Cash in Hand

by TA Moore

  The bogeyman’s spine straightened. “Oh yes, that would be… good for them both,” he said. “I’ll get my assistant to email you the boy’s schedule, but we can make it work whenever the child—Ellie—is free. So important for them, isn’t it, to make the right connections at this age?”

  “She’ll mostly want to talk about horses and K-Pop, on past experience,” Cash said.

  The bogeyman probably winked at him. “Thanks for the tip,” he said. “I’ll set him some homework on that tonight. Excuse me.”

  He ducked away, and a faint dimness to the air and the smell of mold trailed behind him. Arkady snorted.

  “Look at him,” he said. “He thinks his Grub is going to marry into the family now, thanks to you.”

  Cash moved his plate out of reach of Arkady’s fingers. He wanted to eat some of it, and there would be plenty of bones for Arkady to crunch once the party got into full swing.

  “Most monsters in Roanoke think she’s a liability.”

  “Then they’re stupid,” Arkady said calmly. “Mother can’t use Ellie, so it’s possible to just love her. As much as she’s able, at least. If someone made Ellie happy, they would have Donna’s support in life.”

  He plucked the plate out of Cash’s grip and handed it off to a servant on the way past.

  “Hey,” Cash protested as he grabbed for the yakitori skewer on the way by. “I was going to eat that.”

  Arkady tipped his head down and pressed a toothy kiss against Cash’s ear. “And once this is over, I’m going to eat you,” he said, his voice low with the sort of promise that could be dangerous. Just because he probably didn’t mean it literally, didn’t mean he couldn’t do it literally. “Until then, we’ll both have to go hungry. Come on. The Hunt starts soon, and I want a dance.”

  For a second, Cash resisted the tug of Arkady’s hand, old excuses and reasons tart on his tongue. Servants don’t dance with their masters, after all, but it had been years since he’d had a paycheck from them, so he supposed he could do what he wanted.

  And that, more than he wanted to admit, was to follow Arkady out into the dizzy reel of velvet and scale that spun on the time-worn stone.

  Let it be, he told his monster as he laced his fingers through Arkady’s. I know it’s pretend, so let it be.

  For once, it listened to him, the sour little voice that refused to let him lie to himself quiet as they threw themselves into the crush. He clung onto Arkady, his freshly pierced nipple tender as it was pressed against the rich red brocade of Arkady’s frock coat, and he struggled against the feverish throb of the music.

  It wanted him to spin and dip, breathless and mindless, until his feet were bloody and his heart ready to burst. To dance until the music stopped or he dropped, whichever came first, was fun at one of the monster-run clubs, when you were soaked with sweat and running on adrenaline until the musicians fumbled and faltered to a stop with bloody fingers and raw throats. In the halls of the Abascal, the musicians were made of bone and sinew, strung together by Donna’s will, and they’d play until she said stop.

  There was already blood on the floor, a long smear of it where someone had been dragged out of the way. It stuck to the soles of the other dancers and picked out their footwork in damp, sticky prints on the stone.

  The monster’s waltz winnowed the weak from the strong. Unfortunately, Cash was one of the weak. The strings of the violin pinched at his heels, and the heady wheeze of the organ’s pipes urged him on, on, on until his heart stuttered in time with it.

  Arkady pressed a hand against the small of Cash’s back, fingers spread to claim as much skin as possible, and held firm against the fever of music. If he wanted to, he could probably match the other dancers’ frenzied, desperate pace, but it wouldn’t impress Donna if anyone kept up. That was the least she expected of her guests, to not die of her hospitality.

  The point was to see who ignored the pull of stolen humanity as the music pulled it out of their blood and danced to their own beat.

  “I forgot that sound you make when I’m inside you,” Arkady murmured, soft and filthy, against his ear. “That whimper. Like I gutted you and you liked it.”

  Cash shivered at the brutal immediacy of that image. He could feel the sound in his throat, scratchy and hot, and in the taut flick of pleasure that tightened his ass. One hunger to counter another, and it was one that had always worked to distract Cash.

