Archie must feel it too, because when the Toys”R”Us left, he didn’t budge. If anything, he got even happier about his spot on the sidewalk—no more other cute kids to steal his thunder. I have to crane my neck over the crowd to see if he’s here. It’s early morning, he might not be—
Oh, but he is. On a magically bare patch of sidewalk is a pale, ruddy-cheeked little boy with an entirely chipper demeanor, sitting on a giant stack of fliers held together with twine, sporting the most adorable newsboy cap, bow tie, and suspenders. He’s got a pearly grin and round Harry Potter glasses, with his ashy blond hair sticking cutely out of the cap at the back. Even in New York, even in Times Square, some people smile at him as they walk past—until he simpers and holds out a flier, which hurries their footsteps. When someone does stop to take one, they seem puzzled to see its contents. I wait for a couple to take a photo with him; as they leave, walking past me, I hear the giggling pregnant woman say, “Oh, I want my son to be that cute!”
My turn; I walk up. I know he sees me by the way his grin widens, and he holds out a cheery blue flier. “ ‘Allo there, haven’t seen you in a while, ‘ave we?” he says in a Cockney accent right out of a musical performance of Oliver Twist.
I blow a raspberry. “Drop the voice, Archie, you know I hate that shit.”
Archie doesn’t miss a beat, replying in a slow, Southern drawl, “Ahh, you know ah’m just pickin’ widya. You’re the only one ah know who prefers grits over Brits. Got some kinda baggage, do ya?”
I smile, taking the flier from him. “Something like that. How’s business?”
“Not bad, not bad. Winter’s comin’ along, folks are in a giving mood, and some are fixin’ to try a new life phase or two.” He says “life” like “lahf,” his voice cracking on high notes like he’s yodeling.
“Not that devoting one’s soul to the Bringer of Light is much of a phase.”
“Well of course!” Billboard lights dance off his spectacles. “Speaking of which, looks like you’ve sought me out quite specifically today. Anything ah can help you with? Are you finally ready to take the next steps in joining our happy family?”
Archie is an Earthborn demon. Or, informally, a cult baby. The flier has the words, “Join the Church of Heosphorus!” written on it in bold, beckoning letters—that’s a cult of Lucifer, the Morningstar. Every day they indoctrinate people, preferably those with young, fertile uteri, who can be convinced that their life’s work should be to participate in the miracle of mass immaculate conception.
Witches like us call that kind of cult what it really is: a demon baby factory.
See, when demons die, they go to Limbo, where they can spend upwards of a century trying to piece their shattered souls back together. If they’re not powerful, they lose a hefty fraction of their memories and identities in the process, and coming back is nigh-impossible. But there are some demons that never manage to put themselves together—they drift apart, as per the law of entropy, until they’re just grains of the finest dust drifting in the wind. And there’s almost nothing that can pull them back to materiality.
Except maybe a stronger demon. One that’s willing to shove their hand into the dank butthole of Limbo and fish out pieces of a demon’s soul to meld with a human fetus. And then the fetus isn’t human anymore. Probably never was.
I twist my bottom lip and make puppy eyes. “Oh, Archie, I’m so sorry, I would love to do that—the thing is, I actually have to get something over with in my life before I can move onto the next chapter, you know?”
“Of course, of course. Then, mayhaps, can ah help you with that?”
“You can, actually. See, I’m being stopped in my devotion to the Morningstar by another demonic presence in my life—he’s been with me for maybe fifteen months now, if you catch my drift.”
Archie tilts his head. “Ahh. Demon blood got you good, didn’t it?”
“You understand. Tell me, Archie—do you happen to know the name of the fella whose blood I used?”
Archie snickers. “Why’re you asking me? Ah’m just a puny Earthborn trying to find new family. Much beyond Lucifer’s kingdom is beyond me.”
“Well, see, I used to have another demon expert to ask, but he went and died on me a month ago. Very sad affair.”
“Samael? Yea, ah’ve heard of that fella. He’s having a good time down in the firepokey. At least, we’re ‘avin a good time with him.”
