Ambrose caught our concerned looks and snorted. “I’m tired, that’s all,” he said bluntly. “I opened the store at nine a.m., while you two were getting your beauty rest.”
Ambrose was a big man, but there were deep circles under his eyes and his skin had a gray cast.
We offered to work, but Ambrose waved us away. Instead, we followed him up the three flights of stairs to their apartment.
“I’ll make you a cup of tea,” Talbot offered his father.
Ambrose snorted. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
After he went to bed, Talbot and I settled on the couch with a couple of beers to brainstorm.
“So who is running the underworld while Hecate is upstairs possessing Willow’s body?”
“What are you looking for anyway?”
“A way to get that particular genie out of the bottle,” I replied.
At his blank look, I elaborated, “Find a way to get Hecate out of Willow’s body.”
“Why is she still possessing her anyway?” he asked. “Wren took the bead.”
“I know,” I said. “She’s either keeping Willow just to piss me off or…”
“Or what?”
“The bead didn’t work for some reason.” Maybe I’d brought back the wrong bead when Wren had sent me through time and space, to India, where the simple red bead had been hidden.
“Like what?” Talbot asked.
“I’m going to go to the underworld and do some snooping.”
“Pretty risky. She probably left a legion of demons behind to guard the place,” Talbot commented. “I’ll go with you.”
“No,” I said. “I have to go alone.”
Too many people I cared about had already been in danger because of me.
I’d originally come to Minneapolis to avenge my mother’s death and then end my life, but things had gotten complicated. Hope, however fragile, like me, was hard to kill once it had bloomed, and a tiny part of me still thought a happily ever after might still be possible.
That was, until Wren slit my throat and left me to die in a pool of my own blood. I’d thought my aunts were the worst thing around, but they were girl scouts, although rabid ones, compared to Hecate. And I’d unleashed her on Minneapolis.
I remembered Bernie’s little trick and had stopped by the butchers for three slabs of meat for Hecate’s hounds, which I laced with some horse tranquilizers and a hidden command spell. It wasn’t as fancy as Talbot’s had been, but it did the trick.
There was a gate to the underworld directly under Hell’s Belles, the restaurant my aunts owned. It was located near a three-way crossroads.
I didn’t want anyone to know I was coming, so I skipped the express route through Hell’s Belles’ basement and took the long way at it, through the tunnels. The tunnels were as disgusting as ever, and there were signs that someone else had been there recently. It was probably just kids looking for somewhere to party, but it set me on edge.
I’d been to the underworld before, to rescue my cousin Claire from Hecate. Not that Claire had been particularly grateful, but the aunts had been holding something over my head to get me to do it.
Now I was going back of my own free will. The trip downstairs was just as cold, nasty, and smelly as I remembered it. The road to the underworld smelled like the devil’s armpit.
The hounds were guarding the gate. From a safe distance, I tossed the steaks at the hounds and then waited. There was a thud and then another, and finally the third dog went down. I tiptoed past them to reach the gate to Hecate’s realm.
The road to Hecate’s castle was strewn with false paths, traps for the unwary, and poisonous plants that would make a rattlesnake’s venom taste like mother’s milk.
“Stop that and take me where I want to go,” I muttered, when I passed the same patch of wolfsbane for the third time. The path immediately formed a straight line.
I yawned. There was something I was supposed to be doing, something important. My lids started to droop. I was drifting off into a comfortable fog when I realized dark magic was lulling me to sleep.
“Wake up,” I told myself. Then, when that didn’t seem to be working, “Excitare.”
I fought off the urge to doze, but had to slap myself every few miles to stay alert.
Hecate’s castle was in view, but I didn’t seem to be getting any closer. There was rustling in the underbrush, and I froze, but the noise was not repeated.
Still, the hair on the back of my neck prickled. I was being followed. I bent down and pretended to tie the laces of my beat-up Docs. I scanned the horizon, but no demons appeared.
I decided I needed to be more specific with my requests to the enchanted pathway.
