Death's Mistress dbd-2

by Karen Chance

  It had popped out of the tile work at some point in the mess last night and landed on the far end of the counter that held the sink. But it was currently on the move. I watched it skate across the linoleum and pop back into place, the yellowed grout filling in around it.

  I stepped cautiously out of the shower, staring at it, and something bumped my foot. I snatched it back and looked down to find several more AWOL tiles jockeying for position. They moved across the floor, one having a rough time of it because it got stuck in the fuzzy bathroom rug. But it plowed on and finally tore free, scurrying over the floor and up the wall as if magnetized.

  Once I started looking for them, I noticed a few more minute signs of change: stains on the floor slowly shrinking, a gash in the wallpaper closing up like a healing wound, a couple chips in the bathroom mirror melting back into the surface like ice into water. I quickly threw on some jeans and a tank top, ran a comb through my hair and grabbed a jacket to cover my not strictly legal arsenal. Then I padded back downstairs.

  “There’s something very weird going on around here,” I told Claire.

  She glanced up long enough to roll her eyes. “What gave it away?”

  “I’m serious. I think the house is repairing itself.”

  “I know.” She pointed the spatula at the front of the fridge, where several dents were popping back out, one by one, making small pinging noises.

  “How?” I demanded.

  “You know how it never lets us move anything or get rid of anything?”

  I nodded. We’d spent a lot of useless time when I first moved in, trying in vain to adjust the place to fit our lifestyle. But every time we threw something out, it was back in place the next day. And the house could be vindictive, with that odd sort of consciousness magical objects sometimes acquire over time. The last time Claire had tried a reno, half her clothes had ended up scattered across the front lawn.

  “I think Pip spelled the place to maintain the status quo, probably so he wouldn’t have to do any maintenance,” she told me. “But the ley- line sink has so much power that it tends to magnify spells, so…”

  “It got a little too enthusiastic?”

  “Essentially, yes.”

  I glanced at the hole by the threshold that had been there since shortly after I moved in. “Not everything comes back,” I pointed out.

  “It’s a housekeeping spell,” she told me. “I don’t think it was designed to recognize demon blood. But more normal types of damage it should be able to handle.”

  “Then why isn’t it putting it back better?” I was taking in the same rust line along the top of the fridge door, the same warped cabinets above the stove and the same scuffed boards on the same dusty old floor.

  “Because it was designed to maintain everything exactly as it was at the moment Pip laid the spell. And I don’t think he cared too much about decor.”

  “So that stain on the ceiling in my bedroom—”

  “Is always going to be there, yes. Assuming the ceiling knits back.” She looked up. “I’m hopeful, but that was a lot of damage.”

  I stared up, thinking about all the weapons I could buy if I didn’t have to put a new roof on this thing. Of course the spell also meant I could never get rid of the ugly furniture, hideous wallpaper and outdated fixtures. But it wasn’t a perfect world.

  “I guess we’ll find out,” I said, peering over her shoulder to see what smelled so damn good. I blinked in disbelief. “That’s meat.”

  She shot me an evil look. “I know. Don’t start.”

  “Are you planning on eating it?” I peeked under a row of paper towel-covered plates by the stove and discovered piles of bacon, eggs and toast. Considering that her usual breakfast had been wheat flakes and almond milk, it was a bit of a shock. But a good one. I filched a piece of bacon and pulled my hand back before she could slap it.

  She scowled. “No.”

  “This has something to do with going scaly, doesn’t it?”

  “It has something to do with my other half slowly driving me nuts!” Claire said, stabbing at the remaining bacon. “It keeps trying to influence me.”

  I thought it already had, given a few of her comments from last night. And that wasn’t such a bad thing. If ever a situation called for a little more ruthlessness, having a bunch of homicidal fey after your kid was it.

  “I’ve tried to compromise,” she groused. “I tried eating fish and eggs.”

  “Did it help?”

