Rites & Desires

by Amanda Cherry

  A klaxon sounded suddenly then, breaking through the silence of the bedroom and nearly causing Ruby to fall off the edge of the bed. She barely had the presence of mind to slam the drawer shut as she sat bolt upright and searched for the source of the noise. She tried to access the magic of the Eye again; was that the cause of the alarm? Was someone trying to access it? Was it fighting back against being put away now that it had been taken out and used?

  Ruby felt herself beginning to panic. Suddenly the lead lined drawer, clay box, and salt tiled cloth seemed woefully inadequate. Something might be going terribly wrong and she had no idea what it was or what she could do about it. For the moment she had to put those concerns aside. Before she was able to take on any magical investigations, she was going to have to handle the man beside her. Explaining away some stray alarm sounds to the person who had literally designed the alarm systems in this building was going to be quite a feat. She could only hope it had been a while since he’d heard the sound of the alarms he’d wired into this building and could perhaps mistake whatever this was for one of his.

  She had only just begun to even consider the possibility that the sound actually was one of the building’s alarms when Jaccob squirmed in the bed and groaned. She was sitting up, with the sheet tucked under her arms and an expression on her face that she hoped wasn’t too panicked.

  Jaccob rolled onto his side facing away from her and reached out for something on the far night stand.

  It was his wristwatch. Or, rather, it was the device Jaccob wore that passed for a wristwatch but was actually a lot of things connected to Stardust. Had that thing been what had made all that noise? He sat up in bed, the device in his hand, and fiddled with its tiny screen before turning his head and looking at Ruby woefully.

  "Sorry about this," he said, holding up the device. The claxon had stopped as soon as he’d laid his hand on the thing. And he seemed nonplussed, if a little sullen, about the alarm. What he didn’t seem was at all alarmed by it, so Ruby figured his gadget had been what had caused the terrible racket and that maybe she’d be able to get her heart to stop pounding in a minute.

  "You could have warned me," she said to him, "I about jumped out of my skin."

  "Sorry," Jaccob said again, scooting over in the bed until he was able to lean in and kiss her cheek. "I didn’t think about it. I’m so used to it--" His voice trailed off and Ruby could tell he wasn’t sure what to say next. He’d probably never had to tell a woman about his insanely loud Stardust alarm before because he’d only ever been with one woman before now--and she probably pre-dated the wristwatch thing.

  "It’s very loud," Ruby commented, trying to sound as jovial as possible as she tried to shake the nauseated feeling of the adrenaline leaving her system. She was already exhausted. She was trying her best to look on the bright side--she was sure once this wore off, she’d have no trouble falling asleep.

  "Yeah," Jaccob affirmed, still sounding a little embarrassed, "I can be a really sound sleeper. So--"

  "So when the city needs Stardust, he doesn’t have the option of a snooze button?" Ruby reached over and put her hand on Jaccob’s knee as he nodded.

  "Yeah," he replied. "Look, Ruby, I’m really sorry, but--"

  "But you have to go," she surmised, interrupting him before he could finish the thought.

  He nodded again, stifling a yawn as he reached over and patted her hand where it lay on his leg.

  "Jaccob," she addressed him then, finding it somewhere in her to smile, "I’m not mad. I’m a little disappointed, but I’m not upset."

  He leaned over and kissed her again before scooting to sit on the edge of the bed. After strapping the watch-like device back onto his left arm, he retrieved his shorts from the floor and pulled them on as he stood. Jaccob pulled on his trousers next, finding them in a lump not far from where his shorts had been. He then spent a moment looking around the room as though he were a bit perplexed.

  "Over there," Ruby said, pointing to a chair on the far side of the room that was somehow where his undershirt had come to rest.

  "Thanks," Jaccob said back, crossing the room to the chair she had indicated and throwing his shirt over his head. "I really am sorry about this."

