by Louisa Lo
I didn’t have the chance to figure it out, though. There was a sudden flash of light, then every candle on the crystal chandeliers exploded like fireworks. Little rockets of fire rained down on the dance floor.
I squinted. They weren’t rockets at all. They looked like large cookies in the shape of milk bones, just like…dog biscuits?
The six golden lost-soul retrievers howled, then jumped over the circle of hellfire in their bid to get at the dog biscuits, their toy of rapist soul promptly forgotten. There must’ve been a potent dose of enchanted dognip in the biscuits, because the retrievers grew more unruly with each one they ingested, ignoring a lifetime of discipline training.
There was shocked silence amongst the supernaturals, but they soon sprang into action. Each supernatural used the weapon that was most natural to them, from stun spells to scythes to wands, but the effort was largely unsuccessful. The problem was, lost-soul retrievers were not only ferocious and fast, they were also bred to be cunning to the bone. Combine that with the defiance of almost-puppies, and it was impossible to contain them.
It would seem that the dog biscuits were also bewitched to stick to the supernaturals’ bodies. Once the hyped-up hounds finished the treats on the floor, they proceeded to jump up on their hind legs in an attempt to lick the stuck-on biscuits off their supernatural masters.
In hindsight, the older, calmer dogs would’ve been a better choice, huh?
Before anyone could shake off the smell of dog breath and salvia, the candles on the crystal chandeliers exploded again, this time sending down buckets of crimson-cultured liquid.
Thoroughly soaked, the respectable and dignified members of the supernatural world did the only thing they could.
Screamed and ran like little girls.
Complete chaos and pandemonium. It was like Carrie, except that liquid wasn’t blood. Please tell me it wasn’t blood, because now I had a pretty good idea what was going on.
As if to confirm my suspicion, Fir chortled as he swung ’round and ’round the ceiling on a rope attached to the central chandelier, taking in all the mayhem with sheer delight.
Boone was enchanting the floor to be extra slippery, causing Santa Claus to glide across it with his legs up in the air. Ty created the illusion of the exit being surrounded by fire, and Madeleine screamed, thinking her little black dress was ablaze. Clef stood at the corner of the ballroom, muttering under his breath, and somehow my confused Cousin Fred kept banging into those around him.
Oh, no.
The super serious guests.
Fred’s strange blind spots.
The panic.
The illusion.
Fir, Clef, Boone, and Ty weren’t interested in gourmet chocolate strawberries or the sheer thrill of getting into an exclusive event. They were after a career-launching, put-your-name-on-the-map kind of trickery.
And it worked. I’d be happy for them if I wasn’t so busy being horrified.
My cell phone vibrated with an incoming tweet. To lower my chance of becoming victim to my half-brothers’ pranks, I made sure I got regular updates by following them, and every trickster organization imaginable out there, on Twitter.
I glanced at the tweet. It was from Fir, typed with the spare hand currently not holding the rope:
@trickstersunite @mischiefrus BREAKING: All #hell broke loose at #vengeancedemonsball. Calling all #tricksters 2 come & play! Sorry @v4megan couldn’t resist.
Oh, no, no, no. With this tweet, every trickster within the next three planes would show up and join in the fun. Sorry? Sorry wasn’t nearly enough.
So much for trying to get on Grandma’s good side.
Madeleine drew my eyes again, this time in a dilemma I would’ve found funny under any other circumstances. From the back of her little black dress poked a thick, hairy, and curly pig’s tail that wasn’t supposed to show for another few weeks, but no doubt had been induced to premature arrival by her heightened stress. Sweat and tears marred her face, though her tail remained bouncy as she zoomed from one side of the room to another, as if she thought she could outrun her newest body part.
All around the ballroom there were mini-tornados forming, signifying the arrival of the trickster party crashers. Enid ran around the room, doing this wave thing that seemed to stall the tornados’ spins, but there were simply too many incomings for her to stop them all.
