Hexed

by Michael Alan Nelson

  “This is a day of sad educations for you, Karl. You discover that your time has no more value than the time of others, that the only person impressed by your boardroom antics is yourself, and, what I’m sure will come as a rather confusing surprise to a parasitic leech such as yourself, that I have absolutely no use for money. I daresay, you are in a rather weak negotiating position.”

  Karl swallowed, grimacing in pain. “If you don’t want money, then what do you want?”

  The Harlot settled back into her chair, the black fog of her dress billowing over the arms in graceful waves. “I want your fondest childhood memory,” she said.

  “I don’t understand. You want me to tell you what my favorite memory is?”

  “No. Not tell me. Give me. Offer it to me as payment for the secrets you wish to know, and I will pluck it from your mind. But understand, Karl. It will never come back to you. It will cease to exist. Even if you were to write it down, it would be as if you were reading someone else’s words. They will have no meaning for you. That memory will be lost. Forever.”

  Lucifer watched Karl’s face twist in confusion, but she understood perfectly well. The Keeper of Secrets didn’t want money. She wanted things that were precious to you. Sometimes it was as simple as a family heirloom. Other times she wanted your kidney or the last five minutes of your life. Whatever it was that she wanted, no matter how mundane, it was something you were going to miss. Whether you realized it or not.

  “So, that’s it? You’ll tell me the secrets I want to know, and all I have to give you is my favorite memory?”

  “Your favorite childhood memory, darling. You can keep that debaucherous evening in Lisbon.”

  Karl straightened himself and extended his hand. “You have a deal.”

  The Harlot rose from her chair and glided forward. She stared at his hand for a moment before speaking. “There is no going back, Karl. Are you sure this is what you want?” She asked with absolutely no malice in her voice.

  “I can make new memories.”

  “Very well.” But instead of shaking Karl’s hand, the Harlot quickly wrapped her arms around him and kissed him. He struggled uselessly against her grip. The fabric of her dress danced around them, circling them in slow, undulating waves. Her wild hair snaked forward and inched across his face like the roots of a dying tree desperately searching for water. Karl couldn’t move. Only his wide, unblinking eyes indicated that he was aware, alive.

  The Harlot held him there, savoring the embrace until Karl’s eyes began to flutter and close. Slowly, her hair fell back into the chaotic curls around her own head, and her dress succumbed once again to its peculiar laws of gravity. She lowered him to the ground and stepped away once he was able to stand on his own.

  Karl shook his head and blinked his eyes. “What did you do to me?”

  The Harlot smiled. “What I told you I was going to do. I took your favorite childhood memory.” The Harlot swooned. “And oh, what a delicious memory it is!”

  Karl slapped his face a couple of times like he was trying to keep himself awake. “All right, so you got what you want. My turn.”

  The Harlot walked toward a nearby fireplace that Lucifer couldn’t remember being there, let alone having a fire burning inside. She pulled a yellowed parchment from the mantel and tossed it into the fire. Green flame immediately erupted from the parchment as it caught fire. Before it could be completely consumed, the Harlot pulled the parchment from the fire and extinguished the flame with a quick puff of air.

  “Here,” she said, handing the scorched paper to Karl. “I believe this will satisfy your curiosity.”

  As Karl studied the blackened images on the page, his eyes widened. “This is . . . thank you, Harlot. Thank you.” Karl kept mumbling “thank you” over and over again as he stared at the paper, meandering his way back toward the hall of mirrors.

  Once he was gone, Lucifer asked, “Well?”

  “Well, what, darling?”

  “What was the memory?”

  The Harlot took Lucifer’s arm and guided her down an adjacent hallway. “It was the one and only moment in his life when his father told him he was proud of him.”

  “Oh,” Lucifer said. “That actually makes me kind of sad for him.”

  “Don’t be. He was fifteen years old and had just beaten up a younger boy for having the misfortune of wearing pink to school. Neither Karl nor his father are terribly likable human beings.”

  “And now Karl’s going to be a rich, unlikeable human being.”

