by Louisa Lo
“Indeed. But you’re not here just to criticize my way of life, are you?”
Gregory bowed to Mel with a respect I’d never seen him display, even toward his own clients. He pointed at me. “Mel, I’m honor-bound to help this vengeance demon because I have misled her in the initial process of the class action. We’re at a standstill until I repay my debt to her.”
Mel’s gaze didn’t waver. If I expected to see annoyance at being asked to do extra work for free, it wasn’t there.
“If there was a debt incurred, then the debt is ours to share, son,” Mel replied with the same affection Gregory seemed to feel toward him.
“Thank you, Mel,” Gregory said with deep humility.
“The truth is, I already knew you were coming.” Mel turned to the rest of us. “I suppose you’re here to figure a way to send Prince Eldon back, so I did a reading on the Cosmic Balance.”
“And?” I prompted.
Mel looked me up and down, his eyes settling on my bosom for longer than was decent. I was about to call him on it when he answered, pointing at the same boobs he couldn’t tear his eyes from, “Your magic is the answer in this dilemma, Megan. Part of the answer, anyway.”
“What?” I looked down at my pearl necklace. Oh, he was looking at that.
“You need a way to boost the prince’s tolerance for cross-dimensional travel because he’s bound by the limitation of his race. Can you think of anyone who could open tough-to-open passages, and in fact, almost accidentally helped the Absolute Good and Evil escape their prison?”
Me.
Wait a minute. “How did you know about this? My grandma made sure none of that’s public.”
Even Gregory, who’d aided me in that fight, didn’t have all the information, because he wasn’t in the room when I confronted the Absolute Good and Evil.
Mel smirked. “We mercenaries live on the fringe of society, remember? We have our ways.”
“Just how am I supposed to boost Eldon’s tolerance?” I asked. A part of me was glad I could be of help in the matter, the other part was a bit nervous about playing such a key role in it.
“You’ll know when the time comes.”
“How?” I persisted, feeling a little ill about going in completely blind.
“I assure you, you can do it,” Mel said, declining to explain further. “The greater challenge will be opening the portal to begin with. It’s not an easy task, and it’s different than when you did it for the Absolutes. They wanted to leave their prison. They wanted to be found. The changelings don’t. And they have done their damnedest since the beginning of time to avoid just that.”
“Then how do we do it? You mentioned I was part of the answer. What’s the rest of it?”
Mel pointed at Serafina. “Her. My glimpse of the future shows that Lady Serafina holds the other key to this dilemma.”
Serafina frowned. “But I’m incapable of going back. I haven’t the means to do so. When I was in Dualsing before they returned me home, they had me wear a pendant called the Eye of Sebille. It encouraged the symbiotic bond between me and Eldon’s sister.”
“We heard whispers of such jewels. So they are indeed real.” Mel smiled.
“There’s one made for every kidnapped child trapped in Dualsing,” Serafina confirmed. “Though I suspect the one I wore was extra fancy, given the status of Eldon’s sister.”
“And it served as a bridge for your exchange, yes?”
Serafina nodded. “The bond between us grew stronger until the day we traded places. But once I returned to the vengeance plane, the Eye detached itself from my neck and latched onto my counterpart’s body. It disappeared with her when she went back to Dualsing. Since then, my connection with her and Dualsing is gone. I can’t go back.”
A gleam of triumph flared in Mel’s eyes. “Ah, but can you not think of anyone else who might still have that kind of a connection?”
“The only people tethered to Dualsing would be the changeling children living in our world right this moment.” Serafina’s eyes widened. “Alpha and Beta!”
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
Serafina turned to me excitedly. “When I was at Dualsing, it was my job to keep track of the whereabouts of the changeling children. Of course, I didn’t know what the job was really about at the time, or who they were. But there were two changelings on the same plane as Eldon’s sister. They were given the code name Alpha and Beta.”
“You’re telling me that there are two changelings running around the vengeance plane right now, masquerading as one of us?” I asked.
