by C. T. Phipps
“Or a tree,” Kim Su said.
How much did she know and how much was she keeping to herself? There was no way of finding out, since Kim Su was the high queen of keeping things close to her chest. “I’m not sure killing this thing is going to bring you any peace, though.”
“It might keep her from killing more newborns,” Robyn pointed out. That was specious logic, but I understood her point. “Either way, I have to confront her. Did you see any sign of my father?”
“No,” I said, frowning. “I did hear of something called the Brotherhood of the Tree, though. Any idea what that is?”
“Yep,” Kim Su said, looking at the television. “Oh come on, it’s clearly Star Trek: Discovery. You don’t need to buy a vowel.”
“She’s not just a teenage store clerk, is she?” Robyn said, looking at her.
“Nope,” I said, sighing. “But that’s not my place to tell. You’re not going to help us any further, are you?”
“You’re wrong,” Kim Su said, not turning back to look at us. “If you want to find the Dryad then you have to get something to narrow the search more. I’m not going to help you with that, but I will direct you to one who can.”
“Why do I feel like I’m following a trail of breadcrumbs to a gingerbread house where a witch will eat me?” I asked.
“Because you know me so well,” Kim Su said.
“I always hated that story,” Robyn said, looking out to see Emma staring through the window and pawing at it with her hand. “A pair of thieves and homewreckers murder an old lady to steal her stuff. Also, I think you should let your dog back in.”
I waved Emma in. “Got any granola, Kim Su? We should keep treats on hand when she comes back in.”
“Werewolves used to have dignity,” Kim Su muttered before sighing. “You should go to Lucien’s. He knows something about the Brotherhood of the Tree. He also has access to wizards who can make for you an object that’ll help you find the Dryad.”
“Lucien’s,” I said, biting my lower lip. “Great. That’s just great.”
“Ex-boyfriend?” Robyn asked, coming up behind me and smiling. She was almost six feet in height to my five-foot-four stature. She reminded me a bit of how a female weredeer was supposed to look. Deer women were a leggy breed, and I was the runt of the herd.
“What? No!” I snapped, a little too defensively. “There was a thing, but it was nothing. It’s doubly nothing which is still nothing because that’s how math works.”
“Yeah,” Robyn said, nodding. “I know exactly how that feels.”
Emma trotted on in. “Okay, the smell is mostly gone. So where are we going?”
“Her boyfriend’s,” Robyn said.
“Alex’s?” Emma said.
“No, some Lucien guy,” Robyn said. “Who is Lucien?”
“Alex’s brother,” Kim Su said, enjoying stirring the pot.
“Oh, you dog!” Robyn said, more amused than anything else. “That is not going to end well.”
“No kidding,” I muttered. “Also, Emma is the dog.”
Emma glared at me and growled.
Kim Su handed me a granola bar, which I passed to Emma. Emma unwrapped it and ate it, growling between bites.
“Delicious salty nut goodness,” Emma said, crunching and swallowing the last of it. “I’d be a vegan if not for all of the deliciousness of meat.”
“Lucien is the owner of the town’s Red Light District, you know, until Alice turns the rest of the town into one,” I said, trying to figure out how to best explain him. “He’s also a weredragon.”
“Dragon, not weredragon,” Kim Su corrected. “Though, technically, you could call him a werecrocodile. They’re the origins of the dragon myth, though.”
“He’s also a drug dealer!” Emma said, cheerfully. “Except he’s not actually a bad guy since when he’s not committing crime he helps kill monsters!”
“Sounds awesome,” Robyn said, putting her arms around Emma and me. “So let’s get going.”
I didn’t want to go to Lucien’s, despite the fact I still considered him my friend. I disapproved of everything from his lifestyle to the way he did business, but he’d saved my life on a number of occasions. I also knew he cared about me. Wanted me for more than the night we’d spent together. If I hadn’t known any better, I would have said I’d broken his heart when I’d said it was a mistake.
But you couldn’t break the heart of the Devil.
Right?