  “Richer, actually. But his newfound fortune won’t last long. Men like Karl are saddled with insecurity. They’re always trying to live up to some cartoonish idea of masculinity in order to impress the people around them. Especially their fathers. But without this memory to temper that desire, his greed will run unchecked. By month’s end, he will be ruined and throw himself out of an office window.”

  The Harlot looked down at Lucifer and gave her arm an affectionate pat. “Just like you’re going to do.”

  CHAPTER 14

  “I’m not going to kill myself!”

  The Harlot looked down at Lucifer while escorting her past dozens of inhuman trophy skulls mounted to the walls. “Yes, Lucifer, you are,” she said, more as a command than a basic statement of fact. “But that wasn’t what I was referring to.”

  “Okay, don’t do that,” Lucifer said.

  “Do what, darling?”

  “You know damn well what!” Lucifer pulled her arm free. “Don’t pull that fortune-teller crap with me! I hate when you do that. Things don’t always happen the way you say they will.”

  “I didn’t mean to upset you. But I will not insult you by lying. You will toss yourself from a building window. You will kill yourself. Your coming here has all but ensured it.”

  Lucifer imagined her own skull on the wall next to the others. Would the Harlot ever stop to admire it, or would it become just another forgotten decoration? “You would never let that happen,” Lucifer said, more in an attempt to convince herself than the Harlot.

  “You are my heir,” the Harlot said with finality. “Not even death will free you from that obligation.”

  The Harlot led Lucifer through a vaulted archway adorned with intricate sculptures of fairies and imps carved into the ancient wood. The faeries rose along the left side of the arch while the imps clawed their way up the right until they clashed at the top of the arch in a writhing mass of twisted claws and paper-thin wings.

  Past the archway was a cavernous dark that seemed to grow deeper the harder Lucifer tried to peer into it. It was impossible to see anything beyond just a few feet in front of her, but Lucifer could feel the vastness beyond, as if she were standing on the edge of a cliff on a moonless night. The Harlot pulled on a golden rope hanging down a nearby wall. Curtains the size of swimming pools parted to reveal a massive window that filled the room with the Aether’s golden light.

  They were in the Library of Secrets. Bookshelves hundreds of feet high stretched out into the darkness beyond what the light could penetrate. Several winged creatures dropped from their perch atop one of the great shelves and glided deeper into the dark recesses of the library.

  The Harlot moved toward a wide circle of wooden pedestals in the center of a large reading area. Each pedestal displayed an open book of varying size, all bound in ancient leather, which, thankfully, wasn’t human as far as Lucifer could tell. The biggest book was the size of a car door and bound with brass rivets, while the smallest could have fit in the palm of Lucifer’s hand.

  “You’ve been busy,” the Harlot said, casually paging through one of the more reasonably sized volumes.

  “Yeah, well, I’m trying to save a girl’s life.”

  “I was speaking of that, darling,” the Harlot said, pointing to the floor.

  Lucifer looked down and saw what the Harlot was referring to. In the center of the circle, a series of inlaid tiles several shades darker than the surrounding marble floor formed a huge symbol th
at was almost impossible to make out. But Lucifer didn’t need to climb to a higher vantage point to know what it was. It was the same symbol tattooed on her shoulder: the strange lowercase “h.”

  Lucifer scratched her shoulder. “Don’t worry. No one knows how to remove it.”

  “Because it can’t be removed. Did you honestly think, after all I went through to mark you as my heir, that I would allow it to be so easily undone?”

  “I’ll find a way to get rid of it.” Lucifer didn’t try to hide the venom in her voice. “Someday, I’ll get rid of this tattoo and be done with you.”

  “No, Lucifer. You won’t.”

  The Harlot turned and stared out the window. Beyond the soiled glass, the blasted wasteland of the Aether rolled out to the misshapen horizon. Wilted trees rose from the blackened soil, their branches splintered and twisted at unnatural angles. The red and orange hues smeared across the sky were clotted with gray and yellow clouds that hovered like bad moods waiting to vomit their anger onto the parched earth below.

