Vanity Scare

by H. P. Mallory

  I repeated my question quieter. “…Are you okay?”

  Sam muttered something to us about giving her space, and everybody scooted away. A thin, crimson sheen covered all of us, creating false red gloves up to our elbows. Dulcie’s blood, on our hands, our shirts, our faces. Soaking our knees as the pool beneath her spread. We looked like field surgeons. Like painters.

  “Dulcie, sweetie?” said Sam gently. Dulcie collapsed slowly into her, curling up with her head in Sam’s lap. She’d torn her own clothing near to shreds, and only her bra and part of her jeans were left. And they were some of the reddest things in the room.

  Dulcie blinked. A weird, dull brownish color drained out of her eyes and the green came back. Frantically, she looked around the room, breathing heavily through her mouth.

  “Where am I?” she asked.

  “You’re in the breakroom,” explained Sam. “I’m here, and Casey’s here, and Henry and Quill are here.”

  She didn’t mention that Bram was here too, and I had to figure that was intentional. I was kind of confused as to why Bram was here in the first place.

  Dulcie stared at the floor, just breathing. “Hades, what… what the hell… what did I do?”

  “You hurt yourself,” Sam told her. “But not anybody else.”

  “Fuck,” Dulcie muttered, relieved.

  I knelt in front of her, trying to give her plenty of space. I figured Sam would give me a look if I got too close. “What happened?”

  “I. Um.” She pressed her lips together and squeezed her eyes shut, looking down and away before turning back to me when she’d gotten herself just slightly more together. “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?” I echoed.

  “This isn’t nothing,” observed Christina.

  Dulcie hesitated. She sniffed and coughed and exhaled hotly through her mouth. “…Nothing.”

  In the corner, Bram grumbled wordlessly. He stood stone still, watching, waiting for something.

  I looked between them. “Knight?”

  Dulcie twitched like she’d been stung by something and Sam gave me the look I’d been expecting. Not a mean one, just a concerned, motherly, maybe-talk-about-literally-anything-else-for-a-few-minutes pursed-lip stare.

  “Do you want me to go arrest him for something?” I asked.

  “For what?” Sam asked back.

  “Harassment.”

  “Harassment?” Christina frowned.

  “If he jumpstarted this,” I began, but Dulcie stopped me before I could continue.

  “He didn’t,” she asserted. “I don’t know what happened. One second, I was talking to Bram, and then I was just so… angry.”

  “Well, that’s usually what happens when you find yourself in a conversation with Bram,” Sam grumbled under her breath. If it had been any other situation, I might have actually laughed.

  She continued petting Dulcie’s hair. The blonde was matted with sweat and blood.

  “I’m losing it,” Dulcie said softly.

  “No, honey, no, you’re not,” Sam assured her.

  “I am,” Dulcie retorted bitterly.

  She lifted her hand to her mouth and lurched a little, like she was trying not to vomit. And then, for the first time, she noticed the red on her hands.

  Her eyes went wide, and her voice got higher. “What… is that?”

  “Um,” stammered Sam. “Blood.”

  Horrified, Dulcie stared at Sam, tears carving clear lines through all the blood she’d just smeared on her face. “Who did… what did I… Hades… Did I kill Bram?”

  “Unfortunately no,” Sam said and took her gently by the shoulders. “It’s your blood, Dulce.”

  “No, mine’s gold, this is red. This is somebody else’s—”

  “It’s your blood,” Sam insisted, nodding at Dulcie’s confused expression. “I know. Something is definitely wrong, but you didn’t hurt anybody but yourself. I promise.”

  “But… why…” Dulcie looked at her hands.

  Then, we heard the sound of someone running just beyond the conference room, followed by a deep voice, both frantic and freaked out.

  “Where is she? What happened, is she okay?”

  Dulcie froze. She held her breath.

  Henry was the first one to get up. He stormed over to the breakroom door, where Knight was leaning against the frame, panting.

  “You need to leave,” Henry informed him, voice hyper-cold and ready to rumble.

