The Foul Mouth and the Fanged Lady (7 page)

One old lady came in, bought a couple of
shot glasses that were probably worth more than she paid, then
left. Everyone was gone. Just me. All alone. Nice and quiet—good
lighting and plenty of space on the counter for me to spread out my
papers outlining my next bit of Artificer experimentation.

I’d been praying for silence ever since I
was three, the very day I started to realize what sisters were and
how loud and annoying and bossy they could be. In my shop, I
finally got it from time to time.

Is it wrong that I actually like it when the
customers stay away?

Guess that means I like losing money.
Electricity costs. Water costs. Retail space costs. It all adds up.
It all weighs you down. If the static rings didn’t become a seller
to more than my already established customer base I was going to be
in deep shit. I was burning money at a rate of higher five-digits a
month. Eventually Ceinwyn was going to tell me to get lost, call me
a failure, and probably kick me right in the balls—no matter how
much she claimed she didn’t care about the money.

Maybe it’s from being born without anything.
Anything I couldn’t steal at least. I didn’t like spending money if
I could help it. At the Asylum, everything’s provided for you—food,
clothes, school supplies, even entertainment—if you needed
something black market you either traded or you scrounged or you
stole without getting caught. Even for anima. There was no cash. No
debt. Especially not at the levels I was dealing with for my
shop.

I burned through more a month on anima alone
than my father had made in a year. After two years of operation, I
will have accumulated more debt than my father ever made in his
life.

The fuck!

The! Fuck!

When I allowed myself to think about it, the
situation staggered me silent. Even the glory that is
fuck
can’t come to describe how screwed I was. Just like the problem I
was trying to fix, my shop couldn’t keep going at the same pace,
something was going to break one way or the other.

My fingers found my temples and started
rubbing circles as I eyed over my papers for the third pass. I
don’t know what’s worse: my ledger or going over anima conversion
formulas. At least the ledger’s simple. Got to give it that. The
answer’s the answer. A bad answer but it was easy to come to. My
formulas . . .

Thirteen different anima types acting
thirteen different ways, plus if I got the formulas wrong bad shit
would happen. Like explosions. Like pure, unadulterated anima
burns. As Plutarch used to say, ‘
you only get one anima burn in
your life, if you make it to two you’ll be dead before you leave
this school
.’ It hurts—a lot. Imagine being burnt by the very
essence of earth. Yeah . . . it hurts. That meant double and triple
checking every formula I wrote, especially the parts interacting
with each other. The last thing I needed to add to my ledger is
hospital bills.

My fingers pressed in on my skull, pushing,
trying to relieve my headache. “Maybe I should take up drinking . .
.” I muttered to myself. “Couldn’t make it much worse . . . runs in
the family . . .”

That’s when the door opened.

Tangle, tangle
.

Door had a bell.

Tangle, tangle
.

That’s broken.

It took gall to be a million dollars in debt
and be cheap enough to not fix a doorbell, let me tell you.

I glanced up from my formulas to take in a
woman as she stepped clear of my door. I grunted, headache
forgotten. Old ladies, mothers, the occasional college girl who’s
young-cute but not actual-cute hunting accessories, but none like
this one walking into my shop.

This woman was the kind I went to school
with. The kind who knew she could burn your eyes out or smother
your balls in ice if you gave her too much trouble. It’s in the
walk, in the shoulders, in the tilt of the head. It’s not about
actual attractiveness, it’s about a mindset.

For this woman there was no submission to
the truth that I’d been born male and she’d been born female. No
submission that as a male I was supposed to be the stronger, the
hunter. This woman didn’t believe in clubs over the head, in being
claimed
or
sold
. Not on the basis of modern feminism
but on the basis that it would never have been applicable to her
during any period in history.

I’ve always said that every man only sees
two features on any woman. For Ceinwyn, her smile and hands.
Cutting you—one after the other. For my first girlfriend Sally it
was . . . well, it was her tits really, and only her tits . . .
always her tits, but let’s add in her lips too for the few times I
was staring at her face. I was fourteen, give me a break. Don’t
jump on me for only talking physical either, this rule is only for
physical—mind and personality, those are more complicated—don’t all
men know it . . .