  She made a face. “No. It doesn’t want fish. It doesn’t like eggs. It wants big piles of meat—the rarer and the greasier, the better. It would prefer live, squirmy things that it could kill first, only it knows better than to ask for that. So it tortures me with dreams of steak and sausages and ribs grilling over a fire.”

  I grinned. “So you’re cooking all this to what? Torture it back?”

  “The kids have to eat something. And I wanted to make enough for the twins and for a snack for them later. I don’t know how long I’ll be.”

  “How long you’ll be?”

  “Checking on Naudiz. It’s not the kind of thing anyone is going to discuss over the phone. I need to go in person.”

  “Actually, no,” I told her, stealing another slice. It was the good kind—thick, with a honey, peppery glaze. “You need to stay here with Aiden. I have to go in person.”

  “You don’t have my contacts,” she protested.

  “I have Olga.”

  Claire looked skeptical. “Your secretary?”

  “Her late husband was pretty well known in the supernatural weapons trade. And Benny wasn’t too particular about where he obtained his goods.”

  “And that’s a plus?”

  “It is if you’re looking for a hot fey battle rune. I don’t think that guard is likely to go through legit channels. Her people are more likely to have heard something.”

  “But I can’t just stay here and do nothing! That’s all I ever do!”

  “You’re not doing nothing. You’re guarding your son.

  And frankly, you’re a lot scarier than I am.”

  She shot me an exasperated look. “Thanks!”

  “You know what I mean. I can’t do what you can do, Claire. So let me do what I know how to do, okay?”

  I was surprised by a greasy hug. “You’re a good friend, Dory,” she told me fervently. I hugged her awkwardly back, my hands full of salty, fatty goodness. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been hugged this much in a twenty-four-hour period.

  She pulled back, blinking, and I pretended I didn’t notice. “Do you want something before you go?” She gestured at the stove. “There’s plenty.”

  “I thought all we had in the fridge was beer and mayo.

  And I wouldn’t trust the mayo.” I’d caught a small troll with his head in the jar a few days ago, eating it like candy.

  “Olga sent enough for an army over with the twins.” Claire pulled a jar out of the fridge and frowned at it.

  “You haven’t seen them eat yet. It was probably lunch.”

  “How much more should I make?” she asked, eyeing dishes on the stove.

  “Beats me. I’ve never actually seen them get full.

  Anyway, I have to go, before everyone I know turns in for the day.” I topped off my coffee and headed out, before she could ask why there were tongue marks in the mayonnaise.

  CHAPTER 9

  I found my duffel bag in the car and my cell inside the duffel, so things were looking up. The Camaro itself had some obvious new dents and smelled a little mildewy, but it started, so I counted it as a victory. Ten minutes later, I parked it next to a mini-mart that looked like any other in Brooklyn from the outside.

  It did on the inside, too, at least in front. Customers could prowl the deserted aisles, buy rubberlike hot dogs, get a scratch-off card and stock up on overpriced toiletries, all while being ostentatiously ignored by the staff. The locals had eventually gotten tired of the lousy service and gone elsewhere, which of course had
been the point. There were rumors that the store was a front for mob activity, drug running and/or gambling.

  The truth was a whole lot weirder.

  The back room was accessible through a brief hallway and a speakeasy-type door. I bent down and knocked, because the eyehole was roughly in line with my navel. A tiny green eye peered back at me suspiciously. “What?”

  “Open up. It’s me, Dory.”

  “How do I know that?”

  “Because you’re looking at me?”

  “Turn on the light.”

  I sighed. “It is on.” There were half a dozen hundred-fifty-watt bulbs in the overhead fixture, enough that I could feel their heat slowly frying my brain. Not that it mattered. Troll eyesight is universally terrible, and no spell I’ve ever heard of seems to help.

  There was a low-voiced conversation on the other side of the door. “You don’t have to whisper. I don’t speak troll,” I said helpfully.

  “You should learn,” a familiar voice said as the door swung back.