  Knight looked over Henry’s shoulder to where Dulcie was lying on the floor, and went ghost-pale when he saw the blood. And the tiger-stripe scratches, the drying witch-paste, and Bram, hovering in the shadows like the spirit of a murdered Victorian child.

  “Dulcie.” His voice was kind of breathless as he tried to push past Henry. “If he fucking hurt her,” he started, glaring at Bram.

  “I didn’t do this,” Bram said, facing Knight.

  Henry put an arm up on the door frame, blocking Knight’s way in. “She’ll be fine. Just… go.”

  “I need…” Knight looked at Dulcie again and clenched his jaw. By now, me, Sam, Christina, and Bram were all glaring daggers into him—I think Christina’s expression was more pity-the-sinner than the death-to-all-tyrants face I was throwing at him. Either way, he could tell he wasn’t wanted.

  Which is honestly kind of terrible.

  “She needs her space,” added Henry. He clenched his fists and leaned forward a little. He wasn’t much shorter than Knight, but he looked kinda silly squaring up against him.

  Christina looked up. “That’s a good idea, Henry. Can everybody please clear out of the room? Dulcie needs some air.”

  Knight swallowed, and Henry was still mizzenmast-stiff, but it was the perfect way to defuse the tension in the room.

  “Yes, ma’am,” agreed Casey. He stood and shepherded everyone but me and Sam out of the room, since we were the only ones actually doing the magic-medicine stuff.

  Bram was in a corner, out of shepherding range, and he didn’t move.

  Christina stopped at the door. “Bram?”

  He didn’t respond other than to look up at her.

  “That means you, too.”

  He scowled and pushed up off the wall. “Of course. My most sincere apologies.”

  Christina glowered at him. “Don’t you take that tone with me.”

  Bram rolled his eyes and skulked past her. Like a grounded kid sent off to his room.

  “Yeesh,” I groaned.

  “Yeah,” agreed Christina. She looked over at Sam. “You got this?”

  “Sure.” Sam sounded a bit like her stomach had been steamrolled. Quieter, she added, “Why not?”

  Christina nodded. “I’m gonna go see where we’re at with the medics.”

  Sam sucked on her lip, staring at Dulcie. She didn’t say anything.

  I gave Christina a look I hoped she’d interpret as don’t-worry-babe-I-got-this, and she smiled before she walked off.

  Shifting my gaze to Sam, I whispered, “Why is it red?”

  Her face was stretched thin, and this crumpled, paper-airplane-in-a-rain-gutter haze hung over her eyes.

  “I don’t know,” she admitted.

  “Is all of it red?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “We need to test for that, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Because that’s definitely bad.”

  Sam nodded once, tersely. She bit her lip again. “I don’t know.”

  “Did we call a medic?” I pressed.

  “I am the medic,” Sam pointed out.

  “Right, sorry.”

  “An ambulance is on the way, though. For like, actual hospital stuff.”

  “Like blood tests?” I asked.

  “Yeah.” She made this avalanche of a sigh and slumped, hands covering her face. “Hades.”

  “You know, I can hear you guys,” said Dulcie. She was breathing a little easier.

  “Crap,” Sam cursed. “I’m sorry, Dulce.”

  �
��It’s fine.” Dulcie held up her hand. “My blood is red, Sam, I know that’s not good.”

  Sam pursed her lips but didn’t say anything more.

  The bleeding had mostly stopped, and Dulcie wasn’t fighting convulsions anymore, but she was still half-naked and caked in crimson.

  “So, I’m going to a doctor?” she asked.

  “Yeah. We, um, I don’t have the equipment here to run any of the tests we need.”

  “What kind of tests?”

  Biting her lip, Sam looked at me for help, and I shrugged, feeling useless.

  Dulcie spent a minute solid just breathing, which was good.

  “Hey, Sam?”

  “Yeah?”

  “This hurts. A lot.”

  “I know. I’m sorry, honey. Where does it hurt?”

  “Everywhere,” she admitted. “It’s like I have a fever, but I’m not sweating or anything, I’m just cold.” When she scratched her neck, she left half-dried flecks of red behind.

