Blood Rite

by E.J. Stevens

He flinched, beard twitching. Great, there was an unintentional ring of command in my voice that was sure to make this situation worse. Benmore removed his bowler hat and fiddled with his pocket watch. Oh, yeah. I’d definitely made things worse, my behavior only supporting the dwarf’s assumptions about me. He looked ready to either kneel or run.

  “I do not wish to disturb you amidst your duties,” he said, frowning. At least, I think he frowned. It was hard to tell with dwarves due to their copious facial hair, but I’d spent enough time around the gnomes, thanks to Gwenda, to decipher certain beard movements. “But I will do as you command.”

  The dwarf wasn’t the only one frowning.

  “I wouldn’t… I didn’t mean…argh!” I growled. “Please, don’t bow. We’re all friends here.”

  It was a bit of a stretch to claim friendship, since Benmore and I weren’t all that close, but the remnants of my father’s curse and my strange upbringing allowed the white lie to pass my lips.

  Torn looked amused, but Jinx swept over with a chair and a dish of honey candies.

  “Here we are, Mr. Benmore,” she said. “Now how can we help you today.”

  The dwarf eyed the chair warily, but settled into it at the sight of candy.

  “Sir Gaius wants an update on Miss Granger’s progress,” he said, pocketing a handful of sweets. “Our master is quite distressed and demands a swift conclusion to the case.”

  Gaius wasn’t my master, but I let the comment slide, for now.

  “We’re doing everything we can to pursue the matter and find whoever is stealing from Gaius,” I said. “Unless you’re here with information that can help us solve the case, I’m going to have to ask you to refrain from visits that will only waste my time and yours.”

  Look at me adulting with the big words. I hadn’t even stabbed anyone, yet.

  “I’ll show you out, Mr. Benmore,” Jinx said, getting up to stand at his shoulder.

  We’d shown the necessary hospitality. Now if only he’d kindly get the hell out of our office before my head exploded. I reached for a bottle of aspirin and Benmore frowned, but he finally stood and followed Jinx to the door.

  “Gaius must be taking this personal if he’s sending his henchmen to check on you so soon,” Torn said.

  I nodded, swallowing the bitter tablets and washing them down with holy water. It’s not as weird as it sounds. We had a priest bless our water cooler once a week, providing us with a steady supply of holy water. If Gaius had been standing near my desk when he’d threatened Jinx, he’d have received a nasty surprise. Sadly, the water cooler had been out of reach. I made a mental note to move the dispenser closer to Jinx’s desk, and the bell above the door jangled again and Torn slid into the shadows with a wink.

  What now?

  But it wasn’t another one of Gaius’ minions. It wasn’t my fiancé either. Standing in our waiting area was a young Asian woman in her late twenties or early thirties, wearing a raincoat and holding a small dog to her chest. She stroked the dog with short, quick motions, bouncing him in her arms.

  It was going to be a long day.

  Chapter 10

  The woman standing in our office waiting room was obviously agitated. Good thing my best friend had years of experience with helping someone calm down. Getting hit with visions and seeing through glamour had made my life hell as a kid. By the time Jinx came into my life, I was a teen with a phobia or three. She was great at trauma triage and, unlike me, people usually didn’t run screaming when she smiled.

  “What a cutie,” Jinx said, smiling and shifting the focus to the woman’s dog. “What’s his name? Is he a mini Schnauzer?”

  “Her name is Angie,” the woman replied automatically. “She’s a Schnoodle, um, a Schnauzer-Poodle mix.”

  “Think she’d like some water?” Jinx offered. “Or a cup of tea for you? It’s no trouble.”

  “Oh, um, no thank you,” she said. “Well, maybe the tea. For me, not Angie.”

  “Honey or sugar?” Jinx asked, pouring two cups from the carafe atop the squat filing cabinet closest to her desk.

  “No, thank you,” she said.

  I waited for Jinx to complete the ritual of hospitality. It wasn’t an actual magic ritual, but the results tended toward the miraculous. It’s amazing what a kind word and a cup of tea can do. I’d seen her do the same with fae folk with fangs and claws who didn’t speak a word of any human language I recognized. Kindness was universal.

