Women of the Otherworld 09.5 - Angelic

Everyone needs a vacation now and then, and angels are no exception. It was a concept that seemed to elude the Fates. My annual stint as a celestial bounty hunter was supposed to end last week, but complications had arisen, as they so often did. Retrieving hell-doomed souls and hunting down unruly demi-demons isn’t a nine-to-five job.

But now I was finally finished. Kristof didn’t know I was back yet, so I thought I’d get ready for our holiday trip and surprise him. I was looking in the mirror, making a few last-minute adjustments, when my house vanished and I found myself staring at a mosaic of a wedding, with lots of garlands, flowers and flowing robes. The bride began to turn, so slowly it seemed a trick of the light. Over her head, a dove’s wings moved, just a fraction.
The mosaic of life—always changing, always the same.
Deep.

I turned and glowered into the white marble cavern that was the Fate’s throne room.

“Hey!” I shouted. “I’m on vacation here!”

The floor began to move, as slowly as that damned mosaic. Atop the dais, a middle-aged woman with long, graying blond hair pumped a spinning wheel, gathering the thread as it wove. I kept my mouth shut, not wanting to cut anyone’s life unnecessarily short. Anyway, she knew I was there. She paid me no heed, though, until she’d finished. Then she looked up, and gaped at my outfit—low-cut, laced white bodice, skin-tight calfskin breeches and knee-high boots.

“It’s my vacation outfit,” I said. “We’re going to La Ceiba, so I have to look the part.”

“La Ceiba?”

“The pirate town.
Kris likes playing pirate.” I paused. “Kris
really
likes—”

“Enough.” The old Fate had appeared now, taking her sister’s place. She had wiry gray hair, a bent back and shriveled face made even uglier by her perpetual scowl. “Wherever you’re going, Eve, I hope
that’s
not part of your costume.”

She pointed a wizened finger at the four-foot angel sword slung across my back.

“Er, no.
Of course not.
That would be wrong and inappropriate.”

She waited for me to correct the oversight. Damn. Once I disenchanted it, I couldn’t get it back until my next tour of duty. I pulled it off my back, the etched metal glowing, murmured a few words and it vanished, replaced by a boring—if more thematically correct—cutlass.

“There,” I said. “Now, I’m sure you already know Trsiel and I finished the demi-demon contract. I’ve submitted my report. If there are any questions, he’d be happy to answer them. If that’s all, then, I’ll see you ladies in six months—”

“We have another job for you.”

I stared at her. She stared back.

“You forgot to flip the calendar again, didn’t you?” I said. “I’m off-duty now. Technically, I was off-duty last week, too. Not that I’m complaining about the delay…”

“You already did.
Repeatedly.”

The middle-aged Fate took over. “You’ll get your break.
As soon as you do this last thing for us.
A group of djinn have been tormenting people who summon them.”

“Um, yeah, because that’s what djinn do. According to the ancient treaty of something-or-other, they’re allowed to toy with anyone who breaks the summoning contract. Screw them over and they’ll screw you back. Fair is fair.”

The youngest appeared—a pretty little girl with bright blond hair, so tiny she had to stand on tiptoes to see me over the wheel. “Have some experience with that, Eve?”

“With the summoning contract, sure.
That’s what puts the
dark
in dark witch—we use whatever’s available, including djinn. But I was never stupid enough to break a contract.”

“Neither were these people. They’re all supernaturals, too. Dark magic practitioners, like you, who know how to do such things
safely
.”

I leaned on my cutlass. “Or so they think. That’s the problem, as I always told my students. A djinn wants you to break the contract; otherwise, where’s the fun in it? They’re tricky little bastards, so you have to be careful.”

“This group recently entered into a contract with a young witch. When it came time for her to fulfill her end, they bound her and left her that way, without food and water, for two days, until the contract expired, when they were allowed to begin tormenting her for real.”

“That’s not fair.”

“We thought you might agree.”

Damn. They knew I hated hearing about witches getting screwed by demons—well, metaphorically. If they want the literal sort, that’s their choice, one my own mother had made and I appreciated the extra powers that came with being half-demon.

Still, a vacation was a vacation.