  “You think whatever is happening to me is going to kill me?” Dulcie asked.

  Sam shook her head. “No, honey.”

  “You’re gonna be fine,” I said.

  There had to be some truth to that. Dulcie was a powerhouse. Even before she’d gotten the power-ups from hell, she was Odysseus-on-the-run-from-a-bunch-of-angry-gods levels of pissed, smart, and ready to throw hands. She was absolutely fucking fearless.

  Which is what made looking at her now—pale and red-bloody and lost-in-the-Arctic shiver-scared—something like a bad trip. Like I’d driven off the road and woken up in a hospital in the wrong dimension.

  “We got you,” I assured her.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Bram

  It became suddenly clear to me that I did not want to be in this building any longer and there still existed the need to check on Osenna.

  But, as this was a professionally warded building in which several of my associates were charitably employed, I could not simply become a wave of shadow, slipping through the cracks in the floor. Here, I had to take the elevator like any common man.

  And such was where I now found myself. With a jarring motion, the elevator stopped on the third floor. The doors slid open, and the sounds of an active office surged in like water through a hole in a boat.

  A man stepped into the elevator before the doors closed and we continued downward. He was young, with curly brown hair, glasses, and a thin cottony patch over one eye. He looked familiar, but I could not seem to place him—and my memory is not a thing to be trifled with. I did recognize him as the man who had told Vander to get lost while Dulcie was having her fit. For that, I already liked him.

  “Hi, Mr. Bram.” The young man sounded glum.

  “Hello,” I responded cautiously. I had never been good with children.

  He pressed the button for the fifth floor, which I had just left. He would have to ride all the way down before the elevator crawled back up again. I wondered why he hadn’t taken the stairs.

  “How are you?” he asked.

  “I’m as good as can be expected,” I answered as I continued to try to place him. Henry, I thought, Henry Cotton. Dulcie’s partner, the walking flashlight that led us to Meg. Of course.

  When he wasn’t glowing in the dark, Henry was a spectacularly unremarkable person.

  He kept his body pointed at the doors as the elevator descended slowly, giving me a strange, apprehensive side-eye.

  “I saw you and Dulcie arguing,” he mentioned. “Before she, you know… whatever she did.” He gestured vaguely at the walls.

  “Yes, indeed,” I confirmed.

  “Can I ask what it was about?”

  “I am not quite certain myself.”

  “What do you mean?” he asked. “You can’t have an argument if you don’t know what you’re arguing about, can you?”

  “You cannot,” I agreed. “But you can be slapped and yelled at, which looks much the same at a distance.”

  “Oh. Do you know what made Dulcie want to slap and yell at you?”

  “Any number of things,” I theorized. “But I suspect something else set her off and I was the unfortunate scapegoat.”

  Henry nodded sagely. “Yeah. Sam says temporary psychosis is a side-effect of all the different blood mixing in Dulcie’s system. She’s a fairy, so she’s a universal receiver, but some of the individual bloods don’t mix well with each other.”

  “Do you know much about that?”

  “Not really. Something about antigens, I think. If you do a blood transfusion with the wrong type of blood, people can die.”

  “I was referring to Dulcie’s mixed blood.”

  “I don’t know much about what’s going on with her. She doesn’t like to talk about it.” He paused. A pensive air overtook him. “Sir?”

  “What?”

  “Dulcie’s blood isn’t supposed to be red, is it?”

  “No, it is not. Fairy blood is gold.”

  “So, why is hers red?”

  “I do not know,” I admitted with a shrug. “It undoubtedly has something to do with Meg’s experimentation.”

  “…Is it poisoning her?”

  What an astute and unpleasant question. “Yes. At least, I suspect as much.”

  He sighed heavily. We reached the bottom floor and the elevator doors pried themselves open. Together, we stepped into the lobby and both began the descent into the parking garage.

  “Where are you off to?” I asked.

  He held up a set of keys. “I’m going to Dulcie’s house to get her a change of clothes.”

  “Ah.”