He flashes a brief grin—and in that moment, his pearly whites are rotted brown and yellow with black, crusted edges. Then I blink, and his smile turns adorable again.
I put on my best stern schoolteacher face. “I asked you my demon’s name about a year ago, the first time I met you. You said you didn’t know. But that was a lie, wasn’t it, Archie?”
“Oh yea, that was cus’ve the whole gag order thing.”
“Gag order?”
“Yea, he was a powerful one, and he said that any demon who told you his name would pay for it—so we all kept quiet as a church mouse, see? But that don’t matter no more, what with him being dead and all.”
My heart skips. “He’s what?”
“Dead as a doorknob. None of us could believe it.”
“Woah woah wait, hang on—when did this happen?”
“The dying? Eh, not long after we met. A few months at most.”
I do the math on my fingers hidden in my pockets. I met Archie about a year ago, and a few months after that, that would be… nine months ago. The same time he disappeared. Archie is still talking.
“…One of the Seven Princes of Hell, taken down by an uprising of his own lackeys! Funny it was, gosh dang funniest thing ah’ve ever seen.” He doubles over laughing, and his spine bends at a sharp angle that shouldn’t be possible without snapping one’s back.
My head spins to catch up. “Wait, Prince of Hell? Which one?”
“Beelzebub, Lord of the Flies, pig head on a stick. Ever heard of ‘im?”
You know that feeling? When the world is collapsing all around you yet you’re just standing there, somehow intact, holding your breath and waiting for your own body to fall apart like a pillar of wet sand? When you can see and hear things happening around you yet you just can’t believe it, just can’t bring yourself to, because every step forward from now is just so pointless in the face of what you have to fight?
CHAPTER FOUR
Let Me Pick Your Brain
I don’t know when I started walking, but when I stop, my boots are sinking into wet, straw-brown grass. To my left and right, I’m hemmed in by a border of leafless trees like a battalion of beaten-down Spartans, desperately defending one last territory from the chrome skyscrapers on all sides. In front of me is a gray, stone-paved plaza where frantic graduate students and shopping tourists sit at small wire tables and chairs, the students trying not to spill taco filling on their shirts, the tourists chattering animately with enormous shopping bags on the ground next to their feet.
The big cloth umbrellas over the wire tables have words on them—“BRYANT PARK.” Oh, so I’m in front of the New York Public Library. I guess it’s not a bad place to be, given that I don’t know what the fuck I’m supposed to be doing right now. I’ve never been a voracious reader of books without pictures, but I know libraries.
I make my way across the stone, through the arching doorway of the entrance, and up a flight of stairs. Paintings, I’d forgotten they have paintings in here. Renaissance-looking shit on the walls, Moses with a grim stone tablet and stormy skies. Christian figures in billowing silks follow me with their eyes as I traverse the ordered-yet-packed tables, checking databases on computers, jogging up and down stairs to ask different professionals where certain books are. I’m not a research expert, but I’ve never been too prideful to ask for help. I request bulky tomes about conflicting Biblical interpretations of the hierarchy of Hell. I find Dan Brown novels with boringly gender binarist interpretations of mystic energy.
I track down anything and everything that even contains a mention of that name, the name that I still can’t bring myself to say out loud. Beelzebub.
Ba’al Zebub, the books say is his real name—or maybe that’s just a twisting of Ba’al Zebul, “high lord.” They say he was a god worshiped by the Canaanites. But another book says, no, that’s Baal, also known as Bael, a totally different entity. But an interesting footnote says, “Beelzebub/Baal, feud, originated 300 BC?”
There were some Aleister Crowley wannabes who tried to contact him and failed. A few that possibly succeeded, and… weren’t heard from again. I try to find records of a demon baby cult or a suspicious shell corporation—nope. Nada.
On my third trip up to the main floor, I walk past the information desk, where a tall woman with long, silky, platinum blond hair is standing, handing a glossy map to a lost patron. As she gestures, butterfly wings dangle from her earlobes—
I stop short. I swivel around to look at the desk again.
