Fiction River: Hex in the City (13 page)

The Freakshow, a highly specialized nightclub somewhere in Manhattan

Now

“Istas!”

I studied my reflection in the small mirror set into my locker door for a moment more, trying to figure out what I could do differently with my eye makeup, before yawning and turning toward the sound of my name. Looking was a courtesy, nothing more: even if I could not recognize the sound of my employer’s voice, I would have known the smell of her, a mixture of cream foundation, overheated velvet, and the curious pheromone stew of her sweat.

“Yes?” I closed my locker as I turned. It was one in a row of twenty, matching three other free-standing rows, all arranged like this was some sort of gymnasium, and not the changing room of a popular strip club turned burlesque show.

Kitty Smith, owner and operator of the Freakshow—the aforementioned strip club turned burlesque show, which had been founded by her uncle—folded her arms and scowled at me. This took several seconds; bogeymen have very long arms. That, along with their grayish skin and the extra joints in their fingers, is all that visibly distinguishes them from the humans. She even wore her long black hair curled in the human style, framing her pointed, inhuman face. “You’re supposed to be on the floor. What are you doing back here?”

“I am not supposed to be on the floor,” I replied, picking up my parasol. It opened into a pleasing bloom of pink and black lace, which went perfectly with my puff-sleeved, pink and black satin dress. It had taken me weeks to sew the alternating tiers of pink and black petticoats, but the effect was worth the effort, especially once I had dyed pink streaks into my naturally black hair. “If you check the schedule, you will see that I was scheduled to end my labors at nine o’clock. It is now nine-fifteen. I am done for the evening.”

“That schedule was made before Candy went on maternity leave,” protested Kitty.

“My request for time off was not dependent on the status of Candy’s gestation.” I gave my parasol a lazy twirl. “Ryan and I will be having a pleasant evening involving courtship activities, food, and coitus.”

There was a pause before Kitty asked, “You’re going out for dinner and dancing before you go back to his place for sex?”

I frowned. “I believe I just said that.”

“No, honey, you didn’t.” Ryan sounded amused and exasperated at the same time, a combination that I have become intimately familiar with since we began our relationship. I turned, smiling, to see him standing in the doorway of the women’s locker room. He shook his head, smiling back. “Remember what I said about sounding like a dictionary? It confuses people.”

“Refrain from discussion of carnage and how many colors are inside a person, try not to sound like a dictionary…this is why waheela don’t talk to people, you know. It’s far too difficult.”

People might be difficult, but Ryan was easy. Tall, with dark hair, dark eyes, and golden skin, Ryan Yukimura was the first man of any species who had thought to ask me if I was in search of a mate. He was not human—his species, the tanuki, originated in Japan—but as I was not human either, that did not present a significant barrier. Both of us were shapeshifters, and as such looked perfectly human when we saw the need.

“It has its rewards.” Ryan looked past me to Kitty. “My shift’s up. Angel’s got the bar. See you tomorrow night, ma’am?”

Kitty threw her hands in the air. “Oh, sure, you leave, too. My best bartender and my most productive waitress. Why isn’t there a law against employees dating?”

“Because your uncle wanted to hit on the cocktail waitresses,” said Ryan amiably. “Come on, Istas, or we’ll miss our table.”

“Coming.” I picked up my clutch purse, bobbed my head at Kitty, and followed Ryan out of the dressing room. He looped his arm through mine. Normally, he was taller than I was, but I was wearing
high-heeled
boots, and we were almost the same height. Side-by-side, we strolled away.

**
*

I was born in a place that has no name, so high in the Canadian tundra that the permafrost never melted, no matter the season. There were five pups in my litter. I was third-born, large enough to fight off my siblings, small enough not to seem like an attractive mouthful to my father. The largest of us did not survive the winter. Neither did the smallest, and when the first green of springtime came, only three of us remained. I think of those days often, when I am frustrated with the crush and chaos of Manhattan, or when the stupidity of the humans I have surrounded myself with seems too much to bear. Those were my happiest days, cradled in the love of my siblings, protected by the instincts of my mother. And if those days were the best that my homeland has to offer…is it any wonder that I have no intent to ever, ever go back?

Ryan kept his arm looped through mine as we walked along the sidewalk toward our destination, as much a restraint as a show of ownership for the people around us. He didn’t want me departing from the path that we had charted for our evening. A pity. There were some lovely-smelling rats in the nearby alley, and I had yet to eat.

“We’re almost there, Izzy,” he said, still pulling me along.

“Anyone else who called me by such a diminutive would find themselves searching the gutters for their arms,” I said, amiably enough.

Ryan grinned. “Good thing I’m not anyone else, then, isn’t it.”

“Yes.”

We walked a few blocks more, finally stopping in a pizza parlor that smelled amazing enough to make up for the fact that it was essentially a dark cavern carved from the wall. I frowned. Ryan tapped my shoulder and pointed to a sign in the window.

SUNDAY ONLY—ALL YOU CAN EAT, NINE TO MIDNIGHT.

“I love you,” I breathed.

He grinned. “Yes, you do.”

***

To be waheela is to be a creature of endless appetite, as hungry as the winter wind which blows from the north. After consuming the better part of three large pizzas with everything and an entire medium pizza with ham and pineapple, I began to wonder if the north wind had been going about things the wrong way for all these years. Maybe it just needed to visit a nice Italian restaurant and eat until it wanted to vomit.

Not that this was technically a “nice” Italian restaurant. It was narrow, and dark, with walls that had once been white, and were now a dingy shade of cream. I would have thrown away any article of clothing as visibly stained as those walls. The furniture was old, full of splinters and scarred by inexpert repairs. None of which mattered; the food was plentiful, and that was the end of my concern.