  I was still bent over, giving me a view of about a mile of shiny black leather encasing two massive thighs. A flick of the eye downward showed me a pair of high-heeled slides adding another three inches to an already towering height. Three gnarled toes peeked out the end, the usual number for a Bergtroll, or mountain troll. Although most don’t have nails painted high-gloss red.

  Or so I liked to believe, anyway.

  A trip upward showed me a very healthy bosom encased in a bright red vest, which was mostly hidden behind a flowing brown beard. It matched the hair framing the wide face above, which had been teased to within an inch of its life and streaked with platinum highlights. Its owner regarded me quizzically.

  “Why you bent over like that?” Olga demanded.

  Out of shock, I didn’t say. “No reason.”

  I stood up and she pulled back, giving me access. The tiny mountain troll who had answered the door clambered back onto his stool, pushed over to one side where he could smoke in peace. He’d also been used as a doorman by the proprietors of the establishment’s former incarnation—a crowded gambling den. I guess it had gotten too crowded, because it had been replaced by a beauty parlor.

  “New look?” I asked, settling myself onto an empty stool.

  Olga plopped back onto a chair by a manicure station. The chair groaned, but held, and the manicurist went back to work on her thick, curved nails. “You should try,” she said, eyeing my short nails and casual hairstyle without favor. “You look like boy.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Most guys don’t think so.”

  “I not see you married.”

  “Hell has yet to freeze over,” I agreed.

  She snorted. “What happened to that vampire?”

  “Which one?” Lately, I had more in my life than I liked. Of course, since I liked zero, that wasn’t hard.

  Olga spread her giant hands, turned them upward and made grabby motions. I grinned, thinking of Louis-Cesare’s expression if he ever found out that his name sounded like the troll word for “tight ass.” Not that it didn’t fit. On several levels.

  “I haven’t seen him in a while.”

  “You see him more often if you—” Olga looked at the manicurist. “What that word?”

  “Gild the lily?” the girl asked, shooting me an appraising glance. “You’d look great with highlights.”

  “I look like a skunk with highlights.” The curse of dark hair.

  “You just haven’t had them done right,” she told me. “I’m a whiz at color. As soon as I’m done here, we could—”

  “Maybe later,” I told her. I’d just gotten the blue.

  I sketched the problem out for Olga while the rest of the rhinestones were appliquéd. “We don’t know that he’s here to sell it, but it seems like a good guess.” The war in the supernatural community had driven up the price of all defensive wards. And this was supposed to be the grandfather of them all.

  She nodded and then just sat there. Unlike humans, trolls don’t have a problem with long silences. They also aren’t big in the idle chitchat department. Since I suck at that sort of thing myself, I found it oddly refreshing.

  I flipped through a few magazines, went out front and bought a soda, came back in and perused the new stock of weapons in the back room. There was enough firepower to take out half of Brooklyn shelved alongside the peroxide and bags of hair extensions. Olga had needed a cheap place to start up her business again, and the proprietor had needed some security, so they’d worked out a partnership agreement. It was currently possible to come in for a shampoo and leave with the magical equivalent of a bazooka.

  Most of the stuff I already had two of, but there was a nice selection of iron weapons I’d never really bothered to look at before. They were heavy and lacked the grace and flexibility of steel. There was nothing elegant here: no mirror-bright ceremonial blades, no inlaid grips, no fine-tooled scabbards. They were ugly, brutish weapons for ugly, brutish warfare.

  I hefted a short sword that was more like a club, and liked its weight in my hand. It was well balanced, with a dull, slightly pitted surface. No one would see this coming on a dark night. I also selected a couple knives and a mace that must have weighed fifty pounds, and took them back into the main room.

  And found Olga watching me. “What you do?”

  “I need weapons.”

  “You already have.”

  “Yeah, but they don’t work too well on fey. And you may have heard, we had a little visit last night. By the way, thanks for the twins.”

