Incubus Honeymoon

by August Li

  “You should leave the witty poesy to him,” I said. “I would like to attend one of these performances… that performance.”

  “You can do whatever the fuck you like once you cut me loose, mate. Besides, what’s got you so interested?”

  Something about the words echoed through me. “If the cat will after kind….”

  “It’s about sex.”

  “Likely you think everything is about sex, demon. I sense there’s something more here.”

  Inky huffed. “Oh, and why does a cat seek out another cat, genius? For intellectual conversation?”

  “There was a thread of magic. I felt it.”

  “Well, you wouldn’t be the first to say that about Shakespeare. So… maybe the mortals aren’t so boring and insignificant after all.”

  I looked around. Behind the rows of little square windows waited little dull lives. All essentially the same, only one in a million with anything novel to offer. “They’re specks of dust floating on the air. Occasionally one catches the sunlight. That’s all.”

  He shook his head. “They’re more like grains of sand on a beach. And if you look closely at a grain of sand under a microscope, every one of them is unique, a jewel. You can spend an eternity on their facets if you’re willing to look.”

  I pulled away from his grasp. “Well I’m not willing. I don’t want to. You can scratch around in the soil to your heart’s content when I am gone, looking for gems in the mire. I only want one—that one grain of sand that can get me out of this place. It’ll probably be as easy to find as that makes it sound, so if you have anything useful to offer, please don’t hold back.”

  “I thought you could sense magic,” he shot back.

  I had thought so too. I had been sure I’d felt a spell working, the tiny threads of enchantment coming together to form… something… but: “All I sense here is mediocre acting. It’s pitiful, really. I’m glad I didn’t compel them to finish their show. It would have surely been a disappointment.”

  I started walking, eager to be out from beneath the suffocating shadows thrown by the humans’ massive structures, eager for open sky, for air free of the choking odor of some kind of burnt chemicals, eager to be among things familiar to me, in a place where I had agency. There was nothing more disagreeable to me than the tightening of that unseen manacle. I had never thought to feel it again, and I wanted to make someone hurt for reminding me it had ever happened at all. Inky followed me, big feet and heavy boots carving troughs through the dirty snow, a petulant scowl on his face.

  Curiosity finally got the best of me. “What is wrong now?”

  Inky stopped when I turned to face him. He jammed his hands into his pockets and tilted his face toward the jaundiced stars fighting to burn through the fetid haze hanging over the human city. When he spoke, his breath came out in puffy clouds, tinted a sickly ochre by the streetlamps. “Their desires were so, so pure. Distilled, almost. Like an expensive vodka. All the nastiness filtered out. You could drink and drink, get so pissed and happy you’d fall on your face, and never even have a sore head the next day.”

  His pinkish eyes were glazed, and he stared off like a mortal hearing faerie music. I huffed out a sigh and hoped his fugue wouldn’t last. As much as I hated to admit it, this world was strange to me, and I would accomplish my goal faster with him than without. I waited while he continued.

  “The boy. The boy playing the part of the clown. His yearning lay over top of everything, like a thin handkerchief. It covered everything he did. There was a girl when he was at school, maybe in the tenth grade—Jennifer. It hurt that she was kind to him, felt like pity. He wants to make a name for himself, be someone, all so she’ll see him as worthwhile. He doesn’t even want to sleep with her; he just wants to see it in her eyes: the recognition. All the work he’s doing, all the nights without sleep, are so that she’ll look at him and see a valuable person. He wants her to be proud to say she is his friend.”

  That sounded pathetic, incomprehensible. How sad it must be for the mortals, who couldn’t just take those who interested them and keep them in one of their castles to look at whenever they liked. “And so what? You’ll fuck him and make him all better?”

  “No. I can’t help him. Can’t fulfill that desire. Doesn’t mean I don’t feel it, appreciate the beauty of it.”

  “How’s that?” I asked.

  “I don’t know if I can explain it to you, Blossom. It’s kind of like walking past a restaurant, smelling food you can’t eat. You still imagine how it might taste.”

