I sucked in a breath. “It’s stunning.”
The entire thing appeared to be carved onyx. The form was smooth and graceful, and it looked so real, I expected it to feel warm to the touch. It was sitting up straight with its tail curled around it, jeweled claws poking out beneath the tail. One eye was formed of a perfect emerald. The other socket was empty.
“It’s useless.” Her words dripped with disgust, but her eyes gazed at the figure with admiration bordering on love, and her hands stroked the sleek form as if it were real. “They took the part that mattered.” She twisted it to give me a clear look at the empty socket.
“They took the other emerald?”
She shook her head and cradled the statue in her lap. “Not an emerald. A golden cat’s eye. It grants the power of sight.”
Made sense. Three women sharing an eyeball might want a second one to share.
“You’re sure it was them?” I couldn’t go out falsely accusing powerful witches. This was dangerous enough.
Hecate pulled herself up straight in her seat, chin high. “Darling, I am the goddess of witches. I know their residue. Stygian stench was all over the room.” She leaned back again, her shoulders not exactly slumping, but certainly not as regal as they had been a moment before. “The restrictions that keep me here have robbed me of the ability to…deal with my girls when they misbehave. My wand is tied, and they know it.” It was her turn to gulp down her drink and refill it. “Will you help?”
I lifted my glass from the table and held it in both hands. The amber liquid was a comforting place to stare while I contemplated my options.
If I refused to do this, I might be stuck down here until somebody came looking for me. And pissing off a goddess of this level could damage my health, my career, and possibly my afterlife. I didn’t know for certain she’d be vindictive, but all the gods tended to be volatile, at least part of the time. She was an Underworld goddess. That seemed potentially worse.
On the other hand, providing I survived and succeed at this, I’d have Hecate’s gratitude. Considering my nighttime activities as of late, it would be good to have someone that powerful on my side.
I decided to push my luck a little. “So…” I looked up and met her gaze. “Would there be some sort of finder’s fee or reward?”
She chuckled. “Ah. Yes. That part. Well, I wouldn’t expect you to do something like this without payment.” She rummaged in her cloak again and pulled out a keycard, waving it with a flourish. “This is a master key. It will get you through every door in Mt. Olympus and the Underworld. I know several departments leave their doors unlocked up there, but others don’t.” Her lips quirked into a sly half smile. “I think it would greatly assist you in your after-hours endeavors.”
My fingers itched to snatch it out of her hands. There were places I couldn’t go yet, and others where I had to take the time to “borrow” a key from somewhere else before I could get in.
Mt. Olympus was both complicated and inconsistent. It made my side jobs a lot more difficult.
Hecate flashed her dimples and stashed the keycard in her cloak. “So. Interested?”
My snakes stirred on my shoulders. I held my glass high so they could taste the liquor. “I assume you know where they are?”
She watched my head with interest as the snakes took turns exploring my glass. “I do. They run a diner in Wichita.” She made a sour face. “Soup is their specialty. Not made of humans, though. That’s an old wives’ tale.” She rummaged a third time and handed me a palm-sized mirror framed in gold and attached to a long chain. “Take this until you’re done. Wear it under your clothes, and when you’re ready to go into the human world, imagine how you would look as a human, then stare into the mirror until you’re transformed. Do the same in reverse when you’re safely back home.”
I didn’t have to imagine how I’d look as a human. I’d spent twenty years as one. The thought of being mousy and plain again made my stomach hurt and my mouth taste sour. But she was right. I couldn’t stroll the streets of Wichita with my head hissing at commuters who wandered too close on the sidewalk.
“Thanks.” I slipped the necklace over my head and tucked it under my blouse. “Anything else I should know?” I attempted to take another sip of my drink and found it empty. My snakes had finished it off and were lying tangled over my left shoulder. A few made tiny snoring sounds. I rose from my chair, eager to get going. I still had more work to do before I could go home for the night.
She stood with me. “Of course, there’s a slight catch to all this.”
I froze. Of course there was. “Catch?”
“It’s imperative that I have my property returned before the full moon. The spell I need it for won’t work any other time.” She paused and drew her face closer to mine, as if to emphasize how serious this was. “I need it to work. Do you understand?”
I gave her a slow nod. “I understand. That should give me a good week at least, right?”
She let out a short cackle that held no real amusement. “I’m afraid not, dear. It means you have until Monday.” She led me to the door. “It’s the Gray Cafe in Wichita. I assume you can access the Wichita portal and find the location on your own?”
I gave her a curt nod. “Not a problem.” I stuck out my hand for her to shake. “I’ll do what I can.”
She took my hand and held it for a moment while staring into my eyes. “Make sure that you do. If I don’t have that cat’s eye by Monday, I’ll be a very unhappy woman.” Her eyes flashed red and, for the first time, I had a feeling for the frightening extent of her power.
I swallowed hard. “I’ll do what I can.”
* * *
By the time the elevator returned me to the Mt. Olympus lobby—Hecate sent me up but didn’t accompany me—the lights were turned low and no one was around.
It was the perfect time for me to take care of that other business I needed to handle.
