Vanity Scare

by H. P. Mallory

  “Yup.” Christina nodded, hands on her hips. She didn’t look rattled, just kind of pensive. Like she was three thoughts away from something that was bothering her, but she couldn’t get her mind to switch tracks.

  “What’cha thinking?” I asked.

  Christina continued to stare at the wall, the corner of her mouth rising and falling like a deflating balloon. She chewed on the inside of her cheek and surveyed our demoed kitchen. It looked like an octopus had taken seven sledgehammers and a chainsaw to everything but the microwave.

  “We need to get Osenna’s home address, or wherever the hell she’s staying,” she said.

  “You think that demon guy knows Osenna came here before we left to go check on Dagan?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “What other reason would he have had to come here and do this?” she asked, glancing around at the destruction.

  “And he stole my wallet,” I added.

  “Did he take any cash or credit cards out of it?”

  I checked and glanced up at her. “No.”

  “So, he was looking for our address.”

  “Why? Did he think we were hiding Dagan or something?”

  Christina shook her head—not at me, at herself, like she was shuffling through thoughts in her brain and throwing them out as she went. “I mean, maybe, but then why would we have been looking for Dagan at his apartment?”

  I crossed my arms and shrugged. “Getting something Dagan left behind? Checking to see if the place was empty, because Dagan might have warned us this guy was coming?”

  Christina nodded and started to pace. “Okay, yeah, maybe… hmmm.” She stopped pacing and turned to face me. “I’ll call Knight. I mean, he should know about this anyway, because now, whoever that guy is, he broke into Dagan’s apartment and he’s also broken into our house, so that’s two counts of trespassing even if he isn’t doing anything else illegal.”

  “Which I’m sure he is,” I added quickly.

  “I mean, yeah, definitely,” she agreed. She scratched her head and left her hand there.

  “Did Timothy see what that demon guy was doing in here?” I asked. Then I remembered that Timothy didn’t have eyes. “I mean, could he tell what the guy was doing here… somehow?”

  “No.”

  Timothy made a bubbly growling noise from the backyard.

  “What?” asked Christina, like she hadn’t heard him right the first time.

  He burbled in response.

  “Oh, shit, okay,” she said. She turned to me. “Timothy felt somebody else leaving when the demon came in.”

  “Leaving?” I asked. “Like, somebody else was already here before the demon guy showed up?”

  “No, this other person was outside. Timothy says someone walked up, saw the demon bust his way in, and then they ran off. Like, really fast.”

  “Huh,” I said. “Okay, could have been anybody.”

  “Anybody?”

  “Yeah, like, Mrs. Wiggins out for a walk or something. Or another one of our nosy neighbors.”

  “At eleven o’clock at night,” Christina pointed out, raising her eyebrows.

  “…Okay, maybe not. Maybe somebody else is looking for Dagan. Or maybe somebody was scoping our house to break in and steal something?”

  “…Or Osenna came back here.”

  “Osenna?”

  “Yeah. She seemed really worried about Dagan.”

  Did she? I thought she’d seemed a little more preoccupied with making me as uncomfortable as magically possible. Which I supposed also meant I was the last person in the room who would have noticed if she was worried about anything or not.

  “So, she came back here to see if we’d found anything?” I asked.

  “Maybe. Or maybe something else happened and she came to tell us.”

  “That’s not good,” I replied, which was about as helpful as I was going to be until I got some sleep. I never did get my coffee. Except then I had a thought. “Hey, Christina?”

  “Yeah?’

  “What are the odds that the demon is lying to us?”

  “High,” she answered. “What about, though?”

  “What he came to Splendor for.”

  “Dagan?” she asked.

  “No, the scarf.”

  Christina tilted her head at me. “You think he’s lying about the scarf?”

  “Do you think he could be here for Osenna instead?” I asked.

  She blinked a few times, thinking about it.

  “He said Dagan stole something from him,” I continued. “And we think Dagan’s the one who got Osenna out of Dromir, right?”