  He curled one hand around the back of Arkady’s neck and grazed his thumb over the tender spot where his pulse lived. It made him feel better to feel the quick throb of blood under his touch. Arkady looked calm and collected, but the music had as much of an effect on him as it did Cash.

  “I don’t recall,” he said primly as he rested his head on Arkady’s shoulder. He waited for the hitch in Arkady’s chest as he got ready to argue. Then he added, “Maybe you can jog my memory later.”

  Arkady slid his hand down to cup Cash’s leather-covered ass and squeezed roughly as he tugged him—somehow—closer. The play of lean, long muscles under velvet and leather distracted Cash as Arkady guided them through the muddied steps of the waltz.

  “Oh, I’m definitely going to make you whimper,” Arkady promised. He spun them out of the way of a high-stepping Jersey Devil, its head tossed and nostrils red and wet, and finished his promise against Cash’s ear. “And sooner rather than later.”

  The ragged breath that Cash sucked in tasted like Arkady. He could feel Arkady’s warmth on his tongue. It didn’t exactly help him focus.

  “We’re supposed to be looking for your leak,” he said. “Not—”

  He stumbled over what else Arkady might want to look for—on Cash, in Cash—because apparently he either had denial or nothing. Sometimes being too human sucked more than others.

  “Pleasure?” Arkady said. His earlier mood had lifted and been replaced by smug good humor. He turned and brushed a kiss over the thin skin on the underside of Cash’s wrist. “Your human is showing, Casper. Any monster worth his salt can keep more than one hunt in play at a time. Especially when the prey in one has already tasted the… hook.”

  Cash blushed. The hot wash of color made Arkady chuckle with low, dark appreciation. That or the clash of pink cheeks against the pure red shirt amused him.

  “Besides,” Arkady said before Cash could come up with something clever to say, “if you want a good oversight of the wedding guests, where better to get one than here?”

  It was a good point. Cash lifted his head enough to glance around. The music throbbed in his head, between his eardrum and his jawbone, as he took in the hall. It was like being in the heart of a kaleidoscope as the jewel-bright colors gyrated around them.

  The dancers’ auras flared to the music, stretched up from flesh and bone until they were only tethered along the spine. Nobody with a secret that big would risk the loss of control that came with the waltz. But there were a few who moved against the tune, like Arkady. In the middle of the floor, Yana danced on bloodstained silk slippers with her still-human lover, her smile practiced and set at just the right curve to be happy, but not stupidly so. He clung to her, dazed and off-balance from the assault on his senses.

  It gave Cash pause for a second as he loosened his grip on Arkady’s shoulder. Was that what he looked like? Out of his depth? Desperate.

  “No,” Arkady said.

  “What?”

  “It’s not the same,” Arkady said as he glanced over at his sister. “You belong.”

  It wasn’t clear if he meant Jerome or Yana didn’t. Cash didn’t ask. It was one argument he could dodge.

  They turned again, and Cash lost sight of Yana, the flip of the grubby hem of her dress the last thing he saw. Donna sat primly on an ornately carved leather-upholstered seat that somehow managed to stop an inch short of trying to be a throne, next to a frail hunch of a man in a stained gray robe. She cracked a leg bone open with her nails to scrape out the peppered marrow and offered him half. The hand he extended to take it was thin, gray, an
d membranous—newly grown. His aura was thick and heavy on his skin, like a layer of slime.

  The Worm.

  Cash looked away before the Worm saw him. That was the sort of notice that wouldn’t end well for him. Behind them, the few who hadn’t dared the dance floor picked at the platters of banquet food, ignored the servers, and jostled for either attention or anonymity. None of them tugged at Cash’s monster. None of them wanted more than any other monster.

  “Nothing,” he said. The frustration of it caught in his throat. He hadn’t wanted to come back—not that he’d admitted to himself at least—but now that he was, the old need to prove his worth scratched at his teeth. “If the traitor’s here, I can’t find them.”

  Arkady hissed under his breath in frustration. “Damn,” he said. “But it doesn’t matter. We know what the plan is, and as long as we stop your human from exposing us, I can talk Kohary into giving us more time. We will find out what they have planned, and who they are.”

