“Yeah, I can’t kill a demon.”
“But you can distract one. That will be your mission now.”
I bend over to press my forehead into the back of the armchair, groaning. “But how? I don’t know where he is, what he’s up to, why he’s with Dolly and what he’s planning—”
“One step at a time, mi hija. You remind me of Joy when she first became my apprentice. So impatient.”
“Joy was impatient? She’s like, the most patient person I know.” I pause, braced on the armchair. “Well, I mean… she was.”
Bautista shakes an arm out of her shawl to lay a hand on my shoulder. “She was able to grow because she was in a safe place, even if that safe place didn’t last long. We can strive for that with you too. Making your mind a safe place. It might take some creativity, but we can do it.”
“Creativity, as in…?”
“We may have to move forward to move back, move outward to fix what is inside. Is there any place in this city that you would consider a material connection between yourself and your demon? Physical traces of what we just saw inside your mind?”
“I… nothing, nothing like that, it was all in my head—” And then it hits me. “…No. No, it wasn’t all in my head. Not in the hospital.”
“The hospital you were held in as you recovered from the demon’s blood?
“Yeah, there. It was… different, then.” I sit on the bed, heavily. Bautista joins me. “He and I were new to each other, and we hadn’t gotten into the sleep-torture-wake cycle yet. And the way I felt him was more—debilitating, and it bled into my waking hours.” I stare at Bautista’s wall, remembering ants, creeping up and down in forking, meandering lines. Fire and smoke, curling up from under my bed to make me cough. Black oil oozing from under my fingernails, staining my thighs and mattress. “I was kept in a private room, partially because the Council wanted to keep me out of sight of the normies, partially because I was actually hallucinating and they didn’t want to risk having me institutionalized by civilians. They… cuffed me to the bed with Velcro, because I wouldn’t stop kicking nurses—but it was because I thought they were demons, that I was already in Hell. I resisted being put back to sleep all the time because it would make me see him again, hear him screaming at me again, but that only made them sedate me more. It was… a mess.”
“But a mess we can return to, by our own two feet.”
“Yeah, I guess. Do you want to do that now, or…?”
Bautista sheds her quilt-shawl, letting it drape back onto the bed as she stands up. “I have prior appointments, but I also believe this is a venture to be taken in broad daylight. I can meet you tomorrow morning, how’s that?”
“Yeah, okay. Actually, I have a date tonight.”
She perks up, eyes crinkling. “Oh, that’s lovely.”
“Are you a romantic?”
“Somewhat, I suppose. Though my past lovers would have called me more of a rolling stone.”
I can’t help but smile at that. “Broke plenty of hearts back in the day, did you?”
“I’m still breaking hearts. A little advice, Harrietta.”
“Hmm?”
“Be honest with yourself. You are no longer your mother’s daughter, but everything you are does not come from Johanna, either. She was not your beginning, nor was she your end. And Woojin is a lovely name.”
She says it right, Oo-jin like Brian says it, not Woo-jin the way my white principal from Georgia said it when I walked across the stage at graduation.
Bautista picks up a metal can with a long spout and starts watering her ferns. And maybe it’s because I just found myself in Seoul again, but when I leave her hotel room, I put my arms to my sides and bow, bending from the hip. She nods, understanding. And maybe it’s just me, but it seems like her fern waves a long-leafed hand, too.
***
I wash my face and stare up into my bathroom mirror, squinting through wet eyelashes. I’ve got pores like craters and a few developing whiteheads—damn, I’d forgotten how bad alcohol screws up my skin. A few red veins streak through the whites of my eyes, but they’re not too noticeable. I brush my teeth twice, just to get the smell of coffee out of my breath.
A translucent hand pushes through the wall and waves at me.
“Junhyun?” I call.
The hand makes a thumbs-up. I take a quick glance at the tank top and underwear I’m wearing.
“Yeah, I’m decent. What’s up?”
He floats through the wall halfway, his ghostly legs still in the other room. His face is a featureless blur, but I imagine it looks boyish and openly curious, college-age, hair mussed up from pulling all-nighters and late-night convenience store runs for his elderly mom, before an untimely death.