For the physical, it’s only two features.
For this woman it was her neck and eyes.

Neck?

I know, not something you notice usually.
But for this one, she wanted you to notice it. It was a long neck,
with a great swath of smooth skin that had every man thinking about
touching instantly, like they were one of the five-year-olds who
ran through my shop breaking merchandize. At her neck’s middle
point she had a choker about an inch and a half in width that
wrapped around in a complete circle. Real metal through and
through, not cheap modern shit that’s fake on the inside. It was
made of silver, worked with dark gems in a crossing pattern. At its
center was an unmistakable large golden ‘
B
,’ with teardrop
pearls dangling underneath. It drew you to the neck and then the
skin and those long lines did the rest for her.

The eyes were brown so dark to be black,
seductive velvet pools. At the Asylum, Valentine Ward’s were
similar, but there they were fire—threatening to ignite and burn.
Here was darkness, a slow dance of her irises to fall into and be
gobbled up, bare hint that the iris is there until you’re looking
for the touch of color against her pupil.

Darkness is more dangerous than fire; don’t
let anyone tell you differently. The cavemen in ancient history
knew the score. Fire—you respect, you’re always aware of it—you
treat it well and it’s your friend. The thing about darkness is
that you start to enjoy it, start to sit down and rest, start to
think you’re all alone . . . until it’s too late.

The rest of her was class, clad in
three-digit jeans and a hand-woven black sweater that stopped
halfway down her forearm. No coat, which should have been the first
warning, but I’d forgotten what warnings were in my year and a half
away from the Asylum. I’d gotten complacent. Rings on her fingers,
bracelets at her wrists, thick hoop earrings. Dark hair, long. Dark
eyebrows. Everything about her was dark escaping from soft white
skin, except the pieces added by her hand to give a glitter—but
those were just camouflage.

“You’re not closed yet, are you?” she asked
in a voice that could make clothes unbutton themselves.

“Almost,” I murmured, just looking at
her.

“Good,” she said, advancing towards my
register with a sure, unquestioning stride. “This won’t take
long.”

My hands shuffled my formula papers to have
something to do while my eyes kept on staring like a love-struck
freshman. Give me break, okay? I’d been busy working on the rings,
it’d been awhile since the stupid part of my brain had gotten to
come out and play. You’re lucky I wasn’t drooling.

“Can I help you with anything?” I asked in
an attempt to hang on to some professional dignity.

“Yes,” she said. She let the word sink in.
Then she smiled. Knowing Ceinwyn Dale, I know smiles. This one was
damn good. She could bend her lips without really moving them.
Something like that can make a man groan just looking at the woman
who does it. Makes a crude man like me wonder what else the lips
can do. “You own this store, yes?”

“Last I checked.” My hands put my formula
papers away. She might have been hot-stuff but for all I knew she
was from the Guild trying some corporate espionage on me. Takes a
lot more than a pretty face to catch me completely off guard. Give
me some credit. Survival instincts like the ones I learned as a kid
were baseline. They worked with either my smart or stupid parts
leading the way.

“
You
are King Henry Price?”

Price. My eyes went over her again,
searching for clues as to who this magnificent creature was. She
knew my name. Interesting. Not here for teapots then. The antique
people don’t know about Price. Made the smart part wake up a bit.
“I am . . . and who are you?”

“I’m Anne,” she told me.

Anne. Simple name. Never trust the one’s
with simple names.

My gaze went to the large golden ‘
B
’
at her throat. Anne B. A name comes to mind straight out of
history, but I didn’t say it. With my name being
King Henry
,
I couldn’t say it. If I said it then I’d know without a doubt that
the Mancy was playing a practical joke on me.

“Bonnie?” I guessed.

Could have been T-Bone’s mommy, right? Named
after a pirate chick by parents as screwed up as mine. Sure . . .
nurses totally look like this . . . in romance novels and porn
movies at least.

