Answer The Question

I tilted my head back against the pastel green wall of the day spa, relaxing just enough that I could feel every ache and pain in my body. Man, I was looking forward to this massage. 

The doorhandle on one of the client rooms twisted, and a fraction of a second before the door opened, I stiffened. Heat sang through my body and, furious, I stuffed it away, stifling a groan. Not Ty. For a brief moment I panicked, wondering if Bianca had mixed things up and booked my massage with Ty—something I’d asked never to happen again after that first time—but I forced myself to breathe and relax, keeping my eyes closed. Bianca ran her day spa with a golden heart and an iron fist; she wouldn’t do that to me. 

Still, as Ty exited the client room and crossed the waiting area, footsteps soft on the rugged floor. I felt more than heard him pause in front of me, every sense in my body standing to rigid attention. 

Steady breath in, steady breath out. Steady breath in, steady breath out. I’d managed to successfully ignore him through all of our infrequent encounters since that first massage, and today would be no different. 

In front of me, he sniffed. “I clearly need to have a word with Bianca,” he muttered, and I couldn’t tell if he was including me in his audience or not. “That lounge needs replacing, and some things around here are getting downright old and worn.”

I managed to avoid choking on my disbelief until he left the room, though I could still see the back of his head disappearing down the stairs, so doubtless he heard me. Whatever. I didn’t even care. Stupid, arrogant, jerk-faced twat. Just because he was so pretty that girls fell over themselves to be near him, he’d decided he was God’s gift to humanity. Well, I wasn’t falling for it, even if it had been the best bloody massage of my life. I was not some stupid, vapid piece of arm-candy for him to play with. Urgh. 

I slammed my head back against the wall just a little too hard, and winced. Moron! Imbecile! Arrogant peacocky slimeball!

“Ellie?” Bianca’s soothing voice halted my litany and I sighed, forcing away the negative energy encounters with Ty always left. “Your turn, honey.”

Damn him. I was going to enjoy my massage. He was not going to ruin this perfect moment of relaxation. Firmly shoving thoughts of stunningly gorgeous manwhores from mind, I followed Bianca into a treatment room. 

* * *

I slid into my regular seat at Felici’s just as Nana and Lydia, my older sister, were handing their menus to the waitress. “I’ll have the usual,” I said as the waitress raised an eyebrow at me. 

She nodded and swept away, leaving behind a cobalt blue bottle that sparkled and dripped with condensation. 

“So,” I said, pouring water for everyone, “What’s new?”

Lydia shrugged. “Nothing much. I was just moaning about how much working retail during the holiday season sucks. Though at least Ty is on this afternoon, so things won’t get deadly boring until he finishes up at six.”

The glass I was reaching for slipped, tipped, and sailed towards the floor. Nana, with characteristic lightning reflexes, caught it before it had barely left the table, deftly setting it upright and relieving me of my water-pouring duties.

“Ty works at the boutique as well?” I said, aiming for nonchalant. 

Nana smirked, and I pointedly ignored her. 

Lydia nodded. “Oh yeah. He does mornings in the spa and afternoons downstairs in the storefront.”

I made a careful mental note to avoid the boutique in the afternoons. Not that I needed much help with that; Dusk Alley was a designer boutique selling women’s clothing, jewellery and cosmetics that was at least four times out of my price range. I’d known they were affiliated with the day spa, but I hadn’t realised they shared staff. I guess it made sense, especially for the cosmetics and beauty product sales. Whatever. Irrelevant. 

I shoved the whole issue aside and turned to Nana. “So, I was thinking of hitting up the department store this afternoon. I need some clothes for work. Do you want to come?” Not only did Nana have impeccable taste, she also had an almost bottomless bank account that she had no qualms sharing with her only two surviving family members. 

She nodded decisively. “Yes,” she said. “It will be illuminating.”

My eyebrows knitted in puzzlement, but I let it pass. Nana was well known for her bizarre comments and apparently unconnected observations. “Sure,” I said. “Thank you.”

“Swing by Alley when you’re done,” Lydia said. I’m stuck there till eleven tonight. I’ll take my break when you come.”

Nana was already agreeing enthusiastically, and I groaned. So much for avoiding the place. 

Never mind. We’d go in, find Lydia, and drag her out for a break. The chances of running into Ty were entirely minimal. Everything would be fine. 

* * *

“I’ll just be a second,” I assured Nana as I ducked into the bathrooms. We’d spend a good couple of hour clothes hunting, and all of the resulting outfits were nicer than what I had on now. If we were going to stop past the boutique to collect Lydia, my chances of running into Ty were absolutely minimal, thank heavens—but I wasn’t about to give him more fodder for insults if I could avoid it. Old and tired. Prat. 

Locked safely in a stall, I surveyed my options. The navy was too formal; the silver too attention seeking. I settled on a neutral-toned skirt that showed off my butt and a red silk blouse with fluttery cap sleeves that managed to actually make me look like I had cleavage for a change. The whole outfit was sophisticated and chic yet effortless, the neutral skirt enriching the light brown of my hair and the red blouse the best possible colour for my skin tone. 

I pulled it all on, slipped on one of the many pairs of gorgeous new shoes—it was so shallow, but I did love Nana’s bank account—fluffed my hair, and headed back out. 