  Ruby shrugged as she moved to recline against her pillows. "Don’t apologize," she insisted. "It’s not your fault." She took a deep breath as Jaccob walked back to the head of the bed and bent down, kissing Ruby gently on her forehead before turning to leave.

  "Good night," he said to her.

  "Good night, Jaccob. When you catch those bad guys," she called after him as he reached the doorway, "I think I’m going to want a word with them." She was scowling playfully, and when Jaccob turned his head, he grinned back at her.

  "That should be enough to strike fear into the hearts of anyone who would dare to break the law in the middle of the night," he joked, flashing her a smile over his shoulder before passing through the bedroom door and closing it softly behind him.

  Ruby chuckled as she pulled the comforter up under her chin. She took a deep breath and sighed as she settled in to her pillows and blankets.

  He had no idea.

  The day would come when she’d fill him in, but there was a lot of work ahead before that could happen. There was much magic in her future. But first, she would sleep.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Getting out of bed the next morning hadn’t been the chore Ruby had guessed it might be. Normally, functioning after less than five hours of sleep ended badly for her, and worse for anyone with whom she may have needed to conduct business. But the morning after the Pops, she’d rolled over in bed, slid open her drawer, and run her fingers over the Eye of Africa before so much as sitting up beneath the covers. That single action had done more to spur her to wakefulness than a whole pot of strong coffee ever had.

  Not that she was planning to skip her morning coffee--quite the contrary. She threw on her black silk dressing gown, hastily discarded over a chair during the previous night’s adventures, brushed her teeth, and darted upstairs to retrieve her first cup of the day before dressing. Her household staff had learned over the years that Ruby was not to be dealt with before she was properly caffeinated. It was no secret that Miss Killingsworth was not a morning person. The house manager at the mansion and the building manager who also handled the domestic staff for the penthouse were both well aware that new hires were to be told in no uncertain terms to avoid interacting with their employer before she left for work in the morning. This interdiction had come after many, many members of the household staff had been dismissed (and a few of them literally cursed) for inciting Ruby’s ire before coffee. Both her temper and her penchant for revenge had become legendary in the music business, and those fearsome traits were never more prominent than when she was insufficiently caffeinated.

  Her full pot of properly steeped French press coffee was on the counter where it belonged, her stark white ceramic mug and Goblin Records travel cup flanking it on either side. And there was not a soul in sight. Magic and coffee and not having to deal with other people--that was exactly how Ruby Killingsworth liked her mornings to go. She’d wondered when he’d left if Jaccob might be coming back, although she was pretty sure he wouldn’t. They hadn’t discussed it, and she wasn’t sure that one episode of burgeoning carnal knowledge was enough to get him to change his opinion on when it would be appropriate to let himself into her apartment. It was probably for the best he hadn’t come back.

  She’d never gotten used to the idea of overnight company, always having preferred her gentlemen callers to take their leave as soon as it was polite. There was a niggling feeling in the back of Ruby’s mind that this was likely not going to be the case with Jaccob; if his penchant for post-coital cuddling was any indication, she’d likely be awaking to find him still in her bed more often than not in the near future. She briefly entertained the notion of trying to steer things to his place--that way she could be the one to politely excuse herself in the middle of the night. But she
thought better of it almost right away. His place was likely teeming with mementos of marriage and family and all that stuff he was still hung up on. And hangups never made for lessened inhibition. No, if she wanted the sex to get better, it would have to happen at her place.

  She poured the delightfully aromatic dark liquid into the stark white ceramic mug and took a whiff. It was a small price to pay, she figured, for adding Stardust to her list of trophies. Having him in her bed overnight and dealing with him in the morning might not even be so bad, as long as the Eye of Africa was there to boost her mood even before coffee had the chance to.

