Sirena
After leaving Harmon’s store, Sirena transported to the address he’d given her. She arrived at Ted’s Whizzies, a superhero costume shop in Brooklyn, just as her stomach started grumbling for lunch.
Outside, racks of shiny ruby red and black capes drew attention on the sidewalk. The lit-up, blinking royal blue and mustard yellow shop signs used cartoon characters and comic book fonts to direct buyers into the store.
But none of it fooled Sirena. As with much of the Archworld, Ted’s Whizzies was merely a storefront to disguise a supernatural business behind-the-scenes. As she stared up at the store, the only thing left to figure out was whether Ted fell on the Hallow or Nephilim side. The latter would be trouble for her.
She stepped into the costume shop and got ambushed with familiar clothing—deep metallic red corsets, thick circular shields, and logoed spandex with lanterns, bats, and lighting bolts screen- printed on them. She had seen fictional characters wear these before, though she didn’t know their names. She tended not to keep up with American earthlie pop culture since she rarely visited the United States.
Behind the counter, she saw a thin, short man with a hooked nose who looked like he was in charge. She walked toward him with confidence, though she wondered what she had just walked into.
“I’m looking for Ted?” she said to him, scanning the shop. Two guys to her left, one guy to her right, three earthlie shoppers who were oohing and ahhing over the costumes.
“Who’s looking for Ted?” he asked, frowning.
“Me?” Sirena said, not completely sure what he was asking. The three bodyguards took an interest in them, but she tried to ignore them.
He grinned. “Hah, I’m just messing with you. I’m Ted of Ted’s Whizzies. How can I help you?”
Stop making dad jokes, Sirena thought to herself. Already, she didn’t like Ted. But if he was one of the people helping Milena, and if he had information about what she had been doing before her death, Sirena had to suffer through whatever fresh hell he presented her with.
She leaned in, pretending she was looking at something over the counter. “I heard you serve the Hallows and Nephilim in addition to your superhero costume clients,” she whispered, so the earthlies wouldn’t hear. “Do you have a list of your… services… that I could browse?”
“A list?” He said in a normal, booming voice. A few of the shoppers looked up, but Ted just laughed. “Everything I do is made to order, sweetheart.” He raised his eyebrows at her. “And to be clear, I do everything. Every potion, every charm, every healing.”
“You’re a witch,” she said, surprised. All witches were Nephilim… which meant it wasn’t going to be easy to get what she needed from him.
“No shit, sweetcheeks.” He grinned stupidly at her. “Wait—you walked in here not even knowing I’m the head of Brooklyn’s coven?”
Sirena wished she could squeeze Harmon’s head off right about now. “My referrer didn’t mention that,” she said between gritted teeth.
Damn that man. Then again, she needed to practice patience and stop entering situations guns blazing like this. She probably should have staked out the place or asked around ahead of time. She had been in such a hurry to move forward with her investigation
Ted frowned. “Your referrer?” He chuckled. “Okay, who are you, lassie? And who the hell told you to come here?”
Sirena could see that the situation was about seven seconds away from blowing up in her face. “My name is Rhea,” she lied. “And I’m in the market for a potion.”
“No you’re not,” he said obnoxiously, surprising her again. “I’ll be honest—I don’t take on Hallow clients like yourself. And I don’t list my services. If you don’t know specifically what you need, I can’t help you.” He scoffed. “Potion… yeah, right.”
Sirena opened her mouth, but Ted beat her to it. “You’re here for that dead sister of yours, aren’t you?” he asked. “I knew it.” He gestured to the left with his head. “The minute I saw her face in the news—”
“Excuse me?” Sirena said before she looked over to see what he was gesturing at.
She saw a stack of entertainment magazines. Each one had a picture of her sister Milena and her ‘tragic tale,’ a picture of her ex-husband James and his ‘cheating ways,’ or pictures of her niece and nephew in distressing poses—walking along a New York City sidewalk with their heads down, or standing solemnly in black in front of the church where they had the funeral.
Sirena took a deep breath. “You know my sister?”
He watched her, chuckling. “What—you think I didn’t recognize her in you?” he asked. He clearly enjoyed having the upper hand over her and wanted to rub it in a bit longer.
“So do you know her or not?” Sirena asked impatiently.
“She wasn’t that old, maybe her late 30’s early 40’s when I saw her? You look like the spitting image of her little sister. That’s how I knew she was your sister.”
Sirena rolled her eyes. Ugh. She hated him.
“So she went the earthlie way, huh?” he asked. “I gotta say, she was pretty hot, that little blonde thing. I could have definitely had some fun with her, if she didn’t have her two boytoys with her. She probably couldn’t have stopped me, being an earthlie and all.” He tsk tsked, shaking his head. “That’s the price of giving up your archangel powers, eh?”
Sirena ignored his vile comments, though it wasn’t an unusual position for a Nephilim. They fed their egos off of earthlies, so it made sense they didn’t respect the humanity they all shared.
Focus, she reminded herself. He had shaken her, but she was there for a reason. She honestly didn’t want to keep him talking, but it seemed like her best option for getting the information she needed.
“Excuse me—who was with her?”