There is no platinum blonde. The person at the desk has short, dark brown hair shaved into an undercut, and they’re wearing no jewelry on their ears.
I’m panting. I can’t seem to breathe out completely, like my lungs are being occupied by some presence, a tumor that I have to work around. First him—and now Dolly. Was that really Dolly? I can’t trust my own eyes while I’m like this, when I’m on these pills and having these dreams. What if it was Dolly? What is she doing here? It can’t be a coincidence that she’s shown up at the same time as him…
Silver sparks decorate the edges of my vision, like the embers flying off the very end of a firework. My head is light as a helium balloon. The person at the information desk sees me. “Hi,” they say, smiling all friendly, “do you need directions?”
“No, thank you,” I manage, but it comes out quieter than I intended, and the employee frowns, not understanding. Before they can ask me to repeat myself, I spin on my heel and rush down the hallway, to the bathroom sign. I blast into the women’s bathroom, get to the last sink at the counter, and force open my bottle of green pills. I dump the pills into my hand, shake all but one back into the bottle, and pop the one into my mouth. I swallow it with a scoop of faucet water, pursing my mouth at how gross it tastes.
I stare into the mirror, the way I do when I’m drunk, but without that strangely comforting distance, of not recognizing yourself and being happy about it. The pill takes about thirty seconds to kick in. I know it has when my vision sort of… wakes up, the boundaries between objects sharpening, the world becoming a focused tunnel with marvelous depth instead of a flat movie screen. I cling to that feeling, to that illusion of focus. The perceivable effects of the pill don’t last long—a minute, at best—but even a minute of feeling competent and in control makes me want to cry with relief.
The stall door behind me opens, and I see a flash of cornstalk yellow hair. I startle, and the middle-aged woman coming out of the stall startles too. She frowns at my necktie and slacks, opens her mouth like she’s going to say something—I glare at her with my jaw clenched, and she backs off. She huffs, adjusting the oversized sunglasses on top of her head, and starts washing her hands.
I have to get out of here. I can’t be jumping at the mere shadow of every woman wearing dangly jewelry or a blond wig. I can’t trust my brain right now, and I need someone to knock it back into shape. Who do I know that can do that?
***
While I wait in Café Amara, my phone buzzes with a text from an unknown number.
Hi, this is Kate Shin. Brian told you about me?
Yeah, this is Harrietta.
…Harrietta? Are you sure?
Sorry, Woojin. Harry is my English name. Only Brian still calls me Woojin.
Ah, okay ^o^ Are you free tonight?
The cheery little face makes me mirror the expression, smiling despite myself.
Yes! Want to grab dinner?
I know a place that does steak. No reservation needed, semi-casual.
Perfect. 7 or 8?
7 sounds good.
So, she gets straight to the point. Good, I think.
A shadow falls over my phone screen. I look up and see a bright mustard blazer over a white v-neck shirt, creased brown skin and dark hair pulled back beneath a nice, faded, autumn brown fedora.
“You,” says a creaky alto voice. “You have some explaining to do.”
I blink. “Bautista? Is that you?” Last time I saw the Council telepath, she was in a grandmotherly sweater vest and fuzzy slippers; right now she’s at the height of senior fashion, primed for business and pleasure.
She frowns disapprovingly at me, and her cheeks sag. “What other witch’s name have you personally sent echoing through the minds of civilians across the city?”
“You’ll dress up for coffee but not a Council trial?”
“Especially not for a Council trial. The one you took part in was a cover-up, anyhow. Stop changing the subject, why am I here?” She sits across from me, turning her head so I can see the sparkling tinsel texture in her brunet hair that makes me think it might not be so bad to grow old.
“Sorry, I didn’t know to contact you. I would have asked Luce, but she’s in San Francisco for some kind of Council job, and she won’t pick up the phone. But I figured, you hear things.”
“I don’t make it a habit to eavesdrop on random thoughts unless they’re calling to me. And you were making people call. It’s like a radio, I’m only tuned into one wavelength at a time. Unless I go looking, I won’t catch things—but you wormed your way into every wavelength.”