Nana whistled. “Don’t you look special,” she said.

I smiled distractedly, running my fingers along the blouse’s neckline. “It’s missing something,” I said. “I need something around my neck.”

Nana shrugged. “If you say so.”

I loaded my bags back into the trolley and marched off with it determinedly. Three times Nana tried to draw my attention to jewellery stores that we passed, but I knew exactly the one I was after. 

We rounded the corner: Dusk Alley. Chewing the inside of my lip and narrowing my eyes, I made a beeline for the back of the store, where their jewellery display was located. 

Nana caught up after a few moments, and eyed the dazzling array of entirely over-the-top necklaces, the lightest of which looking like it had to weigh at least a pound. “These aren’t really what you’re looking for, dear,” she observed candidly.

I shrugged, stifling my irritation at the truth of her words. “I thought they’d have a bigger range. This one’s okay,” I added, pointing out a silver-filigreed piece with a floral motif. 

Voices erupted around the end of the aisle and I froze. I will not turn around. I will not turn around. I realised I was checking myself out in the mirror to make sure the outfit was sitting right, and jerked my gaze away. “Or this one.” I reached for another necklace to my left, conveniently allowing me to turn my back on the approaching Prince of Twathood. 

Nana, of course, turned towards him. “Oh, I see. Of course.”

Was it permissible to hit grandmothers for being smug? If it had been Lydia I’d have whacked her for sure. 

“I’ll just go wait out the front, I think,” Nana continued, oblivious to my glares. “My feet, you know. And my hips. And my back.” She hobbled away to the tables out the front, looking every day of her age—which I’d never seen her do when she wasn’t up to mischief. Urgh. 

I was too busy fuming at her retreating back to realise that Ty had gotten within range. 

“Can I help you?” he said, eyes dancing. 

No. I was not looking at his stupid eyeballs. I whirled back to the jewellery display. “That one,” I said primly. “I’d like to try it on please.”

He reached for the necklace that hung just out of my reach, brushing past my shoulder in the process. I jolted at the energy his touch sent through me and ended up three feet away down the aisle. My stupid reflexes were always a little unpredictable, but they always seemed worse when he was around. This had been an utterly stupid idea. So what if he thought I looked old and tired? Why did I care what he thought? 

“Here.” 

I turned back to him, expecting to see the silver filigree. Instead, he held a ropey, glimmering creation I could have sworn wasn’t on the shelves a moment ago. It was a single necklace, but made up of tens or maybe even hundreds of strands; I couldn’t quite get a fix on it to figure it out, and the threads it was woven from seemed unnaturally fine and soft, like spider’s silk, the beads tiny and delicate as dewdrops. It glimmered gently in the fluorescent lights of the store, and I stood motionless, transfixed. 

“Do you like it?” There was a depth of emotion to Ty’s voice that I’d never heard before, and my heart skipped a beat in response. 

“Yes,” I breathed, awkwardness and irritation forgotten.

Ty beamed and my pulse skipped again. Saints, he was beautiful. Too beautiful, like a dangerous snake, but as he moved towards me with the necklace in hand, I was powerless to break the spell. 

He reached for me and I turned to face the mirror, back to him so he could fasten the jewellery around my neck. Instead, he laid one end of it across my forehead and directed me to hold it in place while he arranged the rest of the multitude of strands through the back of my hair, half catching it up in a style that seemed at once impossibly complex and incredibly simple. 

He fastened the catch on the jewellery just above my left ear and dropped a strand of hair to cover it. I stared at myself in the mirror, lost for words. The necklace—headpiece—whatever it was—had glimmered before, but in my hair it fairly shone. I felt like I was wearing a headdress made of moonlight that seemed to pulse gently in time with my breaths. 

“Stunning.” 

I glanced up at Ty in the mirror, surprised to see his eyes shining wetly. That instant was enough to break the spell, though, and I turned. “Let me show Nana,” I said. “I mean, let me see what she thinks.”

He stepped back, deferential. “Of course.”

Out the front of the store I found Lydia engaged in vibrant conversation with Nana, who sat with her back to me. Lydia’s eyes widened as she spotted me and paused midsentence. Nana twisted in her chair to see what Lydia had seen—and her hand flew to her mouth. 

“Oh,” she said as I drew close. “Oh, Elyena. You have it in your hair.”

I shrugged, suddenly embarrassed. “Oh, well,” I said, tugging on the strands across my forehead. “Ty thought he’d try something different.”

“Ty did this?” Nana asked. She turned back to her table and busied herself in her copious handbag before I could reply. 

Irritated, I snagged the necklace and tugged it down over my face. I shook my hair free from it and twisted it around to hang around my neck. There. Much better. Stupid Ty and his stupid ideas. What was he playing at, anyway? 

“There,” I snapped at the table, Lydia already engrossed in a new conversation with Ty and Nana still rummaging in her bag. Seriously, would it kill them to focus on me for more than a second? “Is that better?” I twitched the luminous white strands that trailed down my chest, still beautiful, but lacking the glorious beauty they’d had in the mirror just before. 