  The magic had certainly helped her mood immensely, and this day at the office had been a particularly trying one. Although meetings with the members of Metalcholy always bordered on ridiculous, this morning’s had been extra laughable. Once again, she’d had to remind the heavy metal band’s lead guitarist that it was off-brand and unacceptable for him to go about town in khakis and a polo shirt. And not for the first time, she’d threatened him with a personal stylist if he didn’t go out and "at least buy some damned blue jeans." She didn’t have a problem with heavy metal music appealing to all types, nor with the fact that Sturg was a math nerd who liked to work out his guitar chords on a slide rule. But she wasn’t sure how the hard-core base of fans that kept the band lucrative would appreciate being let in on that little bit of trivia. It was the least he could do to try and look the part of rebellious rocker. She was glad to be able to share the news that she’d won the fight with the insurance company--they’d be able to have the rollergirls in their next music video. She could deal with the band herself, but the rest of the details of that shoot were going to be managed somewhere far beneath her pay grade. She had neither the patience nor the energy these days to handle a misfit metal band, a crew of adequate size to shoot this thing, and twenty-odd degenerate women on roller skates.

  Ruby happily passed that buck right down the hill to her underlings. Sometimes it was good to be the boss. Sure, when issues like the one with the insurance company couldn’t be resolved by her staff, they would eventually end up on her desk. But there were layers and layers of personnel between her and most of the problems the label experienced, and she liked those layers. She paid some of those layers very, very well to handle things like roller skating metal heads for her. So when her receptionist, Bridget, knocked on her door to let her know there was another band in her outer office, she wasn’t sure what to think about it.

  She didn’t have another band on her schedule today. "What band are you talking about, Bridget?" she asked, trying not to get too cross with her friendly, white-haired receptionist. Bridget had been the face of the Goblin Records outer office for several years prior to Ruby’s having taken over. And if a career in multimillion-dollar entertainment had taught her anything up to that point, it was that it did no one any good to fix what wasn’t broken. Her personal assistant she brought with her to the position, but the receptionist kept her job, and Ruby had no plans to run her off. Bridget was kind, grandmotherly, patient, pleasant, and soft spoken; she was everything Ruby was not. And she was everything the gatekeeper to the inner workings of an entertainment empire needed to be. Ruby couldn’t be gruff with her, even if she did need more coffee.

  "The one you’ve had in the studio all this last month," Bridget answered. "The odd ducks. Oh--" Bridget frowned and shook her head.

  Ruby was frowning, too. She was pretty sure whoever was in her lobby had no business being there. It was either a prank being pulled by artists in her stable (to what end she could not guess) or it was some musical act who, in hopes of getting a meeting with the head of the label, had talked their way past security and was now pestering Bridget into thinking Ruby actually wanted to see them. She had half a mind to call the police and have them escorted out in handcuffs.

  "What did they say they were called?" Bridget asked herself out loud.

  "It doesn’t matter what they call themselves," Ruby began to tell her. But before she was able to instruct Bridget to call security, the older woman looked back up as the answer obviously came to mind.

  "The Blights," Bridget told her boss. "I knew it was some sort of a name with tribulations in it. But I couldn’t remember. I guess it’s the old age. But that’s it. The Blights are here to see you."

  Ruby was suddenly very glad of her uncharacteristic hesitation at calling the police on trespassers. She had forgotten that the dismissal she’d given the Blights when they’d first come into her service had included the directive "record an album or something." She wondered if they really had been making music all that time.

  But that was a question for another day. If they had come all the way back down here from Regency Heights, then there had to be a reason. "Oh, yes," Ruby replied, playing off her earlier suspicion. "The Blights. They are an odd bunch, but they might be on to something. Send them in, Bridget."

  "Right away, ma’am," the older woman replied, turning and shuffling back to the outer office to let the Blights in. Ruby sat back in her chair for a moment and appreciated that the band of Tulpas had asked Bridget to let them in rather than make any attempt to trick, lie, or otherwise sneak their way past the office staff. That was a little unexpected coming from a group of magical beings on loan from Loki, but it was a pleasant surprise to say the least.

