by Jaye Wells
I opened my mouth to argue, but she held up a hand.
“But,” she said, “I agree that Duffy could be a problem. I didn’t like how he was sniffing around after the Brazilian incident.”
“So, you’ll call Eldritch and turn him down?” I asked.
Captain Eldritch was my boss at the BPD. Ever since I’d started work on the MEA team, our relationship had become…complicated. Luckily, since Gardner was the leader of the task force, she got the pleasure of dealing with him on cases like this.
She smiled. “No. We’re taking the case.”
My stomach dipped. “Sir—”
“Your concerns have been noted, Prospero. But the potential benefits outweigh the problems here. If you can connect this murder with the rash of drive-bys perpetrated by the Votaries, we’re looking at a huge case here. I want money and potions on the table at a press conference ASAP. Plus I’m looking forward to having Eldritch owe us for a change.”
Morales held up a hand. “What happens if we don’t find a connection between the murder and the Votaries?”
“Then keep looking.” Gardner’s smile faded. “I’m gonna be real grumpy if I have to hand all that money and those potions back to the BPD. Understood?”
Morales and I exchanged a quick glance. “Understood,” he said.
She watched us for a moment. Just when I thought she was about to change the subject or issue another veiled threat, she nodded. “Dismissed.”
She didn’t have to ask us twice. We were back outside before she’d even picked up her pen again.
“Morales,” Shadi called from the boxing ring. “You got a fax.”
While he retrieved the message, I went grab my backpack.
“From Duffy,” Morales said, waving the fax as he joined me at my desk. “Valentine’s rap sheet.”
“He’s not wasting any time,” I muttered.
Morales scanned it. “Damn. Someone’s been busy. He’d been collared for everything from driving under the influence of arcane substances to assault with a magical weapon to pimping and pandering.”
He pointed to a note near the bottom of the sheet. A list of known associates included the name Aphrodite Johnson. “I say we start here.”
I sighed and threw my backpack over my shoulder. “Might as well.”
“Where you two headed?” Shadi called from the ring.
She, McGinty, and Dixon were going over surveillance photos from a stakeout they’d recently done of a suspected stash house. Shadi’s leadership on these small-buy operations had netted some good information and a few low-level wizes willing to turn on higher-ups. That’s how we’d managed to justify needing the new headcount with Eldritch—the BPD loved that we were getting some of the rabble off the streets. But now it was up to Morales and me to bring in the big fish so we could keep the MEA brass happy, too.
“We gotta go see a sacred hermaphrodite about a murder,” I called. “Y’all behave yourselves.”
* * *
On our way to Aphrodite’s temple, I got a phone call from my best friend, Penelope Griffin.
“Working hard?” she said by way of greeting.
“Oh, you know. Another day, another shit show. No biggie. What are you up to?”
Morales looked over and I mouthed that it was Pen. He shook his head.
A deep sigh carried through the earpiece. “I’m watching a terrible reality show about people who agree to be locked up in a house with strangers for a chance to win unlimited supplies of vanity potions.”
“You have got to stop watching that crap.”
Another sigh. “I know.”
I shifted in my seat in an effort to control my rising irritation. “Why don’t you get out of the house today?”
“Maybe.”
“I guess this means you haven’t had any bites on that last batch of resumes?”
“Not one, Kate. I don’t get it.”
“Something’ll turn up. You just got to keep your chin up.”
Morales cast me a side-eye. I ignored him. Even though I got frustrated with the constant calls, I felt guilty about my irritation. Pen had quit her job as a counselor at the private school Danny used to attend six weeks earlier—on the same day I’d pulled him out of the school. The reasons for both exits were complicated, but we were a big part of the reason she’d left. On top of the stress of not hearing back from anyone, she was nearing the end of her savings.
“Tell you what,” I said, “Why don’t you come over tonight? I’ll order pizza and we can have a girls’ night in.”
“Actually, that sounds amazing.” She already sounded perkier. “What can I bring?”
“Just yourself. I have some beer.”
“Will anyone else be there?” she asked in a deceptively casual tone.
“Baba’s got her book club at the senior center, but Danny might be. Why?”
“Oh, nothing. I just want to be sure your special friend won’t be there so I can get the scoop.”
“Pen.”
“Kate.” She dragged the word out in a false whine. Even though she was teasing me, it was good to hear some of her old humor creeping back in.
“Behave yourself,” I said in a mock cop’s tone.
“Ditto, girl.” She laughed. “I’ll see you around seven.”
After we hung up, Morales said, “How’s Eeyore today?”
“Be nice. She’s struggling right now.” I swatted his arm. “I invited her over so she’d leave the house. It should be nice, actually. We haven’t hung out in a while.”
“There’s going to be a lot of giggling, isn’t there?”
I scowled. “We’re grown-ass women. We do not giggle.”
He raised an eyebrow but said nothing.
“You got any plans tonight?”
“I was gonna meet a buddy. Grab a couple beers. Play some pool. No giggling, though.”
“You, uh, want to come over after?”
He arched a brow. “Like a booty call?”
I met his gaze. “Pretty much.”
His voice lowered to a husky tone. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Good.”