“Oh, I never got their names, especially not for the kind of work I did for them. I do it under the table for some people, and she was one of them. She only came in once with another Hallow man, and then from there on out she had that redhead Nephilim running her errands for her.”
“And what work were you doing for them?” she asked nonchalantly.
He scoffed, chuckling. “Like I would tell you that.” He folded his arms across his chest. “Did you hear me earlier? I’m the leader of the Brooklyn coven. I don’t do stupid shit like tell strangers about secret jobs I did for other strangers.”
“Listen,” she said, leaning in again. “My sister is dead, you get that? And if you had business with her, I need to know what that is.”
“Whoa,” he said, stepping back from the counter. “I already said I don’t help Hallows like yourself. She was a special case because she somehow convinced a Nephilim to do her bidding. I thought it was hilarious, gave him a ton of shit for it, actually. Oh, they paid handsomely for it, too. Your sister had some crazy resources on her, like she’d been collecting special artifacts for years just to buy that potion off of me.”
“Like what?” Sirena asked. “What special artifacts?”
He stared at her, his fingers tapping his face, like he was deciding what to do with her. “You know, I feel like I’m saying too much.” He grinned at her. “You’re smarter than you look, cute thing.”
She abhorred his inconsistent pet names.
“I think it might be time for you to skedaddle.” He got in her face. “Shoo,” he said, blowing on her.
She snapped back in disgust. “I can’t leave without knowing two things: what my sister came here for, and the names of those two men.” She opened her shoulders and her stance. She didn’t want to have to fight this loser, but she needed more—something to find the two men who were helping her sister before she died.
“You can’t leave?” Ted asked, chuckling. She tried not to let his insufferable laughter grate her nerves. She had half a mind to throw her fist into his lip.
“Boys, did you hear that?” Ted called out loudly. “She can’t leave.”
Sirena smirked at Ted as the witches m
oved toward her, beginning to whisper spells on their lips. She whooshed toward one, punching him in the gut. He keeled over and she took the opportunity to grab his neck and throw him to the ground, toward the second one coming at her from across the room. The body hit him square in the stomach and knocked him back into one of the clothing racks.
Several of the earthlies in the store rose up above the action, mid-speech or mid-shop, completely in a daze of calm.
The third witch lunged at her; she extended her leg into a front kick, then a roundhouse, then a back kick as she turned and jumped up into a double kick to his chest. He oofed, then flew backwards into a full-length mirror.
The first two witches had found their feet, and both were speaking spells in her direction. She shifted dimensions, up and up, until she was into the seventh one where they would be unlikely to reach her. Only the bloodlines of Michael and Luci could enter the seventh dimension. She was the only one left of the former, and the latter was nearly as rare, as Luci was the top archdemon to the Nephilim.
From the seventh dimension, she easily walked up to the two witches and punched them both in the faces. Then one by one, she threw them each across the room.
This time, they didn’t get up.
She pulled herself down to the lower dimensions, posing in front of Ted defiantly. “The funny thing about witches is that if you can deflect their spells, they practically become earthlies in terms of sparring partners.”
He smirked appreciatively. “I see I’ve underestimated you.”
She looked around, noting how much she had trashed the place taking out those witches. The earthlies remained floating above the wreckage, completely oblivious to the danger below. The doors to the shop had been shut, the racks outside had been pulled in, and the lights on the blinking signs had been extinguished.
Her chest heaved in and out. “Do you have what I need or do you want to end up like your friends?”
He raised an eyebrow. “That won’t be necessary.” He pulled something out from under the counter and set it on the glass case. “Your sister wanted a batch of this: a potion strong enough to knock out something very large. And before you ask, no, I don’t know what. I don’t get involved in what my clients do with their potions; it makes it easier to deny that I supplied them with anything later.”
Sirena transported toward him and snatched the potion from his counter. “And the redhead?” she asked, close enough to lock eyes with him intimately. “Where can I find him?”
“Do you think I keep records of my dealings? No—I don’t do names or addresses or anything else.”
“When was the last time you saw him?”
Ted shrugged. “A week ago. Maybe two. He picked up something for your dead sis.”
Sirena pounded her fist against the glass countertop, nearly shattering it.
“Careful,” Ted said. “You did well against the brawn, but you may not do as well against the brain.”
“If I see a witch with a brain I’ll take that into consideration,” Sirena retorted. “You don’t have anything? Did they leave anything? Write anything down?”
Ted smirked again. “What’s it worth to you?”
Sirena smiled at him, tilting her head. “I guess I haven’t been clear enough, have I? You help me or you end up like your friends.”
He licked his lips. “I could help you for a taste of that mouth, sugar.”
She grabbed Ted’s throat, lifting him up.
“Careful,” he said, grabbing her hand, trying to pull her off of him. He looked up, and she followed his eyes to the earthlies, who were now dropping toward the floor. She squeezed harder, they dropped further, he lifted them back up.
“I don’t care about earthlie lives,” she told him.
He looked straight into her eyes. “All Hallows care about earthlie lives, but especially you, darling.”