I couldn’t imagine what made the man with the vivid eyes so frantic to get his letter back, but he’d been truly upset.
That’s what I got for being uncharacteristically helpful.
In a place like Mt. Olympus, nobody paid a lot of attention. Still, mine was the first face everyone saw when they came to work each day. I couldn’t afford to be recognized.
Had I remembered the mirror Hecate had given me, I wouldn’t have had to go to any trouble. But I had a routine, and I stuck to it without thinking.
I rummaged in a drawer under my desk and found the gym bag I kept stashed there. Sometimes my snakes were too active to keep hidden for long, but they’d had enough to drink to keep them quiet for a while. I pulled a scarf from my bag and wrapped it around my head, tucking the snakes gently inside and tying the cloth snugly against the back of my neck. I swapped my tiny round sunglasses for larger ones, then slipped into a baggy, dark hoodie that hung around my face enough to cause shadows. As long as no one looked too closely, I could be anybody, including someone from maintenance.
I took the elevator to seven and stepped out. The entire floor belonged to the Messenger department. Down the hall, a loud rumbling announced the presence of a maintenance person waxing the floor. I turned in the other direction and headed toward the mailroom.
I stopped at the door to the outgoing center and faced the security panel on the wall. Some departments—like Cupid and Muse—left their doors unlocked. Others—like Midas and Mortal Resources—required special keycards to get in. Unlike the rest of the Messenger department, the mailroom took a third option. I had to punch in a security code to get through the door.
I’m not ashamed of what I did to get that code. A little icked out, but I didn’t actually sleep with Anderson the sphinx. It was one date, and it didn’t go that far. Maybe a little far. I did what I had to do to get him to give me an after-hours tour of the department.
And maybe I watched him enter the security code when he thought I was fixing my lipstick.
Sidebar: Kissing a sphinx is like being lic
ked in the face by an irritable cheetah. Not recommended. Plus, he’ll ask you a riddle before each new move.
But the key code still worked. The rest I could block out of my memory. Sort of.
I tapped in the nine-digit number, waited for the light to turn green, then slipped through the door.
The whole place had a musty smell, sort of like a library but not as cozy. The main lights had been turned off, and I didn’t dare turn them back on, but ambient lights around the room were enough to pick things out. Plastic bins littered the floor space and sat in piles against the walls. A conveyor track held more bins, some filled with mail and packages, others with what looked like the trash from a recent office party—empty pizza boxes, soda cans, and paper plates covered in cake frosting.
I took a deep breath, flipped on my flashlight, and tried to figure out the organization of the place. The far wall was divided into hundreds of cubbies, and locations were printed beneath each hole.
That wouldn’t help me much, considering I’d never looked at the destination of the guy’s letter. My shoulders sagged. If I had to go through every box and every cubby in the place to find one small blue envelope, I’d be there all night.
Why had I agreed to this?
I did a quick eyeball of the cubbies, not immediately seeing what I was looking for. Going through each one would take awhile. I hoped I’d find another way to find it before it came to that.
The bins on the floor had destination tags stuck to their sides, and the letters inside were neatly bound together with rubber bands. The bins on the roller contraption didn’t have places written on them. They had numbers.
I stared at them for a few minutes, trying to figure out what the numbers meant. Bins with the number “One” written on the side were piled in the corner, empty. Several that said “Two” were in a smaller stack next to them, and other twos were full and sitting on the roller track. The rest of the numbered bins were labeled “Three,” and those were all on the track.
I chewed the inside of my cheek while I thought about it. Anderson and his coworkers picked up and delivered mail three times per day. He’d picked up the letter from me on his last trip around for the day.
Could it be that easy?
I stepped close to a number three bin and peeked inside. A mass of inner-office manila envelopes swam together like bloated fish. I poked through them, but the bin was consistently nothing but inner-office, company-approved envelopes.
I mentally checked it off my list and moved on.
The next number three was half full. I sifted through and found a mishmash of bills, personal letters, and more inner-office material.
This was where I needed to start.
I grabbed the bin and sat on the floor with it. My flashlight hung from the zipper of my hoodie to keep my hands free. I dumped the bin on the beige carpet and grabbed a handful.
Thank the gods the envelope I was looking for was blue. It made it easier to toss everything that wasn’t it back into the box. This turned out to be everything, so I put the bin back and repeated the process with another. And another.
Twice I found a small blue envelope and my heart sped with excitement. Twice it wasn’t the one I was looking for. They didn’t have gold seals on the back.
A curse on the head of whoever was selling so much of that particular type of stationary, though.
People say, “It’s always in the last place you look.” Sarcastic folks usually add, “Because why would you keep looking after you found it?” Those sarcastic people are missing the point.
The point of the phrase is to say, “Thank the gods it was in that last place I looked, because I was out of places after that.” If there were any more number three bins left, I didn’t see them. So, finding the guy’s letter in the last one was an enormous relief.
What wasn’t a relief was hearing someone on the other side of the door enter the access code.
I froze. An spike of adrenaline shot through my body, and a few of my snakes stirred beneath their tourniquet. One hissed in my ear.
“Shh. Be quiet,” I whispered. I crab walked backward behind several stacks of empty bins. A snaky tongue slipped out from under my headwrap and licked my cheek.