One of the things I loved about our arrangement was that we’d been able to keep things casual. Since we spent so much time together on the job, it would have been easy to slip into some sort of premature commitment situation. But thus far, we’d been able to keep private private and business business. When we wanted to sleep together, we did. When we had other plans, we didn’t. No expectations, no jealousy, no complications. Exactly how I wanted it.
He parked on the road about a block away from Aphrodite’s temple. “How are we going to play this?”
I shrugged. “Considering the fact s/he is only out of jail because s/he agreed to be an informant, I’d say we take the direct approach.”
Several months earlier, Aphrodite Johnson had been arrested in connection with the murder of the city’s mayor. S/he’d been absolved of the murder, but due to some shenanigans during the case s/he’d been charged with obstruction and some other felonies. A deal had been cut to get out of jail time, but the price was having to snitch on the other covens.
“Well, let’s see which gender we’re dealing with today.” Morales turned off the car and got out. I joined him on the curb and we walked together toward the office building.
With a name like the Temple of Cosmic Love, one might expect the building to be covered in neon hearts. Instead, it was a standard-issue brick office building that looked like it housed an insurance agency instead of a brothel disguised as a house of worship.
Inside the lobby, we found Aphrodite’s main security guard manning the front desk.
“How’s it going, Gregor?”
He had a face that looked like a fist with a broken knuckle for a nose, and was about as friendly as a sack of hornets. “What do you want?”
“We’re here to see the Hierophant.” That was Aphrodite’s official title as head of the Sacred Coven of the Mystical Orgasm.
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��You’re gonna have to make an appointment,” he said. “They are extremely busy today.”
“They are?” Morales said.
“The Hierophant decided that since they are getting married, they will be called they from now on.”
I frowned at him. “Morales, I think someone replaced Gregor with the Sphinx.”
“I’m not following that riddle either,” he said. “Who is Aphrodite marrying?” he asked Gregor.
“Theirself.”
“Hold on,” I said. “Aphrodite is marrying…Aphrodite?”
He looked at us like we were a few bullets shy of a loaded gun.
“Okay,” Morales dragged the word out. “What’s up with the they and their stuff?”
Gregor rolled his eyes. “As the Hierophant’s gender is fluid, they prefer to not ascribe to society’s forced gender labels any longer.”
I pressed my lips together and thought about it. “He’s got a point,” I said to Morales. “Besides, all that s/he stuff was pretty confusing.”
“Not to mention insulting.” Gregor scowled, as if he was tired of people not showing his boss the respect they deserved. “Once the marriage rites are complete, their two sides will be in perfect union so the binary gendered pronouns won’t apply anymore.”
“When’s the wedding?” Morales asked.
“Next week.”
I had about a million more questions about what exactly marrying oneself involved for a sacred hermaphrodite, but we were on the clock and solving the murder trumped wedding gossip on the list of priorities.
“Great,” Morales said. “We’ll send some ‘theirs and theirs’ towels. Now, can we speak to them?”
“Regarding?” Gregor said in an infuriatingly calm manner.
“Regarding their nephew, Basil Valentine,” I said sweetly.
The red phone at Gregor’s elbow rang. He held up a finger, indicating we should wait as he answered it. Morales looked at me like I was crazy. I shrugged. Aphrodite might be a pain in the ass most of the time, but I couldn’t help liking them. If nothing else, they were never boring.
“You can have five minutes.”
He clicked a button on his control panel. A split second later a door to the right of the desk opened. Through it I could see the courtyard where Aphrodite kept her poison garden.
“They’re in their meditation room.”
Morales and I shared a frown at that gem. Meditation? Aphrodite?
Gregor ignored our silent communication and continued. “Go through the courtyard to the door on the far end. Can’t miss it.”
“Thanks for your help,” Morales said in a tone that implied anything but gratitude.
“Do not upset them,” Gregor warned. “They need peace and calm as they prepare for the sacred marriage rites.”
I forced a smile. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”
* * *
The courtyard beyond the doors looked like the kind of place you might find housing a sultan’s harem. Low couches and lounges created the perfect spot to strike a pose under the sun’s beams. In the center of the space, a lush garden unfurled and offered up bright flowers that glistened like jewels in the midday sun. Only, anyone who touched those particular jewels would find themselves quickly dead. Aphrodite was famous for their poison garden, which served as a warning to her enemies. Rumor had it several unfortunate souls had been the unwitting victims of the Hierophant’s vengeance, but Aphrodite was good at covering their tracks and had the bonus of having religious protection for the coven’s rites.
We skirted the garden, careful not to breathe too deeply or brush any of the dangerous petals. Just beyond, a pair of glass doors led into a foyer of sorts. The floors were bamboo and the walls were painted a soothing sage green. A pair of carved wooden doors guarded the entrance to what Gregor had called the meditation room.
“You remember this from before?” I asked Morales.
He shook his head. “Must be a new phase they’re going through.”
“Marriage changes a person,” I quipped.
Before he could respond, the double doors opened. The scent of incense wafted out of the darkened room. I couldn’t see beyond the doorway because it was filled with a real son of a bitch.