  “Well that’s stupid.” I turned the corner and walked toward a row of shorter, squatter buildings with a few skeletal trees between them. “I can eat what I want, though I certainly don’t dwell on the flavor. There’s always the next thing to sample, even if after a while there’s nothing new.”

  “That’s true,” Inky said. “But some of them are so good you don’t ever forget. If I had time, I could be that for that boy… the person who looked at him like he was the sun and stars… special. In time, I could’ve made him believe it, made him believe in himself. And he would have adored me for it.”

  His talk was making me feel practically ill with ennui, and I sped up, moving toward a little tickle I sensed at the base of my body. “Well, when you have repaid your obligation to me, you can go back and fuck him until he’s seeing stars.”

  “It’s not the sex. Not completely.”

  I didn’t care, didn’t care how his kind justified whatever they did with, and took from, the mortals. I only wanted to be somewhere I didn’t feel vulnerable. I found it a profoundly irritating sensation, one that obnoxiously demanded I focus on it. I wouldn’t tell the demon so, but this felt very different from the last time I’d been across the veil. I quickened my pace toward the vibrations I felt, and after several moments of my silence, Inky seemed to get the point.

  It must’ve been too cold for the mortals, because we encountered few of them on the street. The taste of magic—a metallic tang at the back of my throat—increased as we moved east along another street deceptively called Emerald. I wondered if the human lanes named Excrement and Sewer shined with jewels in this world. Finally I noticed a solitary figure standing on a corner, and the arcane power swirled around him like hundreds of tiny comets with prismatic tails.

  An unexpected turn of events, but whether for good or ill, I could not yet be sure.

  Chapter Five

  THE GUY was Greek, if I had to guess. He looked like he’d just crawled out of bed wearing an Eagles hoodie over fleece pajama bottoms printed with Tasmanian Devils, poor bastard. A black knit beanie covered his head, but corkscrew curls sprung out around his neck and jaw. Dark stubble covered a round chin that advertised a healthy appetite, something I could respect. People who took pleasure in a good meal tended to be simple and decent. All this sorry son of a bitch wanted was his bed, his memory foam pillow, and the soft body of his girlfriend wrapped around him—her ample tits and belly pressed against his back. He wanted the space heater they plugged in near the foot of the bed and the way it blew warm air under the blankets. But there was a need—more than a need, a compulsion—to stand out here. It shoved his other desires to the side.

  He came up to us with a folded paper clutched in his shaking hand. He thrust it at Blossom. “I, I need you to have this. It’s… we’re opening a deli. This is the menu. I need you to take it. We… we have mutton.”

  “Give it to someone else.” The faerie flinched, and the kid stood, hand still extended and shivering in the cold.

  “No! No. You. It has to be you.” The guy’s eyes widened and he gulped for air, his free hand clutching his chest. With my fondness for artists and sensitive souls, I had learned to recognize the onset of a panic attack.

  “Take it, fucker,” I urged when Blossom stepped back. Reluctantly the faerie held out his pale hand, even muttered a few words of thanks. The kid just stood staring, mouth hanging open, skin slick with sweat despite the cold. “Now tell him he can
go, for fuck’s sake. Let him go.”

  Blossom grimaced, but he waved his spindly little fingers and said, “You’re dismissed.”

  The weird chicken-wire barrier holding him prisoner dropped away, and the kid’s want smelt like lavender fabric softener and his girlfriend’s strawberry shampoo. His head snapped back like somebody had hit him, and he looked around, cursed, and stumbled in the opposite direction, slippered feet tripping over chunks of dirty snow.

  I reached for the menu, tugging it out of Blossom’s grasp. There was a picture of a sheep’s head at the top, above the words RAM Deli, with a list of sandwiches and salads featuring sheep meat underneath. Poor bastard would’ve done better in Center City or somewhere people would pay more just for weird than here, where people gladly tucked into dollar cheeseburgers and a steak sandwich was the ultimate luxury. No way would they pay $13.95 for a fucking sheep-meat sandwich when a cheeseburger was a dollar.

  “What a bizarre person,” Blossom mumbled. “And so terribly dull. Sheep, honestly. Why would he think I would want that? Disgusting.”