He narrowed his eyes critically at me. “The shirt does alluring things to your cleavage, I’ll give you that, even if it does emphasise your wide shoulders. I still wish you’d let me trim your hair, your forehead’s getting completely lost…” He trailed off under my glare. “No?”

“I meant about the necklace.” I thought my voice was remarkably calm for someone struggling against the impulse to commit homicide. 

Beside him, Lydia laughed. “I’m sorry. I’ve been training him for months, and he’s still barely housebroken.” She turned to him. “Ty, what’s our mantra? Answer the question…”

“Nothing else.” He nodded. “Answer the question, nothing else.”

They repeated it again together before dissolving into giggles. Ty reached across the table and tugged at Lydia’s hair, and she shrieked with mock outrage. Before I knew it, a chase was in flight—though I wasn’t actually sure who was chasing whom as they ducked back into the store and circled around racks and clothes stands. 

Ty caught Lydia for an instant, and I frowned in sudden realisation. This whole pantomime was starkly familiar: ten or fifteen years ago, it had been me and Lydia. My frown deepened and I watched closely for tell-tale glances or stray caresses, but as far as I could see, it was true: this wasn’t flirting, it was sibling horseplay. 

“Everything okay?” Nana’s voice cut through my thoughts and I turned, startled. 

“Hmm? Oh. Yes.” I glanced back at the two idiots still causing chaos in the store. “Everything’s… fine.” 

Nana’s eyes twinkled with something unreadable that tugged at my stomach, and I shook my head. “I’ll just, uh, go put the necklace back.”

“Yes, dear,” she said. “You can try to do that if you like.”

I rolled my eyes at her theatrics and headed for the back of the store. I tuned out Lydia and Ty’s ridiculous noise and hunted the display shelf for a place to hang the necklace. Oddly, there didn’t seem to be any empty hooks. I ran the necklace through my fingers, glancing down at where it hung limply around my neck. It was pretty—magically so—but it lacked the sparkle, the mysterious something else I’d thought it had when Ty had first put it on me. 

On a whim, I faced the mirror and tugged the necklace back up into my hair, trying to mimic the style Ty had created. Soft strands fell over my forehead and caught my hair partially up; it wasn’t quite how he’d done it, but… I tilted my head at the mirror and my heart skipped a beat. 

Slowly, tentatively, I reached up to touch the gossamer strands where they glimmered and glowed like a slipped halo.

Something solid hit me between and across the backs of my thighs. I flailed wildly for balance and found myself clinging to—his head, as he pranced wildly around the store with me on his shoulders, shouting, “Answer the question, nothing more! Answer the question, nothing more!”

Oh saints, my stomach’s showing. I tugged awkwardly at my shirt, caught between momentary embarrassment and his wildly infectious enthusiasm. “But what’s the question?” I shouted over the din. 

He laughed. “The necklace! It works!”

I laughed back, even though I had no clue what he was talking about. “Yay?”

Ty performed some complicated sort of movement that removed me from his shoulders and ended up with me in his arms. “Yay?” he said, eyes oddly serious in contrast to the frivolity of the situation.

“Well,” I said, waving my hands as vaguely as I felt, “It works, right? So yay?” I still had no idea what ‘working’ entailed, but whatever it was, apparently this was Christmas for Ty. He hugged me tightly to him and where our skin touched fire rippled through me. Saints. I’d forgotten what it felt like to have actual proper skin contact with him, not just accidental brushes I did my best to avoid. 

It was like drowning, and it was addictive, and it was probably just my imagination that my necklace halo was glowing like it might go nova and Ty was holding me, touching me, and my hands wrapped around the back of his neck and up through his hair and the air around us burst into flame with perfect, glorious pleasure. Skin. I needed his skin. 

My stomach flipped as something happened to gravity and I had a brief impression of broken plasterboard and a flash of darkness before Ty lay me down somewhere soft, and all I cared about was the touch of his skin, because it was beautiful, and perfect, and I nearly sobbed as heat soaked through me, lighting up every fibre of my being and chasing out fear and doubt and darkness—except just there, the very seat of my logic and rationality; it remained unmoved, a cold stone trying to catch my attention in the wave of heat.

“Wait,” I gasped. I needed a moment to process this. 

He ignored me, hands rubbing at my shoulders just like they had that first time in—I took in the plush-rugged floor, the pastel green walls, the ivory couches around the perimeter of the room. We were in the day spa. I struggled semi-upright. “Wait! How on earth did we…” 

He paused, and I found the gaping hole in the floor. Vague memories of a surge of power, of Ty springing upwards ten metres or more to the roof – through the roof – through the floor… I stared at him, wide-eyed, the magma flow of heat suddenly halted. “What are you?”

“Happy,” he mumbled against my shoulder.

I whacked him gently on the back of the neck. “Answer the question,” I said.

“Nothing more,” he murmured, nuzzling my neck. My skin fizzed where his lips touched, and I had to concentrate to rap him on the back of the head. 

“Yes,” I said. “Nothing more.”

He sat back, eyes clouded with lust slowly clearing. “I am what you are, love: a child of the gods. Well, I am closer than you: my mother was a true goddess. Your grandmother is the actual godling in your family.”

My heart stalled. Child of the gods? Me? Nana?