  We passed through the sliding doors that led into the parking complex proper. Henry chewed on his tongue, scowling at the concrete.

  “You were quite strong with Vander back in the conference room,” I told him, wanting to break the silence—and snooping, as was my custom.

  “Agent Vander was bothering Dulcie,” he said. “They broke up and I guess it didn’t go over so well, but he’s still all up in her business even though he shouldn’t be.” He made a frustrated grumbling noise somewhere in the back of his closed mouth.

  “You did well.”

  “Dulcie says I’m supposed to ignore him.”

  I chuckled. There was a soft, metallic echo in this space. “Is Dulcie your mother?”

  “She’s like my work mom.”

  Oh, what a phrase. I wondered how Dulcie would react to hearing her partner refer to her as “mom.”

  “So, you do whatever she says?” I asked.

  “I try, sir.”

  How perfectly innocent; and how refreshing. At least I would not have to add Henry Cotton to the list I was compiling of people for whom an excess of pain had become necessary. Dulcie deserved someone who would respect her boundaries.

  That rules you out, some small voice in the back of my head pointed out in an infuriatingly righteous tone. I rolled my eyes at myself and sighed.

  “Is something bothering you, sir?”

  “Something is always bothering me, Mr. Cotton,” I acknowledged tiredly. “I was never fond of Vander, and recent events have only compounded my dislike for him.”

  “Yeah. Dulcie said he broke up with her, and she still feels weird about it.”

  “Is that all she told you?”

  “Mmhmm.” He shrugged. “I know there’s more, but I guess she’ll tell me when she’s ready.”

  There is so much more, I thought, but telling him did not seem wise. Henry Cotton was the embodiment of idealism; he might well take it into his head to kill Vander himself. And as thoroughly amusing as I would find that, Vander’s death was not a table set for two, and if anyone was going to end his miserable existence, it was going to be me.

  Or perhaps that was why I was so reluctant now to tell Cotton about the reasons I so despised Vander. Christina, I knew, would investigate quietly, and she was far too ethical a creature to ever dream of sharing what I had told her with anyone who did not already know.

  Quillan wou
ld not kill Vander. Christina would not kill Vander. And Christina would not tell anyone else who might kill Vander.

  As of this moment, the only one at the killing table was me. And some childish, vengeful part of me wanted to keep it that way.

  “I will be going now,” I announced, feeling the need to form a polite goodbye.

  “Um, sir?”

  “Yes?”

  “Is Dulcie going to die?”

  It was such an innocent, childish question. And it struck within me a solemn chord of fear. “She has died once before,” I replied, the memory of said occasion coming back to haunt me with a vengeance. “Perhaps she is quite like a cat and still has eight lives remaining.”

  Cotton nodded, mostly satisfied with the answer. “Okay, then. Um. I’ll see you later. Or not. Have a good day.” He held out his hand.

  I stared at it for a moment before taking it and giving it a gentle shake. He did not visibly react to the coldness of my skin.

  He simply nodded once and began to walk away.

  “Mr. Cotton?” I said.

  “Yes, sir?”

  Such a dutiful boy. Dulcie was lucky to have him. Even if I very much would have liked to throw him out the window for sounding like a boy scout from a WWII propaganda film.

  “Keep Vander away from Dulcie, would you?”

  The look that crept across his one working eye was diabolical. It did not fit the rest of him—evoking a feeling similar to how one might react if a small duckling suddenly pulled out a gun and suggested a game of Russian roulette—but it was perfectly sincere. If he ever outgrew the boy scout routine, he would cut quite an intimidating figure.

  “Already on it, sir,” he promised.

  I could not help but smile.

  ###

  The windows of the hearse were tinted, black near to the point that I could not see through them. I lay in my casket, with only a tiny gap allowing me to take in my surroundings. No shadows fell across the seats as my driver drove us back home. Even the heat of midday could not penetrate the willful energy of the air conditioning.

  Of all the long and boring days I have endured in my undeath, this drive was among the most emotionally taxing. I stared out the window, catching vague shapes and trying to decide where, exactly, I was.