by Lish McBride
By the time he turned sixteen, he’d packed a bag and decided to live in his car—a car bought with his own money. That lasted all of one week before Duncan found him camping out in the woods by Duncan’s cabin. After that, Cade lived with Duncan until he was old enough to get his own place. Cade’s parents didn’t seem to mind. They moved to Vermont shortly after their son walked out. He gets a card every year on Christmas. They sign it with their names, not “Mom and Dad” or anything. No mention of love or missing him or even best wishes. Just their names. I don’t think they even know about me. Every year he gets the card, reads it out loud, and then, with much pomp and ceremony, turns it into a paper airplane that he throws and I incinerate midflight. Tradition—it’s important in a family.
Duncan always seemed to know when Cade heard from his parents. I guess it wasn’t hard to gauge—one card on his birthday and another on Christmas, but still. We’d get the card, and then Duncan would show up. At Cade’s birthday, he’d show up with a bottle of stout, and during the winter holidays he’d appear with mulled cider and whiskey. Then he’d sit by the fire and whittle, and I’d make him tell stories about Cade as a teenager. Even though he’d run away from home, Cade really didn’t get into much trouble when he was young. Well, unless my mother was involved.
Venus knew I wouldn’t take this contract, with Duncan as the target. She had to. So why push me on this? She was usually more careful, which meant she wanted him bad enough to risk losing me as an asset, or it was a trick somehow. I kept turning it around in my head and couldn’t figure out my angle.
“Why him? Why now?” Everyone subtly moved back a few steps. Questioning Venus led to punishment unless she was in a good mood. Since she wasn’t in a good mood until after she punished you, it was pretty much guaranteed.
Owen stayed where he was. Venus didn’t scare him.
Venus looked at her nails, either admiring her manicure or wondering what damage her nails could do. It could have been either one. “I have reports that he’s building his own little army. Well-substantiated reports. I can’t have that happening practically on my doorstep, now, can I?”
Duncan amassing an army? For what, overthrowing the Coterie? That would interfere with his fishing. “You mean, like, a golem army?”
“What is an army of wood to my Owen?” She stroked Owen’s arm, and I wanted to vomit a little.
“So, what, you think he’s recruiting people or something?”
“What I know is not really your concern. All you need to worry about is you. Never make me question your loyalty, Ava. Remember that.” She ran her fingers down the chain that held her ward. Logically, I knew there was no way any traces of my blood were still on it. My blood-pact ceremony was too long ago. But it felt like the connection was still there, one touch and my blood was hers. I shivered.
None of this made any sense. I kept waiting for her to threaten me, shove Duncan’s folder back in my hand, or … something. Instead, she stood there, watching me. Okay, then.
“I’m not doing it. That’s final.” I scowled at Owen, my chin jutted out and defiant. “And if I catch you within burn range of him, I’ll roast you myself.”
A soft smile played across Owen’s lips as he made a lick of flame dance across his knuckles, the glow flickering as it wove its way to index to pinkie and back again. “You mean you’ll try,” he said lightly. His finesse was amazing, I had to give him that.
“If I’d meant try, I would have said so.” I was angry, tired from all the politics of the evening, and ready to go. In my book, Owen was long overdue for a smack-down.
Venus clucked at us. “Sometimes you two are worse than children. You don’t want me to make you behave, do you? I didn’t think so.” She had a strange look on her face; it made my heartbeat quicken and my palms sweat. You didn’t say no to Venus. And I certainly didn’t have any grounds to refuse her order. According to my blood pact, she owned me. Up until now, I’d contented myself with tiny rebellions, things that annoyed her but certainly didn’t do a whole lot. But this—well, I was being stupid. Was Duncan worth it? I thought about last winter when he’d stopped into the bookshop and given Cade and me an ornament he’d hand whittled—it was a very Horatio-looking cat relaxing on a book. Cade had loved it so much that it stayed up well after Christmas on our counter. Yes, Duncan was worth it.