Actually, I had to admit that made a hell of a lot of sense. Nana’s bizarre observations, her uncanny sense of timing, her ridiculous physical abilities for someone her age… I blinked, unsure what was more unsettling: that my grandmother was a godling, or that it was dead easy to believe it. 

“Hold on, wait,” I said, wriggling further out from underneath Ty. “If you’re a godling, then…” I hesitated, not sure how to phrase my question, and not sure I wanted to know the answer. A godling. No wonder girls of all ages threw themselves at him. How many women had he loved in his lifetime? Ten? Twenty? A hundred? 

Cold logic was almost as good as a cold shower. “No,” I said. “No.”

“No what?”

“No I am not going to be the latest in a long line of floozies no. Not interested. I don’t care what you are, I’m not available.”

His eyes widened, body and face alike drooping in disappointment. “But Love, you feel it, I know you do.”

“Feel what?” I snapped, arms wrapped tightly around my torso. I felt nothing that he didn’t manipulate me to feel with his stupid godly powers.

“This,” he whispered, and reached out. His fingertip connected softly with the corner of my jaw, and I swallowed at the melting heat that consumed me. His finger trailed down my neck, tracing a blissful line across the hollow of my clavicle, lighting fire oh-so-carefully down my sternum. 

He pulled away and I remembered how to breathe. 

“See?” he said, still whispering. “How can you deny it?”

I shook my head, tears burning my eyes. I don’t want this, I don’t want this, I reminded myself frantically. “It isn’t real.” My nails dug into my palms as I stared into his sea green eyes, so full of sadness they seemed a mirror of my own. “Tell me…” I drew in a shaky breath. “Answer the question.”

He nodded, gaze darting across my face as though trying to unlock an enigma. 

“How many other girls?”

He frowned, and sadness turned to confusion. 

I rolled my eyes, flicking away tears with a quick finger. “Don’t give me that. How many other girls have you played this game with, made… feel like this?” I wasn’t holding my breath for his answer. I wasn’t. 

His confusion deepened. “But Love, I couldn’t.”

It was my turn to be confused. “What do you mean?”

He shook his head. “I couldn’t make someone feel like this. When I touch you, I feel what you feel. I felt it that first time, do you remember? The massage?”

Saints, how I had tried to forget. His touches had been perfectly innocent, utterly professional, but the fire they’d awoken in me had left me reeling in terror; I’d never felt anything that strong in my life. 

A tiny smile played at the corners of his mouth. “That’s when I knew.”

My heart pounded in my head, my chest—and everywhere else. “Knew what?”

He was leaning closer, lips a mere breath away, and I didn’t want to be a conquest, but Lydia hadn’t been flirting with him after all, and now that I thought about it—really and truly thought about it, without the filter of frustration and jealousy—could it be? Was I really the only girl actually losing her head over this man, the only one struggling not to throw herself at his feet?

“I knew,” he whispered against my ear, and I almost couldn’t hear him through the ecstasy echoing through my body, “that you were the one.”

“I don’t believe in soulmates,” I whispered back, eyes closed, every sense in my body standing to attention as his cheek tickled against mine.

“You don’t have to.” His lips traced my jaw and I shivered. “Your heart recognises me, Love, whether your believe in it or not.”

“Love,” I whispered, fingers tightening in his hair. “Is that what this is?”

“It could be,” he said. “If you wanted it to be.”

I luxuriated in the thought for just a moment, before another one hit me. I bolted upright, narrowly avoiding a collision with his nose. “Wait just one second here, buddy. Old? You think I look tired and old?” His words from that morning rang in my ear. “Not to mention, oh, I don’t know, my too-broad shoulders and my totally lost forehead.” I glared at him, wishing that godling powers included the ability to set someone literally on fire. 

Ty laughed, a soft, throaty chuckle that sounded far too appealing. “I knew you’d take it like that, and I confess, I half hoped you’d be provoked into responding. But if you recall, I said that some things around here were getting downright old and worn. I meant, Love, your constant indifference. Not you.”

He tracked a finger over my hairline, leaving tingling fireworks in its wake.

“That’s nice,” I said, pushing his hand away, “But what about my shoulders? And my forehead?”

He frowned, confusion plain again. “What about them?”

“You…” I squirmed, uncertain how to voice my fears aloud without sounding insecure and needy. “They’re not ‘too broad’, and, well, you know…?”

“Look at me, Love,” he said. “Am I perfect?”

YES, my heart screamed. YES YOU ARE BLOODY PERFECT. But I shoved the scrambling emotions away and forced myself to look. Cold logic; cold shower; I could do this. And true, now he mentioned it, his nose leaned a bit to one side, and one eye was slightly larger than the other, and if I was going to be utterly picky then his forehead was probably a fraction too large, and… “Oh.”

Ty softened into a smile. “Answer the question, Love.”

“Lydia’s wrong,” I said.

His eyebrows quirked. “What?”

I grinned, eyes dancing. “The answer. It’s not nothing more.”

Understanding lit his features. “Oh? Then what is it?” He whisked a finger against the tip of my nose, and my eyes rolled closed in pleasure. 

“Everything,” I said. “Everything more.”

He leaned down and kissed me, and this time, I kissed him back. 