Have a date?
I stick my toothbrush in my cheek. “Yep.”
With Lilith?
“I—no, not Lilith.”
Oh. Hasn’t been here in a while.
“Y-yeah. We had a falling out. Kind of.” I turn back to the mirror, brushing my teeth aggressively. Junhyun shrugs, and his shoulders rise and fall as objects separate from the rest of his body.
Kind of miss her. She made things interesting.
I spit into the sink hastily and change the topic. “Hey, have you seen anyone snooping around here recently? Tall, skinny white lady with silvery hair, wearing earrings made of butterfly wings?”
Haven’t seen. Keep a lookout?
“Yeah, I’d super appreciate it.” I gargle some water. “By the way, the date I’m meeting right now? She’s Korean.”
Nice. You bring her home, mom will be happy.
“Yeah, she would be. She was fucking ecstatic when that wizard cop showed up speaking Korean. Even though he was, you know, putting me under house arrest.”
He spoke better Korean than you.
“Aww, fuck you.”
He puts his fingers on his forehead in the shape of an L.
I swipe at him with my toothbrush, managing to blur the form of his shoulder, but my wet hand turns freezing cold—I curse, shaking off the freezing droplets. He laughs, and slips back through the wall.
I dry my hand, holding it to my bare belly to warm it up—and I feel the outline of my sigil scar. Fully healed now, a white-ish outline on my pale skin, just slightly raised. I cover it with a deep blue shirt, a blazer that isn’t too wrinkled, dress pants, and brogues. The brogues are dusty from lack of use, and I have to rub them with an old T-shirt to get a dull shine.
The dark circles beneath my eyes are still present; I get out my seldom-used bottle of concealer, dab a bit over the coloring. Not super neat, but it’ll do in the dim light of a restaurant. Nothing I can do about the pink web of scar tissue splayed over the right side of my neck. I prefer to keep that visible on dates anyway, to avoid making a big deal out of it. It’s only witches, monsters, and demons who recognize it as the distinguishing mark of Harrietta Lee, the idiot blood witch who somehow survived injecting herself in the external jugular with demon blood.
As I transfer the bottle of Vigil from my coat into my blazer pocket, I extract a pill and gulp it down. I’m not falling asleep on my feet just yet, but a dinner date means I’ll be sitting in one place for an hour or more, probably with jazzy lounge music and awkward small talk floating around my head. Better to be proactive against the inevitable drowsiness.
I pause just before slipping the bottle into my blazer. I hadn’t noticed until now how stuffy the air was, how I’d been fighting to take full breaths without even realizing. Huh. I press a knuckle of my thumb to my forehead; it’s hard to zone in on the point of contact, like I’m scattered, unfocused. Not good. I take another pill before tucking the bottle into my breast pocket. Ah, there. The world is right again.
I check myself out in a full-length mirror. Not bad, not bad. Not Prince Charming either, but hey, maybe it’s better not to create false expectations. And it might
just be my flushed cheeks and elevated heart rate, but I’d totally fuck me.
I straighten out my shirt and pat the plastic lump in my breast pocket one last time. Alright. Let’s do this.
CHAPTER SIX
Kate Me, Date Me
I get there earlier than she does. The restaurant is a bit fancier than I’m comfortable with; Kate said “semi-casual,” but I see business executives in suits and ties, a few embroidered designer jackets. Our table is smack-dab in the middle of the restaurant, and waiters in crisp white aprons weave past me to get to the quieter booths by the walls. The mood lighting is a deep red and there’s a low chatter going, punctuated by cheers and the sound of clinking glasses.
I get self-conscious about the wrinkles in my jacket, wonder if I should have put something in my hair. The initial rush of the Vigil has long faded, so now I’m left with fuzzy vision and a glass of water I keep sipping just to look busy. I reach for the glass again, but my fingers are a centimeter off—it tips over, I catch it, and cold water splashes all over my hand. I curse, picking up my napkin to dry off.
