by JJ Jones
“You better!” Lacy cautioned her, rather than offering any sort of farewell before she hung up the phone. Not that it really mattered; Clarissa was well accustomed to Lacy’s abrupt nature, and she found it refreshing more often than not. And by then, she had too much to think about to be able to carry on a pleasant conversation, as everything she had carefully been putting out of her mind all day began to trickle back in, refusing to be ignored for any longer once she was done working for the day.
How did Abel make her feel?
Despite everything that had happened, he didn't make her feel like she wasn’t safe. Plus, she
believed him when he said that he was a better leader than Corvin would ever be, and that he had the best interest of everyone in mind. And he made her feel alive in a way she hadn’t before, and when she thought about it like that, she supposed her decision was basically made for her. She just needed to call Abel to double-check a few things and to let him know that she was willing to go along with his idea, if it meant keeping people safer in the long run.
She started pacing at that point, footsteps carrying her back and forth, just a few feet in either direction as the sunset slowly approached, the clouds gradually shifting from silver to pink and gold. She found Abel’s number in the contacts list, and her thumb hovered over it for only a few seconds before she tapped it, and the phone began to ring.
Clarissa slowed to a halt at the edge of the sidewalk, and by the third ring, Abel answered, with a, “Hello, Clarissa,” that sounded almost nervous. He wanted her to accept the offer, and she suspected it was for more than just strictly practical reasons.
She could have tried to dress it up, but she figured if she tried to beat around the bush, then she might lose her nerve, and so instead she simply asked in a rush, “I won’t need to hurt anyone myself, will I?”
“Of course not!” he hurried to assure her. “Everything you would be doing could be done with your journalism skills. I’m not trying to get you to agree to be my secret weapon or anything like that. Just an extra hand when I can’t go somewhere without being recognized.”
She was quiet for a moment, still turning everything over in her mind, until at last she drew in a deep breath and sighed it out slowly, tipping the phone receiver away from her mouth as she did, so she wouldn’t suddenly assault him with deafening static.
“Alright,” she agreed once the receiver was in front of her mouth again, her voice far steadier than she expected it to be, considering how much she had been dilly-dallying over actually coming to a decision. “I’ll help you. Because I believe you when you say I won’t need to hurt anyone, and that you don’t want to hurt anyone, and that you just want to do what’s best. I believe you.”
Abel managed a brief laugh, incredulous but relieved. “That…is not the answer I was expecting to get,” he admitted after a moment. “But thank you. Your help means the world to me. I mean it.”
“I just hope I don’t let you down,” she replied, reaching up to distractedly rub the back of her neck with one hand as she said it.
“I’ve got a good feeling that you won’t,” he assured her, his tone slightly wry. “And again, thank you. So much. I’ve needed help like this for…ages, honestly. I’d get into it more, but you don’t need me rambling at you right now.” He huffed out a breath of laughter. “You enjoy your evening. I’ll text you if there’s anything you need to know. Alright?”
“Alright,” Clarissa agreed, her voice a low mumble, and they both hung up after a final farewell. It was a relief, honestly. She enjoyed talking to him, true enough, but already she was mentally exhausted enough that she just wanted some quiet.
She looked around at the crowds around her and sighed. It would be a little while before she could have actual silence, and with that thought in mind, she began the trek back to her hotel, her thoughts churning the entire time.
She didn’t know if she was doing the right thing. She didn’t know if there really was a right thing to do, considering the circumstances. But she supposed it was a chance she was willing to take. And if it went south…well, she would be back in the United States soon enough, and there she could try to forget it all and pretend that nothing had ever happened.
She checked the time on her phone, ran a hand over her hair, and started to walk to the nearest subway entrance. She could head back to the hotel and order room service for dinner, and she could just sprawl out on the bed after that until it felt less like all of her thoughts were trying to crawl out of her head.
Besides, she had the feeling that it was going to be a long few days starting tomorrow, and it would probably be for the best if she got a good night’s sleep.
CHAPTER FOUR
Clarissa knew she was supposed to be meeting Abel. He had her phone number, and he had texted her to let her know about it. He had been a bit cagey about the details, other than that it involved their deal and that she would be meeting a friend of his. An inhuman friend, presumably, considering she felt pretty comfortable in assuming that she was the only human who knew any concrete details about the life and times of magical creatures.
They weren’t meeting at Abel’s house, though. Something about it being an annoying distance for his friend to run. So, as she sat in the taxi on the way to the address he had given her, she couldn’t help but let her thoughts run wild as she tried to guess what his friend might be. She supposed the most logical choice was another dragon, but she figured he would have just said that, if that was the case. And besides, she wasn’t sure how many dragons she could take without her entire world view completely collapsing.
(Honestly, she wasn’t sure her entire world view hadn’t already collapsed, and it was just taking her a while to notice. She supposed that was a possibility, and she was just in some form of
denial.)