I also wasn’t sure what sort of reception we’d receive once we got there. Lucien and I hadn’t had much contact with each other aside from several angry text messages. I regretted that as well, since I did consider him a friend. A stupidly sexy, beautiful friend who had been really talented in…okay, Jane, that was not helping.
“Thanks for all the help,” I said, looking at Kim Su. “I’ll try not to get you involved any further.”
“My students keep saying that, but they never follow through,” Kim Su said. “Robyn, there’s also something you should know.”
“Yeah?” Robyn asked. “Some ancient secret of Dryadkindom?”
“That’s not a word,” Kim Su said. “No, it’s that you should be aware this kind of fight is one that begets other fights down the road. You might find a much more peaceful life by just going in the opposite direction of this town and never looking back.”
Robyn paused. “That was the plan. Except, somehow, I ended up coming back. This town sucks you in like a black hole.”
“You have no idea,” Kim Su said. “Don’t come back, Robyn, until you’ve figured out whether you’re coming or you’re going.”
Wow, that wasn’t rude.
Piling into the Millennium Falcon, we took to the road and headed toward the Outlands. They were the bad part of town that was now becoming the other bad part of town, thanks to Alice O’Henry’s influence.
Eleven years ago, when the O’Henry family had massacred the Drake family in the last battle of the old shapeshifter wars, the Outlands had become an abandoned shantytown. A place where all of the unemployed humans who’d formerly worked for the family had lived or worked.
That wasn’t the Outlands today, as all of those buildings had been torn down to be replaced by casinos, strip clubs, nightclubs, and other entertainment industry. For once, vice-ification had worked out as Lucien employed virtually the entire portion of the town the O’Henrys didn’t. He milked every dollar possible from the local tourists and poured it back into the economy.
The place was always under construction and new buildings were constantly replacing the old as the place expanded, changed, and shifted. It had started as a place that was sleazy with a bit of grit on top but now had an increasing amount of New Detroit glitz with theme hotels and even an entertainment arena that was going to be showing Black Chorus, the all-vampire band in a few weeks.
I was ambivalent about the changes the town was going through. It had been a dying community as I’d grown up but it had also been a place I’d felt was safe. That turned out be an illusion, though, and I couldn’t help but wonder if the monsters had gotten worse or simply changed form.
“I can’t believe how much the town has changed since I was last here,” Robyn said, looking out of the back driver’s-side window. “Two years ago, Bright Falls was the sort of town that outlawed dancing.”
“Yeah, well Kevin Bacon took care of that problem,” I said, sighing. There was a lot more traffic than I expected. “Now a bigger issue is who is addicted to what drug or whether to go into prostitution or stripping.”
“You don’t have to choose,” Robyn said cheerfully. “I also recommend having a blood-tasting option if you want to make some real cash.”
“Yikes,” I said.
“Eh, it’s not so bad,” Robyn said, shrugging. “If you know the right places and people. I would still be doing it if not for deciding that a bunch of cult leaders were more trustworthy than the vampire I used to hang with.”
“What happened there?�
� Emma said, looking somewhat uncomfortable with our new companion’s presence.
“Gerald and I got separated,” Robyn said. “He tried to do the right thing and it bit him in the ass. The vampires in New Detroit exiled him then divided up his stuff, which apparently included me.”
I paused, thinking about the one vampire who lived in Bright Falls: Gerald. He was a doctor who worked for Lucien. “Wow, small world.”
“Hmm?” Robyn asked.
“So, Robyn, do you intend to stay in Bright Falls after this?” Emma asked, sounding more than a little suspicious. “You know, I mean after your vengeance and everything.”
“Why?” Robyn asked. “You afraid I’m going to steal away the girl you love?”
“No!” Emma said. “I mean, she’s totally straight…ish. Wait, goddammit. I’m not referring to you, Jane.”
“You betrayed me!” I said, lightly mocking her feelings in hopes she’d find someone else. There had been a couple of girlfriends since she’d come out to me, but nothing that had lasted. Which was a shame, since Emma deserved happiness more than anyone else I knew. “How will I live with this knowledge? All is lost.”
