I shrugged. “Considering the fact s/he is only out of jail because s/he agreed to be an informant, I’d say we take the direct approach.”
Several months earlier, Aphrodite Johnson had been arrested in connection with the murder of the city’s mayor. S/he’d been absolved of the murder, but due to some shenanigans during the case s/he’d been charged with obstruction and some other felonies. A deal had been cut to get out of jail time, but the price was having to snitch on the other covens.
“Well, let’s see which gender we’re dealing with today.” Morales turned off the car and got out. I joined him on the curb and we walked together toward the office building.
With a name like the Temple of Cosmic Love, one might expect the building to be covered in neon hearts. Instead, it was a standard-issue brick office building that looked like it housed an insurance agency instead of a brothel disguised as a house of worship.
Inside the lobby, we found Aphrodite’s main security guard manning the front desk.
“How’s it going, Gregor?”
He had a face that looked like a fist with a broken knuckle for a nose, and was about as friendly as a sack of hornets. “What do you want?”
“We’re here to see the Hierophant.” That was Aphrodite’s official title as head of the Sacred Coven of the Mystical Orgasm.
“You’re gonna have to make an appointment,” he said. “They are extremely busy today.”
“They are?” Morales said.
“The Hierophant decided that since they are getting married, they will be called they from now on.”
I frowned at him. “Morales, I think someone replaced Gregor with the Sphinx.”
“I’m not following that riddle either,” he said. “Who is Aphrodite marrying?” he asked Gregor.
“Theirself.”
“Hold on,” I said. “Aphrodite is marrying…Aphrodite?”
He looked at us like we were a few bullets shy of a loaded gun.
“Okay,” Morales dragged the word out. “What’s up with the they and their stuff?”
Gregor rolled his eyes. “As the Hierophant’s gender is fluid, they prefer to not ascribe to society’s forced gender labels any longer.”
I pressed my lips together and thought about it. “He’s got a point,” I said to Morales. “Besides, all that s/he stuff was pretty confusing.”
“Not to mention insulting.” Gregor scowled, as if he was tired of people not showing his boss the respect they deserved. “Once the marriage rites are complete, their two sides will be in perfect union so the binary gendered pronouns won’t apply anymore.”
“When’s the wedding?” Morales asked.
“Next week.”
I had about a million more questions about what exactly marrying oneself involved for a sacred hermaphrodite, but we were on the clock and solving the murder trumped wedding gossip on the list of priorities.
“Great,” Morales said. “We’ll send some ‘theirs and theirs’ towels. Now, can we speak to them?”
“Regarding?” Gregor said in an infuriatingly calm manner.
“Regarding their nephew, Basil Valentine,” I said sweetly.
The red phone at Gregor’s elbow rang. He held up a finger, indicating we should wait as he answered it. Morales looked at me like I was crazy. I shrugged. Aphrodite might be a pain in the ass most of the time, but I couldn’t help liking them. If nothing else, they were never boring.
“You can have five minutes.”
He clicked a button on his control panel. A split second later a door to the right of the desk opened. Through it I could see the courtyard where Aphrodite kept her poison garden.
“They’re in their meditation room.”
Morales and I shared a frown at that gem. Meditation? Aphrodite?
Gregor ignored our silent communication and continued. “Go through the courtyard to the door on the far end. Can’t miss it.”
“Thanks for your help,” Morales said in a tone that implied anything but gratitude.
“Do not upset them,” Gregor warned. “They need peace and calm as they prepare for the sacred marriage rites.”
I forced a smile. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”
* * *
The courtyard beyond the doors looked like the kind of place you might find housing a sultan’s harem. Low couches and lounges created the perfect spot to strike a pose under the sun’s beams. In the center of the space, a lush garden unfurled and offered up bright flowers that glistened like jewels in the midday sun. Only, anyone who touched those particular jewels would find themselves quickly dead. Aphrodite was famous for their poison garden, which served as a warning to her enemies. Rumor had it several unfortunate souls had been the unwitting victims of the Hierophant’s vengeance, but Aphrodite was good at covering their tracks and had the bonus of having religious protection for the coven’s rites.
We skirted the garden, careful not to breathe too deeply or brush any of the dangerous petals. Just beyond, a pair of glass doors led into a foyer of sorts. The floors were bamboo and the walls were painted a soothing sage green. A pair of carved wooden doors guarded the entrance to what Gregor had called the meditation room.
“You remember this from before?” I asked Morales.
He shook his head. “Must be a new phase they’re going through.”
“Marriage changes a person,” I quipped.
Before he could respond, the double doors opened. The scent of incense wafted out of the darkened room. I couldn’t see beyond the doorway because it was filled with a real son of a bitch.
“Harry,” I said. “What are you doing here?”
“Hieronymus,” he growled. “And it’s none of your fucking business, Prospero.”
In addition to being a dick, Harry was also the head of the Sanguinarian coven. His daddy, Ramses Bane, used to run the coven out of some abandoned subway tunnels that ran under Babylon like a rat’s maze. But after Daddy got pinched for trying to murder me and my ex-boyfriend/future mayor of Babylon, John Volos, Harry had moved the coven to a junkyard. Still, he looked like a guy who lived in a tunnel, with his pale skin, white hair, and pink-rimmed eyes. The only part of him that wasn’t pale was the black ankh tattooed on the center of his forehead.
“I see you’re still as charming as ever,” Morales said. “How’s the limp?”
A few months prior, we’d interrupted a fight between Harry and a Brazilian wizard who could shapeshift into a panther. By the time we got there, Harry was half-dead. But did he ever thank us?
“Go fuck yourself,” he said, and brushed past us on his way to the door.
I called after him, “You keep that up and we’re not going to vote you for Miss Congeniality.”
Once Harry was gone, Morales shrugged. “You’d think as much as that guy has gotten his ass kicked, he’d learn some humility.”
I made a tsking sound. “Some people never learn.”
Morales opened the doors Harry had just exited and held out a hand for me to precede him. Gregor had called it a “meditation room,” but it looked more like a cross between a bordello and a Buddhist temple. Screens painted with graphic sex scenes covered the walls. Candles flickered from metal stands that created an aisle down the center. At the front of the room, a raised platform held a golden statue of some sort of many-armed deity with both breasts and a phallus. And in the center of it all, Aphrodite Johnson sat crisscross applesauce on a meditation mat.
I stilled in shock at the first sight of them. The last time I’d seen the Hierophant, they’d been wearing half of a slinky black dress and half of a dark business suit. The left side of the body had been made up with glamorous makeup and luscious brown locks, and the right had featured artful stubble and a hip masculine haircut.