Once the taxi got to the address and Clarissa paid and climbed out, her curiosity only increased as she made her way over to where Abel was waiting, standing at the mouth of an alley between a cafe and a storefront. She was focused in an instant, so she couldn’t even hear the taxi pulling away again. Something about Abel had seemed to attract every ounce of attention in a room even before Clarissa had known he was a dragon, and it was only more intense when she knew that another amazing creature was waiting. (Well, figuratively speaking. She was pretty sure that Abel’s friend wasn’t actually there yet, considering Abel was the only one she could see waiting.)
She tried her best to seem as composed as she usually was, and though she wasn’t convinced that she succeeded, Abel didn’t actually say anything about it, and for that Clarissa was glad. She didn’t need to lose all of her dignity. Though that wasn’t something she devoted much thought to just then.
It was true that Abel had explained that basically any sort of magical creature could be wandering around looking like a human being, but even so, she hadn’t actually expected to meet any sort of creature other than dragons. They seemed like they would be the top of the food chain, after all. They were large, imposing, well-armed, and they could fly. It seemed silly to assume that anything else might be on the same level as them.
And then, she met Marjorie, and her entire opinion on the matter changed very quickly and very thoroughly. So thoroughly, in fact, that she was pretty sure her opinion retroactively altered so that she had never even been skeptical to begin with.
Her first impression of Marjorie was actually in her creature form, as she trotted up through the alley to meet them, as if there wasn’t a chance that anyone might stumble upon the mouth of the alley and see them. Granted, it was a situation where magic was involved, and Clarissa didn’t know nearly enough about magic to truly rule it out if they were invisible or shielded or something like that.
Regardless, Marjorie most definitely did not look like a human when she trotted through the
alley, and each time her hooves hit the pavement it was with a sound like a chiming bell, before she came to a halt.
Clarissa couldn’t quite describe
how it felt to see Marjorie, honestly. Regardless of everything else going on and everything else on her mind, her presence made it all seem so much smaller and softer and harmless. As if Clarissa could just pick up all of her problems, put them in her pocket, and drop them in the next convenient trashcan. Marjorie made it feel as if everything would be alright in a way that didn’t simply feel like a cheap placation, but as if it was actually true. And for a moment, Clarissa was envious of that ability. But for the most part, all she could was stare.
Marjorie was sort of shaped like a horse, but narrower and sleeker, with legs so slender and delicate they looked as if they might snap if she stepped too aggressively. She had silver, clover hooves, and the fur of her legs was long and feathered. Her neck was slender and graceful, and her fur was such a pure shade of white that Clarissa was pretty sure she was literally glowing, filling the dim alley with soft white light, and the air around her seemed cleaner and purer, as if her very existence was making the world a better place one little bit at a time.
Her ears were a bit thinner than a horse’s would be, and her head was narrower, so she looked just a bit closer to a deer than to a horse, and a thin, curling beard trailed down from the very end of her chin to nearly halfway down her neck. Her tail was long and thin with a splash of hair at the end of it, so it nearly resembled a lion’s, and her mane was long and slightly curly, cascading over one side of her neck in long, loose ringlets.
And a slightly curved horn, nearly two feet in length and shimmering in pastels of every color Clarissa could think of depending on how the light struck it was growing out of her forehead.
She wasn’t a dragon, but in that moment, that didn’t mean anything. Clarissa could easily imagine an entire city of magical creatures following her through hell and high water, regardless of the fact that she couldn’t breathe fire or fly.
The unicorn watched Clarissa with frightfully intelligent lilac eyes as Clarissa gaped at her like some sort of uneducated monkey, until at last, Marjorie took pity on her and transformed.
“You’re fully dressed,” Clarissa stated, and she sort of wanted to slap a hand over her mouth
after that. It seemed as if fate was determined for her to come across as idiotic as she possibly could.
“Magic,” Abel reminded her. “I was only naked last time because I was already naked when I transformed to begin with. Making our clothes change form with us is pretty simple.”
“And saves us a lot of embarrassment,” Marjorie added in a smooth, alto voice. “It would be a little inconvenient to have to carry a saddlebag with me every time I decide to go somewhere on four legs.”
Marjorie shaped like a human was no less transfixing than Marjorie shaped like a unicorn. She was tall and shapely, with athletic legs, shoulders, and arms. Her hands were thin and her fingers long and spidery, with nails painted a deep shade of purple to match her blouse and purse and to complement her black skirt and boots. Her skin was a deep shade of chocolate brown, and her hair fell nearly to her waist in tight, bright white curls, partially shaved on the left side of her head. Her eyes remained the same, a startling shade of lilac, and they were no less intimidating when she looked like a super model.
Clarissa cleared her throat and wrung her hands together in front of herself, suddenly feeling incredibly inadequate. “I’m Clarissa,” she finally offered, just so she would stop standing there in awkward silence. “I figure Abel already told you that, though. And about our weird deal.”
