by Louisa Lo
“Mom, you’re a terrible liar, you know that? What’s really happening?”
Mom sighed. “The coming Monday is not just the Day of Contemplation. It’s also the Day of Shenanigans for us tricksters.”
“What?” I yelled, then lowered my voice in fear that my human roommate would come running.
Given that the Day of Contemplation was a time for quiet reflection of the vengeance performed over the past year, and the Day of Shenanigans was a jubilant celebration of all things chaotic, how the heck was I, a child of both worlds, supposed to observe both festivals on the same day? While I had finally reached a point in my life where I was at peace with my dual natures, I was never big on holidays, and the vengeance one sounded as boring as the trickster one was over-exuberant. Talk about a rock and a hard place.
“I thought the Day of Shenanigans wasn’t for another month.” I sounded whiny even to my own ears.
“It’s changed this year,” Mom explained.
“Again?”
“You know how the trickster calendar works.”
Just like how there were two human calendars—Gregorian and Lunar—trickster and vengeance demons ran on different ones as well. The discrepancy had led to all trickster-calendar–based holidays landing on different dates on the vengeance calendar every year. For example, my mom’s birthday, which was in March according to the trickster calendar, was sometimes in February, April, or even January.
Way to get a child into trouble for not remembering.
“So this year, both holidays just happen to be on the same day?” I said incredulously.
“The first time in a thousand years,” Mom confirmed.
“But there’s more, isn’t there?” I guessed.
Mom swallowed. “Fir, Clef, Boone, and Ty all decided to take the Challenge this year. In fact, they already left the house for the human plane to get a head start.”
“Oh, no!” I moaned. The Challenge was a twenty-four hour pranking binge every trickster attempted during at least one Day of Shenanigans in their life. My four older half-brothers from Mom’s prior relationships spanned from their early to late twenties, the perfect age to do the Challenge, which required both cunning and physical endurance. “We gotta stop them. If they make headlines, guess who the authorities are going to blame? Me!”
The chaos from the Challenge was enough to drive straitlaced vengeance demons nuts on any given day, but on their most sacred holiday? Scandalous. As a hybrid, I had to work twice as hard to get half the respect in the vengeance demon society, and anything my trickster kin did would be looked upon as proof of why I, Megan, would never be a true vengeance demon.
Also, as someone targeted by an ancient order aiming to destroy the world—long story—I desperately needed to stay under the radar in order to flush out my enemy. The boys’ actions wouldn’t help any of this. They truly loved me, but asking them not to prank would be like asking scorpions not to sting.
Then I remembered this whole conversation had started with Mom springing the Hawaiian trip on me.
“You’re trying to head off the pranks, aren’t you?” I realized.
“I figured an impromptu trip would keep them out of trouble,” Mom replied sheepishly. “But I need you to be a part of it so it looks like a real family vacation, and not, er…”
“Us trying to be buzzkills on the best day of their lives?” Thankfully, as adult children under my parents’ roof, my half-brothers did have to play by their rules—if the ruling came with enough of a cover story to make it irrefutable.
“Yeah, that. The official story is that we, as a family, have decided that the best way to respect both holidays this year is to observe neither of them. Your father is picking up the boys as we speak from the city of Laodicea ad Mare, on the human side. I don’t think they’ve had time to land in too much trouble yet.”
After I’d gotten my instructions on the hotel check-in time and teleport coordinates, I hung up with Mom. Staring at the receiver, I couldn’t help but wonder about her interesting choice of words. Not in too much trouble yet, huh? Just how much was too much trouble? Why did I get a nagging feeling that Mom wasn’t telling me everything?
The only way to find out was to actually go on the trip.
***
Considering how often lying on the beach featured in human retirement fantasies, the real thing was surprisingly boring.
Dad rented us a private slice of beach in Hawaii, with a large, four-bedroom hut. With its straw roof, large windows, and airy, cream-colored curtains, the structure was big enough to accommodate all seven of us, but we could still have a bit of privacy. I loved my family, but my trickster siblings could drive me crazy, and Mom and Dad were so in love it was a little gross to be too close to sometimes.
Yes, my dad, the badass arch vengeance demon specializing in the punishment of mass murderers and war criminals, acted like a lovesick teenager in front of my mom. Really intimidating.
The trip to Hawaii from my home in Toronto only took seconds via teleporting, so I got a few more hours of sleep before leaving. Since Toronto was five hours ahead of Hawaii, leaving there at eleven a.m. meant getting to the resort at six a.m. Perfect for a bit of studying before everyone arrived.
Mom teleported to the hut next, with Dad and my sulking half-brothers following suit shortly after. When Mom said Dad was picking up the guys, she meant that he was dragging them kicking and screaming away from their prank-athons. Fir, Clef, Boone, and Ty weren’t exactly happy about having their fun cut short, but a few coconut drinks with pink umbrellas later, they settled down. Tricksters just weren’t every good at holding grudges.
With me being the only child born of both Mom and Dad, I was the baby of the family. Unfortunately, even babies outgrow sandcastles and seashells. There’s only so much crystal blue water, white sand, and seagull squawking a person can take. After three hours of baking in the sun without even reapplying suntan lotion to keep me busy—my supernatural skin just refused to burn—I was ready to do anything other than be a beach bum. Even laundry. Anything was better than nothing.