I rub my eyes with my fists. “I just wrote your name on windows in ketchup and stuff. Handed out some vaguely apocalyptic fliers.”
“You’re endangering me, you know this? You can’t spread a witch’s name far and wide and expect there to be no consequences for them.”
“Which is why you’ve never even told anyone your full name. Listen, I’m sorry, I know it was a bad way to do it. But you have to admit, it’s about as bad as you roofie-ing me last month to get me to talk to you about Joy.”
Her face softens. “Yes. And I owe you a debt for finding her.”
“No, you don’t. I… I was too late.”
“She didn’t die alone. That counts for something, mi hija.”
“I…” I close my eyes, feeling the burning beneath my eyelids. No crying. Not right now. I have more important things to do. “Maybe. Okay, let’s say you owe me. I’m cashing in that favor.”
“I’m listening.”
“Remember how much I hated it when you pulled me into that shared dream?”
“Yes. It doesn’t take a detective to know you’ve had psychic trauma.”
“It was a demon. The demon whose blood I used when I tried to resurrect Johanna. When I attempted that spell, I… opened a sort of gateway in my head, and he could get in anytime I was asleep or lost consciousness. Sometimes it even happened while I was conscious, if I was hazy enough, or one time while I was on acid.”
Bautista’s brow furrows. “I didn’t feel any such presence with you last month.”
“Because he wasn’t there last month. He was with me for about half a year. I took these pills to keep awake, to keep away from him. And then he disappeared. I was good for about nine months after that. And then…”
Bautista raises a wrinkled hand to cup my face. I go still. She looks into my eyes—I can barely see her irises through her hooded, drooping eyelids, her blackhole-dark pupils. “And he’s returned.”
“Yes.”
“You need a way to keep him out, permanently?”
“Yes. Is it possible?”
“More than possible, it’s my specialty.”
I let out a shaky breath. “That’s—that’s good to hear, really good to hear. Except… one thing. The demon himself.”
“What about him?”
“He’s… not your garden-
variety demon. He’s…” Nausea floods up my throat and squeezes my diaphragm. I force myself to say it, one syllable at a time. “Beelzebub. Prince of Hell, Lord of the Flies.”
Bautista just puffs through her nose. “You really are Johanna’s apprentice, aren’t you? Couldn’t anger just any old devil, it had to be one with clout. Reckless little shits, the both of you.”
I groan, but grin behind my hands.
She beckons me to get up, and we make our way to the counter. “Can I get a coffee to go? Drown it in milk and sugar, please,” I tell Gael. He looks back and forth between me and Bautista.
“And for you, Councilor?”
“You have coffee and Coke?”
“Coming right up.”
***
We take the bus, one of those long bendy ones with a hinge in the middle. I stand, she sits, and I adjust my stance as the articulated section spins and tilts.
“Where is your place anyway?” I ask. “I thought you lived in, like, a cottage in the woods.”
“In the Catskills, yes. I used to, when I was first teaching Joy. I enjoyed the quiet and the lack of voices. And occasionally popping the tires of unattended Range Rovers. But after I took Joy back from the Council, I moved out here to be more readily available to her. And I started enjoying the background noise. Too much silence for too long isn’t good either. This is my stop.”
As we exit the bus, I look around.
“Hang on, we haven’t left the borough at all. Are we—”
She strides toward the entrance to the Hilton Hotel. I jog after her. A snappily dressed bellhop tips his hat.
“Good day, ma’am.”
“Hang on,” I puff, trying to catch up, “are you living in a hotel?”
Bautista gives the bellhop a friendly nod. “Good day to you too, Amir. And yes, I do live in a hotel.”
“What the fuuuck?” I mutter under my breath.
I nearly slip on the waxed marble floor as I dog after her. We’re only halfway through December, but there’s a live band playing Christmas carols with a jazzy saxophone accompaniment, and green wreaths everywhere. We get crowded into the back of the elevator, Bautista smoothly pressing the button for the fortieth floor amidst all the chaos. The elevator goes up, and up, and up.
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