“I hate you so much.” Emma covered her face with her hands in a manner that reminded me of a dog and her paws.
“Ha-ha,” Robyn said, smirking. “I swear, I don’t know what being able to pick up people’s secrets has to do with being a tree spirit, but I am so glad being a Dryadkin came with the powers it did.”
“A lot of powers don’t make sense,” I said, looking around for the Lyons Den. Lucien was actually a Drake but he went by his mother’s name even though Marcus O’Henry was in jail and presumably helpless. “For example, I’m a white-tailed deer despite the fact white-tailed deer are an American animal while my weredeer power comes from my European heritage. My Odawa grandfather was a weredeer, but he wasn’t a Native American weredeer lineage.”
Crickets might as well have been chirping in the car.
“Yeah, that’s not really the same,” Robyn said. “To answer your question, Emma, I haven’t decided yet. I wanted to travel around the world and see the sights. It turns out you need money for that, and I saw a lot more in New Detroit than I ever expected to. Even so, I don’t think I could go back to my parents.”
“They wouldn’t take you back?” I asked, expecting some sort of horrible backstory like she was homeschooled to believe in a murderous Sky Father who hated fairies.
That is malicious slander, Raguel said.
I didn’t refer to yours, necessarily! I snapped. Yours is totally forgiving and compassionate to people who actually haven’t done anything.
Thank you.
“No,” Robyn said, shrugging. “They’re just boring.”
The Lyons Den came up soon after, the Taj Mahal of goth nightclubs.
A place that sang with its own rhythm.
Chapter Eight
The Lyons’ Den was not the sort of place you expected to see in an even formerly small town like Bright Falls, Michigan. What had originally been a bank had transformed, physically, into a literal frigging cathedral that had been turned into one of the most popular nightclubs in the country. People came from Hollywood to New York to spend time there with celebrities diverting from New Detroit to enjoy the place.
That wasn’t because Lucien Lyons owned the place or had even paid for it. It was because it was a little slice of hell on Earth—the fun parts at least. Last year, the Big Bad Wolf had literally merged part of the club with one of Hell’s dimensions and turned it into a lodestone to the Spirit World. Any sane person would have sealed it off with every ward imaginable and a sign that said, “DO NOT ENTER OR YOU WILL FRIGGING DIE.”
Not Lucien.
Lucien had taken advantage of the brief infestation of Beelzebub and harnessed the magical energies in order to shape the building to his liking. The sensual, forbidden, and corrupt oozed out of the brick work while the music seamed to permeate one’s soul. Supposedly, you could consume an entire platter full of drugs within its walls and suffer no ill effects while also indulging all manner of hidden vices. The two buildings beside the cathedral were often rented out for conferences of vampires, warlocks, and corporations to. It was why Lucien was the second-richest man in the city.
He plays with fire, Raguel said. Hell plays a long game.
No kidding, I thought back to him. It’s why I’m not with him.
Would you be with him if he wasn’t?
I don’t know, I said, honestly. It’d be a lot harder choice, though.
Lucien had a quality his brother lacked: he never made any attempt to put the mission before other relationships. He was a lot of fun, and while Alex was too, I never had any doubt I would see Lucien again. He was a good friend, but he wanted more than that, and now we were neither friends nor lovers. Goddess, why I had slept with him?
Because you were inebriated and found him attractive, Raguel said.
I wasn’t talking to you.
“Okay,” Robyn said, looking at the Lyon’s Den. “I am one hundred percent sure I would remember a cathedral-turned-nightclub with lines around the block. There’s no way in hell this was constructed in just two years.”
“As Golden Earring would say, ‘Step into the Twilight Zone,’” I said, shrugging. “Mind you, it’s still a city where the majority of tourists are looking for hiking and fishing versus enjoying our retro-goth hot spot.”
“Yeah, across the tracks we have more Country Bears than Pleasure Island,” Emma said.
I looked for a parking space, failing miserably. “A word to the wise, Emma. People would take you more seriously if Disney wasn’t your go-to pop culture reference.”