“Trsiel can handle it. Pair him with Marius or Katsuo—they’re always up for a little extra adventure.”

The middle-aged Fate returned. “I’m afraid they’re busy, as is Trsiel. Now, we believe the problem with the djinn is lack of leadership. With their demon master unavailable, they’re testing the boundaries.”

“Who’s master of the—?” I stopped. My grasp of demon politics wasn’t what it should be, but this one I knew.
“Dantalian?
Um, he’s been unavailable for five hundred years, and the djinn just realized he was gone?”

The old one now, fixing me with a glower.
“Naturally, he has under-demons handling his affairs during his exile. We believe one has finally decided to stage a coup.”

“Dantalian’s not going to like that… Ah, now I see. That’s why you want me—I know the old guy. So I just pop over to Glamis, tell Dantalian about the evil scheme afoot, and he’ll get his other flunkies to stomp it out. All right then. Consider it a favor, but since it’ll be quick, I’ll do it.” I lifted my hands for a teleport spell.

“Angels do not negotiate with demons.”

“No, but they do tattle on them.
Just not usually to other demons.”

“You are not going to Glamis, Eve. You are not consorting with demons. You have not seen Dantalian since that unfortunate business with the Nix five years ago. Correct?”

I didn’t even bother to answer. They knew full well that I’d been cultivating the exiled demon as a source. But God forbid they should admit it, because then they’d need to admit they thought it was a good idea.

In the beginning, I’d played along, happy to lie by omission as long as they didn’t interfere with my methods. I love an underhanded authority-subverting scheme as much as the next person. But when I was continually expected to provide results and lie about how I got them, the bullshit started to stink.

“We all want this resolved quickly,” I said. “So you give me the job, and I’ll run off and fix the problem—”

“You are not going to Glamis, Eve. That is a direct order.” The old Fate’s gaze bored into mine, telling me she meant it.

“Fine.
You don’t want Dantalian to fix this? Then you don’t need me to handle it, do you. Get one of the others.”

“They aren’t available.”

“Well, neither am I.”

“You are now.”

She waved her fingers and the throne room vanished.

Two

The Fates teleported me to the ascended angel staff lounge. It wasn’t called that, naturally. We weren’t staff. This wasn’t a job. It was a calling.
An honor.
A noble mission.

Bullshit.

It was a job—the first I’d ever held. I’d spent my life avoiding exactly this, responsible only to myself and, later, my daughter. After leaving the Coven, I’d spent years traversing the country, learning the kind of magic that gave the Coven Elders vapors. Before long, I’d been a renowned teacher of the dark arts. Then I met Kristof, got pregnant, left Kristof, had Savannah, and continued on, building my reputation, teaching my craft, staying one step ahead of the interracial council and my growing number of enemies until, one day, I hadn’t been fast enough to avoid the fate some would say I’d been running from all my life.

I’d been thirty-eight when I died. Ask me, though, and I’ll say I was forty, just to avoid that “wink-wink nudge-nudge,
sure
you were thirty-eight” shit. I have my faults. Vanity isn’t among them. With me, what you see is what you get. No excuses.

One fault I
will
admit to
is
an overdeveloped sense of loyalty. I do stupid things for people I care about, and that’s what got me here. I made a deal with the Fates to protect my daughter. Now I spend six months a year with Kristof as a ghost, and six months as an ascended angel. Like Persephone banished to heaven instead of hell. Someone
else’s
idea of heaven, I should say, because this sure wasn’t mine.

I made the deal, and I don’t regret it. I don’t try to wiggle out of my responsibilities. Sure, I bend the rules, but that’s why the Fates chose me. I was their fixer, the one they sent on jobs that required a less than angelic touch. My success rate matched that of ascended angels who’d been on the job for centuries.

If this was a real job, they wouldn’t just grant me vacation, they’d send me an all-inclusive trip to the Elysian Fields. But that wasn’t the way it worked.
With other angels, maybe.
Not me. I was the bad girl, no matter how hard I worked, how much good I did. It was just like when I’d been alive—all anyone saw was what I did wrong. Back then, I hadn’t minded, because my bad-ass reputation kept Savannah safe. Here, it was starting to piss me off.