“Harry,” I said. “What are you doing here?”
“Hieronymus,” he growled. “And it’s none of your fucking business, Prospero.”
In addition to being a dick, Harry was also the head of the Sanguinarian coven. His daddy, Ramses Bane, used to run the coven out of some abandoned subway tunnels that ran under Babylon like a rat’s maze. But after Daddy got pinched for trying to murder me and my ex-boyfriend/future mayor of Babylon, John Volos, Harry had moved the coven to a junkyard. Still, he looked like a guy who lived in a tunnel, with his pale skin, white hair, and pink-rimmed eyes. The only part of him that wasn’t pale was the black ankh tattooed on the center of his forehead.
“I see you’re still as charming as ever,” Morales said. “How’s the limp?”
A few months prior, we’d interrupted a fight between Harry and a Brazilian wizard who could shapeshift into a panther. By the time we got there, Harry was half-dead. But did he ever thank us?
“Go fuck yourself,” he said, and brushed past us on his way to the door.
I called after him, “You keep that up and we’re not going to vote you for Miss Congeniality.”
Once Harry was gone, Morales shrugged. “You’d think as much as that guy has gotten his ass kicked, he’d learn some humility.”
I made a tsking sound. “Some people never learn.”
Morales opened the doors Harry had just exited and held out a hand for me to precede him. Gregor had called it a “meditation room,” but it looked more like a cross between a bordello and a Buddhist temple. Screens painted with graphic sex scenes covered the walls. Candles flickered from metal stands that created an aisle down the center. At the front of the room, a raised platform held a golden statue of some sort of many-armed deity with both breasts and a phallus. And in the center of it all, Aphrodite Johnson sat crisscross applesauce on a meditation mat.
I stilled in shock at the first sight of them. The last time I’d seen the Hierophant, they’d been wearing half of a slinky black dress and half of a dark business suit. The left side of the body had been made up with glamorous makeup and luscious brown locks, and the right had featured artful stubble and a hip masculine haircut.
Now, their head had been shaved altogether. Neither side of the face had any makeup or stubble. Instead of wearing two outfits sewn together, they wore a saffron-colored tunic and loose-fitting pants. The right side still had masculine bone structure compared to the left’s softer feminine features. But the stark distinction between the Hierophant’s feminine and masculine dualities wasn’t as noticeable.
They didn’t open their eyes when we walked in. “You’re interrupting my meditation.” Their voice was more neutral than it had been in the past when they chose between their female or male sides.
“Sorry,” I said, “but we have some news you need to hear.”
The eyes opened slowly. “Basil is dead.”
I couldn’t get over how calm they sounded. The Aphrodite I was used to was vindictive as hell and loved to play with their prey like a cat. I couldn’t help wondering if this display was just another of the Hierophant’s elaborate games. After all, a person didn’t just go from keeping a revenge garden to practicing meditation overnight.
“I’m afraid so.”
They closed their eyes and whispered something I couldn’t hear, but it seemed like a prayer. Finally, the eyes opened again. “I can’t say I’m surprised. That boy kept rough company.”
Morales cleared his throat, obviously as surprised as I was about their calm response. The noise sounded unnaturally loud in the sanctuary. “When was the last time you spoke with Mr. Valentine?”
They unfolded their legs and stood. Instead of joining us immediately, they bowed three times to the statue before leaving the dais. Thei
r movements were slow and graceful on bare feet that whispered across the reed mats that covered the floor. “Several weeks ago. He asked me for some money, but I refused. I’m afraid he didn’t like my answer.”
Given the stack of cash we’d found in Basil’s lab, it appeared he’d managed to find a more lucrative con to line his pockets.
Aphrodite held out their hands. “Please, let’s continue our conversation elsewhere. My temple is not the place for such talk.”
We followed them out of the room. Morales shot me a confused look, and I shrugged, as confused as he was.
They led us out into the courtyard to a low grouping of couches. Once we were all settled, they said, “You’re wondering if I had him killed.”
“Did you?” Morales shot back.
A smile spread across their lips. “Of course not. Didn’t Gregor tell you? I am ascending.”
“He said you were getting married,” I said.
“Yes, the sacred marriage is an ascension to enlightenment. My preparation requires ritualistic cleansing of both body and mind. That means I can’t partake in any activities that harm another living being.”
“That’s going to make running your business sort of hard, isn’t it?” I asked.
“I am in the business of healing troubled souls through sacred sexual acts,” they said primly. “However, there are certain…aspects of my operation that I can no longer oversee. My cousin Fontina Douglas will be taking those over. She arrives in a couple of days from Atlanta.”
I sucked on my teeth for a minute and watched Aphrodite. This whole enlightened act stunk worse than sulfur. “What’s your angle here?” I demanded.
“Enlightenment is not an angle, Katherine.”
“I’m just saying it seems sort of sudden. Especially since your cousin was murdered last night.”
“I wouldn’t expect you of all people to understand spiritual matters.”
The insult rolled off my back, but Morales sighed, clearly reaching the end of his patience. “Before you ascend, it’d be great if you could give us a list of Basil’s known enemies.”