“Not quite,” she said. She was middling
height for a woman, so not that much shorter than me. With her
heels, we were about even as she got right against the register to
study my face. “I expected you to be handsome,” she complained. “I
suppose it doesn’t matter . . . but spending time with a handsome
face is so much easier, don’t you think? Handsome never ceases to
remind me to enjoy my lot in life.”

An insult. Nothing quicker to get my smart
brain back in the driver’s seat. My shoulders set tight. Muscles
bunched. I forced myself to keep my hands where they were on the
counter, flat against the top. They strained against it, wanting to
curl into fists. Eight years from that little boy and I still
wasn’t over wanting to smash a person’s face in over teasing. “Does
the ‘
B
’ stand for
bitch
, then?” I asked. “Anne Bitch?
Or Anne Bitchly maybe?”

She laughed it off with a placating little
smile that was still all lips. “You’re King Henry, I’m Anne . . .
what could it
possibly
stand for? Did you study English
royalty at your school or have they nixed those classes for
creationism?”

I ignored the obvious again. That would just
be too weird. The Mancy couldn’t be so cruel. “My luck with women’s
still holding,” I muttered to myself. “You’d have to be a total
whackjob to come in here and be as hot as you are.”

Anne’s head tilted from one side of her
shoulders to the other, long neck bending with it. Like she’s
trying to see if the view changed my appearance. The ‘
B
’ on
her neck shined with a flash, a damned beacon trying to get through
to me.

“King Henry Price?” she asked again.

“I already answered you.”

“I’m sorry.” She shrugged, hands on her
hips, rings rubbing against rough denim. “You’re just so ugly,
aren’t you? Broken nose . . . so many scars. There’s nothing
perfect about you. I thought with all the rumors about you being a
hound that you’d be better looking. I supposed I shouldn’t be
surprised since we live in a time where every woman will stick a
toaster in herself if it vibrates quickly enough.

“Women have no standards at all anymore.
They don’t want to work for the complete experience. Seduction
takes too much time, better to make a blog post about wanting to
‘
get to know people
’ I think the phrase is.”

“Rumors . . .” I said.

I locked on the word, ignored the rest. Yup,
she wasn’t here for the teapots. Good to know. Asylum toady? Guild
spy? Another mancer testing me before she bought a commission?
Could have worked for the government . . . but then maybe not with
the clothes she wore. She might have been related to Welf too. All
possibilities, none the correct answer.

“Look at his little brain go
click
,”
Anne said. “So cute.”

I glanced at the ‘
B
’ one more time.
“If I’m King Henry and you are really Annie B, then doesn’t that
mean I get to cut your head off?” I asked, lips pulling back along
my teeth.

Something shifted in her. The second gear
that Asylum women have when they’re about to put you in place.
“You’re going to close down your shop and then you’re going to come
with me for a few days,” Annie B told me in plain terms suffering
no argument. “I need someone with the skill-set for an Artificer
kind of problem that isn’t prisoner to the Guild bylaws and you’ve
been volunteered for it. If you try to cut my head off, I’ll kick
your little ass. Understand, King Henry?”

Volunteered? Who would volunteer me? Who
could
volunteer me? Short list. Plutarch, Ceinwyn, or the
Lady. “I don’t hire out or build or design without a contract and
unless I say so and last I checked—you didn’t offer me payment.” My
hands couldn’t take it anymore—they curled into fists. Plutarch,
Ceinwyn, or the Lady. Which one would get a kick out of
volunteering me without mentioning it to me?
All of them
.
That didn’t help . . .

“Get out of my store before I build up the
anima to smash you across the street, you pushy psycho bitch.”

That’s when she punched me in the face so
hard I tumbled backwards five feet and slammed into my shelf filled
with glassware.

A few thousand dollars worth of antiques
cracked behind me as my body splayed out from the impact. My feet
slipped under me. You get hit in the right spot on the chin and
your legs will go out, no matter how hard the punch. Has to do with
the torque on your neck. Nerves don’t meet up with the rest of your
body and until the electrical impulses sync up with the brain again
you’re out of it. Those impulses take a few seconds to get back
together, so my butt hit the floor.