  I knew my chin must have been hitting my chest, my shock flashing through the chilly gloom like a sign advertising Live Nude Girls. As opposed to the dead ones. But shit, one couldn’t make generalizations where mages were concerned. I forced myself to focus on something besides the sparkling naked bodies in my poor, neglected imagination. “Are you fucking kidding me here, Blossom?”

  He turned to me, his eyes almost neon. Glowworm green. “No, I’m not kidding. My people don’t eat carcasses or rotten things.”

  He was daft, had to be. Either that or he had one fucked-up sense of humor. I spoke slowly. “And you don’t think there was anything unusual about that exchange? Like, oh, I don’t know, that he was clearly ensorcelled somehow?”

  “Ensorcelled to tempt me to eat a dead sheep? Who would do such a thing? We’re here sifting through this refuse, digging around in trash not even fit for swine, when our jewels are clearly somewhere else.” He looked toward the distant glow of the downtown skyscrapers.

  “What do you base that on?” I asked.

  “Who else would be worthy of summoning me here? Certainly not some slinger of sliced sheep.”

  I wondered what he’d taken from me, whether I could live without it. I didn’t feel any different, and I sure as fuck didn’t need this. “And you really don’t think it’s worth having a look at this deli? Not even worth walking past? It’s only a few blocks away.”

  “I suppose if it will silence your prattling, it is worth a short stroll. I doubt anything interesting will occur, but I suppose I can only live in hope.”

  What a twat. Still, I accepted the concession and walked toward the address printed on the flyer. It was to the northeast, towards Kensington and the Badlands, which was far more dangerous than Strawberry Mansion, and a part of town I’d usually avoid. I just wanted to get this fucker out of my hair so I could find a receptive mortal to fuck the snot out of and feed off for at least a weekend, though after this, a solid month would be nice. I didn’t like feeling vague, and I needed someone’s desire to define me. Preferably someone who enjoyed getting oral sex until their legs felt like jelly, but I was quickly approaching the point where I couldn’t be choosy. I needed some positive energy to sustain me, and I sure as fuck wouldn’t be getting it off Blossom.

  Though his ass in those snug gray trousers…. Would he taste like he smelt: cherry blossoms smashed in your fist and sprinkled with curry powder?

  I stopped in the street and dug my fingernails into my palm, focusing on the sting. No, hell no. Bad idea, that. Worst idea of the century. Pissing on a live wire bad.

  The address listed on the deli’s menu led us to an octagonal building on a corner lot. Its plywood exterior was painted puce, the roof shingles canary yellow. Apparently it had once been a hair salon called Curl Up and Dye. If the bleached piece of copy paper taped in its window advertising “Summer Highlighting Special! Five Foils for $25” hadn’t alerted us to how long the business had been abandoned, the frozen dog piss staining the snow around the realtor’s sign couldn’t be missed. Some Picasso had also used orange spray paint to tell the world “Jenny eat a$$ real gud.” Predictably, Blossom shot me a smirk. “Want to paint a picture, Inky? Remember all the idyllic details of this— Wait.”

  At a subdued squeak, I pressed past the faerie towards the back of the building, where a pair of dumpsters sat, their lids encased in filthy ice. I bent down when I heard the soft mewl again, resting my elbows on my knees, making myself small and unthreatening. Waiting. A pair of eyes like chartreuse marbles caught the light, followed by that small voice. The sweet little voice. My heart soared, and I felt like my grin would split my skull. “Oh, that’s right. Come on, then.” I clucked my tongue.

  The little tuxedo cat approached me cautiously. I met her eyes and blinked twice, very slowly, and then I held out my hand, rubbing my fingertips together. For all her shyness, she bounced up on her hind legs to butt her head against my palm when she got close enough. She had four white feet, a white teardrop over her nose, and a strip of white across her muzzle that looked like a handlebar mustache. Soon she placed her front paws on my thigh, purring. She was skin and bones, probably a year old or less. When I thought I wouldn’t scare her, I scooped her up and situated her inside my jacket so she could get warm, all the while waiting for the faerie twat to say something disparaging. Well, he could fuck right off.