Welcome to Dark Dale

The sign is broken. Parts lie on the ground splintered and splattered with blood. What remained of the rotting stomp in the ground was charred, and gnawed on; teethed on I corrected myself. There was still a tooth sticking out of the wood.

Marzrels went through several sets of teeth as babies, or larvae perhaps, they were carnivorous worms and I had never stopped to ask one what it called its young. Dinner maybe; but probably breakfast.

I flicked the tooth loose with my dagger and watched it arc through the arid air. I tossed the dagger after it. Marzrel teeth kept their venom for months, sometimes even, years after they had been shed. It was a good venom but useless unless you were a Marzrel, the toxins would poison the air they evaporated in and corroded metal at a record pace.

Just another joy of Dark Dale.

A shadow caught my eye, a small yellow scorpion no bigger than my thumb darting away from where the tooth had landed. As it came near I stepped on it. Those I occasionally call friends often laugh at my odd footwear. They have told me on numerous drunken occasions that I would do better to leave the iron out of my boots and run faster. I lifted my foot and used a second dagger to dig out the still wriggling arachnid. I killed it before I left the body to lie in the dust. One doesn’t survive the Dale by being kind and loving. Of course, I’ve never asked anyone about surviving the Dales, as far as I knew I was the only one who could make the claim.

I sauntered toward my destination, a nondescript rock of little intrinsic value. I slashed at bushes as I went and stabbed at shadows. The bushes burned and the sand crackled under the loving brush of my sword of fire. Most people like to collect mementos of their adventures. The average sword-for-hire collects gold, others take bones, teeth, ears, treasure, whatever catches their fancy. A fair number in this region collect skulls.

I collect swords.

The swords of slain heroes, and I’ve killed every one. I also keep daggers handy because I know the weapon I’m carrying already failed one protagonist and I’ve never been one to take undue risk.

At the rock I paused and growled in frustration, this was the part of visiting the Dale I didn’t like. “I am she that is summoned. I am she that answers,” I recited the chant from memory and watched with a bored expression as the rock steamed and smoked. The smoke coalesced and formed in to an ashen skinned demon with glowing silver eyes.

“Took you long enough didn’t it?” the creature demanded petulantly. “Do you know how long I’ve been waiting?”

“Two days,” I guessed since I had only received the summons two days prior, in the middle of a barroom brawl no less, which had been most inconvenient. “You were here last time, make someone in the council mad did we?”

The demon sniffed. “You know not of what you speak mortal!”

“Of course I know of what I speak and don’t call me mortal unless you intend to prove the point.” My free hand wandered closer to the abyssal whip I had picked off the body of a half-eaten necromancer.

Some people will never learn to leave well enough alone. At least not in this life.

“You will die!” the demon cried. Demons do this sort of thing; it’s habit more than anything else and not something that had particularly bothered me once I realized they all did it. I was nearly eight when that happened. Some little girls play with dolls, or horses, or looms, or swords, but I was deprived and forced to play with demons because I lacked parental supervision and income.

“You’ll die too eventually,” I observed, “does that make you mortal?”

“Of course not.” The demon peered at me. “One of these days I’m going to make you flinch.”

“Don’t count on it,” I advised.

It shrugged. “Here.” He held out a miniature portrait and dropped it at my feet. “Kill this.”

I picked up the likeness of a brawny man. “Nicely painted, oils?”

“Oils?” the demon asked. “How should I know?”

“You didn’t paint this?” I looked at him suspiciously. Having a demon hire me was not unheard of, but if this demon was hiring me for its own personal reasons than there was no reason some other creature should have painted the likeness.

“It was given to me by the council.” The demon looked as apologetic as it could.

“This is a council assignment?” The answer was important, it affected pay.

I always charged the council more. It was spite, and I’ll be the first to admit it. I don’t like the council. One of the idiots on it sired me, possibly mothered me, I wasn’t quite sure. But I was spawned by one of them and they had dropped me in the mortal realm with no more than a spell book and a handful of silver. That’s hardly decent parenting in my book. Gold is what loving parents give to their spawn, or offspring, depending on species.

The demon rubbed the bald space between its horns. “You won’t charge to much will you?”

“For a rush job on a brawny barbarian?” I tossed the miniature in the air and caught it thoughtfully. The demons silver eyes followed the jumping portrait. “Triple my usual rates for a rush job. Plus the weight of the hero in gold.”

“Outrageous! You worked for the liche in the summer valley for a quarter of that fee for the same sort of outlander!”

I tossed the portrait to the demon. “Then find another assassin,” I suggested. “If you can find one that will survive.”

That was my trump card every time. No one survived Dark Dale. Those that didn’t die outright were turned. Some were zombies, some liches, others hideous constructs of the Madness, souls ripped and torn beyond recognition. The lucky ones, or unlucky depending on your moral outlook, were turned into lesser demons, imps, succubae, incubi, and other half-mad things that did the bidding of the powerful. They would never be true demons, not with parts of their human souls intact, but they lived like demons.

“Double plus the weight,” the demon bargained.

“Triple plus the weight.” I stood firm. “You won’t be able to find anyone else.” The demon grumbled something foul under its breath. “Just tell yourself it comes out of the council's treasury not yours.”
The demon tossed its head in a nod. “Not my soul,” it muttered. “Find the hero. Kill the hero. And your pay will arrive as usual.”