  Olga inclined her head. “What you do with these weapons?”

  I thought that was an odd question. “What do I usually do with them?”

  “You not go aftersubrand.”

  It had been more of a statement than a question, but I answered it anyway. “I didn’t go after him this time. And how did you know he was here?”

  “People talk.”

  “What else do they say?”

  She shrugged. “He here to make trouble. Not know what kind. But you stay away.”

  “I told you, he came after me.”

  Small blue eyes narrowed on my face. “And you not go hunt?”

  “What are you trying to tell me, Olga? That you won’t sell me weapons if I’m going aftersubrand?” She just looked at me. “Why?”

  “You good fighter, for little woman. But you no match for him. He kill you.” It was said with such toneless conviction that it sent a chill down my spine.

  “Well, cheer up. I’m not planning on searching him out. But in case he comes around again, I’d like something a little more lethal than highlights!”

  We finally reached an agreement, and I took the mace over to the doorman to arrange delivery. No way was I carrying that around all day. But the other stuff I tucked into my duffel. They weighed the thing down a lot more than normal, but it couldn’t be helped. I wasn’t going to get caught flat-footed again.

  I turned to find Olga levering herself to her feet. “Come.”

  She led me out the back door and into a small parking lot, where a specially built van was parked. She settled herself into the passenger’s side while the van’s struts creaked and groaned. Four hundred pounds of troll is a lot of troll, although she’s considered pretty petite for her species.

  The supernatural community in New York is broken into sections, much like the human city. The vamps prefer Manhattan; the mages have their East Coast base in Queens; and the Weres live mostly in rural areas upstate. Brooklyn, on the other hand, is fey territory. To be more precise, it’s a Dark Fey stronghold where the creatures who populate Earth’s nightmares hang out and attempt to make a living.

  A sizable minority of these are trolls, the human term for a wide variety of Dark Fey with a few obvious similarities. In reality, “trolls” were made up of dozens of different species, many of which had been enemies back in Faerie. But in the unfamiliar landscape of the human world, they’d bonded to form a tight- knit community. Olga’s late husb
and hadn’t even reached her waist.

  The rain had slowed everything down, and we got stuck in traffic going over the Brooklyn Bridge. “I hate Manhattan,” I said, itching to get there already.

  Olga nodded sympathetically. “In Faerie, Earth considered hell dimension.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “Yes.” She caught my expression. “Upper hell,” she said, placatingly.

  “I guess that’s something.”

  Traffic started to move again, and we inched into the city. There was no parking near our destination, so I dropped her off and went to find a garage. By the time I got back, she’d disappeared into a dimly lit restaurant decorated with raffia-wrapped wine bottles and paint-by-number images of Italy.

  It was fey run, meaning she could drop her glamourie like a coat at the door, the restaurant’s camouflage ensuring that everyone looked more or less human. Most of them were, but I spotted the slightly blurred outlines of at least three Others at the bar and a couple more eating spaghetti Bolognese at a corner table.

  “Lucas,” Olga told the waiter, who was in a glamourie to match the decor—dark hair, perfect little mustache, slight paunch, balding. What he actually looked like—or what he actually was—was anyone’s guess. I could detect glamouries unless they were very, very expensive ones. But I couldn’t see through them.

  That was, after all, kind of the point.

  The little man took us over to a table where a distinguished white-haired gentleman of maybe seventy was enjoying some cacciatore. His wrinkles were discreet, like the subtle stripe in his four-thousand-dollar suit and the shine on his Prada loafers. He seemed human enough, as far as I could tell, but he didn’t so much as blink as Olga explained what we wanted.

  “You check,” she finished, summoning the waiter with a regal gesture.

  “My dear lady, I don’t have to check,” he said, blotting a daub of sauce off the end of his chin. “I can assure you, nothing like that is being offered for sale in New York.”

  “How can you be so sure?” I asked, as Olga basically ordered the menu.

  “Because it is my business to know!”