Sixpence & Whiskey (9 page)

15

When
I wake up, there’s a fairy in my face for the second time in as many days.

“Really, Rochie?” I bat at her, but she only laughs and dodges, bells tinkling merrily.

“Rise and shine! It’s tattoo day. You just couldn’t help yourself, could you?”

I sit up so fast my head spins, then lay back down with a groan.

“Oh. I…well,
fuck
.”

She gives me an interested look. “You didn’t go that far …did you?”

I throw a pillow at her. More bells and laughter. “This isn’t fair, I was inebriated.”

“I thought you told Jack you were barely tipsy?”

“Well, actually I—wait a minute. Were you spying on us, you little perv?” I open my mouth, then shut it again. I don’t want to think too much about last night. Anyway, asking Rochie what Jack is up to won’t do any good. I file the question away, feeling uneasy for more than one reason as I sit up.

Rochie is grinning. “Merely protecting my interests. Now pay up, buttercup. I want you tatted by sundown, got it? And because I’m such a good sport, I’ll even pop by the wolves’ camp for you. And remember, it’s Jo-
kul
Frosti…”

“Wait a second.” I’m thrilled she’s still gonna check out the wolves, especially after what went down last night, but what’s this bullshit? “You said Jack’s name?”

Her tiny eyes narrow. “That is his name, Seph.”

I stare at her, my unease growing. It is true—that’s the old Norse name for Jack in the fairytales; his
true
name. But suddenly I can feel the teeth of a trap closing around me.

As if sensing the direction of my thoughts, Rochie waves a diminutive finger. “You made a bet. Going back on it would’ve serious consequences.”

It would, too.

FTCs can’t enter into a bargain without fulfilling said bargain, in one fashion or another. It would bring a crap load of grief down on my head. Karma is painfully real in the FTC world. But getting Jack’s name engraved in my skin? I shiver, barely resisting the urge to throw the pink-and-white striped duvet back over my head and hide from the world.

“Going through with it might be worse,” I mumble.

Her wings give an evil tinkle. “Wanna bet?”

Jett glares at me as I pull her to the shop entrance. I’m surprised she didn’t just haul off and blast me into itty-bitty pieces when I got her out of bed an hour ago. I think it was only my announcement that I needed her to give me some ink that made her restrain herself.

When I told her the name I needed to have carved into my body on the way over here, though, she about blew a gasket.

“You’re fucking insane,” she says now.
Again.

“Everyone keeps saying that lately. It’s kinda hurting my feelings.”

“I can’t do this, Persephone.” Her voice is uncharacteristically soft. “I won’t.”

We went over this in the car, too. “If you don’t, I’ll have to go to someone else.” And I don’t think I could handle that. As much as she annoys and scares me, Jett is my sister. If I have to have anyone cutting up my skin, I want it to be her. “Is that what you want?”

With a vicious curse, she sticks in her key and wrenches open the frosted-glass door. I start to move past her to the bar, but she throws out an arm, catching me in the gut hard. “Where are you going?”

“To get a drink?”

“Like hell you are.”

“You expect me to do this stone-cold sober?” I gape at her, rubbing my sternum.

She shrugs, the jagged edges of her black hair brushing the spirals of ink that crawl up the back of her neck. “I don’t expect you to do shit, but you want a tatt from me, you’re doing it sans alcohol.”

“Okie.” I smile weakly and she leads me over to the reclining leather chair.

I sit, curling my shaking hands over my thighs. Raising those dark winged eyebrows, Jett drops into a stool next to me. “Want me to call Sy?”

I swallow at this unexpected kindness—Jett is not fond of humans—but shake my head. “She’s working.”

“Okay, besides fuckhead’s name, do you have an idea what you wanna do here?”

I thought about this long and hard before I woke her. It was surprising how easily the image came to me, even if the idea of going through with it scares the crap out of me. I tell her want I want and where I want it.

Jett frowns. “As far as pain goes, that’s not a fun place for a tatt, Seph. It’s gonna fucking hurt.” I swallow but lift my chin. She shrugs again. “Fine. Let me work up a few sketches.”