“Take me to where I want to go quickly,” I clarified.
I walked along the path for no more than twenty minutes before I entered the palace. It was abandoned, and not even the lowest demon of the realm had stayed.
I wandered from room to room looking for clues as to Hecate’s current whereabouts, the location of Hecate’s physical body, which I was sure was still in the underworld somewhere, or a sign of a possessed Willow, but came up with nothing. The castle had been stripped bare.
I’d lost all sense of time during my search, but my growling stomach made me realize I’d been there some time. “This is a bust,” I muttered to myself, but I went down one last hallway anyway. I was sure Hecate’s body was still stuck in the underworld.
I came to a room I’d never seen before. The door was carved yew, the handle crystal. It was locked.
Before I could pick the lock, a roar sounded. There was a creature standing at the end of the hallway, blocking my escape. It had the head of lion, followed by the head of a goat. Its tail was the head of a deadly serpent. I was facing down a chimera.
The chimera charged me. I was trapped. I muttered, “Obscura,” before it reached me and the chimera stopped, confused by my disappearance from its vision. It skidded comically as it tried to correct its trajectory, but came close enough to touch. The nostrils on the lion flared. I didn’t wait to find out if it picked up my scent. I ran.
I made my way back through the same treacherous forest. I looked over my shoulder constantly, still worried about the chimera tracking me, but there was no sign of the beast.
I crossed back using through the same gate I’d entered, but someone was waiting. Danvers appeared to be looking for a way in, his wheelchair moving quickly over the uneven path. The movement rattled his teeth and his composure, but when he stopped in front of me, his usual snarl was in place.
Hecate hadn’t needed Danvers any longer and thrown him away, but why was she still hanging on to Baxter? The flesh eater had vanished, but the harpy feather I’d found at the scene convinced me that Hecate was behind his disappearance.
Willow’s husband. Danvers had stuck with his golf shirts, but his tan had faded. The curse I’d lobbed at him right before I died had taken care of his golf swing. His hands shook with palsy so much he could barely grip his wheelchair.
I probably should have felt sorry for him, but I didn’t. He’d killed at least a baker’s dozen of naiads to break Hecate out of the underworld. And he’d hurt Willow. In my book, that meant the bastard deserved every agonizing second.
The hounds still snored.
“You need to get a new trick,” Danvers said. “Why not just kill them?”
“I’d never kill an animal,” I replied. “Unless it was disguised as a human. But calling you an animal is an insult to the poor beast.”
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
“None of your business.”
“She was only playing before,” Danvers said. “Hecate doesn’t like to lose.”
“Neither do I.”
He smirked at me. “Just you wait, Nyx Fortuna. A whole lot of trouble is coming your way.”
I smirked back. My life had been full of trouble.
I waited, but Danvers didn’t make a move to cross over into the underworld.
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“Been taken off the guest list, have you?”
“She left me in charge. I can go into Hecate’s realm whenever I want,” he blustered, but he stayed where he was.
I was torn. I needed to get back home, but I had an overwhelming desire to wrap my hands around his neck and squeeze until he told me where Willow was or he stopped breathing. “You don’t have enough magic left in you to call up and order pizza, let alone control the dead.”
“You’re dead already,” he replied. “You just don’t know it yet.”
I’d always known I wasn’t destined for a paint-by-numbers happy ending, but I wasn’t going to let a monster like Danvers be the one to kill me. He didn’t make a move, though, and we stood there, locking eyes.
A single roar was the only warning I had before the chimera appeared.
Danvers’s bloodshot eyes opened wide. “I didn’t think they existed anymore,” he said.
I was going to have to kill it. Hecate could do infinite damage with a chimera on her side. The chimera made its cousin Cerberus look like a teacup poodle.
The snake struck my arm. A sharp pang and then my vision blurred as the venom hit my bloodstream. Even if I managed to extract the poison, the lion would tear me to shreds. Or the goat’s pungent odor would kill me. Fortunately, I wore my World War II fighter pilot jacket, which had healing charms sewn into the lining. It would slow the poison.