  He might. Cash would be gone with the confetti, swept back to his normal life. That was definitely what he wanted, and it didn’t make the back of his throat hurt with salt.

  “And what if it’s Donna behind it?” he asked quietly, his voice muffled against Arkady’s chest. “Or Yana.”

  “Or me?” Arkady asked.

  “If it were you, you wouldn’t have gotten me involved.”

  “Would I be scared that you’d find out my secrets?” Arkady teased, his voice light and cocky with bred-in aristocratic confidence. “If you did, would you turn me in?”

  “You wouldn’t risk me or Ellie in a plot like this,” Cash said. Whatever else they had been, might have been, would be in the future—Arkady wouldn’t have dragged him into this as a patsy. “If anything, you’d have sent us away.”

  The sharp clap of Donna’s hands silenced the musicians midnote. They let their hands drop to their sides, instruments clutched loosely in torn fingers, and stood patiently. The echoes of music bounced off the high walls and arched ceiling as the dancers staggered—bloodied, winded, flushed—to a halt.

  “A toast,” Donna said as she lifted a thin ivory goblet in one hand. The tusk was ground down thin enough that it glowed pink from the liquor within. “To my daughter, may she survive her birth and her first husband.”

  A ragged round of applause quickly died away. Yana tilted her head with an expression of wry appreciation for her mother’s careless cruelty, one hand on Jerome’s forearm to shush his attempt to protest. Glasses were snatched from tables and trays—sometimes from hands—and raised in the air.

  “Until the key to the pit is found,” Donna proclaimed, her voice rich and layered with her birth tongue’s accent. For effect. “Until the angel opens the gates. We will endure, thrive, and multiply. We walk in darkness so that, one day, our grandspawn shall walk in the fires of hell.”

  At the edge of the dance floor, Kohary, elegant and alone in unadorned black, raised his glass.

  “To the Prodigium,” he said, his voice cool, composed, and pitched to carry, “who will take us there.”

  The silence was brittle and felt like it would be sharp when it broke. Donna stared at Kohary for a drawn-out moment and then smiled. It looked genuine, which was scary.

  “To the Prodigium,” she acknowledged, “and all our children.”

  It was a lot to toast. The cheer from the crowd was a little confused, uncertain exactly what they were meant to celebrate, but the burn of alcohol as it hit the back of their throats steadied them.

  “To the Prodigium!”

  “To the Abascals!”

  “Sláinte!”

  The cheers stuttered over each other. Next to Donna, the Worm pointedly downed his glass in silence. He snapped the stem of the glass when he finished and dropped the goblet to the ground to crush underfoot.

  In the center of the hall, surrounded by a ring of empty space as the dancers stepped back, Yana picked up her skirts high enough to flash scarred knees and curtsied.

  “To me,” she agreed, her voice chill and clear. “At long last, Mother.”

  The two Abascal women stared at each other for a second. Then Donna turned and gestured to the musicians. They jerked to life under her attention and prepped their instruments, bruised fingers poised over aged keys on the piano and the violin tucked under a blistered chin.

  “An instructional for the happy couple,” she said. “Play ‘The Auld Wife.’”

  She gathered her skirts, all heavy gold shot through with ivory threads, and stepped up onto the stage with them. As the bow was scraped over the strings for the introductory skirl, she lifted the remnants of her dinner and licked the bony knuckle of the thing.

  “For she loved her husband dearly,” she sang, with a pause as she wiped her mouth on her sleeve. “But another twice as well.”

  Her voice was high and sweet, with a chorister’s purity to the notes as they soared. Whoever she’d plucked the talent from had been truly gifted, so no wonder she held it close. Yana pulled a quick, ugly face as she registered the song her mother had picked—an old Irish murder-ballad about an incompetent husband-killer—but then offered her hand to Jerome. He looked nervous but gulped and took it.

  The assembled monsters jostled each other—teeth bared and elbows jabbed into ribs—as they pulled back to give the happy couple room to move through their paces. No one wanted to lose their position at or near the front of the mob.

  “A beautiful couple,” Kohary’s low, rough voice remarked over Cash’s shoulder. “The Worm regrets he won’t be able to stay for the wedding.”

