Storm in a Teacup (4 page)

"Oh, a year or so. She came in a couple hours a day, three days a week. Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday. Sometimes I'd have her over on Sundays for brunch. She did like my cream cheese stuffed French toast." Hazel sits back in her chair again, taking another big swig of her tea.

I try another sip of mine and burn my tongue. Lady must have a leather-lined mouth.

"Someone at The Hole said you used to come in to see her band play," I say.
 

Hazel shakes her head in a violent nod. "Lena was awful good with that bass. Though you wouldn't know it for all the racket the damn singer and guitarists make. I went to see her oh, four or five times."

"You didn't seem surprised to see a Mediator asking about her."

"Lawd, no. She was a good girl, but sometimes dark things done swallow the light."

I'm the choir, and she's preaching right to me. "So you think she got killed by demons?"

Hazel drains the rest of her tea and dumps the empty cup on her own dark rinse coaster. She pulls her feet onto the seat of the chair and crosses her legs, leaning forward to look at me. "I don't know what I think."

"But you think she's dead?"

"I reckon I don't know."

"You said was."

"Oh, honey. If you try and dissect all my crazy old fart ramblings, you'll drive yourself mad." Her lips part in a wide smile showing one missing eyetooth.
 

Old fart, maybe. Crazy, not so much. I don't know how to get Hazel to tell me her suspicions, so I switch tactics. "When was the last time you saw her?"

"Roundabout two months back. She'd switched our schedule round a bit so she could work Saturday mornings at that awful diner, and she came to see if we could switch back because she was going on graveyard shift there four nights a week. Poor little chickadee. Wore herself out working both places. I told her I'd pay her more, but she said she needed the money."

"Would you mind telling me how much you paid her?" If she was squirreling money away, maybe she vanished on her own just to get away. It happens.
 

"Of course, dear. I paid her twenty-five hundred dollars a month."

I have to rewind in my head before that computes. "You paid her over two thousand dollars a month to work —" I do the math, "— twenty four hours? That's over a hundred dollars an hour!"

"I'm old, Ms. Ayala, and I ain't got kids or grandkids to support. What else am I going to do with my money before I die? My arthritis won't let me travel anymore, and the blasted witch who made my cataract potion got addicted to the skittles. Soon I'll be blind and twisted into bony lumps, and then I'll be dead. Lena was a good girl, and I was happy to do it."

Skittles. The drug's taking over more and more of Nashville's best witches. I'm no witch, but apparently one of its effects is to make magic visible in colors. Or maybe it just makes spells orgasmic. Either way, it's about as easy to quit as heroin and meth combined, and there's no such thing as a functional skittles addict. They just sit there and do stupid glamour spells all day and watch their hands move in front of their faces.

Twenty-five hundred dollars a month is a good income for a starving musician. Thinking of the bones protruding from The Righteous Dark's band members puts that clichéd phrase in a sickly light. "Did Lena have roommates?"

"She sure did. Three. They lived in East Nashville, just outside of the Samhain Quarter. She worked at the Waffle Spot there a few nights a week." Hazel reaches into a basket to her right and dredges out a mass of colored yarn that looks like the seventies barfed in her hand. Olive green, magenta, burnt amber, and puke yellow threads form the base of what looks like a doily. Looking at it makes me dizzy, so I force my eyes back to Hazel's face.

"That's one of the cheapest areas of town. Do you know why she needed so much money? Was she on any drugs?"

"If she was, she didn't tell her employers." Hazel chuckles as if she's made a good joke, and her knitting needles click together in a flurry of swirling color.

Even if Lena worked only three night shifts at the diner weekly, that would bring her monthly income up to almost four thousand dollars. That's almost as much as I make at my cushy salaried job. I live alone downtown in a building with security. What single musician needed that much income just to survive with three roommates in the cheapest part of town? Even if she paid all their rent, she'd have almost three thousand dollars left over. Debt? Loan sharks? Gambling addiction? Inability to say no to panhandlers?