“Can’t blame me for trying.” Venus never took her eyes off me. Her tone told me that she absolutely could blame me. “Surprising, though, you of all people defending Duncan. Yes, very interesting.” She smiled then, and it was sickly in a cat-eating-a-whole-aviary-of-canaries kind of way. I didn’t like that smile.
“He’s not part of Coterie business,” I said. “Leave him be. Please.” I wanted to look away but knew it was a bad idea. It had hurt to say “please” to Venus. “I don’t ask for many favors. Whoever gave you your information, they’re wrong.”
“You appear to know very little about what is or is not part of Coterie business, my little bug.” She stepped closer to me. “Even if what you said were true, it doesn’t matter. My business is Coterie business. Understand?”
I held her gaze, even though my eyes were starting to water from not blinking. What did she mean, “if what you said were true”? I may not know every single person in the Coterie, but I knew that Duncan wasn’t involved. Was she hinting at things I didn’t know, or was she just messing with my head?
“Yes,” I finally said, when it was clear she was waiting for me to respond.
“You need to sleep more,” she said. Her hand caressed my temple, then pulled back slowly. In a blink, she’d slapped me, thankfully not into unconsciousness. Enough to sting and remind me who was boss, though. Enough to draw blood where the inside of my cheek met teeth. I didn’t pass out, but I fell to my knees, my hand cupping my cheek as my vision tunneled. Venus leaned over me, her ward swinging. I had a flash of memory, an image of her ward in my blood. Even though it dangled in my face, I couldn’t reach out and tear it off her neck. The pact forbade it.
Constructed by Coterie lawyers, signed in my blood, and sealed by a blood witch—there was no way I was wiggling out of the pact safely. Unless Venus died, or—much more likely—I died, I wasn’t getting out. Oh, and the incredibly likely option of her letting me free was always there. Yeah, right. I could always track down the blood witch and ask her to undo it, but since that would result in a quick and messy execution for both of us, it wasn’t really an option. I had to face it. I was bound to Venus. It was the only way she allowed me to live. Let Cade live. The platinum of the swinging charm taunted me, and I couldn’t so much as reach out to it. Stuck, it said. You’re stuck with the rest of us.
Hmm. If I thought the necklace was talking to me, maybe she’d hit me harder than I thought.
My head complained about me standing so soon, but I didn’t want to stay on the floor. She handed me the file again. I used it to wipe off the blood that had dribbled from the corner of my mouth. Then I handed it back to her with a tight-lipped smile. It felt like the temperature in the room dipped about ten degrees, and I heard a few audible gasps from our audience. Venus could kill me right now and be within her rights granted by the pact. I had blatantly disobeyed her, and I’d done it openly and flagrantly. I was banking my continued health on the fact that she needed me—that I was worth too much. If the bet had Vegas odds, I wouldn’t have staked money on it. Even with my worth, the outcome did not look good. Would Cade be safe with me gone? Or would Venus track him down out of some perverse sense of vengeance? I could only hope that Duncan would take care of him.
She stared at me for a few breaths while we all waited to see which way she would swing. A sudden image of her as a Roman emperor filled my mind. Venus in the Colosseum, watching gladiators battle for her, waiting for her to give a sign as to whether they lived or died. Would it be thumbs up or down? Cheery. She finally shooed me away with one hand. “Go, rejoin your friends, then.”
A light dip of the head—as close to a bow
as she was going to get from me—and I was out the door. Even though I walked at a normal pace, I couldn’t get out of Hell fast enough.
5
AIN’T NO PARTY LIKE A COTERIE PARTY, ’CAUSE A COTERIE PARTY HAS A BODY COUNT
THERE ARE SEVERAL bars in the Inferno, but the Purgatory bar is the smallest and has only one or two bartenders working. The bar, like the restaurant, is dimly lit, mostly by candles and chandeliers made to look like they’re full of candles. There’s some red backlighting that reflects off the burnished copper set into the wall.