  But if this woman was turning down honey, my money was on her being human. That and she looked totally normal with my second sight. Even her dog was just a dog, albeit a particularly adorable one with a breed name that sounded like a type of sugar cookie.

  Jinx brought over the cup of tea and a jar of dog biscuits and set them beside the chair facing my desk. With a curt nod, the woman settled in the chair, dog on her lap. She took a fortifying sip of tea, the cup clattering against the saucer due to shaking hands. I watched her brace herself, but she lifted her chin, and met my eyes. I had a bad feeling that I didn’t want to hear whatever thing it was that made coming to me such an ordeal.

  “What can I do for you, miss…?” I asked.

  She looked from me to Jinx, who stood nearby, ready to jump in when we were ready to draw up a contract, or if I started scaring the client.

  “Brandy,” she said, absently stroking her dog. The dog looked at me suspiciously and showed its teeth, and I avoided making eye contact with it. Some animals can see through glamour or at least sense our otherness, and this dog and its owner were already on edge. “Brandy Palmer. And I don’t know if you can help. It’s just that I didn’t know where else to go, who else to tell, but I have to tell someone and I remembered your ad in the paper about taking on weird cases, no matter how strange, and that you’re a psychic, you know, like, different. And I thought, I can tell her. She won’t think I’m crazy. She’ll know what to do.”

  Brandy spoke rapidly, all the while bouncing the dog on her knee. While I had no idea what she’d seen, it was obvious that I needed to handle this carefully.

  “It sounds like you came to the right place,” I said soothingly, keeping my voice gentle.

  Brandy laughed, a touch of rising hysteria in her voice.

  “Now that I’m here, I’m not so sure,” she said. “I guess I expected beaded curtains and crystal balls.”

  “Sorry, The Emporium has that covered,” I said.

  I winced inwardly. Madam Kaye’s Magic Emporium had the cheesy psychic kitsch market cornered, at least it had until I’d caused it to burn to the ground. I didn’t seek out havoc, but danger and destruction had a bad habit of finding me.

  I had a feeling this visit was more than a simple case. Hopefully, whatever had scared this woman wasn’t something of my own making.

  “You said you needed to tell us something?” Jinx asked.

  “You probably won’t believe me,” Brandy said, shaking her head. “I don’t believe it and I was there.”

  My eyes flicked to Jinx. That sounded like our kind of case, all right.

  “You made the right decision, Brandy,” Jinx said. “You can tell us. No judgement, I promise.”

  “Jinx is right,” I said. “You can talk to us and it’s in, um, confidence. Trust me, I’ve seen things that can’t be explained. I get it if you’re scared.”

  I was going with my gut here, but something had this woman spooked and we needed her to feel like she could tell us whatever it was.

  “You won’t believe me,” she said.

  But she’d slumped in her chair and her words were less certain.

  “Try us,” I said. “You’d be surprised what I believe these days.”

  “We’re discreet,” Jinx said, pouring more tea into Brandy’s cup. “Detective-client privilege and all that.”

  Brandy sighed.

  “I was walking Angie down by the pier, near where the carnival used to be,” she said. “You know where I mean?”

  I nodded, a sinking feeling in the p
it of my stomach.

  “At first, I thought it was a bunch of kids in Halloween costumes or people filming a movie,” she said.

  “Because?” Jinx asked.

  “Because they were zombies dressed like clowns,” she said. “Or clowns dressed like zombies. Zombie clowns.”

  Brandy started to laugh, and a chill ran up my spine.

  “Can you describe these clowns?” I asked. “You said ‘at first’ you thought they were actors. What changed your mind? What made you think they weren’t part of a movie or TV shoot?”

  Harborsmouth wasn’t a huge city, but we did attract the occasional film crew. Actors dressed as zombie clowns, or clown zombies, was plausible.

  “Oh, I thought I said,” she said, looking back and forth between us. “It was the smell.”

  “The smell?” Jinx asked.

  “Yes, they smelled like spoiled meat,” she said, looking a bit green.

  “And they were dressed like clowns, you’re sure?” I asked.

  “Heck, yes,” she said. “Quite sure. Top quality costumes too. I really thought they must be filming a movie, but a film crew doesn’t record smell, do they?”

  Her eyes were wide and glassy. She was in shock.