Still midway down the stairs, I heard the heavy oak door of the second floor swing open. Uh-oh.
Thud, thud, thud.
The overexcited, teeth-baring retrievers gave a great big yawn and promptly lay down on the dance floor. They were snoring before their heads hit the ground.
Thud, thud, thud.
The crimson-colored liquid was lifted from the surfaces where it had landed and gathered itself back into the buckets it came from.
My grandmother, the matriarch of the Aequitas clan, one of the oldest families in the history of vengeance, stood tall and proud at the top of the stairs. In her hands was a bejeweled, wicked-looking staff. She banged it on the floor again.
Thud, thud, thud.
There was a hush as Grandma’s stern voice rang over the ballroom. “Be gone, children of Loki.”
Every trickster in the room was ejected from the demon plane, back to wherever they came from.
And though technically I wasn’t a pure child of Loki, I was ejected just the same.
Except I didn’t go straight home like the rest of them.
Chapter Seven
ONE MINUTE I WAS on the grand staircase of Grandma Aequitas’ ballroom, the next a mini-tornado wrapped itself around me, taking me away and depositing me in…the exact same spot I’d been moments ago.
“What the—” I slumped and gripped the railing in an effort to prevent myself from falling. I looked around. My surroundings were exactly as they should be, from the chandelier with a broken rope, to the sweeping staircase, to the vengeance fresco on the ceiling. Yet everyone and everything around me looked washed out, discolored, as if there was a thick layer of fog between us.
Grandma was making some sort of announcement in front of the gathering crowd at the center of the ballroom, but I couldn’t make out her echoed words. It was like I was underwater and the sound was muffled.
That was strange. Within the mist enveloping me, I swear I could make out various locations in multiple realities overlapping the ballroom. There was what looked like my bedroom on the human plane, and another room with oddly familiar carpets.
I squinted, and that particular reality came into sharper focus. The inside of a suburban home was a juxtaposition to Grandma’s mansion. My parents’ living room. Dad was standing over the sprawled figures of Fir, Clef, Boone, and Ty, an arch vengeance demon in full fury. I didn’t have to have the volume on to know what that conversation was all about.
“Dad, can you hear me?” I called out, but he continued to lay into my half-brothers without a single glance my way.
“Hey, Dad!” I screamed as loud as I could. No response from him. With racing heartbeat, I called out to Grandma down in the ballroom. “Grandma Aequitas!”
She didn’t give any sign of acknowledgement, which wasn’t entirely out of the ordinary, except not a single person from the gathering crowd looked up at me, either. Curiosity was universal, supernatural or not.
Unless they couldn’t hear me. Nobody could. Not even Grandma.
I scrambled to get up, almost slipped on the polished wood, and started making my way down the stairs—
And ran right into Cousin Fred, who was making his way up, pressing a handkerchief against a broken nose.
I mean, I ran right through him, like I was some disembodied lost spirit. Cousin Fred didn’t even blink in the moment right before our bodies should’ve impacted. He could no more see me than he could feel my physical presence.
I patted my body with shaky hands. It felt real enough to me. That ought to give me some comfort, but I was feeling anything but comforted. If I was real, yet nobody coul
d see me, then where the hell was I? How could I be in different places at once, yet not really in any of them? Was I going to be stuck like this for all of eternity, existing, yet not?
An old legend popped into my head, cutting through the growing trepidation. According to the stories, there were barren spaces, realms of emptiness between planes. Maybe due to me being a product of two worlds? Grandma’s ejection didn’t quite send me back to my room on the human plane, but landed me in the shadowy boundary between the worlds instead.
I took a few deep breaths, tightened my grip on the railing, and tried my best not to freak out. But I was.
I couldn’t stay here. But how was I supposed to go home? All portal openings required an originating address. I had no idea where here was.