  “You once stood on the shores of the Abyss amidst the slaughter of deities and demigods,” the Harlot said. “Yet you survived. Becoming my heir was a condition of that survival.”

  “Okay, two things,” Lucifer spat. “First, I was in the middle of that mess because you put me there. You orchestrated the whole damn thing just so you could mark me, so don’t make it sound like you did me a favor. And second, that was a condition I never agreed to. I never wanted to be your heir. I’d rather be eaten by rabid badgers than spend eternity here, going insane from all the secrets bouncing around inside my head. But you forced it on me. And now my life is one giant carnival of magic-covered suck.” Lucifer gave the Harlot a thumbs-up. “Thanks for that.”

  “Are you quite finished?” the Harlot asked. “If I hadn’t marked you as my heir, you would be dead. Or worse. So, you’re welcome for that.” The Harlot gently held Lucifer’s chin in her fingers. “You are a gifted young woman, and it would have been a waste to simply let you die, your potential unfulfilled.”

  “So now I’m the ‘chosen one.’ Hurray for me.”

  The Harlot laughed. “Darling, you were the one foolish enough to steal from me. Had you not made me aware of your existence, you would have died in that favela and I would have found another to be my heir. You chose yourself.”

  “Is that really true?”

  “More or less.”

  “Well, don’t hold your breath waiting for a thank you. On second thought, go ahead. Hold your breath. Hold it as hard and as long as you can.”

  The Harlot turned back to the book, ignoring the insult.

  Lucifer said, “So what you’re saying is that if I hadn’t robbed you, I wouldn’t have this stupid ‘h’ on my back.”

  The Harlot turned and gave Lucifer an incredulous stare. “You are marked heir to the Keeper of Secrets. A station that predates English script by several thousand years. Why would you possibly think the symbol is an ‘h’?”

  “You know . . . for ‘Harlot’ or whatever.”

  The Harlot shook her head and turned back to the book.

  “Why do they call you the Harlot, anyway?” Lucifer asked. “Or would that cost me my happiest childhood memory?”

  “You have no happy childhood memories.”

  “If you don’t want to tell me, fine. But you don’t have to be a dick about it.”

  “Is that really the secret you came here to learn?” the Harlot asked.

  “Of course not.” Lucifer stood next to the Harlot to look at the book on the pedestal she was leafing through. The pages were completely blank. “I have to get to Witchdown,” she said. “A girl, Gina, is there and I have to save her.”

  The Harlot produced a large quill from her sleeve and began to write in the book, her scratchings a collection of jagged lines that somehow formed words. “Why do you want to save this girl?”

  “Uh, she was kidnapped by a witch. And I could be wrong, but I don’t think it was just so the witch could have someone show her how to update her iPhone.”

  “But why you? Why are you so focused on saving this girl?” the Harlot asked.

  “Her dad hired me. I’m getting paid.”

  “You are a skilled thief worth ten times your weight in gold. You don’t need money. So I will ask again. Why?”

  For a moment, Lucifer didn’t speak. The only sound in the great library was the Harlot’s quill scratching across the paper and its echoes disappearing in the dark.

  “Her dad, Buck,” Lucifer finally said. “You should have seen him, Harlot. Such a proud, powerful man. But he was broken. Desperate. When his daughter was taken, he was destroyed. Gina must be somebody special.”

  Lucifer looked up from her thoughts when she noticed the Harlot had stopped writing. The Harlot was staring off into the dark, her voice barely more than a whisper. “All daughters are special,” the Harlot said.

  “Not everyone thinks so,” Lucifer said.

  The Harlot turned, pulled from her reverie and said, “No. Not everyone does.” She turned and brushed a strand of hair away from Lucifer’s eyes and said, “But everyone should.”

  Lucifer wanted to push the Harlot away but just stood there instead.

  “So you wish to get to the fabled town of Witchdown,” the Harlot said, turning back to her book. “Witchdown is in the Shade.”

  “I know.”

  “Yes, you do. Thanks to poor Helen Peltier. I’m sure she didn’t mind being woken from her eternal slumber and forced to crawl back into her corpse just to satisfy your curiosity.”