I must’ve jinxed myself.
I felt the change in the air current more than heard the sound of feet landing on soft sand. Someone had just teleported right next to me.
I opened my eyes. A beautiful girl with pale skin and wine-red hair stood before me in her full vengeance demon outfit. The black top, black tights, and black boots seemed so out of place with the whole sunny beach scene.
“Esme!” Mom exclaimed from a few feet behind me. She sounded a little breathless, like she had just come up for air after a kiss with Dad. I tried not to roll my eyes. No matter how old I got or how much distance I had gained by moving out, the ick factor of my parents making out never went away. “Are you able to join us after all, dear?”
Esme was Dad’s vengeance demon daughter from his first marriage. We had a yours, mine, and ours kind of family. Esme was studying for her vengeance Master’s at the same university where I was in my second year. She was closer in age to Ty. Given the contrasting natures of vengeance demons and tricksters, we did not always agree, but love kept us strong. I was lucky in that aspect. It made the prejudice I experienced as a hybrid more bearable.
“No,” Esme said apologetically. “I’m still doing research for my thesis. But there’s something I need to talk to you about immediately.”
“What is it?” Dad asked.
“Not here.” Esme looked beyond the boundary of our hut, where there was a family of reapers with two chubby toddlers building sand coffins and a beach volleyball game between some henchmen of Ares, the god of war. “Can we go inside?”
“Sure.” I got up as Dad helped Mom do the same. Esme looked pointedly at my half-brothers, who were still lying down. “I mean all of you.”
With shrugs, the boys did what Esme requested, but not without a trick-you-later gleam in their eyes, which she ignored.
Once we got to the living area of the hut, Esme threw a privacy spel
l over the structure, preventing any would-be eavesdroppers. Then she tapped her watch, and the faery cloud encased in the glass display turned purple, then projected what appeared to be the start of a human newscast onto the wall of the hut. Esme pressed freeze-frame on the image and turned to us.
“I assume you have not seen the news this morning.”
“The resort strongly advises all patrons unplug during their stay.” Dad glanced at Fir, Clef, Boone, and Ty. I got a feeling that they’d chosen this vacation spot for exactly that reason. There was a lot of mischief an enterprising trickster could do remotely while lying on a beach.
A sense of unease grew in my stomach. That other shoe that I’d been waiting to drop since I’d agreed to this vacation? I felt it lodged in my throat as I asked, “What is this all about, Esme?”
“Our grandmother sent me.”
Considering how high profile this weekend, of all weekends, was, whatever message that Gran had sent Esme to tell us in person must be pretty bad. Did I mention that Gran wasn’t your typical, knitting-in-a-rocking-chair kind of grannie? Our grandmother was a long time member of the Council, the governing body of vengeance demons. When we got a message from her, it was part personal, part official business.
“What is it?” I tried to keep my voice even, and my trepidation from turning into full-blown panic.
“Watch.” Esme pressed a button and the human female newscaster in the projection started talking, “…four million hits in the first hour. Twitter is ablaze with the hashtag #2funny2stayterrorized. Sources have confirmed that the video was uploaded and distributed through all the usual terrorist channels, lending credibility to its authenticity. But that leads to more questions: was the upload purely accidental, or an indication of some kind of internal power struggle amongst the different factions…”
I frowned. Why did Esme come all the way here because of a human terrorist video? The Council made a strict policy of staying away from the Middle East of the human plane, claiming that the conflict was the mortals’ internal affair. I always suspected that the Council just copped out because they didn’t want to expend the resources required to resolve such complex issues, though as guardians of the Cosmic Balance, we really should.
And why had Esme come here with this particular video? Why did it go viral? There was like, a new one being posted every week, with the ever-depressing and horrifying same old, same old—masked men, threats, and violent executions. I would imagine that the news value of these videos must be pretty low by now.
Except…
What did the newscaster say that hashtag was again? #2funny2stayterrorized…
Too funny? Oh, crap.
I stole a glance at Mom and caught her looking at me, chewing her lip. She looked away.
The newscaster finished talking and her image was replaced by a masked man in military fatigues holding a machine gun. The outfit, the weapons, the mask…all typical of videos of this nature. The man was in a sparsely decorated room with a cot and a pillow. Judging by the perspective, the webcam seemed to be on a laptop on a table beside the cot.
What was different about this video was that the man wasn’t looking at or talking to the camera. In fact, he seemed completely unaware that he was being filmed as he took off his mask and boots, then set his gun by the foot of the cot.
I gasped. I recognized that face. The man, nicknamed Snakebite, was a terrorist leader well-known to humans for the video-recorded threats he delivered to the West. He had a certain bite to his speech that made everything he said come out as a hiss, hence the nickname.
What happened next was rather anti-climatic, actually.
Snakebite hit the cot and started snoring.
I would say that was classic slob behavior of falling asleep after a long day at work without even bothering to change into a clean shirt, except this guy’s definition of the daily grind might be different from most.