“He did,” Marjorie agreed pleasantly. “I’m here to tell you about your first lead to investigate,” she supplied, her hands settling on her hips as she said it. Her tone turned slightly wry as she added, “I do most of his investigating for him, since I’m a bit less immediately recognizable.”
That seemed almost inconceivable to Clarissa, before it occurred to her that Marjorie simply meant she was less famous than the billionaire standing beside them. Which was true enough; Clarissa couldn’t recall ever hearing Marjorie’s name before, while Abel’s name seemed to be common knowledge in the city.
Abel shrugged carelessly, as if to silently say ‘what can you do?’ “It’s not my fault I’m well-known,” he protested mildly, though he didn’t sound particularly offended at the moment.
“You do seek out a lot of attention,” Clarissa pointed out, recalling every interview and article about him she had perused during her research before leaving the States. It had been a rather impressive number of words to get through, and he had never seemed upset about it.
“A lot,” Marjorie confirmed, nodding earnestly. “You’re kind of an attention whore when you want to be.”
Abel folded his arms over his chest and scowled at them, falling into a sulk when Marjorie turned her attention to Clarissa.
“Our first lead is a hippogriff,” she explained, pulling a slip of paper out of her purse as she said it. There was an address written on it, and she handed it over, pressing it into Clarissa’s palm. “His name is Remy Bergeron, and he’s the vice president of a telecommunications company.
That’s the company headquarters.” She pointed to the slip of paper. “We aren’t sure how involved he is in Corvin’s machinations, but we do strongly suspect that he is involved in some way.” She gave Clarissa a meaningful look. “Which is where you come in. You get in, get as much information as you can in whatever way seems best to you, and then give it back to us, so we know how to best act.”
“What would Corvin need someone from a telecommunications company for?” Clarissa wondered, glancing down at the slip of paper as she asked. It didn’t exactly sound like the sort of
person you would find in the inner circle of a prospective warmonger, after all.
“Assuming we’re on the right track,” Abel replied, “then we suspect he makes sure Corvin can keep in touch with everyone else he’s tapped to help him.”
“So, if we deal with him,” Marjorie added, picking up where Abel left off, “then it will be a fairly big deal, since it will make it harder for Corvin to keep in touch with everyone else in his network.”
“But won’t he notice if someone like that suddenly stops helping him, then?” Clarissa wondered, trying to think like the sort of tacticians they had apparently grown into, though it wasn’t exactly a role that came naturally to her. Granted, she hadn’t had to grow up living in hiding, even while out in the open, so she supposed that made sense. And when she thought of it that way, she was fairly glad she couldn’t quite get on the same wavelength as them.
Abel waved the question off, unconcerned. “I can make it look like it’s no big deal pretty convincingly, regardless of how it ends,” he assured her, and in that moment, Clarissa suddenly knew just how things might end.
Abel might need to kill someone. And Clarissa might need to help him with it. Not directly, true enough, considering she was about as harmless as a flea compared to him, but she would still be giving him the information he needed to decide whether or not it was necessary.
Granted, she was reasonably comfortable in trusting that he wasn’t going to just immediately leap to murder if he didn’t have to, but she didn’t actually know, and the fact of the matter was that all she had was his word, and it was still a possibility. Even just knowing it was a possibility, she wasn’t sure how she felt about it.
But she had agreed to help, and she wasn’t going to go back on her word. So, she comforted herself with the knowledge that she wasn’t being handed a weapon herself and that things would get worse if she didn’t help, so she looked down at the slip of paper once again. Already formulating a few plans for how to deal with it,” she stated. “I’ll see how quickly I can get in to speak with him, then.”
Just a few days ago, she would never have even guessed that fantasy creatures were real at all, and soon enough, she was going to have spent time with three of them, all of them of different species. It was almost too much to wrap her brain around, and she was still sort of convinced that she was going to wake up at any momen
t to realize that she had drunk too much the night before and had a particularly vivid dream.
The rest of her, however, knew that everything that had happened was very, very real, and it was as frightening as it was incredible. She wasn’t sure what she was going to do once it was time for her to head back home again, knowing that there were probably fantastical creatures all around her, and she wouldn’t even be able to bring it up to any of them.
*
It was surprisingly easy to schedule a meeting with Mr. Bergeron. Clarissa spun a tale about how she was interviewing people about influential businesses in the city for an article in her magazine, and after that, he seemed thrilled to meet with her the very next day. She made sure she was dressed professionally with all of her usual supplies with her. She wanted to be convincing, after all, and it seemed like the safest way to get back out again once she had the information she needed was to simply interview him as promised and then leave.
Of course, she showed up almost forty-five minutes before their scheduled appointment, so when the woman behind the desk in the lobby told her what floor to take the elevator to, Mr. Bergeron was still busy in his office.