  Christina nodded. “Yeah, demon guy could have been lying about the scarf, then, for sure. And that might explain why Osenna didn’t want to go to Dagan’s apartment to look for him. Maybe she was worried the demon guy would be there.”

  “So, there’s stuff she’s not telling us,” I said.

  “Yep,” answered Christina, pulling out her phone. “Lots of stuff.”

  She dialed and put it to her ear, doing that disappointed-mom head-shake thing. There were a couple seconds of silence.

  “Knight. Yeah, we talked to the investigators on scene and got booted. Then we got home and the demon we were talking about was here… no, he was gone when we got here, but he stole Quillan’s wallet and didn’t take any cash or cards, so I think he was just looking for… yeah, exactly. Yep. Uh-huh. No, yeah, and we’re pretty sure Osenna knows this guy, whoever he is, so we need to find her. Do we have an address on file?” She pinched her nose. “Of course we don’t. Fan-fizzing-tastic. Okay, yeah. I’ll call you in the morning, okay? I know, I know. Just, we might have a hostile demon roaming around Splendor, and that’s… no, I get it, I know… yeah. No, I’ll keep looking. Okay, thanks. Later.”

  She hung up, sat down hard on the floor, and let out this big foghorn sigh.

  “Keep looking for what?” I asked.

  “Osenna’s records,” she said, folding over into her knees and groaning. “I’m HR, so I have access to all the…” She made a rolling motion with her hand.

  “Chronicles?”

  “Yeah, those.” She groaned again. Not angry, just tired and peeved. Like when you keep lending somebody your pens and they keep losing them. Like, you’re not pissed about the pens, but goddamn, how hard is it to keep track of a pen?

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah.” She looked up and pulled her hand down her face, squishing her nose and her cheeks, stretching her lips. “Okay, so Knight told me that Casey said I can keep looking into this Dagan disappearance thing as long as it doesn’t get in the way of anything else I have going on. And I guess Knight had to argue it over with Casey because, right now, we super don’t have enough evidence to turn this into a federal case. We can put, like, two guys on finding Osenna if we want to accuse her of falsifying an identity or something, but everything else is circumstantial.”

  That was true enough. Two break-ins, a missing demon, and a questionable siren was a recipe for something, but it wasn’t necessarily disaster.

  “But Casey’s still gonna let you look into it,” I confirmed.

  “Yeah, I guess so. Knight said he was able to convince Casey to be concerned about it. Dagan’s the only demon in California, so whoever was in his bedroom is either”—she took a deep, tired breath through her nose and sighed it out again—“here from out of state or he’s not legally here at all, you know?”

  I nodded.

  “Is Casey sending somebody out here?”

  “Yep. They should be twenty minutes out, I think? Maybe more.”

  I looked sheepishly at the broom I was holding. “Okay. So maybe sweeping up the evidence wasn’t the best idea.”

  “Maybe not.”

  “Fuck.”

  “It’s fine. They’ll take the demon’s blood and see if they can get a hit on anything in our system, but honestly, I seriously doubt he’s a legal resident.”

  “Because he knows Dagan?”

  “Y
eah. And because I’ve just got a bad feeling, you know?”

  I nodded.

  “But if he’s here illegally, we’ll find out and… arrest him, I guess?” she asked. “Not that he’s going to say anything about Dagan if we do, he’ll probably just”—she sighed again—“say it’s demonic custom not to knock or something when you’re returning somebody’s wallet.”

  I shrugged. “Maybe. But I think whatever is happening, Osenna’s in danger. She might have run off just because she saw someone breaking into our house or into Dagan’s place, but if she recognized the guy and ran, it’s because she knew him.”

  “That’s usually how recognizing somebody works, Quill.”

  “Hardy-har, you know what I mean,” I said.

  Christina smiled, but just for a second. “Yeah. We need to find her.”

  “Before bubble demon does.”

  “So, we’re running with the demon-is-here-for-Osenna-and-Dagan-is-probably-dead thing?” she clarified. “And is this guy’s official title ‘bubble demon?’”