Jett may not be the family ‘artist,’ but she’s talented. It only takes her about ten minutes of playing around on her sketch pad before I say, “Yeah. That’s it. Just like that.”

She looks from me, to the sketch and back again. “Alright, lose the shirt. And Seph?”

“Yeah?”

“You better not puke on me.”

I’m sore when I head down to check on our resident assassin hours and hours later. The bar is in full swing now, several of my employees already on the clock and bustling about. Tyr watches me gingerly sink down onto the cushion just outside his magical cage.

“Someone else take a shot at you already?”

“In a matter of speaking, yes. But this isn’t from them, it’s from my sister.”

His eyebrows shoot up. Tyr leans against the wall, pulling out a cigarette to burn. Every movement has a casual menace that reminds me just how easily this man could’ve killed me. “That the sister I met, Jett? The one who looks like
she’d
know how to use torture effectively?”

“That would be her.”

“What did she do to you?”

“Gave me a tattoo.”

He pulls the unlit cigarette from his lips, then laughs. And laughs. I’m betting he has plenty of ink under those clothes, but I don’t ask. I just glare. 

“Shut up. I have a deathly phobia of needles.”

He lights his cigarette and takes a long puff. I bought him a couple packs. Seemed only fair. “Then why the hell did you get a tatt?”

“I lost a bet. With a fairy.”

His lips twitch. “Aww, poor baby. Can I see?”

“No.” I give him a sour look. “Now are you ready to tell me who sent you after me? And no more of that
I’m going to blow up the earth
shit.” My Marvin the Martian impression isn’t bad, but Tyr doesn’t laugh.

Taking a deep drag, he doesn’t say anything for a long moment. With lazy skill, he sends a family of smoke rings into the air. I can’t resist a light illusion in return, a pretty pink arrow that snags all three and pins them to the wall. He watches them disperse, clapping his hands quietly.

Then those black eyes find mine. “It was the Dark Council. They hired me to kill you.”

I didn’t expect him to answer at all, and especially not with
that.
My mind churns as I try to take it in. I’ve heard the whispers, of course. The rumors of a twisted form of the real Council. One that bends laws, instead of enforcing them. One that does things …

Well, things better left in the dark.

But it’s not true. It’s just a myth to keep people in line. To discourage rabble-rousers. I don’t believe it.

Tyr is watching me as if he can read my mind, that half smile on his lips. His dark hair curtains his face, arms folded, one hand going to his lips as he takes another drag, waiting for me to speak.

“There is no such thing.”

“Ah, but there is, lovely. I’ve done work for them many, many times.”

“And have you found them to be mentally challenged in the past?”

Tyr smiles, a trifle sadly, I think. “These are not the kind of people who make mistakes. But regardless of whether they are right or not, you’re in their cross hairs.” Worry snakes its way into my stomach.

I don’t go around being all badass. That’s my sisters’ job. At least the older two. I stick close to home, I don’t go looking for fights or making bids for power. I like playing village witch, keeping Duluth safe from wolves and other shit and keeping myself to myself. I’ve never even fully explored my powers. Mostly because I never thought there was much to explore, but…

“I’m not looking for trouble, Tyr. I never have.”

“But it’s apparently looking for you, sweets.” His smirk lacks its usual sharp humor and he looks tired. Like Merry yesterday, I realize. And Jack. Luna, too.

Even Georg, come to think of it. My eyes widen. I sit straighter, making the abused skin over my ribs and stomach protest.
And Mom before she left.

Those odd words of Stephen’s from the other day ring in my ears again. When he was talking about Georg and me.
‘He worries about you…you’d be
safe
with us.’

The shadow in those blue eyes.

There’s something here everyone else is seeing, but that I’m not. Like the blind spot on my tiny Fiat that can hide a whole damn eighteen-wheeler until I hear the air horn and nearly shit my Victoria Secrets.

