“Saved you,” I said a second later, through still-swollen lips. “That make us even?”
“Oh, did you now?” he asked, his gaze ridiculously tender. “And who put me in danger in the first place?”
“Splitting . . . hairs,” I answered.
“Uh-huh.”
“What am I doing here? Where’s Gareth?” Already, talking was easier, and if I wasn’t mistaken, my other eye was starting to open.
“The police raided the place before I could get him loose, so I grabbed you and got out. I knew if they saw you first, they’d insist on paramedics and the hospital, and I didn’t know if you had that kind of time or whether you could even recover from all the spider bites without the ambrosia. But I left the panel open in the elevator and Arachne’s own key in the lock so that they could find him.”
And the audience . . . What had they seen? How much of it would they believe?
He shrugged. “I was more worried about you.”
I was breathing easier now, and the numbness that had overtaken my body was starting to burn off like the morning fog.
“Thank you,” I said finally. It was long overdue. I was usually too busy being pissed off at him for something or other.
“You’re welcome,” he said, looking down at me with something a lot like love. But those he loved tended to meet bad ends . . . worse than becoming spider food. Turning into a tree or ending up with an arrow through the heart or the power to see the fate of Troy but not affect it . . .
I looked away, wondering whether Detective Armani had been in on the raid and what he’d think when he heard the tale of the fembot who’d kicked spider ass.
RED ISN’T REALLY MY COLOR
BY CHRISTINA HENRY
This story takes place between the events of Black Night and Black Howl.
The envelope sat in the middle of my dining room table. It was creamy white, made of some kind of fancy paper that I would never be able to afford. My name, Madeline Black, was written on the front in beautiful calligraphy.
Beezle, my gargoyle, perched on my shoulder. We both contemplated the envelope in silence.
“So, are you going to open it or what?” Beezle finally said in his gravelly voice.
“I’d prefer not to,” I said.
“Okay, Bartleby. Then can we stop staring at it like it’s a bomb that’s about to explode and do something productive, like make dinner?”
“Dinner?” I asked, glancing at the clock. “It’s only one o’clock. You just ate lunch twenty minutes ago.”
“But the arrival of an unexpected messenger with a missive from your great-great-grandfather has disturbed the delicate balance of nutrition to energy inside my body, and now I’m starving again,” Beezle said.
“I’ve got news for you. There’s nothing delicate about your body,” I said, approaching the table. “And pizza is not generally considered a nutritional superfood.”
“I wasn’t going to say we should eat pizza,” Beezle said.
“Yes, you were,” I said. “If it’s not pizza, it’s wings, doughnuts, cinnamon rolls, Chinese food, or popcorn.”
“Ha!” Beezle said, floating off my shoulder on his little wings. “Popcorn is a superfood. It’s whole grain and everything. I think Rachael Ray or Katie Couric or Oprah or somebody said it was good for you. I’m making some now.”
“One bowl!” I called after him. “And adding half a pound of butter does not mean it’s still health food.”
I reached for the envelope with my right hand and turned it over. The coiled snake tattoo on my palm tingled, an exact match of the symbol pressed into the seal of the envelope.
The mark of Lucifer, my many-greats-grandfather.
I’d gotten the mark by using a sword made by Lucifer and tapping into some long-buried power inside me that tied me to his bloodline. I didn’t love having it. It identified me as one of Lucifer’s own, and there are many good reasons why an association with Lucifer is less than desirable. Starting with his list of enemies, which was far too extensive. And all of them liked to find ways to hurt him by hurting me.
Thanks to my unwanted family ties, I’d recently gotten sucked into a major diplomatic-mission-gone-wrong in one of the local faerie courts. In the process I’d managed to make a personal rival out of the faerie queen, Amarantha. I had enough on my plate without being chased down by angry fae every time I stepped outside of the house.
And now there was an envelope from Lucifer. I was sure that I wasn’t going to like what was inside. I tore the seal and withdrew the folded paper.
The paper was actually made of linen. Where does one even find linen paper?
I read the message inside, my eyebrows drawing closer together with every word. Then I tried to crumple the fancy linen into a tiny ball but succeeded only in making the letter look like it needed ironing.
I went down the hall to the kitchen and tried to slam the letter in the trash in a satisfying way. The expensive paper just drifted softly into the can.
Beezle was buried in a bowl of popcorn on the counter. And when I say “buried,” I mean he was actually buried. My gargoyle is about the size of an eight-week-old guinea pig. He fits in my coat pocket. So he can actually disappear into a serving bowl full of food—at least until he eats it all, which takes a surprisingly short amount of time.
He was facedown in the bowl. I could hear the sound of his stone jaws crunching away at the kernels on the bottom. The only visible parts of him were the claws on the tips of his feet. I grabbed one of those claws and yanked him out of the bowl, thus spilling popcorn onto the counter. He glared at me indignantly, swallowing the food stuffed in his beak.
“I’m in the middle of something here,” he said, flapping his little wings and wrenching his foot out of my grasp. He floated up to my eye level.
“Lucifer wants me to find the Red Shoes for him,” I said. “I don’t want to go on another mission for Lucifer that’s sure to go haywire. I don’t even know what the Red Shoes are.”
“What you don’t know could fill an encyclopedia. If people used encyclopedias anymore,” Beezle said.
I ignored him. “How am I supposed to find these things? And what makes these red shoes more special than any other pair of ruby slippers?”
“The Red Shoes are a legendary artifact,” Beezle said. “Nobody knows exactly how old they are, or where they originated. They are generally associated with the fae, but they didn’t make the shoes.”
“Oh, good. More faeries,” I muttered. “Why does Lucifer want them?”
“We-e-e-e-l-l-l,” Beezle said slowly. “Supposedly the wearer of the Red Shoes will be forced to dance without stopping.”
“Until?”
“Until nothing,” Beezle said. “Even if the wearer dies, or their limbs are cut off, the shoes will continue to dance.”
I had a horrible vision of amputated feet, still bloody at the ankles, gaily moving in the steps of a jig.
“So Lucifer is sending me after an ancient torture device disguised as attractive footwear,” I said.
“You’re surprised by this?” Beezle asked.
“No,” I said. “But I don’t think it’s a good idea for me to get mixed up in any more faerie nonsense, do you?”
“Lucifer thinks it’s a good idea, or else he wouldn’t have asked you,” Beezle said.
“He didn’t ask,” I said through gritted teeth.
“He respects your strength. So he wants to test it,” Beezle said.
“I don’t test well,” I said.
“I don’t think you have a choice,” Beezle said.