  “I think bubble demon is pretty fitting,” I answered with a shrug. “And as to your other question… I mean, I think it’s the worst-case scenario. But also probable.”

  “The worst-case scenario is a bunch of demons rallying to bring Meg back from the dead,” said Christina. She looked at me. “So where do you think Osenna went?”

  SIX

  Bram

  It was several hours past full-dark when a servant informed me that a smallish, pale siren was wandering the seedier parts of Splendor proper, inquiring after me.

  “She is here, then?” I asked. My servant would not have informed me of this news if the siren had not already been apprehended. Or perhaps he had failed to apprehend her…

  My servant—Gerard, a butler I had acquired in 1875 at an English academy where such paltry trades are learned—nodded.

  I sighed, closed the book I was reading, and sat up straight in my chair. “Show her in.”

  Gerard nodded again, then disappeared. When he reappeared in the drawing room, he was accompanied by a mousey little thing whom I recognized immediately as Osenna Warkley.

  “Osenna,” I said in way of greeting without actually greeting her. Sometimes, one lacks time for such silly trifles.

  She looked around with her arms wrapped about herself, feigning cold and trying her damnedest to look lost. She scuffed at the carpet with the toe of her sandal.

  It is quite difficult, however, to make oneself appear unassuming when one is positively radiating sexual tension.

  “No games, my dear,” I admonished her.

  She lifted her face and looked me square in the eyes. “Darion,” she said. “Darion is here.”

  Vampires are a stiff kind of creature no matter what one does to assuage one’s ever-tightening muscles, but at the mention of the illustrious Darion Halsir, I felt myself go quite a bit stiffer.

  And I was not the only one who was vexed by this information. Only twice before had I seen proper fear cross Osenna’s face, and each time, it had been tied to that exact name.

  However, I could not muster much in the way of sympathy. If Darion had found Osenna at last, it was because she—or Dagan—had done something stupid.

  “Sit,” I instructed. She did not sit so much as float, draping herself over the chair in the way of silk curtains thrown askew by the wind. “Gerard, some tea for the lady.” Osenna was hardly a lady, but perhaps that was beside the point.

  He nodded and dispensed with himself.

  The only lights in the room, for the moment, were the lamp under which I had been reading and the steady, muffled glow of the fireplace. The light itself was not at all flattering, but Osenna, true to form, rendered herself immaculate within it, nonetheless.

  “How or why is Darion here?” I asked.

  “Dagan got caught.”

  “Caught,” I repeated slowly. “Caught doing what?”

  Osenna bit her lip and pushed a bare shoulder forward into the light, where it glistened. “Well. We were playing a game, Dagan and I...”

  She sighed, I supposed to add extra drama to her story.

  I cared little for drama. “Do continue, my dear—time is a luxury I’m not interested in granting you.”

  She stuck her tongue out at me, then took a moment to pull it across her knuckles before replacing it in her mouth. In Osenna, fear manifested as silence, and the kind of lazy seduction one might have expected in a Victorian smoking room or a restaurant attached to a speakeasy.

  “Hades, Osenna, get on with it,” I said. Darion’s was not a name that invoked a great deal of patience in me.

  “Hmm,” she pouted. “Mad you weren’t invited? You know you’re always welcome, Bram.” She looked me up and down then as if she meant to strip away my clothing with her teeth. Perhaps I would have taken her up on her offer a long time ago. A very long time ago.

  “Osenna. What game were you playing with Dagan? I don’t care for your showmanship, as I’m a very busy man.”

  She frowned, because it was quite clear I was in the midst of my repose. Then she sighed. “Just prior to our game, Dagan asked me a very important question. And I told him I would give him an answer if he…” She smiled. “Did something for me.”

  “And what was he meant to do for you, hmm?”

  Osenna blinked languidly and eased herself into the chair as if hoping to draw some type of reaction from me.

  “Osenna,” I pressed.

  “Yes?”