  I reached into a desk drawer and grabbed another dish of honey candies. I slid them across the desk, waving for Brandy to help herself. Jinx raised an eyebrow, but I shrugged. Brandy may not have a faerie’s sweet tooth, but the sugar would help the shock.

  There wasn’t much more I could do. It’s not like I could admit to the existence of zombies or tell Brandy about the carnival fae. And our local vampire lord, although technically an ally, was in no condition to erase this woman’s memory, even if I’d been in a position to ask him for a favor, which I certainly was not.

  “Oh, that was my friend’s punk band!” Jinx exclaimed.

  “A band?” Brandy asked, blinking.

  “Sure!” Jinx said. “They look totally scary, right? And they smell horrible.”

  Jinx wrinkled her nose exaggeratedly. It would have been funny if she wasn’t saving our butts by selling a lie that just might preserve our secret existence.

  “Well, yes, but…” Brandy stuttered.

  “It’s their image,” Jinx said. “And, you know, the hamburgers they left in their van. Now their costumes smell terrible. Totally rank. I heard one nightclub wouldn’t even let them on stage.”

  “It was just a…punk band?” Brandy asked.

  Humans are innately prone to disbelieving the weird and uncanny. Give them a reasonable, scientific explanation and they’ll usually take the bait. Nobody wants to believe that monsters roam the streets. I should know. I’d started seeing the monsters beneath their magic glamour when I was just a kid. If there’d been a way to turn off my second sight and tell myself it was a hallucination, or a punk band, I would have done it in a heartbeat.

  Blinking and clutching her dog, Brandy followed Jinx to the door. It was a pretty magnificent performance, and nobody got hurt. When the door closed, Jinx flipped the closed sign and dropped into the vacated chair across from my desk.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “No problem,” she said. “She was nice. No reason for her to have nightmares. It was the least I could do.”

  “It’s a good thing my partner is so brilliant,” I said.

  “Hella brilliant,” she said.

  “Okay, hella brilliant,” I said with a snort.

  I smiled, but it didn’t last.

  “Think the necromancer is squatting in the glaistig’s old territory?” Jinx asked.

  “Sounds like it,” I said, letting out a heavy sigh.

  Until recently, the carnival fae had lived on the pier where the glaistig, known to her subjects as the Green Lady, ran a combination amusement park and freak show that was actually a cover for the more monstrous faeries who were incapable of glamour. Due to my inability to control my wisp powers or create a glamour to cover up my otherness, I’d almost ended up one of them, swearing fealty to the Green Lady.

  In the end, I’d found another way to solve my glamour problem. But the glaistig and I had history. We’d butted heads, and I’d made bargains with her, more than once. That might not have ended too badly, but the Green Lady had been impatient, a common trait of the long-lived, and tried using Jinx as a bargaining chip. She’d forced my hand, but I won’t lie. I enjoyed knocking the glaistig down a notch and rescuing an enslaved incubus and succubus in the process. I didn’t like bullies.

  Admittedly, we did more damage than was necessary to save Jinx. The Green Lady’s tent burned and some of the adjoining grounds were damaged, but the carnival fae were unharmed. I thought that I’d sent a clear message not to mess with me and mine. I figured that once the dust and ash settled, we’d start over on more equal footing. I never thought the glaistig would leave in the night, taking all of the carnival fae with her. One day they were there, a bit scorched but alive and operational, and the next the amusement park was shut down and abandoned.

  Until now.

  Chapter 11

  Torn finally emerged from the shadows of my office, where he’d eavesdropped on our client’s visit, and we decided to continue tour zombie hunt. Jinx hadn’t been thrilled to be left behind, but it was still during business hours. Plus, Brandy may not be the only human to see zombies on our city streets. We had to keep the doors of Private Eye open, just in case.

  That left me once again with the cat sidhe lord.

  “As much as I’m enjoying this team-up, I think it’s time for reinforcements,” I said, texting Ceff with our location and a quick update on the current zombie situation.

  It wouldn’t take Ceff long to get here, even with a pitstop to drop Sparky off with Jinx back at the office. Torn and I were on the jogging trail that ran along the harbor, halfway between Private Eye and the abandoned amusement park sprouting up from the pier like a riot of poisonous mushrooms on a felled tree stump. Rising from the clusters of faded and ragged circus tents stood the Ferris wheel, the distant rusty creak of its cars mixing with the cry of seagulls.