Drugs would make the most sense. "You never noticed her looking like she was strung out or tweaking?"

"Never. Like I said, Lena was a good girl. I don't reckon she ever showed up even hung over."

"You have no ideas where she could have gone?"

Hazel's lips wrinkle like a dried apricot. "I've already told you no."

I still don't believe her. Especially after she referred to Lena in the past tense. Just like the sound witch at the Hole.

I don't like being lied to.

CHAPTER FIVE

Non-Mediators like to ask me why I do my patrols in Forest Hills, the most well-to-do, hoity-toity area of Nashville. South of downtown and nestled around the sprawling Percy Warner Park, the demons love it. That's why. Don't tell the rich people who spend two million a villa there. Their real estate agents would loathe you forever.

Or fine, whistle blow all you want. But don't expect to ever buy a house again.

I keep the demon population down enough that the wealthy inhabitants don't notice. Though once I saw an article in the newspaper about a prized bloodhound dying after lapping up a puddle of anti-freeze in the woods. The dog's owner blamed the neighbor. I blame myself — I'd killed a slummoth there two nights earlier, and their blood is the same radioactive green as antifreeze. I feel worse about the dog than the owner, who had five others.
 

People picnic around here, and each little cleft of hills in the park is home to tables and the occasional ruin of a cottage.
 

A pink glow from one such ruin draws my attention as I creep around the bend of a ridge. There are as many different types of hellkin as there are boils on a witch's enemy, but I can usually identify the slimy boogers when I see them. Slummoths ooze clear mucus and bleed lime-green, rakaths can shoot quills the size of Hazel's knitting needles unless you sever their clavicles, and jeelings glow like a kiddie night light.

They're also twice my size.

I keep my sword unsheathed whenever I patrol. The first thing any Mediator learns is that as a hunter, you have to carry a weapon. Any species of hellkin
is
a weapon. You never know when the three seconds it takes to tug on your sword hilt will be the difference between seeing the sunrise and that other thing.

Creeping toward the cottage, I hold my center of balance low. Jeelings rarely travel in hordes, but any number of things to go bump in the night could exist between me and the ruined cottage. Only three of the four walls remain, and none of the roof. I see the glow through one crumbled window, pinkish and inviting.
 

A tremendous oak holds its ground between me and the open wall, and I slink toward it. I can't climb one-handed, and the branches are too high to reach even without one hand full of sword.
 

Peeking around a burl in the mass of trunk affords me a glimpse into the cottage. I can see by the light of hellglow, and I jerk my head back behind the tree. The jeeling's not alone. Two slummoths stand in front of it, their oozy mucous glistening in the soft pink hue the jeeling emits. Jeelings and slummoths both horde independently, but never together. I've never seen them in the same ten-foot radius without a cyclone of snarls and slime and flesh. And blood. Lots of blood.

But these three appear to be talking.

I strain to listen, and I make out some jumbled growls. Demon languages tend to be throaty, depending on clusters of unpronounceable consonants with the occasional howl-like vowel thrown in for spice. I can't understand any of them, but as angry as they sound to my very human ears, they're not killing each other, so they're being peaceful.

Frowning, I chance a look around the ragged bark of the oak. They're still going on. First two imps in Miller's field, now a demon conference. All in a week. Even without Gregor setting me off to chase wild geese, this constitutes an unusual few days. I don't reckon much on the validity of coincidence.

The cottage walls are rough stone, but crumbly. They'd be tough to climb without alerting the demons to my presence, and I can't risk fighting all three at once. Even one jeeling is a lot to handle.
 

A chittering above my head makes me jerk back behind the tree. Something small and hard bounces off my skull, and I catch it before it soars away. An acorn.
 