I went to check on my two favorite bartenders—and despite their earlier behavior, they still were my favorites—behind the Purgatory bar. I slid onto the stool behind Lock, winking at Ezra as I did so. He solemnly held up one finger in a shushing fashion, then went back to wiping down a pint glass.
Lock’s spiked, bleached hair appeared magenta in the bar’s light. He wore his black Purgatory T-shirt and black pants well, judging from the way the women seated at the bar were staring, and by the amount of drool Brittany had produced at the table earlier. Not that I was sizing up one of my best friends. That would be weird.
I leaned forward and pinched him on the ass. I thought he’d leap or startle, as most people would when receiving an unexpected goose, but Lock simply spun around, grabbing my hand.
“Let go,” I said.
He shook his head slowly, eyes twinkling in the candlelight, then pulled me forward so he could lean over the bar and kiss me on the cheek. I felt the collective death stare of every girl seated at the bar.
“You’re not supposed to be over here,” he said into my ear. “Especially since I’m full of wrath toward you right now. Never visit a wrathful bartender. We can do terrible things to your beverages.”
“You’re full of something,” I said, leaning away from him and yanking my hand back as I did. “But I’m not sure it’s wrath. Besides, you love me too much to poison me or kick me out for being underage.” Especially since I knew for a fact that neither of them was twenty-one either. One of the perks of working for the Coterie? Best fake IDs ever. Venus had even made me take one. She didn’t want my age to get in the way of my job, should I ever have to go after someone in a bar or voting booth. Just because I had one didn’t mean I wanted to use it to go into a Coterie bar unless it was to see my friends or take someone out.
Lock rolled his eyes theatrically at Ezra and pulled me a Coke from the bar, topping it with a cherry before he handed it over, but he didn’t argue. When I was in Purgatory, the only two people who were allowed to give me food or beverages were Lock and Ezra. It was one of their rules. The Inferno had a large staff, and since I’d been one of Venus’s bogeymen for years now and a lot of the creatures held a grudge, we didn’t know what one of them might pull. People don’t care that you hurt them or their loved ones because someone else told you to—they just care that you did it. It was too easy for something to go wrong, which is why Ezra had insisted on waiting on our table earlier. I thought they were being overly cautious most days, but after my little meeting with Venus I was willing to go along with their paranoia.
“How did it go?” Lock asked, handing off a set of martinis to a waitress.
“I turned down a job.”
Ezra and Lock both stilled.
“I’m sorry,” Ezra said, “could you repeat that last part? I couldn’t hear it over the sound of you losing your damn mind.”
Lock tossed his bar rag on the counter. “Funny, you don’t look dead.” He poked me with his index finger. “And you certainly don’t feel dead. Maybe I need to feel you more to double-check.”
“Piss off.” He reached to poke me again, and I batted his hand away.
“It was Duncan. What was I supposed to do?”
Ezra came around to my side of the bar, completely ignoring the customers who’d just approached to order, forcing Lock to walk away for a second and deal with them.
“Duncan? Beardy, food-bringing Duncan? I like him. We can’t kill him. He brings us fish.”
“I know,” I said.
“Also, because it would be wrong,” Lock said, walking back over to us. “Still, Ava. You told her no? Flat out? No attempts at negotiation?” He rubbed the back of his neck. “What am I saying? Of course you didn’t negotiate. You probably yelled ‘no’ and then spit on her shoes.”
“I’m not that bad. I know better than to spit. But I am a little worried about her lack of instant torture and/or murder. At the very least I should be hanging from warded manacles while starved weasels nibble at my toes.”
Lock rested his elbows on the bar. “See, you kid, but that really is where you should be right now. What did she do?”
“She slapped me.” We all knew that the slap was almost a nonpunishment. I mean, Venus slapped when she was feeling playful. I gave them a brief sketch of the meeting, and Lock went back to wiping the counter, but he did it slowly, his face creased in thought. Ezra left his stool to drape over my back and steal the cherry out of my drink, because touching reassured him, which is how I knew that he was worried even if he was acting like his usual playful self.