  Arkady didn’t look away from his sister’s dance. Neither did Cash, even as the back of his neck crawled with nerves.

  “A shame.”

  “I’m sure he’ll be missed.”

  “We were expecting great things from his wedding present,” Arkady said dryly. He finally turned, and despite a brief resistance, Cash turned with him. “How long do I have before the Prodigium sends you back?”

  Kohary actually looked regretful before he schooled his face back into unreadable lines. “Not long,” he said. “Once the Worm is out of Abascal territory, he’ll rally the Prodigium Seats to act. I’ll have no choice.”

  “For the first time in her life, my mother is innocent,” Arkady said.

  Kohary glanced down at his feet, as if he expected the devil himself to come up in protest at that slur. Cash had as well.

  “Or at least, not involved,” Arkady said with a flicker of tired amusement.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Kohary said. “The Worm has wanted this excuse for a long time. Your mother has gone unchecked for too long, and he is… concerned… about her ambitions.”

  “Who isn’t?” Arkady asked.

  “What will happen?” Cash asked. “To her family. To my daughter?”

  Kohary looked at him for a moment. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “At best, she’ll be made the Prodigium’s ward.”

  Cash swallowed. His throat hurt, and something he suspected was guilt scraped at the back of his ribs. That wasn’t a best he could accept, and that meant worst was going to be terrible. He had already known that, which was why he should have focused on who did this. Maybe he did love Arkady, but Ellie was his daughter, and she had to come first.

  “For what it’s worth, I believe you,” Kohary said. “Your mother is hardly part of the human world. How would she even get in contact with some human TV show? But it doesn’t matter. The Prodigium keeps order. Not justice. Once the—”

  The doleful toll of bells interrupted Kohary. He paused as he cocked his head to listen and then shrugged the rest of his apology as he put his hand on Arkady’s shoulder.

  “Your sister’s marriage might be short, but I hope it’s happy,” he said.

  Then the gates were dragged open—the scrape of iron-shod wood as it dragged through the ruts in the stone somehow caught up into the music—and the Abascal Hounds bayed their way into the party. All bones and pale hide, with bloodshot h
uman eyes in overlong Saluki hound heads, they tore into any monster not quick enough to get out of their way.

  It should have grabbed Cash’s attention—it was certainly meant to—but his mind had grabbed on to something else. How would Donna get in touch with Harry, or whoever had passed the story up to Harry? How would any of the Prodigium’s old sour monsters? It wasn’t like they could look it up.

  Behind the Hounds, the Hunter came, hunched over the weed-slimed neck of the kelpie as they galloped through the gates. A bone mask hid his face, yellowed and crusted with lichen, and a hangman’s rope dangled from one hand. The monsters laughed, gasped, and shoved their way out of his path as he goaded the horse forward. Cash lost his grip on Arkady as the crowd surged again to watch the Hunter snare his prey. He lost sight of him too as well-dressed things shouldered him out of their way and toward the back of the press.

  Cash let it happen. He dragged his fingers through his tangled hair as the Hunter, Jerome tossed over his thighs, charged out of the hall.

  Shit.

  Cash had asked the wrong question.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “WHAT?” ANNA-BETH said—yelled—down the phone. The dissonant screech of death metal vocals made the line fracture with static bursts. “Did who ask?”

  Cash pressed back against the wall. The roughly carved stone was cold through the thin fabric of his shirt, and the knobbly edges jabbed into his shoulders and spine. He could hear the excited yelps of the wedding party as they got Yana ready for the chase to get her groom back. It wouldn’t take long before they spilled out onto the shore.

  “Anyone.” He tasted salt on his tongue and wiped his nose on his sleeve again. A troll had caught him across the nose with the end of her tail, the tuft braided and banded in gold. He wasn’t sure if his nose was bleeding or the skin had split. “Forget who asked about local horrors. Did anyone want to know who to contact with a big story?”

  Anna-Beth blew air out between her lips on the other end of the line “People ask all the time, Cash,” she said. “Everyone’s got a granny with a cursed puppet or a spirit in the sink that they wanna get on TV. How many ‘for reasons unbeknownst I have found myself cursed’ letters does Winslow get a week?”