Chapter 22
"So-have you decided what you're going to tell your parents?" Hexe asked quietly as we cabbed home from the Tombs.
"Not only am I going to tell them to go to hell; I'm going to give them road maps and hold the door open for them as they leave!" I replied with a crooked grin. I expected Hexe to laugh, but instead he gave me a serious look.
"Are you sure that's what you want to do?"
"No, but it's not like they're giving me a choice," I admitted.
"I hate to sound like my mother, but maybe it would be a good idea for you to leave Golgotham for a little while. At least until the matter of the demon is resolved."
"Your mother's a lot nicer about it than mine, but she's definitely not thrilled with us hooking up," I commented. "I wasn't going to mention it in front of her, for fear of providing ammunition for her argument, but Nessie did offer to let me crash on her couch."
"Why didn't you say so?" Hexe exclaimed in relief. "Problem solved!"
"I can't impose on her like that, what with the wedding coming up. And I thought you couldn't send me away?"
"I meant everything I said: I can no more tell you to leave than I could cut off my own right hand. But if you go Ν I replof your own volition-that's different. I'd miss you terribly, but as long as I knew you still loved me, and would come back as soon as it was safe, I could handle it. I realize it would be unpleasant, but at least you'd be safer with your parents than living in Golgotham. It would just be a temporary situation-"
"That's what they all say," I replied with a humorless laugh. "You mentioned the Left Hand Path was insidious-that it corrupts you in slow motion, until you're no longer the person you used to be. Well, the same holds true for my parents. If I pack up my things and head home, I might as well slit my wrists and get it over with. My mother has been trying to drag me back into the fold for years, and this thing with the demon gives her a good excuse to swoop in and try to run my life. You're just icing on the cake, as far as she's concerned. My parents don't like the idea of me being involved with a Kymeran, but they really hate the fact that I'm an artist. Believe me, I've seen it before.
"I used to go to high school with this girl named Eleanor. She was an amazing, incredibly talented poet who wrote stuff that could make a statue cry. She had fire inside her-you could see it in her eyes. She went off to Vassar and got a few poems published that got some attention from the New Yorker. Everyone said she was going to be this century's Edna St. Vincent Millay. When she graduated from college, she moved to the Village and decided to publish a poetry journal to showcase her work as well as that of her friends.
"One thing led to another, and eventually Eleanor's so deep in debt she defaults on the mortgage for her loft. That's when her parents told her that if they were going to bail her out, she had to move back in with them. I remember her telling me that it would only be temporary, until she could straighten out her finances and get herself back on her feet. That was a couple of years ago.
"The last time I saw Eleanor, she was no longer 'burning her candle at both ends,' but taking high tea with the rest of the Ladies Who Lunch at the Plaza. She'd gotten married to some dreadful hedge fund manager, who I hear cheats on her every chance he gets, and they'd moved to New Hampshire. Now she just comes into the city to go shopping and attend her mother's charity events. She was surprised and, I think, more than a little embarrassed to see me. When I looked into her eyes, I could tell the fire had been snuffed out. I don't care how much safer I'd be sitting in my family's penthouse-I'll be damned if I end up a Bergdorf's zombie."
"I don't think you'll ever be in danger of losing your fire," Hexe replied with a smile, squeezing my hand. "You're a stronger woman than you give yourself credit for, Tate."
"The pits be praised! I've been going crazy waiting for you two to get home!" Scratch yowled, nervously kneading the floor of the foyer with his front paws.
"I'm sorry it took so long, but we had to make a couple of stops after leaving the hospital," Hexe replied. "I'm sure you're starving, of course."
"I'm not hungry," the familiar replied.
Hexe stared in disbelief. "You? Not hungry? What's the matter? Are you sick?"
"I'm fine. I just can't find Beanie. That's all," Scratch replied with an uncharacteristic hint of worry.
"What?" Hexe and I gasped in unison.
"Did you check the backyard?"e bt of I asked, trying to keep the panic out of my voice.
"Of course I checked there-what do I look like, an idiot?" Scratch snapped. "I even searched the maze. I asked the hamadryad, and she says she hasn't seen him all day."
I hurried up the stairs to the second floor, praying that he had simply fallen asleep in the dirty laundry hamper again. "Beanie? C'mere, boy!" I called out. "Mommy's home!" I paused, hoping to hear the velvety flap of his ears as he shook himself awake, followed by the familiar thumpity-thump of his paws against the hallway runner as he scampered to greet me, but there was only silence.