“At least as of a little over a year and a half ago, yes,” Serafina replied. “And if the authorities ever find out, these changelings will never be free again.”
Or worse. I didn’t voice my thought out loud. If the Council knew about the changeling kids, the loss of freedom might be the least of their worries. The Sui-Ling type would want to see what made them so hard to detect, and that knowledge could only come from torture and experimentation. I would like to think that our society was civilized enough for that not to happen, but this was the first time in vengeance history that they had a chance to see what made a changeling tick, so anything was possible.
“Maybe I never thought about them until now because deep down I didn’t want to,” she murmured. “A part of me hates myself for not connecting the dots sooner, and the other part wishes I never did.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself.” I put my hand on her arm. “Who knows how the whole bonding and exchange ritual works? Maybe if the kids are discovered, the Dualsingians are just going to abandon them or something. You know how they say you’re not supposed to touch baby birds, or else their mothers won’t care for them anymore? Maybe it’s like that.”
“I thought that bird thing was just an old wives’ tale?” Gregory began.
“You never know, there is always some truth in myths.” I glared at Gregory. Didn’t he realize I was trying to cheer Serafina up? “Anyway, if you knew and told the Council, everything would be screwed up and the vengeance kids would’ve been stranded on Dualsing for good.”
“I suppose you’re right, Megan.” Serafina straightened her shoulders. “Mel, how can Alpha and Beta help get Eldon home?”
“If you can locate these kids, Eldon can piggyback ride on their bonds with Dualsing. One kid’s bond might be strong enough, but two in combination is even better,” Mel replied.
“Do you remember where they are?” I asked Serafina excitedly.
“I-I think so.” Serafina took a deep breath. She waved her hands, conjuring a map against the ceiling of the TARDIS. This one was as clear as the one she had created when we had first tried to find Eldon, with no entanglement like the last one. It was a world map depicting the vengeance plane.
Serafina magnified North America, and further enlarged the southwest side of Lake Michigan.
“That city.” Serafina pointed at Chicago. “This is where the changeling kids were placed on the vengeance plane. Hopefully they’re still there.”
Fir slapped his thigh. “Of course!”
We all looked at him. He explained, “Vengeance Chicago has one of the highest population of tricksters on the entire vengeance plane. There’s something there that makes us thrive. Maybe the wind or something. I assume whatever enhances our magic there is probably doing the same for our changeling brothers and sisters, helping to mask them from the vengeance authorities.”
Serafina highlighted a point at downtown Chicago. “That was where Eldon’s sister was. She was on the rooftop of a skyscraper at the time.”
“These”—she made another two dots—“are the spots where Alpha and Beta were relative to her position.”
She transposed onto the existing map something that looked like Google Streetview. “If I remember correctly, Alpha was walking downtown, between these two buildings, and Beta was in a two-story house in the suburb.”
Even having witnessed a previous demonstration of her skills
, I was still impressed by what Serafina could do. For the first time in what felt like forever, I was optimistic. We had two—count it, two—leads, with firm locations we could chase down and send Eldon on his way using the abilities that Mel was confident I had. I grinned at Serafina, then quickly dropped it when I saw how miserable she looked. Damn, I kept forgetting that while for me, the departure of Eldon would mean getting rid of all the things that could go wrong in my world: the Council leading the planes into war, the Greys gaining the upper hand, and the chaos in the meting out of vengeance; but to Serafina, it meant saying goodbye for the second time to someone she obviously cared about.
I didn’t miss how Gregory used his cell phone to snap pictures of the map on the ceiling before Serafina shut it down. That would be Gregory, making sure he wasn’t left out of the next phase of the plan, looking out for angles he could exploit later.
I glared at him only to find him with a deep frown on his face as he looked at the screenshots on his cell. Weird.
Fir was practically dancing on his feet. “I can’t wait to meet these long-lost trickster cousins. Wait until I tell everyone!”
