by Mur Lafferty
“What the hell just happened?” Zoë asked out loud, staring at her ichor-covered hand, which was beginning to itch. She wondered if she was developing an allergy. Dimly she registered Opal’s weeping in the background.
“Editor, you have slain what I and Gwen were unable to, and you did it while grievously injured. Why did you hide what a warrior you are?” Eir asked, respect in her voice.
“I have no idea how I—what the hell was that snake thing?” Zoë was having trouble keeping her thoughts together, and she struggled to sit up. Her head began to throb, and she felt dizzy. She silently pleaded with Anna for support, and felt her equilbirum come back, although the pain remained.
“That was the essence of the demon,” Gwen said. “You separated it from its body, effectively killing it.”
“But that snake thing is still alive,” Zoë protested.
“It’s the spirit of vengeance. That can’t be killed, any more than love or greed or altruism,” Gwen said.
“I bet those are prettier demon essences than vengeance,” Zoë said. “So we’re OK now?”
“We’re OK,” Gwen said, nodding slowly.
“Except for Kevin,” Eir added, pointing to the mourning Opal.
Zoë’s body had begun to react to her injuries, and she decided to lie back in the gravel again. Her voice felt very far away as she struggled to make the words happen. “Maybe someone can give me a trip to the hospital?”
She closed her eyes, but didn’t fall unconscious just yet.
Anna, what the hell happened back there?
The ghost was silent for a moment. There are some things you need to know about citytalkers. And ghosts.
Zoë woke slowly, as if she were peeling layers of gauze from her eyes. She was in Freddie’s Ready B and B, and Gwen sat beside her bed. The clock said ten a.m. Eir dozed in the desk chair.
Zoë blinked, and then focused on the death goddess more closely. “Jesus, what happened to you?”
Gwen’s immaculate hair was disheveled, her gown torn at the shoulder. She had a cut on her left cheek that leaked silvery fluid. She sat slumped, exhausted.
Gwen’s voice was very low and tired. “Eir and I fought the inugami. Then Kevin and Opal fought. Then the inugami got away from us and found you. You killed it.”
Zoë rubbed the back of her head, which was sticky with blood, but it was leftover blood. There was no pain, no bump. She flexed her wrist, which was wrapped in a bandage. It ached, but the break was pretty much healed. “I got knocked off the roof when Opal threw Kevin at me. And then I passed out. Then I came to and the demon was there, and a ghost. Then… that happened.”
“I saw the ghost inside you, the girl from the train, yes?” Gwen asked.
“Right.”
“Eir was able to heal the wounds you got during Opal’s battle with Kevin, but not the burns from the demon.”
Zoë glanced at the dozing goddess. “Is she all right? Are you?”
Gwen nodded slowly. “The creature is gone. Eir will need sleep; she used far too much of her strength yesterday, first at the hospital, and then for attempting to heal Bygul, then on you. Not to mention the night before with the bullet wound. We will recover. The real problem is, we don’t know who sent the inugami, and why it attacked Bygul. Or how you killed it.”
Zoë held her hands out in front of her and looked at her fingers. They wiggled when she told them to. They were dirty and bloody. She felt an intense desire for a bath. “Anna was with me, she helped bring me back after I got knocked out. But how did I—we—get rid of the demon?”
“Tell me what happened after you left the restaurant,” Gwen said.
Zoë went through what she remembered of the evening, the story of Reynard, their conversation, and how he acted when he saw the inugami.
“He told me to find a ghost, right before he left!” she said, her eyes going wide. “He knew how to beat it! How did he know that?”
“The ghost has just arrived here,” Gwen said, focusing at the closed door. “She looks as if she wishes to talk to you. I require sustenance, so I will leave you two.”
Despite Zoë’s exhaustion, she felt the chilly, uncomfortable air between her and Gwen. It wasn’t time to reconcile, but she needed to say at least one thing.
“Thanks for saving my life, Gwen,” she said.