"He's not up there!" Scratch shouted after me. "Believe me, I've looked all over the house, and I can't find him anywhere! I went downstairs and checked the basement, and I even went up to the third floor, just in case. He's not in the house. I think he got out when the PTU crime scene investigators were here. They kept coming in and out. . . ."
I felt the bottom of my stomach fall away as what Scratch said started to sink in. The thought of Beanie being out on the streets, scared and alone, with no one to protect him, was far more distressing to me than the possibility of another demon attack. I hurried back downstairs to join the others in the kitchen.
"Beanie's out there by himself, Hexe," I said breathlessly. "He's just a baby-he's never been mistreated. He doesn't know people can be mean, or that things can hurt him. He's never known anything but love and kindness his whole life. He doesn't even know enough to be scared! What if he runs out in front of a carriage and gets crushed? I've got to go find him! But where do I start?"
"I think I know a way to locate him," Hexe said, ducking into his office.
As I waited for him to find whatever it was he was looking for, Scratch hopped onto the kitchen counter, so that he was eye to eye with me. "I'm sorry, Tate," the familiar said. "This is all my fault. I should have kept watch on him. I would already be out looking for him, but I'm bound to the house until Hexe says otherwise."
"Where's all this concern coming from?" I asked in surprise. "I thought you hated Beanie!"
"I don't hate him!" Scratch replied indignantly. "I just think I'm better than he is."
"This should do the trick," Hexe said, returning to the kitchen with a scrying crystal the size and shape of a small avocado. "It was designed to reveal the exact location of missing persons and misplaced things. And since Beanie falls somewhere between those two categories, I think we have a good chance of finding him with it."
He knelt beside the refrigerator and dunked the odd-shaped crystal into Beanie's water bowl, then held it up to the light. As the water began to dry on its surface, shapes began to move deep within its heart, gradually resolving into distinguishable black-and-white images. My heart leaped at the sight of Beanie running down a narrow, trash-strewn passageway.
"I think I know where he is," Hexe said, turning the scrying crystal around for closer inspection. "That looks like Snuff Alley, behind the Stagger Inn, just off Rutger Street."
"At least he's still alive and in one piece!" I sighed in relief.
"Not for much longer, though," Hexe said grimly, pointing to the living buzz saw of teeth and claws in pursuit of th purele puppy.
"Bloody abdabs!" I yelped. "What the hell is that thing?"
"It's a rat king," Scratch growled, his eyes glowing like lanterns. "I can't stand those chuffers!"
As I watched, helpless to intervene, Beanie ducked between a pair of overflowing garbage cans, putting his back against the alley wall, as the mass of writhing rodent flesh advanced upon him with snapping teeth and scuttling claws.
"Come on, let's get him before he's torn to shreds!" I shouted.
As I threw open the front door, Scratch leaped in front of me, blocking our path. "Let me go with you two," the familiar pleaded. "I can get there faster."
Hexe nodded and Scratch jumped over the threshold and with a couple flaps of his wings shot into the air, soaring past the roof of the boardinghouse.
Hexe and I hurried in the direction of Rutger Street, dodging fellow pedestrians as we tried to keep an eye on the hairless cat flying high over our heads. As we crossed Perdition, I spotted a narrow opening between a tenement building and the Stagger Inn, an establishment that catered to the harder drinkers of Golgotham, which was saying something. The passageway was barely wide enough to allow two adults to walk side by side, and was far too narrow to accommodate a centaur, with or without a carriage.
With its rusty fire escapes and clotheslines full of drying laundry hanging overhead, Snuff Alley looked no different than it had a century ago, or the century before that. And judging from the stench coming from the overflowing garbage cans that lined both sides of the alley, that was also the last time the sanitation department had paid a visit.
"I see them!" Scratch called out from his vantage point high above. "They're twenty yards in, on the left-hand side!"
I charged down Snuff Alley without a thought as to what might be lurking in the shadows. All that mattered at that moment was that my dog was in trouble and needed my help. Then I saw the rat king.
What I had glimpsed in the scrying crystal had been awful enough, but it was nothing compared to seeing the creature in the flesh. It was composed of at least a dozen Norwegian rats, arranged in an outward-facing circle. The long, hairless tails of the individual rodents were tightly braided together, creating the hub of a wheel, of which each rat was a spoke. No matter what direction you looked at it, the rat king was nothing but snarling, snapping heads with razor-sharp teeth and filthy claws, and it was impossible to sneak up on.