“Good enough,” I agreed placidly. A funny thing most humans don’t know about demons is that they are actually bound by their words, unlike humans who can lie constantly without punishment.

No blood or vows are actually needed just a firmly worded agreement. The demons promise was contingent on my finding and killing the hero but since I would find and kill said hero there was no problem. “How many days ahead is this hero?”

“Three.” The demon held up three pointed talons. “He nears the east gate even now. Within two moonrises he will have reached the portal.”

“Are you not attacking him?” I asked with more suspicion than usual.

“We have thrown everything at him since he arrived.”

“The east gate is nearly impossible to reach unless you have a demon guide,” I noted. “Does he have a demon guide?”

“No.” The ashen demon squirmed.

“Tell me,” I ordered.

“He is impervious to magic. He nulls it. Nothing we do works.” The demon with its monstrous horns, bulging muscles, and venomed talons pouted.

I sheathed my sword of fire and pulled out a sharp iron spike. “Is he mortal or a demigod?”

“Mortal, most assuredly.” I gave the demon a pointed look. “Probably mortal,” it amended with an apologetic shrug. “No divine influence has been seen on him.”

“Well that at least is encouraging,” I traded my iron dagger for my favored offhand weapon, a sword breaker.

There are two kinds of sword breakers readily available for those who want to crush their enemies and deprive them of hope as you do so. The first is the traditional iron rod with no sharp edge. It’s heavy, sword length, and if you strike hard enough swords break. The second is a long dagger with a sharp edge on one side and a deep-set jagged edge on the other side. You catch your opponent's weapon in the deep-set serrations and twist.

Snap!

Such a lovely sound and so useful when you are forced into confrontation with berserkers, especially those who tie their souls to their blades. The look of panic as they realize their pride has killed them is priceless. Well, no, not priceless, I can put a price on anything.

Winter

It’s winter, whatever that means in a place where the temperature never varies by more than a double handful of degrees, and I’m out beyond the yard collecting firewood when my neck prickles – the sense of being stared at. I snap the branch I'm holding, forcing myself to focus only on what I’m doing, willing my breaths even and my heart calm. Only when I am certain I give off no sign of having noticed do I risk a glance up. Nothing but trees.

The light crackle of a footstep sounds to my right, and despite myself, I stiffen. It’s barely audible above the mundane, everyday sounds of the forest, but I am listening for it – have been listening for it since I was seven, and he ran away. I’d know the footfall of my wolf anywhere.

I twist the last couple of branches into my rope-knotted bundle and heft it onto my back, all the while willing him closer, closer. My brother shouts out from the house, and the spell is broken, and though sound neither confirms nor denies it, I know my wolf is gone.

With sighs heavier than my burden of wood, I trudge back towards the house.

Inside, my remaining three brothers are making a ruckus around the kitchen table. I stamp my feet in the doorway, more for show than any good that it will do, and drop my bundle at their feet. “At least put these away while you mutter,” I say, scowling at them. I am a person of few words, and their idle conversations still irritate me, even after so many years.

Jasper turns to me, eyes wide. “Haven’t you heard?” he says.

I shrug out of my light coat and frown at him. ‘Don’t know, don’t care,’ I mean, and he knows it well. To my annoyance, it doesn’t stop him from continuing.

“Big news,” he says, and I sigh. Big news always means even more idle chitchat than usual, and if it’s big enough, even the parents will join in, and my only hope for quiet and sanity will be outdoors. Of course, that’s my preference anyway, so that's hardly the end of the world.

I shrug again and make to leave the room, but Shull stops me and peers at me seriously. “You’ll want to hear this,” he says.

I shrug again, but stay.

It’s Fil who tells me the news in the end, something noteworthy in and of itself: he is nearly as reluctant to participate in conversation as I am, although it seems to give him pleasure to listen to it.

“Winter,” he says with characteristic brevity. “Real winter.”

I open my mouth to make a dismissive noise, but the repetition hits me, and his meaning sinks in: real winter, honest-to-goodness, genuine winter, the likes of which I’ve not yet lived to see. A shiver runs down my spine. “Honest?” I ask, drawn against my will into exchange because winter, real winter, is something I’ve been dreaming of since I was young enough to dream.

“Honest.” His eyes are alight, and then they all spill over themselves in an effort to tell me where, and when, and who told them, and how it is they know, and through all the noise I tune out and ignore them because none of that matters, none of that is important; the only thing that matters is that my wolf is back, and a real winter is coming.

I leave the room while they are all mid-sentence, smiling to myself.

Winter. At last.

Published Author

Horace Jones chewed his lip as he rode the elevator up seven floors to his Manhattan apartment. At the door he hesitated. Was it really over? Unlocking the door he pushed it slowly open and peered into the dark. “Hello? Domino?”

His black-and-white shorthaired terrier ran toward him, ears perked up.

“Is it safe?” Horace asked as he flipped on the light. 

Domino thumped his stubby tail on the wood floor.

“All right then.” Horace stepped inside. Slamming the door he secured the lock and scanned the near-empty living room: one couch, one table, one chair, one empty bookshelf.