“You did most of the work, we just got you back here,” Gwen said, but she smiled slightly and left the room.
“OK, Anna, what the fuck?” Zoë asked into the room, and felt a shivery, awkward feeling as the girl entered her.
I’m glad you’re all right.
“Apparently it’s thanks to you,” Zoë said out loud. “But what the hell happened back there?”
I think there’s something you need to know about citytalkers. We weren’t just tasked with communicating with cities. We were also assassins.
Zoë nodded, feeling the disconnect with reality that so often came with outrageous coterie revelations. Luckily, the phone rang, and she allowed herself to be distracted.
“That’s my boss. I have to take this.”
“All right. Tell me what happened from the beginning.” Phil’s voice was patient.
Zoë gritted her teeth and tried to retell the story more calmly, leaving out the rather important citytalker information. “Public Works thought Kevin killed a woman. We went looking for him. Then Opal went apeshit crazy and attacked him. She killed him. I got into the middle of it and hit my head and got knocked out.”
“But Gwen says you saved them from a Japanese demon dog? A real inugami?”
“Yeah, that happened, too,” she said, picking at the bedspread with her right hand. “I think I was possessed by—a ghost.” She had almost said “another citytalker, who was apparently also an assassin.” That would have been very bad.
“And how do you feel now?”
“Well, I’m tired. And my arm is burned from where Eir couldn’t heal my demon injuries. But hiring a healing goddess was the right move.”
“I just hope she can write,” Phil said.
“Always the bottom line, huh, Phil?” Zoë asked.
Phil was silent for a moment. “All right. Tell Opal I want her to call me at sundown. I want a report from Eir as well, when she wakes up. As for you, it does sound like possession, and it sounds like a good thing, too. The bigger problem is who sent the inugami, and why. How have you managed to piss someone off after being in town less than twenty-four hours?”
“It’s my magnetic personality, I guess,” she said, leaning back in bed. She really wanted that shower.
“An odd thing is that ghosts don’t possess people so often anymore,” Phil said.
“Anymore?”
“Now that we have establishments settled for giving ghosts jobs, it gives them fewer reasons to seek corporeal form. So why did she target you?”
Zoë could feel him getting close to guessing her secret. “I guess I have a guardian angel,” she said. “Anyway. So Opal is supposed to call you. So is Eir. Kevin’s apparently dead. Sorry about that.” She thought she should feel bad, but she just felt tired and annoyed.
“And you haven’t lost Bertie, have you?” Phil’s tone was wry. Do vampires ever mourn? Zoë wondered. She thought of Opal’s tears last night, and then amended her thought to… vampires they’re not related to?
“Not that I know of,” she said. “He helped us find Kevin last night, but I haven’t seen him today.”
“Check on him. Try not to lose any other team members. Get Gwen to find out who set the dog demon on Jackson Square. And how’s the book going?”
Zoë glared at the ceiling and gave it the middle finger. It made a poor proxy for the vampire. “About as good as the NYC book was going around this time two months ago.”
“You’ll get your feet under you. Try to stay alive. And if you can’t manage that, get Opal to turn you. I’d prefer not to lose you entirely, although”—he paused, considering—“chaos does seem to follow you.”
“Don’t remind me,” she said. “I’ll call you when the next team member bites it.” She ended the call, then texted Gwen to come into her room.
Gwen peeked her head in a moment later, eyebrows raised.
“I think I’m down for the day. All I want to do is sleep. Phil wants to hear from Opal and Eir, if you don’t mind telling them.”
“I can’t imagine he is too happy with Opal.”
Zoë thought for a moment. “He didn’t seem too upset. I don’t know if it’s a vampire thing or if Kevin was just that disliked.”
“Both,” Gwen said.
“He’s more concerned about the team being reduced. And what about you, you didn’t answer me. Are you all right?” Zoë asked. “I’ve never seen you physically affected by anything. And you look… rough.”
Gwen waved her hand, dismissing the concern. “I can be damaged by very strong metaphysical beings. But no one has ever injured me gravely. Once I feed I’ll be fine.”
