“Hail the purchase of the socks!” cried the mice, before dissolving into general rejoicing.
I had to smile. There’s very little that won’t inspire Aeslin mice to religious ecstasy, which is why we’ve kept them around for so long. Having a tiny church choir singing the praises of fixing the garbage disposal does a lot to keep things tolerable. Also, they’re too damn cute to kill, and ecological curiosity generally suppresses any homicidal urges that may get past the “awww” impulse. After living with them for seven generations, we have yet to figure out what Aeslin mice are for.
“Okay, guys,” I said, as I swung my feet around to the floor. “Why am I getting the morning congregation experience? Again, I know this isn’t a major holiday.”
“It is the sixth day of the Month of Do Not Put That in Your Mouth!” proclaimed one of the priests, sounding incredibly pleased about that fact.
It took me a moment to figure out what that meant. The Aeslin schedule their celebrations according to the standard human calendar, but maintain their own calendar for private use. How they keep the two straight is something I will never understand, especially since they celebrate approximately thirty-two months every year. (That really is an approximation. Several of the months are intermittent, and may skip a year or more before making a return engagement. Religious mice are weird.)
“You want cheese and cake, don’t you?” This was the right answer: the room erupted into cheers and jubilation.
I was going to need to get up sooner or later. Probably sooner, if I wanted to make it to work on time. I’m less inclined to take the rooftops when the sun is out—something about not wanting to cause a mob scene when people decide I’m a cat burglar or a masked vigilante—and I didn’t trust my ankle yet. I would have needed to have two broken kneecaps and maybe a dislocated hip before I was willing to take a taxi. It was me and the two-foot express, and that would take time.
I stood, careful to keep myself centered on the bed so I’d fall on something soft if my ankle refused to hold me. There was a twinge of pain and some protests as the bandage scraped against the raw skin, but that was all. I could stand, I could walk, and I could probably even dance, as long as I didn’t expect to be up to competition standards. It was better than it could have been. “I’ll take it,” I said, aloud. The mice greeted what must have seemed like a total non sequitur with more cheering.
That’s the nice thing about Aeslin mice. You don’t have to make sense to keep them happy. You just have to let them worship you unconditionally, move into the attic (or the closet), and occasionally pester you for manna from Heaven. Which, them being physically mostly mouse and all, usually takes the form of dairy products and baked goods. It works out okay.
Once in the kitchen, I dished up plates of flourless chocolate cake, slices of cheese, and soda crackers, cutting a piece of cake for myself and leaning against the windowsill as I ate. The mice made a production number out of breakfast that Disney could have taken some tips from. The dance routine with the soda crackers was a particularly nice touch.
The mice vanished after they finished eating, scurrying off to do whatever it is that they do all day. For the most part, when they’re not underfoot or enacting weird religious tableaus on my counters, they go their way and I go mine. Things are less dangerous that way. I put my plate in the sink, stretched, and sighed. Time to go check my email and see what sort of apocalypse the Covenant was so generously providing me with.
* * *
I don’t know how people accomplished anything in the days before email. When I logged into my account, I had three messages from Dad, one from Aunt Jane, and one from Sarah. Sarah wanted to confirm that we were on for dinner; I shot her a note saying I’d be there by eight, and warning her to stay out of dark alleys and subway tunnels. Not that Sarah’s the kind of cryptid who likes to hang around in the places monster hunters tend to frequent, but you can never be too careful.
Dad’s messages managed to be more useful and more worrisome at the same time. We had records of three confirmed Covenant “purges” in the Manhattan area, along with two in New Jersey and six more that weren’t verified but looked likely. They seemed to come through every fifty years or so, spend a summer slaughtering anything they could get their hands on, and then go home, serene in the knowledge that they were doing holy work.