 The dog ran to the couch barking. His tail knocked the table. A piece of paper fluttered gently to the ground.

“No!” Horace threw himself at the ground, sobbing. Fists beat the hard wood floor as hot tears streaked down his face. “No! Not again!”

Domino whined in confusion.

Defeated, Horace crawled forward. With trembling hands he lifted up the paper, dreading what he would see…

“A bill! Oh, thank all my lucky stars, a bill! Look!” He shoved the bill from the dog-walker in Domino’s face laughing giddily. “A bill!”

He rushed to the bookshelf to check the layer of dust.  

“Empty!”

Horace collapsed on his plush red couch, smiling at the empty shelves. “No one understands, Domino. They don’t realize the burden I live with.” For the first time in weeks he felt safe, completely at peace with himself.

Domino put his nose on the couch, brown eyes gazing up with total adoration.

“Right, food. Let’s see what we’ll have for dinner, shall we?” Horace hit his legs with forced enthusiasm and stood up.

“The gala today was awful, all those flashes going off. Five microphones shoved right up my nose. My mouth positively aches from smiling. I mean, really, how many questions can you have about a book? I’m a private person! I want a private life. Is that too much to ask?”

Tail thumping in expectation, Domino sat front of his food dish.

Horace opened the fridge. Leftovers from the week were piled in front, while older dinners lurked in the back enjoying complicated lives of their own. “I have steak tartar left from the dinner with Jay Leno yesterday. Cake left over from the buffet with Ellen the day before. And something pasta left from the lunch with Oprah that I went to on Monday. What would you like?”

A bark and a growl.

“Steak it is.” Horace emptied the Styrofoam box into the dog’s dish. “Eat up.” He pulled a left over sandwich from the back of the fridge and read the scribbled handwriting. “Writer’s conference? When did we last go to a writer’s conference?”

With a steak in front of him Domino was too distracted to comment.

“Probably not good for me then.” Horace tossed the wrap in the trash. He looked back in the fridge and, with a shrug, tossed the rest of the leftover food.

Domino whimpered, covering his eyes with his paw.

“We’ll go shopping tomorrow,” Horace promised.

He pulled a candy bar out of the vegetable drawer. “Cold, but tasty!”

The dog growled at him.

“It’s healthy!” Horace protested. “It has peanuts.”

He sat down beside Domino on the floor and watched the mutt enjoy his steak. Being a dog certainly looked nice. Easier than being a best selling author at least.

While his sixth book in three years was out, breaking earning records, Horace worried. The New York Times couldn’t get enough of him. His agent, who had started three years ago with a client list of one, was now the most sought after agent in New York. She still kept a client list of one.

And the Most Successful Agent expected her one client to keep her wealthy. When Evil Editor Madeline called The Most Successful Agent demanding to know when the next bestseller was going to be on her desk, The Most Successful Agent would turn to him.

Horace covered his face with his hands.

If he were lucky, very lucky, that sixth book would be his last. Maybe he could fade into obscurity. Maybe all this would just go away. He hadn’t meant for things to get out of control like this. It had been a joke, at first, a way to needle his friends at the coffee shop by showing them his finished manuscript while they slaved away at their own editing.

Sending a query letter had been a fun game… until the agents started calling. After that everything had snowballed and there hadn’t been a chance to explain the joke to anyone but Domino.

He peeked through the kitchen doorway at the bookshelf. It remained empty. Maybe the nightmare was coming to an end.

“Come on,” he said, patting the dog, “let’s go take our showers and get some sleep. Our devoted agent will be calling in the morning, bright and early, to drag me off to another interview. I don’t want to look as if I haven’t slept.”

He stumbled off to shower, trying to avoid looking in the mirror. He was over fifty and he hadn’t aged well. His PR people didn’t care; they told him he looked affable and jovial. Horace considered that over-kind. He was middle aged, overweight, going bald, and had bad teeth. But he never posed for the cover of the books so it didn’t matter.

He shaved, letting Domino play in the water while the shower warmed. Domino stepped out, shaking himself dry and trotted off. Horace tested the water, stepped in, washed, and groped around for his towel.

And groped some more, dripping water on the floor.

“Blast!” He scurried into the air-conditioned hall, shivering. Ran to the linen closet to grope there for a towel.

He pulled out a manuscript.

“Domino! Domino, we’ve been attacked!” The dog raced down the hall, skidded on the wet floor, and looked up at his sopping wet master. Horace shook the manuscript at the dog.

His ears flattened as his tail tucked.

Horace held the book near Domino’s face. “Try chewing it a bit.”

Domino yelped and ran.

“Coward!”

Horace threw the infernal manuscript into the puddle of water and left it there while he dried.

Determined not to endure a seventh run as the New York Times’ best-selling author, he paraded past the manuscript to his room. He pulled on flannel pajamas, hands shaking as he did up the buttons.

A quick peek around corner confirmed the manuscript hadn’t vanished.

He cleaned the bathroom, scrubbed the toilet, disinfected the dog’s dish, and hung a dry towel by the shower.

The manuscript hadn’t moved.

Fear growing by the moment, he tided the house, dusting, mopping, straightening….

Realizing he’d run out of all possible chores except mopping up the puddle with the manuscript, he picked up the unwanted pages.