Ryan reached for one of the last slices of pizza. I growled briefly, reminding him that the food was mine, before leaning back in my seat and allowing him to take it. Ryan grinned.

“I take it you approve?”

“I do.” I nudged him under the table with my toe. “How did you discover this venue?”

“I told some friends that I needed somewhere to take my lady where they wouldn’t look at us funny for eating everything in sight. This place,” he gestured to the restaurant around us, “does all-you-can-eat Sunday once a month, at which point it winds up packed with college kids, competitive eaters, and lots of other folks who are more interested in eating than they are in judging.”

“Excellent.” I scanned the room, taking note of the wide variety of people who had crammed themselves into the narrow space. I was most definitely the best dressed of the lot, or at least the only one who had bothered to coordinate my earrings with my vertically striped stockings.

Most waheela do not care for crowds.
I
do not care for crowds. But I am very fond of watching fashion trends, and this has required me to learn to be still even when surrounded. It was not an easy lesson.

One of the waitresses wove through the crowd with an easy grace that I admired, putting a small dessert pizza down between us. It was grated chocolate and sliced strawberries on cinnamon bread, and I appreciated the artistry of it, even as I felt no desire to continue eating.

“We didn’t order this,” said Ryan, sounding puzzled.

“Compliments of the chef,” said the waitress. “You’re tonight’s big eaters!” Her announcement drew a round of applause from the tables around us.

“Oh. Well, thanks.” Ryan looked back to me and shrugged. “I guess we should try it. To be polite.”

“Your weakness for chocolate will be your undoing one day,” I said, and sighed, and reached for the pizza. If there is one thing I have learned since leaving the cave of my fathers, it is how to be polite.

There was a bitter taste lurking beneath the sweetness of the treat, like bones sleeping under snow. I paused in the act of chewing my first mouthful, trying to figure out why I knew that flavor—and more, what it was doing in my food.

Then Ryan’s eyes rolled up in his head, and he fell, face-first, into his plate. I threw my slice of pizza aside, reaching for him. Someone in the crowd protested. I swallowed my half-chewed mouthful in order to snarl at her. The protests stopped.

My hand never reached my boyfriend’s shoulder. Cold swept over me like the cruel north wind, and I barely felt my own head hit the table.

***

I snapped awake. The pizza parlor was gone, replaced by a dark, cold room and a metal chair beneath me. Something held me in place. I tensed, testing my bonds. Metal chains, with a smell I did not recognize. No common alloy, then. They were wrapped around my body half a dozen times, holding me down, torso, arms, and legs. If I changed forms, and the chains did not snap…

I have seen stronger than I killed by their own foolish bravado, believing they could transform their way out of any trap or trouble. I calmed my breathing and was still.

The scent of Ryan hung in the room, but I did not know whether it meant my boyfriend was present or whether I was simply smelling my own clothing until he groaned off to my left, and said, “I don’t think that pizza was a good idea.”

“Shh,” I cautioned, despite my relief. “We are unlikely to be alone here.”

“I know, but they wouldn’t have put us together if they didn’t want us talking. Can you change?”

“The chains are too tight. I fear I would break myself. Can you?”

“No. Same.” Ryan sighed. “They’re too tight for me to get bigger, and too complicated for me to get smaller. Even if I shrank, I’d be all tangled up.”

“Ah.” Waheela have two shapes that we choose to wear: the one I was chained in, and my great-form, which was ten feet tall and difficult to buy shoes for. Tanuki have three common shapes—man, beast-man, and beast. It was a pity that none of them were currently available to us. “Is there a length of chain between your legs?”

“Yeah, and it’s, um, a little closer to the boys than I really appreciate.”

“Is there direct constriction of your testicles?”

I could virtually hear Ryan’s wince. “No, but it’s close.”

“Hmm.” I looked around the darkened room again. My eyes were adjusting to the dark, allowing me to pick out some small details, such as the location of the nearest walls. I considered rocking back and forth until I fell over, but dismissed the idea as impractical. I would injure myself well before I did anything to damage either the chains or the chair, and I would probably rip my stockings in the process. That was unacceptable.

“So honey? Do you smell anything that might tell us where we are?”

“I smell you. I smell metal. I smell cold. We are near something refrigerated. I do not smell anything that would indicate why we are here, or how we have been brought here.” As I said the last words, I froze. There was one thing that would explain how we had been brought here without our captors leaving any scent hanging in the air to warn me of their natures.

Ryan realized it, too. The silence stretched between us for what felt like an age before he said, “Waheela smell like cold.”

“Yes,” I agreed. “We do.”

***

It is hard to be a predator in any world, but harder still in a world where all is ice and snow and cold, forever. The waheela grew large, to fight off all who would challenge us, and then, when that was not enough, we grew difficult to track, to confound those who we would hunt. The scent of a waheela in human form is indistinguishable from fresh-fallen snow. Even in our great hunting forms, we leave behind meaningful scent trails only when we are wounded. We had been taken; we were in a room where the only abiding smell was the smell of the cold. It was thus clear that we had been taken by waheela.

“Ryan?” My voice was suddenly brittle in the cold, dark air, like ice that was on the verge of breaking.

“Yeah, Istas?”

“I have been very fond of you, and am glad to have entered into a casual mating relationship, despite the differences in our species and cultural backgrounds. I hope that you have not regretted your time with me.”

“What? Of course not. Istas—” Confusion and burgeoning panic sharpened his voice to a killing edge.

In some stories of the waheela, we can grab the wind itself to use as a weapon, when the need is upon us. If only all stories were true. I sat up taller in my chair, as tall as the chains allowed, and wished that I had my parasol. I have always felt braver when properly accessorized.