I expected the video to end there, but it didn’t. The snoring went on for another full minute. It was so uneventful the newscaster’s voice started coming over the audio, urging the viewers for patience, to wait for it. Whatever it was.
Then it happened.
Snakebite had been sleeping with his back to the camera, his hands tucked under the pillow. But now he rolled over to face the camera. In sleep, the widely feared leader’s mouth was hung open, and he was drooling all over an object that he pulled to his chest from under his pillow.
A purple teddy bear. Clutching a tiny pink heart.
My mouth dropped open, and a laugh escaped from my throat involuntarily. I heard similar sounds coming from my family members.
“That’s been the reaction of humans all over the world,” Esme said, as Snakebite started gnawing at the polyester bear’s fuzzy ear.
“This is Kate Shaw, reporting from Latakia, Syria.” The newscaster signed off.
Esme tapped her watch again, and the projection disappeared.
“I can see why this video would go viral.” There was a calculating gleam in Fir’s eyes. He was an expert in social media due to his extensive use of it to build his own trickster brand. “It struck a chord.”
He was right. People liked to laugh. They liked to watch other people’s embarrassing moments. And they liked to not feel helpless in the face of unspeakable atrocity. A funny video being accidentally—or not so accidentally—loaded onto the Internet, featuring a violent terrorist being a sucker for teddy bears, fulfilled all three of these needs. No wonder they’d liked and shared it across the blogosphere—in marketing that was what they called actionable, with the participants feeling empowered by being a part of the phenomenon.
“The Internet exploded this morning with memes and parody videos, and some enterprising humans have even started selling coffee mugs and T-shirts online.” Esme sighed.
“Okay, so it’s super-funny, and it’s making waves with the humans.” Now that the urge to giggle had subsided, I turned a shrewd eye on Esme. “But why are you sighing? Why is this being treated as a vengeance matter?”
Because let’s face it, Gran hadn’t sent Esme here just so we could all have a good laugh.
Esme looked me in the eye, though I got the impression that she was resisting the temptation to glance at our half-brothers. “There’s evidence that supernatural power was used in the recording and distribution of that video.”
Now that she’d mentioned it, I could feel it. It was a subtle power signature. Was it my imagination, or was there just the tiniest hint of pina colada in the flavor?
“We must consider the possibility that, er, given the nature of the video and the upcoming trickster holiday—”
“You think a trickster did this.” Fir didn’t seem insulted by the unspoken accusation at all. In fact, all the boys looked downright delighted by the idea of it. And why shouldn’t they? Every trickster dreamed of doing a major prank that would put them on the map, and this was pretty big. And to top it off, it happened right before the Day of Shenanigans. Talk about perfect timing.
The question was, had one of the boys been the very trickster who did this video prank?
“Wait. Back up a little.” I held up a hand. “I know that the Council believes that pranks like this disrupt the Cosmic Balance, but this is just one little video. It’ll blow over by next week. Even if a trickster did do it, and I’m not saying one did, it’s just a joke. It’s not like we’re dealing with a super villain or anything like that.”
“It’s not about that.” Esme blew a strand of hair out of her face. “Our seers claim that the video has the real potential to alter human history, and the Council forbids that. We have to find out who did it and make sure it never happens again.”
“Alter human history?” I echoed. “What the heck are you talking about?”
“Think, Megan.” Esme started pacing the floor. “The whole point of terrorism is to terrorize. From this point onward, the collective human consciousness is going to associate video-recorded threats not with a sense of dread, b
ut with the image of a grown man slobbering all over a teddy bear.”
“Too funny to stay terrorized,” I muttered. I had to admit, that hashtag was gold.
“Exactly. And war is as much about psychology as it is live ammunition. This video hurt the bad guys’ credibility, making them a laughingstock when they need to appear intimidating.”
“So okay, human history might get altered.” I crossed my arms. “But let’s face it, the Council’s typical speed is like molasses in January. Why are they so on the ball in this matter?”
Esme stopped pacing and turned to me. “This prank also served the unintended purpose of eliminating quite a few injustices in the human Middle East.”
“That’s a good thing, right?” I was puzzled.
“Except the vengeance is not claimed. Might never be claimed.”
A light bulb went off in my head. “So you’re saying that the Council is springing into action because they’re embarrassed?”
Vengeance demons were to the Cosmic Balance what maids were to a large mansion. When injustices in the Cosmic Balance got rectified, it was like a room in the mansion being cleaned. Now suppose a maid told the mistress of the house that a certain room should just be closed up for good because the mess in it was impossible to clean. Then a new maid came and filled in temporarily, and managed to fix up that room without fuss. Imagine how humiliating it was for the original maid, and the kind of questions the mistress would have for her.
Zillions of people on all the planes relied on the vengeance demons to address the injustices in their lives. While the Council maintained the official policy of no interference in the human Middle East, the endless conflict was racking up a lot of unattended injustices. The person responsible for the drooling video was like that annoyingly effective new maid. He or she had managed to address long-standing injustices that the Council had been ignoring, and it was done rather effortlessly. It raised a lot of tough questions about the efficiency of our governing body.