“Gravely. Death goddess. I get it,” Zoë said. Gwen didn’t smile. “Work on that sense of humor, OK?”
“Noted,” Gwen said. “I will inform the others of their duty to our boss.”
“Can you ask Freddie for some Tylenol?” Zoë called after her, but Freddie was at the door, ready with Tylenol and a glass of water. Zoë managed to grin at him.
She wished she had packed some of the teas she had gotten from Granny Good Mae, but she had run out. Since she had gone several weeks without getting injured in a coterie encounter, she kept forgetting to find a new supplier.
With Freddie and Gwen gone, Zoë lay back in bed and swallowed the pills past the lumps in her throat. She took some deep breaths to calm her mind and deal with the incidents of the previous night.
“OK,” she said to the ghost she hoped was still in the room. “Let’s talk this out.”
“Citytalker history, one-oh-one. Go!” Zoë said. The ghost waited patiently in Zoe’s head, not trying to take over her limbs, just waiting.
Anna began. Magical humans have always had as much, or more, natural power than the coterie. Zoëtists could create zombies and constructs, and the really powerful ones could even control some zombies. Weres straddled coterie lines, slave to the shapechange, human most of the month, animal the rest. And the citytalkers were the most efficient assassins ever trained, because if they were linked to a city, they could find anyone or anything hiding within. They also proved very difficult prey in urban environments.
A group got together—and by ‘group,’ I mean coterie in every large city in the world—and decided to remove the human coterie.
It took decades before the humans realized that the attacks were more than random violence; they were being hunted. They tried to rally, but only the zoëtists were community-based and struck back. The citytalkers were solitary, communing mostly with their cities, and the weres tended to group together only for defense, not offense.
“So werewolves don’t exist anymore?” Zoë interrupted.
Lycanthropes are only one of many, many weres. These humans could turn into wolves, or cats, or pigs, or any number of things. You’d be surprised at the things a human can turn into.
“And they’re gone?” Zoë persisted.
As far as anyone knows. That’s another story. I’m sure a handful exist; it’s honestly very hard to eradicate a global species.
“The zoëtists clearly did OK.”
Their ability to raise armies of mud, water, metal, or flesh was formidable. The weres were only powerful for a couple of days a month. They could force the change at other times, but it was difficult. They were easy prey during the rest of the month.
“OK, but what about this assassin stuff?” Zoë asked.
Citytalkers are hard to kill, and hard to track since they could tap into the cities they were with and know when something was hunting them. This made them immensely useful assassins. A high coterie organization began to employ them, and even say that if you didn’t join it, you would be one of the hunted.
“Harsh,” Zoë said.
So now we had citytalkers hunting each other, parents hiding their children, and the general genocide happening everywhere.
The zoëtists fought back as they always do, and managed to make a treaty with Public Works and its governing body for protection. But by the civil rights era, most of the human coterie, barring zoëtists, were gone.
“So citytalkers are still around, they’re just hiding, or working for the Man?” Zoë asked.
As far as I know.
“So what about what happened to us? Out there with the dog demon thing?”
Possession by a ghost does something strange to human coterie. You will be able to see other ghosts, and your magic combined with my access to other planes means we could merge to create something to fight the demon on both levels, the physical and the metaphysical. It can only defend against one at a time.
A shy, proud tone crept into her voice now. I was trained in demon assassination, and I knew what to do when it attacked.
“Then I owe you a beer. Or twelve,” Zoë said. “So can you tell me anything about this shadow organization?”
I don’t know much about it, only that it’s called the Grey Cabal, it’s made of coterie, even zoëtists, and it employed citytalkers. It controls the ruling coterie in every city, as well as Public Works.
“Seriously? The watchers of the watchmen are what the watchmen hunt? Now we’re getting into conspiracy theory territory.”
… Something like that, yes.
“Who knows about this stuff?” The concept of Phil, or Morgen, having this information was too weird.