I may sound prejudiced against the Covenant. That’s because I am. They’re a huge society with nigh-infinite resources and access to research materials I can only dream about. So what do they do with all that power and potential? They hunt innocent cryptids for the crime of having been born to a species that didn’t make it onto the “approved” list. There’d be hundreds of special interest groups dedicated to stomping them out if they were hunting panda bears and dolphins. Since they hunt bogeymen and basilisks, they’d probably get a medal if anyone knew that they existed.
Dad’s notes went on to say that the De Lucas were among the worst of a bad lot, since they actually bought the party line about the extermination of cryptids being the will of God. It’s hard to reason with someone who thinks he’s got a holy calling. Violence is sometimes the only answer, and I hate killing people. It’s messy, it’s inconvenient, and while body disposal is surprisingly easy when you know what you’re doing, it’s not a pleasant way to spend an evening. Apparently, most of the De Luca family had already ridden the party line to extinction, since Dad had death records for a whole stack of De Lucas, including “Christabelle and Antonio De Luca” who were survived by their only son, Dominic. Poor guy must have been raised by the Covenant. That was just going to make him more annoying.
Aunt Jane’s letter was a sort of supplement to Dad’s information. He may be the family historian, but she’s the family nosy gossip columnist—a more useful function than you might guess. It helps that my Uncle Ted’s an incubus, which gives her a direct connection to the cryptid community. She’s an honorary succubus, and she gets on all the mailing lists.
According to Aunt Jane, asking her lists “Does anyone know what’s up in New York?” resulted in a positive deluge of information, all of it pointing back to one worrisome conclusion: nobody knew what was going on, and everybody thought it was going to be big, whatever it was. Which explained why the locals weren’t evacuating. Until they knew whether or not there was a problem, they wouldn’t want to risk losing their nesting spots, or deal with cell phone cancellation fees and forwarding their mail.
I printed the messages and stuffed them into my backpack before starting for the bathroom. It was time to get ready for my second shift in twenty-four hours. At least once I got there I could have a little word with my boss about why he hadn’t been clueing me in on gossip that might pertain to my chances of survival.
Wow, all this excitement and minimum wage, plus tips. Who says you can’t make a living in New York City?
Seven
“A proper lady should be able to smile pretty, wear sequins like she means it, and kick a man’s ass nine ways from Sunday while wearing stiletto heels. If she can’t do that much, she’s not trying hard enough.”
—Francis Brown
Just arriving at Dave’s Fish and Strips, a club for discerning gentlemen
BY THE TIME I GOT TO DAVE’S I was drenched in sweat, feeling put out and abused by the universe. I don’t know how walking at street level could do more damage to my admittedly low-maintenance haircut than running across the rooftops would have, but it managed. The gel I’d used to make myself look less like a startled cockatoo melted in the hot Manhattan air. At this point, my hairstyle was best described as “half spikes, half surprised mop.”
I stomped into the dressing room, stopped, and promptly upgraded my opinion on the unfairness of the universe. Candy was sitting in front of the mirror, putting the finishing touches on her makeup. She looked as dewy-eyed and fresh as a Miss America contestant getting ready for the swimsuit competition. Even the tawdry uniform Dave forced us to wear was elevated by contact with her skin, somehow bec
oming raiment fit for a princess. And that’s exactly what it was, because she was a princess, cryptid royalty and, like any real princess, she didn’t need fur or jewels to let her intrinsic nobility shine through. Her flaxen hair was long, smooth, and perfect, just like her hourglass figure and fashion-model face. Nothing human should look that good. Which was a good thing, because Candy was a long way from human.
“Candice,” I greeted, heading for my locker.
Her gaze didn’t waver from her reflection as she offered a cool, “Verity,” in return. Out of all the girls working at Dave’s, Candy liked me the least.
Sadly, that made sense. My family is part of the reason she’s been reduced to cocktail waitressing—us, and the rest of the Covenant.