"Get away from my dog, you bastards!" I shouted, snatching a discarded bottle from a nearby trash can and chucking it at the writhing mass of fur and fangs.
I expected the rat king to react to my attack the same way a normal rodent would, by scurrying off to the nearest hidey-hole. Instead, the wheel of rats came whirling toward me like a lazy Susan from hell, squealing and gnashing its myriad teeth in anger.
"Let me at 'em!" Scratch snarled, tucking his wings in and dropping from the sky like a hawk going after a rabbit. The familiar nimbly zipped through the maze of crisscrossing laundry lines like a barnstorming stunt pilot and sank his talons into the rat king's knotted tail. The verminous abomination shrieked in alarm, its squeals melding into one voice, as Scratch snatched the creature off the ground.
The familiar flapped up into the air again, theairto rat king swinging back and forth beneath him like the clapper of a bell. Once Scratch landed atop the roof of a nearby tenement, the screams of the rat king as its individual members met their fate echoed throughout Snuff Alley.
I rushed forward and pushed aside one of the garbage cans, revealing a shivering Beanie. He was covered in filth and badly frightened, but seemed otherwise unharmed. The moment he saw me he jumped up onto his hind legs, waving his little paws in the air. I snatched him up and buried my face in his fur, unmindful of the smell.
"Don't you ever scare Mommy like that again!" I scolded the squirming wad of puppy as he licked the relieved tears from my face.
"You can really haul ass-you know that?" Hexe panted as he jogged up to join me. "One second you were standing on the street; the next you were halfway down the alley!"
"I guess my maternal instinct kicked into drive," I replied.
"Overdrive is more like it. Is he okay?"
"You tell me," I said, handing Beanie to him so I could wipe the puppy kisses from my face.
"He seems to be unhurt, but-Hey, that tickles!" Hexe laughed as Beanie started licking his ears by way of greeting. "Phew! He's definitely getting a B-A-T-H when we get home!"
" 'And they all lived nauseatingly ever after,' " Scratch said sarcastically as he made a four-point landing, a still writhing length of tail hanging from the corner of his mouth like an errant strand of spaghetti. "Don't everyone thank me at once for saving your stupid dog."
"You know this little guy means a lot to me," I said, kneeling so that I was face-to-face with the familiar. "I owe you one, Scratch."
The winged cat looked at my outstretched hand for a long second, and then stepped forward, butting the top of his head against my palm. His skin was warm and smooth to the touch, like a living chamois cloth.
"Hey, he's my pet, too," he purred.
Later that night I lay in bed and stared up at the dragon painted on the ceiling. Hexe was asleep next to me, his tousled purple head resting on my breast. The warmth of his body pressed against mine was comforting after everything we'd recently endured. Despite today easily qualifying as one of the worst of my life, I felt oddly at peace.
All my life I had felt somewhat . . . detached . . . from my family. I'm not sure whether the fault for that lies with me or my parents. It's not that I don't love them. I do. And I know that they love me, in their own fucked-up way. But when it comes to understanding and accepting one another-that's a different story.
Being an artist isn't the easiest thing in the world. It's more like a genetic disposition than anything I have conscious control over. I can't stop being an artist any more than I can stop being allergic to grapefruit. But my parents have always viewed it as some sort of deliberate act of defiance, done simply to get under their skin. And, to be honest, sometimes it was. But I never set out to be a sculptor simply to piss them off. I've given up on them ever understanding me. And I would be okay with that, if only they could just accept me for what I am.
I'd never experienced much in the way of acceptance, outside of Nessie and Clarence, my family's butler. All my boyfriends before Hexe had certainly fallen short in that reorted gard. Most of them thought my claiming to be an artist was the upper-class version of being a welfare cheat-a way for me to shirk adult responsibilities while giving the finger to my family. In the end, they viewed me no differently than my parents did, really.
But Hexe . . . Hexe had accepted me for who and what I was, including my art, right from the start. He'd never once complained about the noise I made when working on my sculptures, or the sparks generated by my welding equipment. And he would be well within his rights to do so, because what I do is sure as fuck loud and dangerous. But he doesn't seem to care. Hell, it seems to make him happy.