  “Please, don’t, Harlot. I feel bad enough as it is.”

  The Harlot closed the book and hid the quill inside her sleeve again. “Good. Mrs. Peltier was a kind and gentle woman who sought to make the world a better place. You shouldn’t have disturbed her with your petty resurrections. You should have come to me instead.”

  “And how much would that have cost me? Huh? Seriously, you’d think that being your heir would at least get me a discount!”

  “Contrary to what you might think, I help you as much as I’m allowed.”

  “So you’ll tell me how to get to the Shade?”

  “That is a secret I cannot share for free. I’m sorry, Lucifer.”

  “But there’s a way. You’re telling me there’s a way.”

  “There is, but only for those rare individuals born with the gift of magic. And even then, it is a deadly proposition. It’s only been attempted a few times before and successful even fewer. Most recently, a sorceress of incredible power was able to travel there, though only for the briefest of moments and not without suffering . . . consequences.”

  “Will she help me?”

  “If she were able, I believe that she would. But she is consumed with helping her nephew at the moment. That poor boy has even worse luck than you, darling.”

  “I find that hard to believe,” Lucifer said. “But what about me? I’m a thief, not a sorceress. How can I get there?”

  The Harlot shook her head. “The price for that secret is more than you would be willing to pay.”

  “Try me,” Lucifer said.

  “Emotions.” The Harlot spat the word as if it were sour in her mouth. “If you wish to know the secret of traveling to Witchdown, you will give me your emotions. All of your emotions. You will give me your capacity for love, hate, sadness, joy, empathy, sympathy, pathos of every stripe. I will turn you into a husk devoid of any and all feelings. A homunculus incapable of experiencing anything endemic to the human condition. That is the price of this secret.”

  Lucifer scratched her head. “Okay, is that just a fancy way of saying I’d never be happy again?”

  “No, darling. It is a very plain way of saying you would never even know if you were. Do we have a deal?”

  “Of course not.” There was a part of Lucifer that liked the idea of not feeling anything. A life without experiencing sadness or regret would be wonderful indeed. But no joy? No happiness? She couldn’t agre
e to that, no matter how rare those moments were.

  Lucifer had hoped that being the Harlot’s heir might have some benefit when it came to learning secrets, but she should have known better. Hope was not a plan. “Then is there anything you can tell me? Anything at all? I have no idea how much time Gina has, or if she’s even still alive.”

  The Harlot took a deep breath and placed her hand on the closed book. “I cannot tell you how to travel to the Shade without exacting a price. There’s nothing to be done for that. What I can tell you is that there are others who may know.”

  “Others?”

  “The Shade is a realm of death, yet Witchdown is an oasis in that desert of life. An oasis created by witches.”

  “Yeah, I already know that.”

  “Then why do you insist on playing the dimwitted child when the solution is obvious? If you seek secrets from the province of witches, ask a witch.”

  “But you’re the only witch I know—” Lucifer snapped her mouth shut. She wished she could take the words back, but it was too late. She herself hated being called a witch because she knew very well the horror one had to embrace to become one. And though there was no doubt that the Harlot was a monster, she wasn’t that kind of monster. At least, as far as Lucifer knew.

  The Harlot faced her without turning around. She seemed to fold in on herself until she was looking directly at Lucifer, wisps of shadows bleeding off of her like black steam. The swirling darkness of her eyes stilled and swallowed the light around her.

  “Harlot, I’m sorry, I just meant—”

  “SILENCE!” The Harlot’s incredible shout hit Lucifer like a wave from a blast furnace. The sound echoed through the library, kicking dust from the ancient shelves and creating a bilious fog that rolled into the dark beyond. “I. Am not. A witch,” the Harlot said, her voice filling Lucifer’s ears with a dull ache. “You wish to know the benefits of being my heir? Here. Allow me to introduce you to the last man to have insulted me so.”

  The Harlot grabbed the book she had been writing in and tossed it at Lucifer’s feet. When Lucifer was finally able to look away from the Harlot’s terrible gaze and at the book, she noticed that she had been wrong earlier. This one was bound in human skin.