I’m so preoccupied I don’t notice she’s at the table until she clears her throat.
“Hi. Harry, right?”
I look up, and there she is. Kate Shin. She stands in front of me in a classy black dress and ruffled cardigan, holding a matching black purse on a golden chain. Her auburn curls are styled in a flawless bombshell blowout, framing a face with a sporty tan and big, velvet brown eyes. Thin golden hoops dangle from her earlobes, and deep crimson gloss shimmers on her lips. All in all, she looks like she’s put a lot of effort into her appearance and she’s damn proud of it.
I hastily stand, hitting the backs of my knees against the edge of my chair. “Right, yeah, that’s me.” Ah, shit. Way to go, asshole. I slip out from my seat to her side of the table, pulling out her chair. “Sorry, I was distracted.”
“I noticed,” comes the lighthearted reply as she primly takes her seat. As she shrugs off her cardigan, I see dustings of freckles on strong shoulders and the defined curves of her biceps. I go back to my own chair, feeling like I’m returning to a battle station, preparing for anything.
“I bet you probably hear this a lot,” she says, conversationally, “but wow, you’re pretty tall.” She has a hint of a Korean accent in the ways her “th’s” become “d’s.” Do I sound like that?
“Yeah, I guess I am. My mother hated it, said I’d never attract a Korean husband. And, you know. I didn’t.”
She puffs air through her nose, not quite committing to an outright laugh. She’s as guarded as I am—ai, this is going to be awkward.
She picks up a menu; I take her cue and do the same. The waiter arrives with a small breadbasket, and I order a chicken—a fancy chicken, but a chicken nonetheless. Kate gets a filet mignon and a soup. Okay, so she lives at least a bit more lavishly than I do.
“So, what did Brian tell you about me?” she asks when the waiter has left.
“Nothing, actually. He figured that’d make me curious enough to say yes to the date, and, well, he wasn’t wrong.”
“Oh really? That’s funny.”
Her tone doesn’t make it sound like it’s funny, or even all that interesting. Still, I perfunctorily respond, “What do you mean?”
“He told me everything about you. How you met in elementary school, how you dated in high school, meeting again as adults in New York. He also said you were—in a band?”
“Two bands, if you count praise band at school.” I kind of stare at the breadbasket in the middle of the table. I’m hungry enough that I want to eat from it, but Kate’s hands are tucked under the table in her lap, and I feel self-conscious about eating while she’s not. “So, you know I went to international school in Seoul, right? What about you?”
“I grew up here. Well, ‘here,’ as in the US, but not in New York. I’m a West Coast girl; grew up in Irvine, went to UCLA, which is how I know Brian. Where did you go to college?”
Uh oh. Strike one. “I, um, didn’t go to college. Graduated high school, then spent five years traveling with a… family friend.”
To her credit, she seems more interested, not less. She leans forward, the light reflecting off her dark lip gloss. “Oh, really? Like an apprenticeship?”
“Yeah, exactly like that.”
“What trade were you apprenticing in?”
Step carefully, carefully. Man, that bread looks good. “—Archeology, basically? We spent a lot of time bouncing across continents so that Johanna, my teacher, could take first crack at a scroll or urn or temple door.”
She perks up. “Oh, that’s cool! So do you know a lot about ancient history?”
Ooooh noooo. Strike two.
“Uh—not—really? That wasn’t really—my focus. I was mostly there to… absorb, and drive the car. Take notes, bring a shovel.”
“A shovel?”
“Yeah, for the grave robbing.”
I realize what I’ve said only when her eyes go wide.
“—I was never convicted I swear, all the charges were dropped! I mean, not that I didn’t do it, but, uh—it wasn’t stealing, we were being paid to steal back a stolen thing—” Her neat eyebrows go lopsided. “—no no no no, we weren’t stealing for money! The place was abandoned, no one got hurt—no one living—ack, it made sense at the time!”
She blinks, her thick black lashes fluttering uncertainly. I groan and put my head in my heads. Strike. Fucking. Three.