  I stood with the kitten securely inside my coat. Movement caught my eye—something big coming from the alley behind us. This fellow was brown with black stripes and a thick coat, maybe a Maine coon or a Norwegian Forest cat, and a scrappy old bastard, judging by his shredded ears. He came within a foot of me, sat on his haunches, and yowled.

  Others followed: a black tom missing an eye, a big tabby wearing a collar with a bell, a little white Persian like a cotton ball with blue eyes. A calico with a bobbed tail. A famished grimalkin followed by a litter of babies. One that looked like a cross between a Siamese and a fucking bobcat. Two little blondies with orange eyes traveling together. Blossom came to stand next to me as the cats kept coming, appearing from alleys and behind buildings, from underneath bushes and bins. It was like the shadows were spawning them, and in no time, a sea of glowing eyes surrounded us—thirty cats or more, all of them sitting on their haunches and staring up at us like they expected some kind of fucking show.

  I would’ve been a daft tit not to remember the students back at Temple and the boy muttering “Cat, cat, cat.” No way was this a coincidence.

  When it seemed they had our attention, the cats got to their feet in unison, turned, and walked to the front of the garish little building. When we didn’t follow right away, they sat down and focused their shiny, unblinking eyes back on us. I looked at Blossom and shrugged. Cats didn’t act like this; I liked them a lot and knew a bit about them. I respected their resistance to submission, their individuality. They were fuzzy little anarchists, and they made their own way. But this lot sure looked like they had a goal in mind, one they’d work together to achieve.

  As soon as I started walking, the clowder turned as one and made its way onto the street. They gathered in the middle, waiting until we caught up. I was still expecting some snide remark from Blossom, but when he passed me, his green eyes were bright. He might have even been smiling. I hung back for a minute just to watch the spectacle, shaking my head. Only a fucking faerie would prance up the street behind an army of alley cats. All he needed was a fucking flute to complete the picture.

  Or maybe I was remembering that old tale in reverse. Whatever. I was happy; being around cats, with their big shiny eyes, soft fur, and little bean toes, made me happy. Blossom seemed happy around them, too, and that made me hate Blossom less, which also made me happy. I didn’t enjoy conflict; I liked warm squishy feelings. Sweet, wet, sticky emotions like strawberry jam. Something you could lick and let the sugar dissolve in your mouth. I leaned down to nuzzle my face against the bla
ck-and-white kitten sleeping happily in my coat. “I’m going to look out for you,” I told her. “You and me, yeah?”

  She mewed in response, and I looked at the bizarre parade moving up the street. Hell, at least we were getting somewhere. This couldn’t be accidental, and all I could do was see where it led us.

  At least there was no one about to make a lame pussy joke.

  Chapter Six

  ANIMALS WERE more trustworthy than humans. At least they didn’t have an inflated sense of self-importance. Besides, I liked cats. Of all the creatures, they managed to take advantage of the mortals while resisting their yoke. In a way, they played with them the same as my people did. The big striped tom rubbed against my leg and looked up at me. When our eyes met, he closed his very slowly. Come on. Come, faerie. We’re almost there.

  Where are we going?

  I do not know, answered a skeletal gray female with a white tummy. But we need to take you there.

  Do you know why?

  We only know it’s important, said a plump tabby in a collar.

  Cats shouldn’t be collared. I waved my fingers and the strip of sparkly pink cloth fell to the ground.

  Why do you want to do this? I asked them. Are you trying to help me?

  We want to hunt, said a soot-colored adolescent cat. We want to eat warm flesh and to mate.

  You are not cat, said a sleek white one, but you are more cat than the others.

  Your blood smells familiar. Something we have forgotten but recognize now that we scent it. We will guide you.

  But where? I asked.

  Here. Here. Here! In this place. In this location is where you need to be. Your hunt begins here.

  Why?

  We do not know. We wanted to bring you here. We were made to want this.

  We are here now. We have done this thing. We can go on to our hunts, to our shadowy secret places. This is your hunt. It begins here.