A low chanting began in the distance. Initially I thought it was Grandma’s male choir starting up again, but a glance down the ballroom confirmed that she was still fuming and gesturing. It would seem a less than opportune time to restart the music. Also, the chanting sounded much louder than anything else I’d heard since arriving in Shadow World.
I paused and listened hard. The chanting was indeed male, though it was coming from far fewer than four-dozen chanters, the standard size of a choir suitable for an event like tonight’s. The style was Gregorian, and when the art form was created, it was indeed done by monks. The sound originated from within the Shadow World itself.
And the chanters were getting closer. Their voices were getting louder, and I could make out faint shapes from within the fog.
Three hooded figures in long, flowing, dark robes emerged from the mist, prayer beads in hand. Due to the thickness of the mist, their materialization came as a shock. One minute they sounded like they were still far away, the next they were merely a few feet from me.
The figures glided the rest of the way to me. On closer inspection, what they had in hand weren’t prayer beads at all, but the tiny skulls of some unfortunate rodents strung together. The monks, for lack of a better name for them, surrounded me; their chanting rose to a crescendo then fell silent.
The monk in the middle of the group had a prominent pointy chin. He extended a talon-like index finger towards my face, one sharp fingernail tracing my cheek. If my nerves weren’t so frayed, I’d have laughed at how cliché it all looked—a mysterious realm, larger-than-life hooded figures, a menacing caress on a frightened girl’s cheek…but I was too busy leaning away from the creepy touch. Yet a part of me also wanted to lean forward, mesmerized by the single brown fingernail pressing against my flesh; like a car crash, I couldn’t look away. It was long, ugly, and curled, similar to a witch’s. My stomach churned.
Don’t move. Don’t even flinch, or that nail will cut you like a razor.
When Monk in the Middle lifted his hand and struck it down toward me, I couldn’t help but squeeze my eyes shut. I knew it was cowardly and un-vengeance demon-like of me, but I couldn’t help it.
Then I heard the sound of shuffling; something dropped onto the ground and bounced down the stairs. Someone cursed profusely.
Eyes still closed, I touched my cheek tentatively and felt no smearing of blood on it. There was that, at least.
I opened my eyes and looked down. I had no idea what drew me in that direction first, but something told me it was crucial.
At the base of the stairs was the talon-like hand, but what was more interesting was the area where the hand should’ve ended and the wrist began. There was no savagely severed wound, but a plastic handle. In fact, the whole damn thing looked plastic, what with the index finger still pointing outward in a rigid fashion and the very absence of blood.
The hand wasn’t cut off, it was dropped, like the prop that it was. Come to think of it, the skull necklaces looked fake too. I was reminded of the Halloween accessories human kids would get from novelty shops to jazz up their costumes. What kind of supernatural would buy from mortal stores, when there should be plenty of horrors at their own disposal?
I took a deep breath and rolled the scent of my surroundings around on my tongue, something I should’ve done right from the beginning, had I not been so freaked out. There was no trace of magic in the air that I could taste.
I rounded on the three creatures. Whatever they might be, they were in trouble now. And they would’ve realized it too, if they weren’t so busy arguing amongst themselves. Monk in the Middle seemed to be the leader, so I mentally labeled the other ones Sidekick Number One and Sidekick Number Two. They had the heavier build and strong facial features of dwarfs, though not the height, as they were only a bit shorter than me. Now that I wasn’t busy being scared to death, I could see their not entirely monk-like pot bellies.
It was hard to tell what manner of creatures these three were based on mere surface appearances, due to the huge amount of intermarrying between brownies, gnomes, hobgoblins, dwarfs, and elves since the medieval period, the last time humans had documented their looks. If I were to guess, I would say they were some form of elves, judging not from any specific physical attributes, but from the odd sense of grace in their micro-movements.
Even if not graceful in speech.
“I told you it’s too heavy to cart around.” Monk in the Middle turned to Sidekick Number One. When the leader had chanted during his entrance, before he’d ruined his badassness, I’d thought he was a deep baritone. Now his voice went up an octave to what I suspected was his natural voice. “Why did you have to pick up something so big?”