Times new roman, twelve point font, double-spaced. Just the way his agent liked it.

The water hadn’t even ruined the edges.

“Blast!”

Shuddering, he slumped back to the bedroom, turned on the bedside light, and sat down to read the book. Domino hopped up beside him for moral support.

“Look at this first page!” Horace wailed. “It’s perfect!” Gripping, intense, passionate… “The New York Times are going to rave about this, I know it.” Tears blurred his vision.

He tried page two. Perfect.

Page three was even better.

“I know what the New York Times will say,” he said with a sniffle. “A brilliant masterpiece of cunning wit, enduring love, and a timeless metaphor for the human condition. They’ve done that to me before.”

Horace sobbed.

Domino played dead.

“We have to get rid of this. I can’t face another book signing. I can’t go on Oprah again! No more parties! No more reviews! I can’t stand the pressure!”

He looked down at the dog.

“We burn it. No one will ever know. I’ll fade into comfortable obscurity. I won’t go insane and you won’t have to live in the pound with cats. No one will ever know that I can’t write to save my life. We end it. Tonight.”

Domino followed him to the living room and watched him start the fire.

“It’s for the best,” Horace promised.

He tossed the manuscript in and watched. The fire merrily burned away around the book. Flames kissed the manuscript. Hot breezes rifled the pages. Burning logs popped in accolade. But the pages didn’t singe.

The manuscript wouldn’t burn.

“This is a nightmare!” Horace threw another log on the fire and ran to hide under his blankets, praying the manuscript would turn to ash in the morning sunlight like the like sucking vampire it was.

All through the night he tossed and turned. Awards shows haunted his dreams. Hollywood directors calling for movie rights turned angry when he couldn’t remember the character’s names…

The next morning his sheets were drenched in sweat. The smell of animal fear permeated the room.

A key clicked in the lock of the apartment- his agent! He had to hide the manuscript before she found it!

 Horace stumbled into the living room, bleary eyed and nauseous with worry.

 His perfectly groomed agent perched on the couch devouring the latest, unsinged, manuscript.

“Horace! This is brilliant!” She gave him a very stern look. “Why was it in the fire place?”

“Oh, uh, well, you know how I feel about first drafts.” He gave her a weak smile. The future loomed dark with the promise of lies and television appearances. He would tell her. Right now, he’d confess that he hadn’t written the book. She could make everything go away.

But she laughed, smiling up at him as if he could do no wrong. “I don’t know how you do it.”

Resolve crumpled.  Horace echoed her with a nervous laugh of his own. “The books just…. come to me. Isn’t that how it works for everyone?”

Understanding

Walking into the house again after five years, it still smells exactly the same. You still use that lemon and vanilla brew on the stove to freshen the kitchen, still use the same brand of shoe wax on Dad’s boots in the hallway. And underneath it all, I can still smell the Windex.

Windex and vanilla, shoe wax and lemon: the smells of my childhood. Val is four, now. Her childhood smells of lab chemicals, frozen dinners and oil paints. Mum, I’m sorry.

I found Dad in the kitchen, peeling potatoes of all things. I’ll never know how you manage to wrangle him into kitchen work like you do when we grew up with him swearing it was women’s business, girl jobs. You’re amazing. A force of nature.

Dad hugged me, congratulated me on my promotion while he handed me an apron and your second best peeler. Hasn’t anyone told you yet that the only people who categorise their peelers are washed out, nineteen-fifties housewives? Mum, I’m sorry.

I’m sorry I’m not everything you ever dreamed of. I’m sorry I’m not Ramona, with her two-point-one children and her white picket fence, her stay-at-home lifestyle and her church-every-Sunday. I’m sorry I followed in Dad’s footsteps and forsook yours. I’m sorry my brain wasn’t built for cleaning, that I could never find any joy in endless, cyclic, thankless scrubbing. I’m sorry that I find the make of genes more intriguing than the ironing of jeans, that my child knows the taste of frozen carrots and store-bought cheesecake, that I grow my greens on a petri dish instead of a home-dug garden.

I’m sorry, most of all, that this makes you sorry.

Val, at least, can’t disappoint you. Although I’ve already applied to enrol her in the advanced science stream next year when school starts, she loves the kitchen too, loves mixing and brewing and beating. She owns more cooking equipment than I do – she thanks you for the cupcake set, by the way.

What she loves most of all though is art. She’ll sit and watch her father for hours at a time. A four year old! Sitting still! It’s astounding. I used to have these dreams, when I was pregnant, when we found out we were having a little girl… I used to dream that she’d grow up just like me, practical and unromantic, logical and not at all homey.

And then she grew up, and she loves glitter and sparkles and ponies, loves dress ups and tiaras and pink. Oh, she’s logical, my darling little baby logician who demands why she has to eat her pumpkin when carrots are better for making vitamin A anyway; but she cooks, and she loves to paint.

I know, all children love to play at house, love to get their fingers messy and smear colours across a page. I probably even did. But Mum, how do you bear it? What do you do, that moment when you first realise that this person that was once like a second heart in your own body is now someone distinct, someone different – someone not you? 

Mum, I’m sorry. I love you. Thank you for everything. 

Xx Angie.