  “Sweet angel of the sea, darling mine—please pay attention to the conversation. What did you demand of Dagan?”

  Osenna ran her fingers through her hair, which trailed slowly across her throat. She looked into the fire for a moment, keeping her face downcast.

  Ah. “Where did you demand Dagan to go?” I asked, realizing I’d been asking her the wrong question all along.

  She looked up. She blinked. “Home.”

  “Home, to Dromir? To the demon plane?” I said, perfectly livid. She nodded. “Of course, you did.”

  Gerard returned with a steaming cup of tea. Osenna brought herself forward with a flourish of hair, hips, and fabric, accepting the tea with a nod. I found my attention riveted to the cup of tea for a moment.

  Blood is a surprisingly versatile flavor, but there is something about tea that one cannot ever truly replace, even when one’s organs no longer know how to process it. It was a shame I could no longer partake. I did so miss it.

  My servant stood rooted to the carpet, staring openly at Osenna. She sat with her chest forward, pretending not to notice.

  “Gerard,” I said sharply, flicking my wrist and pouring a not-inconsiderable amount of glamour-esque magic into the words to counteract Osenna’s presence, “off with you.”

  He nodded curtly and staggered away. A moment later, there was a thump in the hallway as he fell over. By the silence that followed, he apparently decided the ground was the safest place to be. Although he was a vampire by my making, he was still a young one and, thus, not immune to the lady’s charm. Pity.

  “What’s wrong with him?” asked Osenna, as though she did not already know.

  I allowed her a moment to sip her Earl Grey and contemplate the posh furnishings while I attempted to calm myself.

  I had gone to considerable lengths to conceal the pair of them, Osenna and Dagan. In Melchior’s time, the manufacture of false names was quite commonplace—but actually needing to hide Osenna and Dagan physically from Darion had been among my more taxing endeavors. To find that Osenna had taken a sledgehammer to all that toil and trouble by sending Dagan back to the demon plane to satisfy some ridiculous game was… irksome. To say the very least.

  “Your ceilings are higher,” commented Osenna.

  “Yes,” I responded, cracking my knuckles one by one. “I have grown rather disenchanted with the feeling of being… crowded.”

  “So you had your roof line raised?”

  I shrugged. “If one possesses the means, o
ne can do whatever one chooses.”

  “Hmmm. Whatever happened to your club?”

  “Sweet Osenna, has it been so long since you have visited me?”

  She took another sip of her tea and smiled at me over the rim of the porcelain. Her eyes caught what little fire remained in the hearth and flung it at me as an assassin might fling a dagger.

  “I sold the club,” I answered.

  “Why?”

  “The property no longer suited me. I grew bored with it.” I sat up straight and implored myself not to scowl. “But we are not talking about me, are we? Why don’t you tell me more about how you, in your vast and interminable wisdom, sent Dagan back to Dromir?”

  Osenna gave me a withering look. She set her tea down on the table beside her chair, slouching forward enough to expose most of her breasts. I made a point to look her in the eye; nothing is so offensive to a siren as the disregarding of her personal assets.

  “Mother had a scarf,” she explained. “Gaudy red thing, silk, I think, terribly expensive—”

  “No, no, no. Not why did you send him back to Dromir. How?” Quite frankly, if it was a scarf for which Osenna had sent Dagan back into the lion’s maw, I did not want to hear it.

  You see, demons are not from the Netherworld; they hail from a world completely their own, and as such are not beholden to our rather more stringent laws regarding dimensional borders. They can come and go as they please, at will.

  Dagan, being a demon, could travel between here and the demon world whenever he wanted.

  Provided he had not been banished from the dimension entirely. Which he had been.

  So, if Dagan was suicidal enough to return, he had to do so the old-fashioned way: via portal, which was quite a troublesome thing to do, seeing as Dromir only had one working portal and it had been closed for longer than I had been dead. And that was a long blasted time.

  Osenna twirled her hair around her index finger and looked down into her lap. Unless I wanted to spend the remainder of the night prying it out of her, this was an answer I would not receive.