Dragon princesses look like curvaceous, drop-dead gorgeous human girls; as the name implies, there are no males, and their exact method of reproduction is unknown. Not, I’m ashamed to admit, due to a lack of field research. Cryptozoologists have been trying to figure out where dragon princesses come from for centuries. It’s one of our holy grails, like finding a living unicorn or, well, the Holy Grail. (People used to think dragon princesses hatched from the bodies of dead dragons. People also used to think rotting meat spontaneously generated flies, and that’s only occasionally true. It depends on the type of meat.)
Near as anyone can tell, dragon princesses evolved solely to care for dragons. They’re born craving gold and spend their lives pursuing wealth—and if they get it, they promptly use it to buy more gold. They gather in Nests, sleeping in tangled harems on beds of 24-carat loot. It’s a pretty sweet gig. There’s really just one problem with the dragon princess gig: dragons have been extinct for centuries, leaving their symbiotic pets to gather gold for nobody, and worse, leaving them stranded in the cryptid world with no natural weapons to speak of.
Dragon princesses don’t have fangs, claws, or poison. They don’t survive under impossible conditions or live in places where they won’t be bothered. They don’t burn—you could take a blowtorch to a dragon princess and all you’d do is piss her off—but there isn’t much call for the asbestos blonde.
The thing is, dragons didn’t go extinct. They were made extinct by the Covenant, since no one was really keen on sharing their living space with a giant fire-breathing lizard. That was long before either the Healys or the Prices left the Covenant, and it turns out dragon princesses carry a grudge as well as the dragons supposedly did. Maybe even better. Ninety percent of the world’s cryptid population have forgiven us for what our family used to be, focusing instead on what we’ve become: advocates, allies, and sometimes the only humans willing to put themselves in danger to save a cryptid life. The dragon princesses focus on what we used to be.
Killers.
I tossed my backpack into my locker and grabbed my spare uniform off the top shelf. I heard Candy shift in her seat, no doubt so she could keep watching me in the mirror. She didn’t like being alone in a room with me, largely because she seemed convinced I’d flip out and try to kill her at any moment. There were times when I was tempted, usually when she cleared one of my tables and they “mysteriously” failed to leave a tip, but my parents raised me to be tolerant of the racial quirks of our cryptid neighbors. In Candy’s case, that meant she’d need to be a lot bitchier before I wasted a bullet on her.
After fluffing the pleats on my skirt into their appropriate jailbait-esque configuration, I turned and asked, “Is Dave in his office?”
“Please. Like he’d leave it during the day?” Candice twisted to eye me suspiciously. “Why?”
There were a lot of possible answers to that question, starting with “like I’d tell you?” and going downhill from there. Sadly, protecting the cryptid population of Manhattan was at the core of my mission statement, and that meant I had to at least pretend to give a damn about Candy’s welfare. Even if I didn’t want to.
“I ran into a man from the Covenant last night while I was making my rounds. He seemed like he was planning to stick around for a while. Thought I’d check with Dave, see whether he knew anything about our new neighbor.”
Candy’s normally milk-and-roses complexion went waxen as her eyes widened until they looked like they were going to fall out of her head. Composing herself with a visible effort, she licked her lips and said, “You—you’re lying.”
“Sorry. Wish I was.” I shrugged. “His name’s Dominic De Luca. I already called my folks, and Dad sent me the intel on his family. They’re old school Covenant. Guy looks like he’s legit.”
“I … no. No, you have to be wrong.” She stood, scattering cosmetics as she fumbled for balance against the dressing room counter. “The Covenant doesn’t come here anymore.”
“The Covenant comes when it’s time for a purge, same as they come everywhere else.”
Her eyes widened again, but only for a few seconds; then they narrowed, fury suddenly radiating from her expression. “This is your fault,” she spat. “You and your goddamn family couldn’t just stay on the West Coast until they hunted you down, could you? And now they’ve followed you here. Well, I hope you’re happy, Verity. I just hope you’re happy.”