I glanced down at the foot of the bed, where Beanie, freshly bathed and exhausted from his misadventures, lay sound asleep. He was curled up toes-to-nose and snoring like an adorable little buzz saw. There was a flapping sound and a second later Scratch appeared, perched atop the footboard.
"I just finished the perimeter check," the familiar whispered. "The warding spells Hexe erected are still holding strong. Courtier or not, that demon's not getting back in here."
"Might as well turn in for the night, then," I said, pulling the bedclothes about Hexe and myself. "Good night, Scratch."
"G'night, Tate," the familiar replied as he hopped down onto the foot of the bed next to Beanie, draping his right wing over the sleeping puppy like a mother hen protecting her chick. "See you in the morning."
I'm riding on a cart alongside Gus as Bayard slowly clipclops through the early-morning fog. I glance up at the sky, in search of the sun, but all I see is gray.
"Where are we going?" I ask, but neither replies.
"I asked them the same question," a strange man's voice says from behind me. "And I got the same response as you did." I look over my shoulder and see a Kymeran man with apricot-colored hair and a Vandyke beard sitting in the back of the wagon. Although I do not know him, he seems familiar. "Part of me is relieved they won't answer," the stranger says. "I think if they talk to me, it means I'm dead."
"Do I know you?" I ask. "I have the funny feeling we've met before. . . ."
"My name is Jarl," the stranger replies. "I am an alchemist." He gestures to the floor of the wagon, at the copper dragon curled at his feet. The creature regards me with eyes made of flame, steam rising from its nostrils. I do not feel fear or surprise upon seeing the beast, but, instead, a strange sense of connection. Somehow I know the creature will not harm me. Jarl reaches into the pocket of his coat and removes an egg and shows it to the copper dragon, which opens its mouth to receive it.
I turn back around and see a narrow alley before us, barely wide enough for the wagon to pass. There is a bright light at the other end. There is a figure standing at the far end, arms spread as if to block our path.
"This is my last favor!" the figure calls out. I recognize the voice as Quid's, although it sounds as if he's speaking from the bottom of a well. "The girl can go no farther!"
Gus nods his head and turns to speak to Jarl. "Tell her."
A look of dismay flickers across the alchemist's face, as if his worst fears have been confirmed. He glances at me and smiles sadly. "You have to wake up, Tate. to wakeTatgards m
"Why?"
Jarl points at the narrow sliver of sky above our heads. I look up and see the shape of an approaching demon silhouetted against the fog.
I came up out of the dream like a swimmer escaping an undertow, gasping and flailing as if my life depended on it. I sat straight up in the bed, my senses strained to their limit. The clock on the bedside table told me it was just before dawn.
"What's wrong?" Hexe yawned as he rubbed the sleep from his eyes.
"Do you hear it?" I whispered.
There was something scratching at the shuttered window over the bed. A few seconds later the sound stopped, only to resume at the secured window in the bathroom.
Hexe threw aside the bedclothes. "It's heading for the roof," he said, pulling on a pair of pants.
Scratch raised his head and sniffed the air, pulling a still-snoring Beanie closer to him with his wing. The familiar's eyes narrowed to gun slits and he began a low, menacing growl as he tracked the sound of the intruder, his ears swiveling like radar dishes.
"Don't worry. I cast the strongest spells of protection possible on all the windows and doors," Hexe assured me.
A rattling sound came from the bedroom fireplace, followed by a tiny spill of displaced soot falling onto the hearth. "What about the chimney?" I asked.
Hexe bounded across the room, his right hand glowing, and fired a bolt of blinding-white magic into the grate. There was a whooshing noise, followed by an all-too-familiar squeal.
"I can't believe I overlooked the chimney," Hexe said, shaking his head in self-reproach. "It's a good thing you woke up when you did, Tate."
"Could that thing really fit down the flue?"
"Demons can make themselves as big or as small, as thick or as thin as necessary," he replied. "That's why it's important to seal every possible means of entry with protective wards, so they don't pour themselves through the keyhole or slip in through the mail slot."
"What do we do now?"
"We wait until cockcrow. If it hasn't fulfilled its mission by then, it must return to its master. And then it will return at the same time tomorrow, and so on, until it either succeeds at its task or is returned to the Infernal Court by whoever summoned it. Now that you know that, are you still sure you want to remain in Golgotham?"
I wrapped my arms about him, pressing my head against his bare chest. "If my mother can't scare me into leaving, what chance does a demon have?"