile politely and then quietly compete to see who could be more charitable than the other.
The lobby was Switzerland. No arguments, no insults, no magic. It was as much an area for the two groups to play nice as for the rest of us Mundanes to take a break from the two extremes.
The design aesthetic here was simple: other than the large underwater photographic prints in rich colors, the rest of the space was white and sparkly. White linens covered tall bistro-style tables, the white floor tiles gleamed, and hundreds of white fairy lights had been strung up, providing the only illumination. Light piano music added to the overall soothing effect while photographers circulated, getting shots for the local papers and various PR pieces for Party and House use.
Curious as to how the rest of the space had been divided, I ducked into the darkened room with the six-foot-high tropical fish tank that beckoned from my right. Techno music with a broody edge flowed through the speakers, perfect for both the large shark tank that anchored the length of the opposite wall and the steampunk-clad acrobats magically dancing and swirling high up in the center of the room. The occasional fireball tumbled above our heads before bursting into showers of red and black sparks that waterfalled harmlessly down.
A server dressed in a similar steampunk vibe offered me a bland-looking cake ball.
I raised an eyebrow.
“Wish balls,” he said. “They’ll be whatever flavor you want.”
“And?”
“And nothing. No mood-enhancing food tonight.”
In that case, I helped myself. One of my favorite flavor duos burst on my taste buds and I moaned.
The server peered at me. “Not a chocolate moan. Too earthy for vanilla or lemon.” He tapped a finger against his lips. “Aha! Bacon and maple syrup.”
“What gave it away?” While there were Nefesh mind readers, they were rare and tended to be heavily medicated. This guy was too upbeat.
Blood & Ash: A Snarky Urban Fantasy Detective Series (The Jezebel Files Book 1) Page 3