After a few seconds like that, Lock shook his head. “I don’t like it, Aves. You need—no, we all need—to watch our step for a while. She has to be planning something. No way she’d let you walk away with just a slap.” He grabbed a few dollars that someone had left as a tip off the counter and shoved them into his apron. “There’s talk lately that she’s been even more … interesting than usual. I know we always try to tiptoe, but now might be the time to add padded slippers and a noise machine into the act. Know what I mean?”
I stared down at my soda, stirring it with my straw. “I’m worried, Lock.” Ezra stroked my hair, and I caught a few people staring daggers at me. It didn’t matter that we were just friends. All they knew was that I’d walked in and stolen Ezra’s attention.
“You spoke for all of us,” Lock said. “Which means that, if she wants, Venus could terminate Ez and me as well.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I should have brought it to you first—”
Lock cut me off. “Why? Our answer would have been the same.”
A new drink ticket flashed on the screen behind Lock, and he started pulling some beers from the tap to fill the order. “Ezra and I can handle ourselves, but maybe you should go check on the friends you came with.”
“They aren’t really my friends,” I said.
“Really? But you have so much in common.”
I knew that tone. It meant that the subject would come up again later, in much more detail. I squirmed in my seat and whined. “You’re not going to make me talk about my feelings, are you? I hate that. Sometimes being friends with you is like having a girlfriend. If we X-ray you, will we find an errant uterus?”
“You can always strip-search me and find out.” Lock leaned against the bar and gave me a mock smolder. It always made me smile, but secretly, deep down in the Tartarus region of my libido, I actually kind of found it a little thrilling. Not that I would say so to Lock.
“Uteruses are found on the inside, Lock. Inside. You have met women, right?”
That earned me another grunt. “You have no idea.” There was no leer when he said it, just an honest response. “Okay,” he said. “Playtime is over.” Ezra took his place behind the counter, and Lock walked me to the elevators.
“What, you think ninjas are going to jump out and attack me in the fifteen feet between the bar and the elevators?” I looped my arm in his.
“The way tonight has gone, I would follow you into the bathroom right now.”
My throat went dry as he brushed my hair back from my face, staring at me for a moment before he turned to the elevators and shoved his hands into his pockets. “I can’t follow you up there—I’m still on shift, and Venus would kill me. Well, she’s probably going to kill me anyway, but I’m not going to go out of my way to give her extra reasons. Be careful, though, Aves, okay? Stay safe?”
I agreed,
even though we both knew that it was an impossible promise. The only way to stay safe in a Coterie bar was to leave it.
A SECURITY guard waved me into an elevator. There are stairs going up to the top floor, but they’re used only for emergencies and staff. Venus thought the elevators were much more dramatic. For once, Venus and I agreed on something.
The doors dinged open, and my first impression was that the place was on fire. Maybe that was just the firebug in me, though. Smoke rolled over the floor, so you could only see the dancers from about thighs up. The seats that lined the dance floor were done in deep purple velvet, and everything was hazily lit, making the scene ethereal and dreamlike. I had expected a disco ball. Don’t ask me why. Apparently I pictured Heaven as a grand seventies-style disco party. And I wouldn’t have said no to some roller-skating dancers. A sudden image of my mom in bell-bottoms and an Afro made me smile, even though it hurt.
I felt bad for the waiters, who were all wearing scanty outfits. The guys had on short, Grecian-looking, white linen skirts that somehow emphasized rather than took away from their masculinity, and oh boy were these guys masculine. You could have made a “Men of the Inferno” calendar; you know the kind where guys are half-naked in waterfalls for no apparent reason, or chopping wood, even though it’s clear they’ve never even held an ax before? Dreamy, every single one of them, and they were wearing nothing but those tiny skirts and the leather straps that held on their long white wings. I kid you not. The staff up top was winged. And the ladies, all voluptuous curves and sultry looks, were wearing the same thing, except they had an additional, if miniscule, piece of linen to go across their chests. How did anyone stay with their date?