“Told you it was too bulky to maneuver,” Sidekick Number Two chimed in. He was just a bit bigger than the others, a bit rougher looking.
“But it’s so nice and scary,” Sidekick Number One complained, looking at the fallen hand longingly.
“Well, it’s not so scary now. And I would’ve been fine.” Monk in the Middle poked Sidekick Number One in the shoulder. “If you hadn’t stepped on my robe and made me lose my balance—”
Sidekick Number One held up his hand. “It’s not my fault. Our robes are too long.”
“And why is it too long? Who got us those robes?” Monk in the Middle folded his arms.
“I did, but only because they were on sale. Buy two, get one free. You’re the one who said we should always try to get a deal—”
“Er, guys.” I cleared my throat.
“Yeah, but I didn’t mean cutting corners and making us trip all over.” Monk in the Middle bristled, totally ignoring me.
“Yeah, I almost tripped too,” Sidekick Number Two added helpfully.
“Fellas.” Pissed that earlier these cheap losers had managed to reduce me to a shivering mess with a pathetic fake hand, of all things, I flared my nose and went into full vengeance mode, pulling my power around me like a blanket. It wasn’t much, being borrowed and everything, but I was betting it was more than what these guys had.
The three faces around me bleached, then Monk in the Middle took a good look at me and did a double take.
“You’re not her,” he blurted. He turned to his sidekicks. “She’s not her.”
The sidekicks looked at each other and shrugged.
“Didn’t you check the picture?” Sidekick Number One asked his counterpart.
“I thought you checked it.”
I rubbed my temple and felt the beginning of a migraine.
Then I thought about what Esme had said about Grandma’s male choir.
The choir doesn’t sound right. The singers aren’t evenly distributed in skill.
I now knew what that must have meant. The three guys in front of me had infiltrated the ball by hiding in the male choir. Their singing skills might be on par with each other, but they didn’t match the rest of the choir. Did they come to the ball just to follow me here? But why?
Their bickering continued.
“Are you sure she’s not the same girl? They all look the same.” Sidekick Number One scratched his head.
“They all look the same to you.” Monk in the Middle rolled his eyes.
“Enough!” My voice boomed
in the substanceless world, thanks to an extra kick of power fueled by annoyance.
The three jumped. Monk in the Middle looked at me again. “You’re not her.”
“I thought we’d already established that.” I rolled my eyes.
“Then where is she?”
“Who is she? What are you up to? What is this place? What’s going on? Did you come to the ball to target me?” I fired off my questions in quick succession with a less-than-subtle compulsion. I had to get home, and these assholes were going to help me do it whether they liked it or not.
The three looked at me, eyes glassy as they came under my spell.
I took that opportunity to ask in a firm voice, “Who are you?”
“Bonaventure the Third,” Monk in the Middle said.
“Wistari,” Sidekick Number One replied.
Sidekick Number Two didn’t answer me. Instead, he shook his head like a wet dog and blinked rapidly until his eyes became clear again. I’d heard of some giants having natural immunity to vengeance magic. Maybe an elf with some distant giant blood in him? That would explain the tougher appearance. It would be just my luck to bump into one, tonight of all nights.
Looked like I still had the attention of the other two, though. They just stood there with their jaws hanging, their postures relaxed and passive. But before I could get another question out, Sidekick Number Two grabbed their hands and made all of them fall backwards, down the staircase.
Into the portal he’d just conjured in midair. He’d opened it through his sheer will. His own damn sheer will.
The portal closed before I could follow. Oh crap, there went my only lead.
I didn’t know how long I remained on that staircase. My sole point of reference was “watching” Dad yell some more at my half-siblings and Grandma answer questions from the press with a grim face. Both instances could last either five minutes or thirty, though.
Chanting started in the distance again.
The same Gregorian style, three part harmony, faint shapes from within the fog.