Under my frosty look, he added, “After. Way after. Maybe never.”
“It better be never,” I grunted.
“So which one should we go after first?” Fir asked.
“Alpha,” Serafina and Gregory said at the same time. As if regretting his words, Gregory’s mouth thinned and he said no more.
“Visiting Alpha first makes sense,” Serafina explained. “From the record, it looks like he might be the younger of the two.”
“The older and the closer they are to being exchanged, the more of their changeling personalities emerge,” Fir reasoned.
“And the more…difficult it might be to convince them to help us,” Gregory added.
“Alright, Alpha it is.” I clapped my hands together, then I asked Serafina as something just occurred to me, “You referred to Alpha as a ‘he,’ is that so?”
“I’m not entirely sure.” Serafina frowned. “That word just comes to mind when I think of Alpha.”
“Maybe your instinct knows something you don’t. Let’s go find out.” I turned toward the door, then stopped and glanced back at Mel. I couldn’t bring myself to thank him, not when he was in this with Gregory to turn a profit, and was only helpful because they wanted to move forward in obtaining it. So I opted for a convoluted form of compliment instead. “So, you got any last words, advice, or wisdom to impart?”
Mel gestured toward Serafina. “Yes. Catch her.”
“Huh?”
I had barely started moving when Serafina collapsed onto the floor.
Chapter Thirteen
In Serafina’s Shoes: Loss
SO IT WAS DECIDED. We would first try to find Alpha based on the information I’d given the group.
I should feel excited at the prospect of making progress, but all I could feel was dread. Dread of being too late in reaching Eldon. Dread at sending him back to Dualsing in what would likely be a suicide mission.
Or maybe I was focusing on what might happen in the future, because I couldn’t bear to imagine what might be happening to him right at this moment.
I wanted to scream in frustration, but all I could do was follow the group out of the sci-fi-inspired room in a brisk and orderly fashion.
Until Mel pointed at me and told Megan to catch me.
Before I could ask him to clarify his instruction, my eyes rolled to the back of my head and I plunged into a world of ice and darkness.
Cold, so cold.
I was lying on a metal surface, with straps cutting into my arms, legs, and torso, tying me down. I knew the surface was metal because there weren’t any clothes to insulate my back from it. I was naked save for a sheet covering my middle.
With these blasted binds, I might as well still be impaired. My legs are just as useless now as before.
I hope Finny is alright.
Those weren’t my thoughts. They were Eldon’s, as evidenced by the mention of that leg, and the fact that he was the only one who had ever called me Finny.
It wasn’t me who was thinking those thoughts, and it wasn’t me who was half-naked on a cold metal slab somewhere dark and unknown. Amazed and terrified at the same time, I realized I was somehow experiencing what Eldon was feeling, and hearing what he was thinking.
The bond of love that we’d once shared, which had allowed me to hone onto his location in that wretched human alley but was somehow severed upon his kidnapping, had resurfaced. It allowed me to leave my body behind and seek out Eldon through some kind of involuntary astral projection, much like how I once did with his sister.
Someone turned on a single fluorescent tube, the harsh light lit up the strange room that resembled a cross between a morgue and a ritualistic shrine.
Now that I was aware I wasn’t actually on a metal slab, my perception shifted. I could no longer feel the coldness of metal behind my back. Instead, I took on the perspective of the body-less spirit that I was, floating a couple feet above Eldon’s body.
I looked at him. If I had had a body to gasp in horror with, I would have.
Though Eldon’s body lacked any physical wounds, there was no doubt in my mind that he’d been tortured. It was there in the grayness of his skin, the dark circles around his bloodshot eyes.
I forced my gaze to leave him and examine the room in greater detail, hoping for some clues that could help identify his location. There were the things one might expect from a human hospital, such as the metal slab and the high-tech instruments, but the floor was painted with ancient symbols, and in the corner there was a table with two-dozen spent candles.