I get to my feet in a rush, not even noticing the fiery pain that radiates from my newly-inked side. Tyr pushes away from the wall, dropping his cigarette. It casts a flurry of sparks when it is hits the dingy cement. “Hey there, not so fast, lovely. We had an agreement. I told you who hired me, now let me go. I’m gonna need a head start.”

I ignore him, heading for the stairs. The litany of curses that follow my exit are the least of my worries. I’ve missed something. And I have a really bad feeling it’s something big.

16

Ana
is in the drawing room again, carving something. Little flecks of white dot her dark blue skirts. She dresses normally enough when leaving the house, but when home, Ana often indulges in the fashion she prefers, from the era she came of age in—seventeenth century France. She misses it. I often wonder why she never asked Mom to bring her back, but I suspect it has something to do with Netflix and hot showers.

“What’s wrong with me?” I ask the question for the second time in less than twenty-four hours.

She eyes my trusty pink Uggs, salt-splashed skinny grey jeans and my old UMD sweatshirt that may now have a few spots of blood on it. I ran a brush through my hair and scrubbed my teeth this morning, but that’s about it. Her perfectly powdered nose wrinkles. “I’ve been waiting for you to ask that question for years.”

“I’m serious here. Why is everyone so…concerned about me lately?”

Almost imperceptibly her eyes widen, but instead of equivocating, like I expect, she says, “Well, you’re clueing in at last. Mom told me this would happen, but I must say, I expected you to be quicker on the uptake.”

It’s hard to get the words out past the lump in my throat, but I manage to voice what has been in my head since I ran out of the bar. “Did Mom leave because of me, Ana?”

“I honestly don’t know, Persephone.” She sets the bone she’s carving aside (I think it may have once been a femur), brushing off her skirts methodically before she looks up to meet my hot eyes. “But if I were to guess, I’d say yes. Almost certainly.”

“Why?”

“You’re dangerous.” She shrugs, looking delicate but somehow impervious in her silk and lace. I’m beginning to hate that word and the ambiguity behind it. “We’ve always known that.”

“Was anyone planning to tell me? And by the horned one, dangerous,
how
?”

She hesitates. “You’re very young.”

“I’m not a child, Ana.”

A frown. “In many ways you are. Twenty-six may be grown up for a human, but for us... you’re not even immortal yet! I’m three hundred and twelve years old—”

I cut her off with a snort. “You are
not
three hundred and twelve, Anastasia. That’s going by your birth
age.” With all Mom’s hops, she’s barely lived a hundred fifty years.

She purses her lips, looking unruffled, but I can see the spark in her eyes. “Nevertheless, that’s a good deal more than you, and as I was saying before you interrupted, even I can hardly make heads or tails of Mom’s motivations sometimes.“

“That’s because she’s nuts.”

Ana shrugs. “I won’t argue that, but I know she was honestly worried about you…and your potential.”

“And might there be others out there worried about this ‘potential,’ too?”

Her eyes narrow. “Why do you ask?”

“An assassin of the realm tried to kill me awhile back.” For the first time in I don’t know how long, I see what might be actual fear touch those pale blue eyes as I continue, “In short, he said it was because his employers thought I was too dangerous to live.” For reasons unknown, even to myself, I decide not to tell Ana that Tyr’s still in my basement, or what he said about the Dark Council.

“So…it’s started again. Surely you remember all those attacks when you were a kid. Did you think that was all random? For fuck’s sake, Seph!” Despite her love of antique clothing, Ana’s vernacular is not so quaint. Pinching her nose between thumb and forefinger, she closes her eyes, only to open them again with a glare when I clear my throat.

“Weren’t you ever
curious,
Persephone? Carly has her paintings, Jett has her teleportation deal, Mom bounces through time, I have my power, but you…? Haven’t you ever wondered what
yours
is?”

I’m taken aback, an inexplicable knot forming in my stomach. This subject makes the back of my neck cold, like someone stepped on my grave. But I can’t put my finger on why.

Outside the window I catch a glimpse of Mrs. Rudd next door, a shovel in one hand as she bats at the air with the other. Crazy old lady is gonna fall and break her neck one of these days.