Sirena’s jaw tightened as she lowered him to the floor. She loosened her grip on him. “Show me what you have and we’ll negotiate a fair price,” she said, trying to regain control of the situation. If she had to let the earthlies die, she would—her sister’s whereabouts before she was murdered was a matter of great importance to her and the Hallow people. But if she could save those lives, she would try.
He rolled his neck in one direction, then the other, rubbing it with one hand. He didn’t take his eyes off her as he pulled a small piece of paper from a drawer behind the counter—a note with a description of something, almost like a shopping list.
The careful cursive handwriting hardly scratched a sentence worth of words on the paper, but the note itself would be enough for a witch to use a tracking spell on.
“Which one is this?” she asked. It wasn’t her sister’s loopy scrawl, but it didn’t look quick and messy either, like she’d expect from a man. It almost looked familiar, reminding her of something—but what?
“I think the Hallow man wrote this,” Ted said.
“Great,” Sirena said. She stuffed the potion in the inside pocket of her leather jacket. “You’ll track it tomorrow morning and give me the location you come up with.”
“Can I get your number or something to call you?” he asked.
“There’s a place in Brooklyn that does tarot readings. 34th and Church. Drop off the info there tomorrow at dawn. I’ll get the message.” The Seven Brothers network would call Harmon in the morning, so he could deliver the address to her.
She turned to leave.
“Payment?” Ted called out after her.
She turned halfway. “You’ll get your payment when you drop it off.”
“It better be good. I would hate to hurt someone if it wasn’t.”
She smirked. She had spent most of her life accumulating Archworld wealth, including new technology, vials of blood from different bloodlines, and special instruments, weapons, and relics. In the earthlie world, it was easy enough to summon cash from thin air—after all, it was just ink and cloth, or even better, numbers in a computer. But in the Archworld, only authentic, powerful objects had value.
She had gobs of it… and apparently her sister had the same idea. Yet another thing she didn’t know about her own sister, that she had to find out from a stranger—a vulgar, annoying one at that.
“You let those nice earthlies at the tarot shop live now, will you?” she called back as she walked out of the shop. She didn’t look back. She couldn’t show that kind of weakness when a guy like Ted was involved.
Brie
“Brie,” Pilot whispered in her ear from behind.
She sat on their mom’s B&B Italia couch in their formal living room. Her mom hated when she sat on this couch, especially when she tucked her legs under her seat with her heels still on.
But her mom wasn’t alive anymore.
“Brie.”
She didn’t respond, instead focusing on two girls from her school who were chatting by the refreshments across the room. Though Jenny and Rebecca were in her grade, she didn’t recall having ever spoken to them, nor having ever introduced them to her mom. Why were they here, then? Why did mere acquaintances show up at strangers’ funerals? What was the point when they didn’t even bother to offer her condolences?
“Brie,” Pilot repeated, using his demanding voice.
“What?” she snapped, flipping around. She stretched her legs across the couch, rubbing the cramps out of her calves, one of which had fallen half-asleep.
“I asked you where you’ve been,” he said, clearly irritated. “I was worried about you earlier. You said you were going to the restroom, and then you disappeared from the church and left me to deal with all of these people alone.”
She felt like they’d had this conversation a few times in the last couple hours, but Pilot didn’t seem to be able to let it drop.
“Again, James was there,” she said, repeating one of her arguments from earlier. James van Rossum was her birth father, technically, in addition to being a famous rock star from Dragon Lizzie, one of the biggest grunge rock bands
of the 90’s. But she barely knew him, since he had been absent from their lives for as long as she could remember.
He hated when she called him James, so she usually only said it behind his back, or when she was mad at him.
“He doesn’t count,” Pilot said. Now he was repeating arguments.
“He counts,” she insisted. She scanned for James, easily finding him in a large group of famous people who knew either one or both of her parents from being in the industry.
“Look,” she said, pointing her head in James’s direction. “He takes attention off of us when he’s here.”
James had been working the crowd at the post-reception, regaling them with stories about how he had met her mother so many years ago, how his band was doing, what his new projects were. If she were being honest with herself, he didn’t seem particularly troubled by her mother’s death, which hurt her more than she wanted to admit.
Then again, she imagined that Milena had died a long time ago for him when their relationship went up in flames and he abandoned his family.
“You’re ignoring my question,” Pilot said. “Adele!” he called out.
Her best friend looked up from what seemed like an intense chat with one of Pilot’s best friends. Rykken Camacho had flown all the way from Honolulu to be at the funeral. He had stayed with them a few times, a week here, a week there over the summers. She guessed that her mother meant a lot to him… he had spent a decent amount of time with her over the years, and her mom fed him well, which she knew he appreciated. Still, Rykken’s presence
Adele strutted toward them, her hips swaying a little too obviously. She had developed physically a lot faster than Brie, her chest and butt coming in sometime in the middle of 8th grade. Since then, she had easily caught the attention of a number of guys at Braxton. Not that Brie minded or felt jealous… she wasn’t nearly as boy crazy as some of the other girls at her school.
Adele forced Brie to make room for her on the couch, then plopped down next to her, resting her head on Brie’s shoulder. “How are you holding up, girl?”
Magic After Dark: A Collection of Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Romance Novels Page 100