Emma crossed her arms and stared. “Beauty and the Beast is my favorite movie and I make no apologies for it.”
Robyn was still fascinated by the Lyons Den, staring at it sideways through the window. “Honestly, I never liked Beauty and the Beast all that much. I never could get why Belle didn’t go for Gaston. I mean, yeah, he was an asshole, but dude was ripped. The Beast just didn’t do anything for me.”
I pondered that. “I feel like you may have missed the point of that movie.”
“What, the Beast being rich? No, I got that,” Robyn said, finally turning away. “I hope the toilets in the castle didn’t talk. That would have been gross.”
I decided to pull into the V.I.P parking lot since it was otherwise a five-block walk. “Okay, now you’ve just made the movie weird.”
Driving up to the parking-lot booth, I tried to figure out a way to convince them to get in when I didn’t have a spare couple of thousand dollars to buy a ticket.
“Welcome, Ms. Doe,” the parking lot attendant said, opening the boom barrier for us.
Okay, that was easy.
“Thanks,” I said, pulling in and surveying the large number of sports cars and limousines present. “Emma, do you have a lifetime membership here or something?”
“Pfft!” Emma snorted. “I’m rich but not that rich. I have to go through three lawyers and a magical ritual to get at any of my money. Remember, I still clean rooms at Pinehold.”
“Shouldn’t you be going to business school or something?” Robyn said, showing herself to be innocently insensitive.
“That assumes I want to be a businesswoman,” Emma said, surprising me. “My father is a lawyer, my mother is a lawyer, my aunt is a hotel magnate—”
“And a madam,” I said.
“And a peddler in flesh,” Emma said, frowning. “My other aunt is the sheriff. She’s considered the disappointment in the family, by the way. My brother is going to Yale, the first recognized therianthrope to do so—”
“Couldn’t get into Harvard, huh?” I said, smirking.
Emma glared at me. “I don’t know if that’s who I want to be.”
I found a parking spot after surveying the entirety of the V.I.P center. I was surprised to find it was marked “DOE FAMILY ONLY”. Pulling in, I said, “You can be whoever you want to
be, Emma. I’ll support you no matter what.”
“Well, she’s rich, so maybe that’s true,” Robyn said, crossing her arms. “For the rest of us, we don’t have the option of hanging around doing nothing like a fuzzy Kardashian.”
“I do stuff,” Emma said, looking disappointed. “I want to be useful.”
I glared at Robyn with my rearview mirror. “What exactly did you do, Poison Oaky?”
“Survived,” Robyn said, grimacing. “I was raised in the middle of Shadow Pine Park with my mother, my father, and a partridge in a pear tree. I was homeschooled and about the only people I ever got to associate with were the other woodland folk. I was about ready to go insane by the time I was eighteen. I think I still had imaginary friends by the time I was fourteen.”
“Maybe they weren’t so imaginary,” Emma said.
“Don’t gaslight me, Lassie.”
Emma blinked confused. “I’m not, really! Just there’s all sorts of invisible supernatural beings and we really—”
I interrupted with a question that probably shouldn’t have been asked. “You left your kid in that sort of environment?”
“I have four years until he’s kindergarten age,” Robyn said, showing no shame. “My parents weren’t bad people. The opposite, really, but they were afraid.”
“Afraid of what?” I asked.
“I think what might happen to a supernaturally beautiful little girl in a town full of perverts and weirdoes,” Robyn said, unbuckling her seatbelt. “Marcus O’Henry was still in charge of the town back then and he made sure every kid fit into his plans. It’s not like I could hide that I was something strange back then. My hair was green during the spring, blonde in the summer, brown in the fall, and white in the winter.”
I opened the door and stepped out of the car as everyone else did. “Your hair was tied to the seasons and you had trouble telling you were tree related?”
“It’s not exactly like there’s a bunch of Dryad horror movies,” Robyn said. “I did what I thought was best for my kid and myself. Do you think you’re ready to have a kid?”
“Buck no!” I said, aping Emma’s earlier comment. “Goddess, no. Nope. No. No sir. Not even close.”