I turn back to Ana with an effort. “I don’t know. I guess I assumed I didn’t have one. That I was just a normal witch.”

She snorts in a very un-Ana-like fashion, but her face looks a trifle strained.

“Fine,” I snap. “What’s my power then, Ana?” Dread inexplicably fills my stomach, along with a faint whispering in my head.
Don’t ask that. Nevereverever.

Again, my eyes are drawn to the window. I suck in a breath. Mrs. Rudd is staring right at me over the hedge, her wrinkled face barely visible between her scarf and hat. She puts a finger to her lips—or I think she does—but when I step closer to the window, she’s heading up the steps to her front door.

Shaking off the weird Stephen King moment, I turn back to Ana expectantly.

“I have no idea. But Mom did.” Plucking at her skirt, she avoids my eyes as she gets to her feet. “And it scared the shit out of her, Seph. I remember her saying once…”

“Saying what?” I prompt, when her voice trails off.

“That if she couldn’t teach you to control it, one day you’d turn the world upside down.”

That falls right in line with Tyr’s apocalyptic talk. My throat tightens. “But… she never taught me anything about any special gift. Never
once
said a word about it, Ana.”

“I think you’re wrong about that. Come on, I want to show you something.”

Our house has a turret. Just one. It’s not trying to be a castle or anything, but those old Victorian architects did love their whimsy. Mom’s room is at the top of the turret. It’s drafty up there, but I’m sweating by the time we reach the top of the stairs. I really need to start working out.

Ana takes a filigreed key from her skirt pocket. I lean against the bricks and try to gasp unobtrusively while my sister unlocks the door.

Mom’s scent hits me first; beeswax candles, rosemary and Earl Grey tea. As batshit crazy as my mother can be, I miss her bad. I blink the sting of tears back and follow Ana inside. It’s dark in here. Like Ana, Mom prefers some of the trappings of her youth. Little light comes through the two latticed windows, but Ana ignites a couple wall scones with a word, filling the room with the flicker of candle flames.

This could be the salon of a French courtesan. The curving walls are covered in silk wallpaper, midnight blue with hand-embroidered silver fleurs-de-lis. Several huge gilt mirrors are hung around the room, along with a few impressive pieces of art, including the original Birth of Venus (the one in the Uffizi is a magical dupe), which hangs over my mother’s enormous bed. Humble Mom is not. There is also a pentagram worked into the ebony parquet floor, shimmering in and out of life in glossy shades of black on black.

Ana glides across the room as memories overwhelm me. I almost expect to see my mom twirling in front of one of the mirrors, bopping her head along to Cyndi Lauper or Debbie Harry while fixing her hair. I look up at the walls, which beside the artwork, showcase several weapons, including the athame that took Luna’s father’s life. It seems to glow in the half-light, drawing my gaze.

A weight hits my stomach, knocking me back on Mom’s bed.
Oomph.
I sit, automatically grabbing the edges of the book Ana heaved at my gut. “You need to read this.”

“What the hell is it?”

“Her diary. One of them, anyway.”

I stare down at the enormous tome in my hands. It looks like it belongs in the bowels of Trinity freaking College.
Diary?
Gilt letters on the front read
1919-Whatever
.

“Go on, February 12, four years ago.”

I find the page, coughing a little at the dust that puffs up between the thick pages that feel oddly slick between my fingers.

Fucking cold today! -32 below. February is definitely the cruelest month, no matter what Eliot said. I think it’s time for another walk.

Ran into Beau today. He is persistent, I’ll give him that. Poor sap is wrong, of course, nothing has changed. Of course he doesn’t really understand. Seph will be unstoppable, just as they all have said. My poor girl.              

Wrack and ruin everywhere. Nothing to be done but rattle on. I’ve told them all such, but no one listens to me. Except Seph. My baby girl understands what needs to be done.

I look up to see Ana standing there, her white-blond curls bobbing, staring down at me. “Are you still sure Mom never said anything to you about this, Seph? Absolutely sure?”