A high-pitched voice giggled on the other side of the door. The bin I’d been sorting through still sat on the floor, and the envelope I’d been after lay next to it. I took a chance and crawled back to snag the letter, then disappeared behind the stack again as the door opened.
“And this is where the magic happens.” Anderson’s voice was too loud. He sounded like he’d been drinking.
“It’s so much bigger than I expected!” The giggle happened again, making me cringe. Whoever she was, she didn’t sound terribly smart.
Then again, that was a pretty good line. I wondered if she’d memorized the entry code, too.
“You have no idea, Lily. You have no idea.”
She squealed, something thumped, then they started making bizarre slurping noises. I wished I didn’t recognize the sound, but I did. It sounded a like someone being licked by an irritable cheetah.
I curled into a ball, hoping the sounds would soon stop, but they didn’t. A box tipped off the conveyor to the floor, then the rollers on it rattled. A lot. The giggler moaned.
The slurping stopped, and Anderson spoke in a breathless voice. “Lily, what is it that’s always coming, but never arrives?”
The girl’s giggle grew louder. “I don’t know, but it sounds dirty.” She squealed again, and a bra flew over my head.
I’d had enough. If he saw me, too bad. I wasn’t going to sit there and listen while he ran through the gamut of old riddles in order to get her naked.
I needn’t have worried. I stood from my hiding place, but the two were far too involved to notice me. I ducked as a shoe came toward me, then stepped over a puddle of skirt, taking a quick glance at the couple, and finally slipped out the door.
I didn’t want to stick around long enough find out how a man with the body of a lion had sex with a woman with the body of a tree.
In the hallway, I leaned against the wall and caught my breath. The letter was safely stowed in my pocket with my flashlight. Several of my snakes had woken, and they weren’t happy about being restrained. Once I was safely in the elevator, I switched my glasses, lowered my hood, and removed the headscarf. I checked my watch. It was already past nine o’clock. As the doors opened to the lobby, I realized I could have used the necklace Hecate had loaned me instead of going to all the trouble of disguising myself. I shrugged. Next time.
This after-hours stuff was either going to kill me, or I was going to open a detective agency and start charging people.
I was kind of expecting the first option.
* * *
After everything I’d gone through to get the envelope back, the guy with the piercing blue eyes didn’t appear. I waited all day, expecting him to show up, breathless and sweaty, ready for disappointment.
Nope. Not a sign of him.
I pushed through the day, half my attention on the people making their way through the lobby. Several people asked if I was feeling okay. I constantly forgot to scowl, and was probably far more helpful than usual.
The weird part was, I wasn’t even angry with the guy. I was worried. Where did he go? Was he okay?
When the day was over, and he still hadn’t appeared, I tucked the envelope in my purse and closed everything up for the night. When no one was around, I pulled out the mirror necklace from Hecate and gazed at my own reflection.
I tried so hard not to imagine myself as a mousy, boring little thing with hair-colored hair and eye-colored eyes, no hips, a vague suggestion of breasts and chubby thighs. I really did. After having lived in that exact body for the first twenty years of my life, I couldn’t not imagine it.
Funny thing was, once I was back to looking that way, I didn’t mind. There was a lot to be said for having pearly green skin, snakes for hair, and a gorgeous figure, but normal wasn’t so bad e
ither.
I ran my fingers through my plain hair, remembering what it was like to have hair as a decoration rather than a crowd of companions. Strange, but peaceful.
Usually when I went out into the human world on a mission, I stole—borrowed—things from other departments to ease my way. The door to the human world wouldn’t take me anywhere without a magical item to force it, since the portal door wasn’t set to anywhere for me anymore. I left everyday through the other door, and it took me to the Mount Olympus housing district.
But today I got around my problems the old fashioned way. I controlled all the paperwork coming in and out of Mt. Olympus. I only had to fill out paperwork adding my human portal setting to Wichita, hit it with the approval stamp, and I could walk out the front door into Wichita.
I almost felt ashamed at how easy that part had been. Almost.
The door swung open, and a couple came into the lobby holding hands. The smell of the ocean wafted in behind them. I waited for the door to close again, then opened it and walked out into Wichita, Kansas.
Because I’d entered the address on the paperwork myself, my portal deposited me a few blocks from the diner.
I’d forgotten how free it felt to walk down a regular human street, fully visible, but still unnoticed. Unlike most portals, this one hadn’t been in the worst place in town, surrounded by condemned buildings and questionable smells. I swung my arms as I walked and stared into the shop windows I passed. A woman dressing a mannequin in a bridal shop smiled and waved, and I waved back.
Something smelled delicious from across the street, and I realized it was my destination, Gray’s Cafe.
As I crossed the street toward the entrance, I had a terrible thought and stopped when I stepped onto the sidewalk.
I had no idea what to do next.
* * *
My grumbling stomach was what got me moving again. It was a cafe at dinnertime. A girl had to eat, right?
Undercover Gorgon: Episode #1 — Witches War (Undercover Gorgon: A Mt. Olympus Employment Agency Miniseries) Page 2