“…I’m really sorry. We can totally just eat in silence now if you want, just, please don’t blast me on one of those Internet threads about nightmare first dates. At least, please don’t use my real name.”
She’s quiet. And then she smiles, and I see a concentration of freckles on the bridge of her nose, harder to see through her makeup.
“See, when you say it made sense at the time… I think I believe you? Shit happens. I should know, I used to be a wedding planner—well, I’m an event planner now, but I used to only do weddings. And shit goes wrong at weddings. I’ve had to perform CPR three times, and only one of those people had actually stopped breathing. I’ve been threatened with a cake knife. I’ve had the police called on me—not during the cake knife thing, but because a bridesmaid stole my bottle of mace to use on the groom. I… don’t do weddings anymore. You don’t rob graves anymore, do you?”
“No, of course not!” Not in the last two years, at least.
Her smile becomes a grin, dazzling me. “Well then, we shouldn’t have a problem. And now I know you’re not boring.”
The breath whooshes out of me. “Oh, thank gods. You look so nice and put-together, I thought for sure you were going to peg me as a weirdo.”
“Do you want me to peg you?”
Now it’s my turn to freeze, deer-in-the-headlights style. She covers her mouth with two well-manicured hands.
And then we both burst out laughing.
“Okay okay okay, start over, start over,” she chokes out through her laughter.
“Yes, yes, of course,” I answer, clearing my throat to regain my composure. I sit up straight, all prim and proper. “So, what do you do?”
A beat.
“—Oh, no wait, you already said you were an event planner—”
Helpless giggles all over again, both of us hiding our faces. A couple of old white people glare at us in disdain over their steak.
“I don’t know why I’m laughing!” Kate gasps. “I’m so embarrassed, I—I’m so sorry, I don’t know what I’m doing at all. I haven’t been on a date since I moved to New York, it’s been six months and I just, it’s like I have absolutely no idea how to talk to women anymore—”
“Hey, me too! I mean, the ‘not dating for six months’ part. You’re not alone in that, I promise.”
“Oh, I am so glad. Fuck Brian, the way he talked about you I couldn’t tell if you were a genuinely lovely person or a complete
dirtbag that he was just covering for—and it’s like, am I supposed to take the word of someone I barely know from college, especially if I only remember him as the guy with the really obvious nipple piercings under his shirt?”
I spit my water so far that I extinguish the candle in the middle of the table. “Brian had nipple piercings in college?”
As I wipe water and spittle off the table, apologizing profusely, the stone-faced waiter shows up to relight the candle. I turn to the side to thank him, and Kate stops laughing and sits up.
“Oh, you have something on your…” I can hear the exact moment she realizes her mistake. “Sorry, never mind.”
I wave her off. “It’s fine, don’t worry about it. I guess Brian didn’t tell you about the scar?”
“Do you mind telling me? Is that a question I can ask?”
“Yeah, yeah sure. It was an accident—chemical burn. I was twenty-two, I was an idiot, I was in the hospital for a bit but I’m fine now.” The lie is easy. Lies to make people feel better are always easy.
Kate’s soup arrives. “Chemical burn. Huh.” She stirs her soup with a spoon, her eyes lightly downcast. “Speaking of which, this might sound squeamish to you, but do you do drugs?”
The phantom rattle of pills in my pocket.
“Nope.”
“Drink?”
I flash back to kneeling in front of the toilet this morning, puking my guts out.
“Occasionally.”
“Smoke?”
“Nope.” At least I can be honest about that one. “You don’t like people with vices?”
“It’s… something like that.” She has this voice that sneaks up on you, the end of each sentence kind of bleeding into the next. The rhythm is… comforting.
“Is the drinking a problem? If you need to not be around alcohol, I can—”
“No, the drinking is totally fine. Actually, it would be nice to order some wine.”
She doesn’t even look at the menu, just asks the waiter if they have sauvignon blanc. I don’t know what the fuck that is, only that it’s alcoholic, so I order a glass too and pray that my wallet won’t take the hit too badly.
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