I’m pretty damn. I think I would recall a convo that had,
Hey, sweetie, I should probably tell you that one day you might be responsible for the ruin of life, the universe and everything.
A majorly fucked-up twist on the Ultimate Question. Yeah, even I would remember that. I look down at the book again.

“Who’s Beau?”

“No idea.” Ana waves a hand. “And believe me, I’ve tried to figure it out. She mentions him a couple other times in here, but it’s all very vague and Mom-ish. You need to figure this out, Seph. Your power,
and
what Mom was talking about that you should know.”

“Why did you never mention this—any of this—before now?” I’ve already guessed the answer to that though and sure enough Ana’s answer is exactly what I expect.

“Why do you think? Mom said I couldn’t, not until you came asking.” She rolls her eyes, but I can see the frustration in those perfect blue irises. “More of her ‘timey-wimey’ bullshit.”

My mom liked to pull the old retrocausality card whenever we questioned any of her nutso-sounding orders. She took pains to show us that time isn’t always linear, that instead of the past affecting the future, sometimes—often even—the future affects the present, and the present the past. It was her way of training us from a young age to take her convoluted requests seriously.

We got the message loud and clear. After a couple of days like something out of
Back to the Future
meets
The Twilight Zone
, complete with disappearing pets, best friends and sometimes body parts, we all learned to toe the line, even Jett. But for all her preaching about the pitfalls of time, Mom loved to meddle with it.

Just a little tweak,
she would say, in that airy tone of hers. I repress a shudder even as I set the diary down, tears burning the corners of my eyes. Despite the trouble she could be, I miss her so damn much.

Neither of us says what’s on both our minds as we leave Mom’s bedroom. What if she finally found something she couldn’t ‘tweak’? Something really bad. What if she went forward and found out the future wasn’t so bright? Or wasn’t there at all?

What if my mom disappeared because she already knew I was a lost cause?

Having found out I’m going to bring about the second big bang due to some secret power, you’d think I’d find something more spectacular to do the next morning than just go to work, but there it is.

Routine has never been my thing, but right now I find myself desperate for something familiar to keep me sane. The first shift is on at T&T—the Laundromat portion opens at ten on normal working days—but I walk by the main door and slip in via the side entrance for Bad Reputation. It’s damn early for her, but Jett already has a customer. I can see her familiar shape bent over someone through the frosted glass. Must be a really special commission to get her up this early. The distant buzz of the tattoo gun makes me shudder.

I practically run to my office door, wrench it open and slam it shut behind me.

Only once again, I’m not alone.

Jack is leaning a hip against my desk. Clad in perfectly worn jeans, a snug white Henley under his fitted brown leather jacket, dark hair ruffled back, he regards me from over folded arms.

Looking as long, sexy and irritating as it is possible to look.

I shove him aside, patting down my desk and bending down to test the floor for weak spots, before crawling over to knock a couple of times on the wall.

Jack watches me, his eyebrows raised. “What the fuck are you doing?”

“Looking for the secret wormhole that apparently leads into my office.”

He doesn’t look amused as I get to my feet with a groan, brushing off my knees, coughing a little at the dust that comes away. “Why? Who else has been in here lately?”

“None of your business.” I start to walk around the desk, but his hands circle my waist, yanking me back.

“
Who,
Persephone?” Those strong fingers press into my side, right over the new tattoo.

With a gasp of pain, I shove him back. “No one important.”

He loosens his grip instantly, his eyes narrowing. “You’re hurt?”

“I’m fi—”

Jack pushes me against the desk, more gently this time, but with firm purpose. Unceremoniously, he yanks my shirt up almost to my collarbone. I stare up at him in shock, suddenly glad I wore the hella naughty, see-through blue lace bra today.

Especially when Jack freezes and nearly swallows his tongue. His fingers tighten on my hip. The moment spins out; his eyes on my body, my eyes on his face, our hearts in pounding lock step. At least if the heavy breathing coming from both of us is any indication.