I'm tempted to throw it back at the squirrel, but I don't want him to make any more noise. I'll be damned if I'm going to let a bushy-tailed rodent draw the attention of three demons. What's he even doing here? Even the cicadas buzz off in the other direction when demons come around. I look up and raise my hands above my head in surrender, backing away from the oak. Careful to keep my silhouette behind the sheltering girth of the tree, I make it three steps.

There's a loud squeak and an angry rustle from the branches.
 

The guttural demon-speak breaks off like they've all been simultaneously hit with acorns.

I have about seven seconds to think about shitting myself when the first slummoth rushes me.

Slummoths are quick as a stick of butter sliding on Hell's floor, and this one catches my left shoulder when I try to lunge right out of its path. I shift my sword as I fall and clip the slummoth's thigh. A flash of glowing blood sprays through the air. I hit the ground and roll away from the slummoth. The pink glow of the jeeling comes at me like a comet.
 

Its heart is about three feet above the level of my head. I take off at a full sprint toward the jeeling as if I'm challenging it to a game of chicken. Ten feet away, I push myself off from the ground and soar toward the demon. My sword plunges into its chest.

A boulder slams me to the ground.

At least that's what it feels like. The second slummoth is on me, and its teeth sink into my shoulder. I scream.
 

My left side is pinned to the pine-needle covered ground, but my right arm is free. I yank my belt knife from its sheath and stab it into the slummoth's neck.

The demon makes a sound like tearing steel and releases my shoulder from its jaw. The other slummoth and the jeeling are recovering quick. I need my sword back, and it's still lodged in the jeeling's chest. I must have missed the heart. I ain't leaving my favorite sword to corrode from jeeling blood.
 

"Fuck."
 

The first slummoth runs at me. It's slower now. I must have hamstrung it without trying. Demons ignore pain, and the thing is hardly limping. My knife drips fluorescent green blood. I can try and kill the demon I just stabbed, or I can defend myself against the one stumbling for me at a half run.

Standing still is bad in a fight like this. It allows my adrenaline to rush over me like liquid metal.

I make the stupid choice.

The downed slummoth has a spike on the top of its head, and I grab it with my left hand. Pain gnaws my arm like it's eating corn on the cob from wrist to shoulder and back. The demon's twin is closing the gap, too close for me to change tactics now.

I slash my belt knife against the slummoth's neck.
 

It only cuts halfway through. "Fuck!"

Sharp as I keep my knives, it's not enough. I jerk my arm back and hack at it. A spray of green goo hits me in the face. Some gets in my mouth, tasting like burnt aluminum. No time. I hack the opposite side of the slummoth's neck, leaving its spine exposed.

It roars, and the other slummoth lurches at me. I turn and kick, planting my foot in its chest. The impact of my foot knocks my attacker on its back. The jeeling unfolds from where I left it crumpled on the ground, and its glow brightens to a dull red. I look at the almost-beheaded slummoth at my feet and think back to all my kiddie league soccer games we played between swordplay classes as Mediators-in-Training.

Corner kick
. My foot hits the slummoth in its pointy ear, and his spine snaps. The head hits a sapling and bounces to the ground.

How's that for a goal?

I need my sword. I've wounded the remaining slummoth enough that its speed is useless. The eleven-foot jeeling can't keep its balance. My shoulder feels like it's been doused with kerosene and set on fire, but I force my feet to churn into a run. I flank the jeeling and jump just as I reach its side.
 

I miscalculate. My hand comes down hard on my blade, and the honed edge slices into my palm. With a shout, I reach up with my left arm to grab the hilt. The jeeling roars as the stuck blade wrenches through its chest.
 

I yank the sword from the demon's body just as it crashes to the ground. I swing the sword left-handed, thanking every asshole instructor I had as a child for making me learn to fight with both hands. The jeeling's head comes off clean, and I stumble to the side. My right palm drips blood on the ground, mingling with the green slime from my first kill. The slummoth bite on my shoulder feels like it's spreading down my back, but I can't switch hands. One slummoth left.