  As the group of them ambled into her office, it gave Ruby a moment’s pause wondering how someone who had been around the music business as long as Bridget had could possibly have taken them for a band. But then she stopped to consider the conversation she’d just had with Sturg Ramstehl of Metalcholy about not making his way through the world dressed like the father of an Ivy League dudebro and decided she already knew the answer.

  "Shut the door," she instructed Fire, as the orange-haired young woman brought up the rear of the group filing into her office. Once the door was securely closed, Ruby pressed a little button on the underside of her desk. It was a modified version of the "recording" light buttons they used in the studios, and part of the security system Starcom Security had installed for her before she moved her offices into the Ruby Tower. A light would come on in her outer office and another at the reception desk that said in no uncertain terms that Miss Killingsworth was not to be disturbed for any reason. As long as that light was burning, she and the Blights wouldn’t be bothered.

  She also flipped the switch that activated both the Faraday cage and the active sound interference mechanisms she’d had built into this office. Corporate espionage and creative thievery were real problems in the entertainment business, and Ruby wanted to make sure no one could listen in on her meetings with artists. The intellectual property discussed in this office could literally be worth billions, and so she’d had every information security measure that Starcom had to offer installed.

  It was helpful to know no one could listen in on her talks with the Blights, either. Just in case anyone suspected her of malfeasance--which she was sure no one did at the moment--it was better to be safe than sorry on matters such as this. She indicated to her group of visitors that they should have a seat on the white leather sofa and chairs to her right. She’d learned a long time ago that bands liked to "chill" when they were being creative, and having something approximating a living room in her office helped with that. Seating for ten that didn’t involve the conference table across the room apparently came in handy for more than just self-involved pop singers.

  The Blights settled in without a word to each other or to Ruby. Fire, Doubt, and Pestilence took up residence on the sofa, Ruin and Decay made themselves comfortable in the overstuffed chairs, while Plague plopped down lotus-style on the floor in front of the glass coffee table and began picking through the bowl of hard candy and lozenges that Ruby kept for singers. She frowned down at him as she crossed to sit in the high-backed armchair that faced the table and couch. It was a throne-like art nouveau piece that shouldn’t have gone with the rest of the décor in Ruby’s ultra-modern office, but somehow fit in perfectl
y. The Blights had guessed correctly that this chair was reserved for the boss, and that no one had better so much as think about sitting in it. Cody, the most clueless of the Young Dudes, had almost made the mistake of claiming it when they’d come in to hear about the first-week sales of their sophomore album, but it had taken only a single raised eyebrow from Ruby to stave off that bad decision.

  Good thing, too. The Young Dudes had made her a lot of money--were still making her a lot of money. It would be a pity to have to kill one of them.

  "So, what do you have to tell me?" Ruby asked before she was even fully in her seat. She surveyed the group of them together and frowned. "Did you know that she thinks you’re a band?"

  "We’ve been in a recording studio every day for the past two months," Doubt reminded her. "Of course she thinks we’re a band."

  Ruby rolled her eyes as she settled farther back into her chair. "You’ll have to let me hear what you’ve got," she drawled, the sarcasm as clear in her voice as the Blights had ever heard it. "But we’re not here to talk about music right now, are we?" she asked with an abrupt change in tone. "You wouldn’t be here in the middle of the day if you didn’t have something to tell me. So tell." She crossed her legs and leaned lightly against the back of the chair, her arms regally draped over the velvet cushioned armrests. "You spoke with Discontent." The group of them nodded. "And?"

  "Your ritual isn’t in that book we found," Pestilence told her.

  "My ritual?" Ruby asked. She wasn’t sure she had ever mentioned the word "ritual" in front of the Blights; in fact, she was pretty sure she hadn’t ever actually said it out loud in relation to the Eye of Africa. That made any reference they made to a ritual highly suspect. Knowing for herself she would need to perform some feat of ritual magic in order to take on the power of the Eye was one thing, having it be common knowledge all of the sudden was something else altogether. She narrowed her eyes and waited for her answer.