“Freeze,” I commanded. The chimera froze. I took out my athame and cut two small slits into the wound and sucked out the poison. It tasted as bad as the chimera smelled, like rancid goat meat, and moldy fur, and dog barf. I spit it on the ground and then repeated the process until most of the venom was out.
When my vision cleared, Danvers was gone. The chimera was still frozen, but I could see its multiple eyes furiously working. What should I do with it? It didn’t seem sporting to lop off its heads while it couldn’t defend itself, but if I left it there, Hecate would use the chimera to wreak havoc topside later.
I weighed my options. The spell would hold the chimera for a few hours. If I got lucky, I’d have just enough time to figure out where to stash it before the magic wore off. If I wasn’t lucky, the chimera would probably kill me.
I hated to wake him, but I was in a bind. I picked up the phone and dialed Ambrose’s number. “Know anywhere I can stash a chimera in cold storage for a few days?”
“I do, but you’re not going to like it,” he replied. He was right.
Chapter Six
I went back through the tunnels and waited for Ambrose near Hell’s Belles. He pulled up in the Eternity Road van thirty minutes later. He’d brought Talbot, which made it easier. Ambrose was a big man with a wolfish grin, and I honestly wasn’t sure if he would have fit in the tunnels.
“Got any rope?” I asked. We needed something to keep its deadliest parts on lockdown while we brought it up.
“Take the dollies, too,” Ambrose told Talbot.
Ambrose waited in the van while Talbot and I went to retrieve the chimera.
“I can’t believe I’m actually going to get to see a chimera,” Talbot said as we walked.
I stepped around a heap of broken bottles. “It’s not as fun as it sounds,” I warned. “It bit me once already. The spell may have worn off and it moves fast.”
The chimera was where I’d left it, but the furious look in its eyes hadn’t dimmed. We loaded the chimera into the back and then Ambrose drove straight to Parsi Enterprises. Parsi Enterprises was housed in an old converted warehouse building in the North Loop neighborhood.
I missed my job there, but killing Deci had served as my official termination. I couldn’t really blame them.
“You’re serious about giving my aunts a chimera?”
“It’s safer with them than with Hecate.”
He backed into the loading dock, which was in the rear of the building, on the manufacturing side of Parsi, and flashed his lights three times. Nothing happened.
Eventually, there was a shine of silver and Morta appeared, her hair gleaming in the darkness.
My aunt’s habitual chilly expression thawed when she saw the chimera. She snapped her fingers and a silent factory worker helped us load the still-frozen chimera onto a flatbed cart.
We stopped at a freight elevator and the factory worker went back to the plant.
Morta punched a code into the keypad and the elevator descended. The doors opened into a huge space that spanned the entire Parsi Enterprise building and then some.
“Thank you for bringing the chimera to me, Mr. Bardoff,” she said.
“Don’t thank me,” Ambrose replied. “Nyx is the one who caught it.”
“Son of Fortuna, you managed to trap the beast?”
“Don’t sound so surprised,” I told her.
I counted twelve occupied cages. They were state-of-the-art, large spaces that mimicked the occupant’s natural habitat. Instead of iron bars, there were wards crisscrossing the cages. Additional wards ran along the hallway where we stood.
Deep in the bowels of the building, the Fates had amassed a magical menagerie. Lerna, a giant crab known for its fighting ability, scuttled among the rocks and water of one habitat. A lone Phoenix sat on a perch in another cage. In a darkened cage containing a miniforest, three pixies, naked and toilet paper white, sat waiting, their little yellow eyes gleaming through the darkness.
Ambrose didn’t seem very surprised, but I was reeling.
“Did you know about this?” I asked him.
“I’d heard rumors,” he replied. “But I never thought I’d see it.”
“It’s like a friggin’ mythological zoo in the middle of Minneapolis,” I said.