  “You think I can’t handle more zombies?” Torn asked. “You wound me, princess.”

  “I think we can use another set of eyes on this, especially from someone with sway with the local water fae,” I said. “Ceff isn’t just king of the kelpies. He’s one of the most powerful water fae leaders in these waters. The selkies, merfolk, and merrow are all either allies or have sworn allegiance to him.”

  “I suppose that could be useful,” he said. “Maybe. It’s not like I’m on the best terms with the merfolk right at the moment.”

  “Yeah, that tends to happen when you don’t bother to call a girl back,” I said. “I thought you were all wise and immortal, Torn. Sleeping your way through the entire mermaid clan was stupid, even for you.”

  “The two are not synonymous you know, wisdom and immortality,” he said. “Not that I’m admitting to any wrongdoing. Merfolk culture is supportive of polyamory.”

  “And I’m not saying it isn’t,” I said. “Look, I know I have my hang-ups, but I don’t have a problem with sex between consenting adults. I also don’t have a problem with you taking on multiple partners. What I do have a problem with is you not being honest and upfront about your intentions with any of your partners. Also, not a fan of how you gather some of the merfolk’s secrets. It’s sneaky as hell.”

  “Why thank you,” he said.

  “Wasn’t a compliment,” I said. “But I think you know that already. You’ve been on a self-destructive downward spiral ever since my dad left. I get it. It sucks. And I can hard relate. I miss him like crazy. But he’s gone, and I’d rather not lose you too.”

  “You almost sound like you care, princess,” he said.

  “That’s because she loves you, silly cat,” Ceff said, pulling himself out of the harbor and up onto the jogging and cycling trail where Torn stood dumbstruck. Ceff let out an equine snort and flashed Torn an amused grin. “What? Somebody had to s
ay it. You two were never going to.”

  Ceff shook himself dry, like a horse shedding water from its coat. From one second to the next, he went from swimming in the harbor to bone dry. No water pooled around his bare feet. Even his low-slung jeans were dry. It was a neat trick.

  Torn might be rooted to the sidewalk, but I had no such problem. I took a step toward Ceff, need swirling within me. My betrothed held still, reading my intent, as I leaned in for an embrace. It was all restraint and anticipation and the promise of what ifs. We didn’t have time for a vision right now, but, so long as we didn’t touch skin to skin, I’d be fine.

  No crippling visions. No getting hurt. No fear.

  I’d come a long way. Ceff had been a big part of that, but in his own weird, annoying way, so had Torn. There were times when Torn was like holding a mirror. I didn’t want to be alone forever. I loved my new family and, sure, family can hurt you, but that’s because they’re worth the pain and sacrifice. Even Torn.

  “Fine,” I said with a shrug. “Ceff is right. I care. But how about instead of standing around talking about our feelings, we go search for some dead people.”

  “Oh, thank Titania,” Torn said.

  “This way,” I said.

  It didn’t take us long to reach our destination. Becoming fae had its downsides, what with the iron allergy and the assassins, but a wisp, a cat sidhe, and a kelpie can sure travel fast when we put our minds to it. Being on a jogging trail also gave us the advantage of not needing to worry about attracting undue attention. If we moved a bit too fast, or a tad more gracefully than a human was capable, that was surely due to the fading light and dancing reflections off the harbor.

  I waved my friends over to an overgrown shrub and a wall of chain link fencing that rose from crumbling pavement, sand-filled potholes, and patches of untrimmed grass. We had a clear view of the carnival’s service entrance.

  Too bad we were also downwind of an extremely ripe garbage dumpster.

  “Why are we here?” Torn asked, showing his teeth in disgust.

  Torn had lurked in the shadows of my office, listening to every word our client had said about the zombie clowns she’d seen while walking her dog near the carnival’s front entrance. Armed with that info and our past adventures together, Torn probably assumed I’d go storm the front gates, fireballs blazing. He was forgetting that I wasn’t just a wisp princess with magic powers, or a woman who attracted destruction like a minotaur in a china shop. I was a private investigator, and a damn good one.