I looked back at Eldon. There was a mix of fear and defiance on his face as he looked up at the person who’d just turned on the light and entered the room.
The false Sui-Ling.
For reasons unknown, the Greys’ agent had decided to maintain that disguise. The smooth dragonhide she stole hugged every inch of her body.
False Sui-Ling grinned at Eldon as she leaned over him. “So, is your highness ready to talk?”
Eldon remained silent.
“So far the only thing we’ve established is that you’re royalty, and I didn’t get that using this.” False Sui-Ling pulled out a wand and looked at it with a bemused expression. The wand was made of oak, and hand carved with an asymmetric yet utterly sharp end. It was well polished; one would expect no less refinement from a society of the Greys’ caliber. “Your mannerism betrays your breeding, and breeding is the one thing I recognize and could relate to. You sure you won’t tell me anything useful before we begin again? I hate hurting someone of a respectable bloodline, changeling or not. We’ll send you home right away if you’re willing to tell us where to find it, I promise.”
“No,” Eldon spat, his lips pulled back from his teeth in a snarl.
“Very well.” False Sui-Ling shrugged and traced the wand over Eldon’s formerly impaired right leg. Then she moved it toward his upper body.
The wand touched his chest and nothing happened. I was just about to breathe a sigh of relief when Eldon screamed in pain, his right leg shaking in spasms, almost yanking free of the restraint. False Sui-Ling then moved the wand onto his abdomen; just like before at first nothing happened, then Eldon’s right leg seemed to be assaulted by invisible forces. The pain I saw on his face, compared to his usual stoic bearing, was absolute.
I couldn’t run to him. I couldn’t help him because I didn’t have the physical form to do so. All I could do was stand there and see him suffer. The sense of helplessness was driving me insane.
Since my return home, many had been skeptical about my capability to become a true vengeance demon. I was too gentle, they criticized. But now, in the face of Eldon’s agony, I longed for the body I’d left behind at Mel’s place. I had no doubt my wings would have no problem bursting out of my back, my pearl earrings charged to a glowing brilliance, ready to aid me in wreaking destruction on
Eldon’s tormentor.
But all I could do was resist the urge to panic, and focus on something I could be useful for.
Like figuring out how the mysterious torturing worked.
Why was it that his right leg seemed to be in such great pain, when the wand only touched it at the very beginning, and was nowhere near it as the agony hit? Why was it that touching every other part of his body brought on pain for his recently healed leg?
By the time False Sui-Ling traced the wand over Eldon’s right leg again, I understood.
Megan once showed me a human toy called the Wooly Willy. It was a cardboard depicting a cartoon face. Sealed in hard plastic with iron filings, you used a magnetic pen to direct the filings to where you wanted them to deposit on the cartoon face, adding “hair,” “beard,” and “eyebrows” onto it. False Sui-Ling was using the same principle, drawing out the vengeance magic that was used to heal Eldon’s leg, and depositing it onto other parts of his changeling body.
The rest of his body raised arms against the foreign magic they perceived as a threat, and started attacking his own leg much like a host body rejecting a transplanted organ. In essence, False Sui-Ling was torturing Eldon using his own body.
It would be clever if it weren’t hurting the boy I’d cared about most of my life.
“Finny, what are you doing here? Leave now! I don’t want you to see this.” Eldon’s voice brushed over me. I blinked and looked around, realizing that there were now two Eldons—one lying on the metal slab, covered in sweat and seemingly dead from torture, the other standing right next to me in an immaculate royal outfit, as substance-less as I was.
False Sui-Ling frantically tried to find a pulse on the Eldon on the metal slab, angry that her prisoner might have eluded her through death.
I swallowed and asked Eldon, “Are you…dead?”
“No, I’m not. I’m just getting a reprieve using a spell called Playing Dead, something we learned from our trickster cousins a long time ago. Once I was out of my body, I found you here. I don’t have a lot of time before I get pulled back down there, Finny. You have to leave, now.”