“Candy—”
She didn’t give me time to finish the sentence. Ripping off her apron, she flung it on the floor between us and turned to stalk out of the room. I sighed. On the plus side, she was probably on her way to warn the rest of her Nest that the Covenant was in town. On the negative, out of the city’s three dozen or so dragon princesses, she was the one I probably had the best relationship with. The rest of them wouldn’t just blame my family; they’d blame me personally.
This day was getting better and better, and it wasn’t even noon yet. Who knew what wonders were lurking on the other side of the lunch rush? Leaving Candy’s apron on the dressing room floor, I turned to follow her path out to the hall. It was past time to have a little chat with my boss.
* * *
Dave’s darks were on again, making it impossible to tell whether he was in the office while I was standing in the hall. I decided to take a chance on Candy’s information being accurate and strode into the blackness with my chin held high and my shoulders pushed back, like I was making my entrance to the stage before a competition tango. Always wow the people you’re up against with confidence, that’s the family motto. Well, that, and “always count your ammo before agreeing to a firefight.”
Walking into a dark office that might or might not contain a bogeyman definitely didn’t fall under the heading of “ten smartest things I have ever done.” It might be somewhere in the top thirty, but that’s because I had an abnormally interesting time as a teenager. It probably looked like stupid bravado, and it probably was, to a degree. That’s why I had a knife in either hand by the time I cleared the doorway, ready to fling them at the slightest provocation.
It was normally possible to take eight steps into Dave’s office without banging into anything. I stopped after six; far enough to make it clear that I wasn’t bluffing, but not far enough that I risked whacking my knee on his desk and ruining the effect.
“Dave? We need to talk.”
There was a brief pause before Dave’s voice hissed out of the black, sounding puzzled and a little excited. “Why, Verity Price, how very … very of you. Have you finally decided that the time is ripe to have a proper play date?”
“Turn off the darks, Dave. We need to talk.”
“So you say, so you say, but you came into my lair without demanding safe passage through the light. An interesting choice for a girl who says she doesn’t care for shadows.”
I yawned, not bothering to cover my mouth. “Blah, blah, blah, you’re very scary, oh, I’m trembling. I came in without telling you to turn off the darks because I wanted you to actually believe that I was serious when I said you needed to listen to me. We have a deal. Part of it involves me not hunting you.”
“And?” There was caution under the excitement now, as logic overrode his instincts.
I flung a knife into th
e darkness, aiming for a spot a foot to the left of where Dave’s head would normally be. I heard it hit the wall. “And if you insist on giving in to your nature and spooking me, I’m going to have to give in to my nature, and hunt you. Darks, Dave. Talk, Dave. Now, Dave.”
The darks clicked off and the lights clicked on, revealing the dour, gray-skinned form of my boss sitting behind his desk and sulking like a petulant child. “What could possibly be so important that you needed to come in here like that?”
“Candy went home.”
Dave hesitated, visibly trying to fit that statement into any sort of logical conversation. “So, what, you want her tables?”
“It was a personal emergency.”
“What sort of personal emergency could possibly make a dragon princess give up her tips for the second shift in a row? I expected her to come in here black and blue after her Nest-sisters kicked holy hell out of her for missing work.” Dragon princesses view the income of one as the income of all, and they tend to get a little bit cranky when that income is threatened.
Watching Dave’s expression, I said, “She had to go make sure the Nest was aware that there’s a representative from the Covenant currently resident in Manhattan.”
I’ll give Dave this much: he managed to school his face almost instantly into a neutral state. Sadly, “almost” wasn’t fast enough to keep me from seeing the way the skin around his mouth tightened. It was a subtle tell, but it was what I had to go on. “Is that so?” he asked. “That’s a pisser. We’d better make sure the rest of the staff knows. How’d you find out, Very? Has this guy been bothering you?”
“If we were on a bad cop show, this is where I’d point out that I never told you it was a guy, but since the Covenant’s field agents are ninety percent male, I’m going to let it pass,” I said, stepping forward until I could rest the heels of my hands against the desk. “Why didn’t you tell me he was in town, Dave?”
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