“It’s not a zoo,” Morta said. “Or a prison.”
“Then why are you keeping them here?”
“Use your head for something other than decorating your shoulders,” Morta snapped. “What do you think would happen if these creatures were released upon the mortal world?”
“They’d be hunted.” The thought of trapping such wondrous creatures made me ill.
“Exactly,” she said. “These are the last of their kind. They are safe and happy here.”
Safe, maybe, but her “guests” didn’t seem happy.
There was a lamia’s dirt mound in the far cage, but no sign of the lamia. “What do you feed that one?” I asked curiously. Lamias fed on the blood of children. I couldn’t imagine even my aunts being that heartless.
“Adult virgin donors,” she said crisply. “She doesn’t like it as much as the blood of the innocent, but it keeps her full. She eats innocents for food, but will kill for fun, so stay away.”
“What’s in that one?” I pointed to the cage. Behind the wards, there was a round wooden door barely three feet wide. The door had a thick iron dead bolt on it, and salt encircled the door. White chrysanthemum hung in garlands and runes written in an old language decorated one wall.
“Don’t go near that cage” was my aunt’s succinct reply. So I didn’t.
Something about all those trapped creatures reminded me of the Fates’ late lamented Tracker. He’d been too busy harassing me to have rounded up all the creatures before us.
“Morta, do you have other Trackers on your payroll?” I asked.
She gave me a sour look. “You killed our Tracker,” she said.
“I killed Gaston,” I said. “But it’s not like you not to have a backup plan. Do you have others or not?”
“A few,” she admitted. “But none as talented as Gaston was.”
“Do you think he could track a flesh eater?”
“Yes,” she said. “But he is a she.”
“Can I meet her?”
“Perhaps,” my aunt said. “This Tracker is unpredictable.”
“Your last Tracker wasn’t exactly working with a complete deck of cards,” I said.
“You took care of that, didn’t you?” she glared.
I glared back. “I did. Gladly.”
Ambrose cleared h
is throat. “Nyx, it’s time we got back to the store.”
He said good-bye to my aunt, but I didn’t bother.
On the way home, I stared out the window as Ambrose drove through the city streets. What were my aunts doing to do with so many mythical animals? Whatever it was, it wouldn’t be good.
Chapter Seven
I was reading the headlines as I sat at the stool near the register at Eternity Road. I looked for clues about Hecate’s and Doc’s whereabouts, but there was nothing in the paper, except a brief mention of Baxter’s disappearance. Hecate was out there, but it had been quiet since the slaughter.
Talbot leaned against a display case next to me. He was watching the customers with a bemused look on his face.
To the mortals, Eternity Road looked like an average pawnshop, but to the magical community, it was a treasure trove. Business at Eternity Road had more than doubled, but it was mostly low-powered magicians looking for protection charms. The store was filled to the brim with exotic and mundane items. There was an amazing selection of amulets and other treasures in a locked case next to the old-fashioned register.
“Too bad Zora’s closed,” I said. “We could send them there.” Jenny, my ex-girlfriend’s roommate, had died at the magic shop. After her death, the magic shop hadn’t reopened.
Talbot gave me a sideways glance. “Have you heard from Elizabeth?”
“No, but I didn’t expect to,” I said. “She and Alex are safe and that’s all that matters.”
A shifty-looking wizard in a suit and tie tried to pocket a star amulet. I threw a receipt pad at his head. “Get out.”
He tried to give me an innocent look. “Out,” I said. “And leave the amulet.”
The wizard scowled at me, but did as I asked.
Talbot grabbed a bunch of stuff and went over to Harvey, the enormous stuffed bear we never seemed to sell. Or maybe we didn’t want to sell him. We amused ourselves by dressing Harvey up in a variety of outfits. Talbot draped a white silk scarf around Harvey’s neck and then added a monocle.
I handed him a black silk top hat. “Try this.”
Even dressing Harvey didn’t warrant a smile from Talbot. He was still down about my cousin.