Very few people. Citytalkers did, once. Perhaps the head of state Public Works.
“So even Phil doesn’t know. Weird. So wouldn’t citytalkers and Public Works be redundant?
I didn’t say the citytalkers were police instead of Public Works. They were a secret police for the Grey Cabal.
Zoë wondered if Arthur knew this. His boss was a fertility goddess, but Zoë had thought that was an anomaly. Now that she knew an incubus was in charge of New Orleans’s Public Works, she wondered.
“If the coterie know citytalkers exist—I mean, fifty years ago wasn’t that long ago, especially among immortals—why did no one figure out me or Granny Good Mae?”
People rarely see what they’re not looking for. It’s how coterie have hidden all these years.
“If the Grey Cabal is all-powerful, did they protect their own secret police from the genocide?” Zoë asked.
I assume they tried but not a lot survived. I just know the citytalkers, both the secret police and those of us just trained as assassins, suddenly began dying, and the Grey Cabal couldn’t stop it. I don’t know if they sanctioned it, or were behind it, or simply decided to let it happen because they had found better assassins than the citytalkers.
Zoë’s head seemed to swim. “So the real purpose behind my abilities is to be a secret assassin. But if most of the coterie or the Grey Cabal find out about me, they’ll kill me. Lovely. So what do I do now?”
Have you ever attuned yourself to a city?
APPENDIX II
CEMETERIES
New Orleans is famous for its cemeteries, and for good reason. The water table requires all burials to be above ground, so instead of fields with headstones, New Orleans citizens get marble crypts. Some of these crypts serve as residential areas for coterie, so tourists aren’t welcome there. But the best place to rent a crypt for a pleasant, light-tight stay would be St. Louis Cemetery #1. Within walking distance of much of the nightlife of the city, this cemetery offers crypts that still frequently receive offerings from curious tourists or family members who are not aware that their relative has rented out the apartment to a tourist.
The real estate agency Kenneth Crewe and Great-Grandson oversees cemetery rentals, and is open 24-7, always staffed by someone ready to rent out a crypt.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Zoë was getting out of the
blessed shower when her cell rang. Arthur again. She had nearly forgotten about him.
“Hey, did you have any luck?” she asked, wrapping a towel around herself.
“None,” he said, morosely. “I searched miles of swamp. Nearly got lost. I think I saw a gator.”
“I’m sorry. I had a rough night. One of my writers killed a person. Then he died. Then I got possessed by a ghost and got attacked by a dog demon, then I killed it. Broke my wrist, got a concussion, it was a mess.”
“Nice try on the one-upping, but I’m still the one who’s going to be a zombie at the end of the day,” Arthur said, his voice flat.
“I wasn’t—”
“Forget it. I need some sleep, I’m going back there tonight after I do some information gathering,” he said. “When I could get Ben to talk about his mentor, he said she was somewhere in the Barataria Swamps.”
“That’s pretty broad,” Zoë said. “And didn’t Ben say that Lucy had killed his mentor?”
“When has death ever stopped anyone? I figure I’m looking for a zombie or a vampire,” he said. “Or something else.”
“Then you’ll need backup,” she said.
“I’ll call you if I need you. Zoë, you have a whole mess of monster drama that follows you, and I don’t need that shit right now. I’m going to die and come back as a fucking zombie if I don’t work this out. Nothing is more important to me right now.” He hung up.
“But if nothing is more important then you should take all the help you can get!” she shouted, knowing he wasn’t there.
She stared at the phone, hurt. But what hurt more was that he was probably right.
While Zoë had no trouble with her zombie coworkers—except for the one who had attacked her, but he was high on formaldehyde and she didn’t hold that against him—Arthur had a different view of them, as monsters that needed policing. He didn’t want to turn into what he feared, didn’t want to suddenly be policed or hunted by his coworkers.
And to be honest, a zombie was not the most… sanitary of coterie. She didn’t know if she could stay with him if that happened. Be there for him, sure. But a physical relationship?