Wicked Ever After (A Blud Novel Book 7) by Delilah S. Dawson
The tables were all black, the chandeliers were all black, and the menu advertised more than blood, mixed with certain magic procurements that wouldn’t be available outside of the heavy black gates that frightened away the fine folks of the city proper.
“Good gravy. Are these ladyfingers made of actual lady fingers?”
Criminy tutted and whisked the menu out of my hands. “If you have to ask, you’ll never know, darling. Two hot cups of Earl Grey, please.” The waitress nodded and hurried off, and he leaned over. “Not actually made from the blood of any earls, I promise. They just steep some bergamot in to give it a little taste.”
Until our drinks arrived, I stared at the paintings lining the walls, all delicate watercolors of beastly murders. It was more pleasant than contemplating the mysterious information my grandmother had that I couldn’t begin to guess at. Criminy wrapped my gloved fingers around the hot cup, and I drank reflexively. It was better than I’d anticipated, especially after Crim showed me that the sugar and creamer parts of the tea service were filled with skull-shaped sugar cubes and bludmare’s milk, respectively.
“Are you taking it well, love? I was afraid that if we stayed on the street gawking, we’d attract a scene, which is exactly what you don’t want when you’re doing what we’re doing.”
I sipped the scalding blood tea and shook my head. “I just don’t understand why you didn’t tell me sooner.”
“Consider this a last-ditch effort, as I’m feeling a bit desperate. Bludmen are known for rationality and a merry sort of selfishness. Chasing someone who made it clear she didn’t want to be chased is the grandest sort of folly. I honestly thought you’d have come to your senses by now as the metamorphosis took full effect.”
I straightened up and glared. “Well, excuse me for harboring some lingering human feelings and loyalty to my grandmother, Mr. Immortal Kiss.”
Crim sipped his tea and muttered, “Tell them a little louder, love. Only the entire shop can hear you.”
I flushed. I’d forgotten that the blud transformation was considered a taboo topic among Bludmen, something that should never be shared or discussed, especially in public. To Criminy’s people, and now mine, humans were mostly fools, bullies, and walking blood bags. I could sense a few dark looks thrown our way, and I lowered my voice, feeling flustered and out of my element. And yet, strangely, not a bit embarrassed.
“Look, Crim. You once told me a glancer sees everyone’s future but her own, and you never said there was an exception to that rule. Now I feel like Nana knows all my secrets, and I’m missing what I need to know about her. What if my sweet little grandmother saw . . .”
“What happens in a marital bed?”
I smacked his hand. “Well, more than that. My past, our future. I glance on hundreds of people at the caravan every week, but I don’t tell them everything I know. Just something helpful, some little tidbit that’ll make them tip more. They never consider every tiny detail I see of their lives and tragedies, and if they did, they would never step into my tent. It’s . . . deeply personal.”
“But you do it anyway.”
I stared up at him, unblinking, daring, unashamed, registering a strange new core of anger in me. “Yes, I do.”
Crim cocked his head like a crow and regarded me through laughing eyes. “My, my. It’s amazing, watching you become a predator.”
“Am I doing a good job?”
He set down his cup, took my hand in both of his, and pulled off my glove with a slow, strange sensuality that reminded me of the first time he’d ever removed a glove for me, biting the fingertip to pull it off and turning me into a puddle. This time, he revealed a dainty hand covered in shiny black scales and tipped with slender, sharp talons, like a hawk’s claws. I wasn’t yet accustomed to this visible evidence of my change and, to be quite honest, had mostly forgotten about it, considering that long gloves were still the norm for Bludmen and the inhabitants of Sangland as a whole. I couldn’t help noticing that the compass rose that had once been tattooed on my palm was gone, replaced with smooth, unblemished, shining black.
“Beautiful hands, deadly talons.” He caressed my cheek and lifted my lip gently with his thumb. “Sharp fangs.” He released me and let his eyes graze me up and down. “An attitude based on truth and the rejection of shame and guilt? Priceless. Yes, my love, I’d say you’re coming along quite well. If only you’ll learn to let sleeping dogs lie.”
I smiled, replaced my glove, and drank down the rest of my steaming blood tea. “Excellent, then. Forget Nana. Let’s focus on the real prey. Considering that I’m a predator like yourself, then you’ll agree that we should go focus our deadliness on someone who deserves it, yes? As a public service and to reduce overall anxiety?”
His eyes narrowed when I stood. “Nowhere in our marriage vows did I agree to have my compliments turned against me,” he said.
“For better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, for kicking ass and killing witches.”
Eyes pinned to mine, he finished his tea, dabbed the blood from his lips with a handkerchief, tossed down his coppers, and stood. “I’m onto your ruse, love. Pretend all you want. I don’t have to be a glancer to see where your goal truly lies. At least, let me be the first one through the door.”
“I thought it was women and children first?”
He shook his head and offered me his arm, murmuring, “Women and children last.”
13
At first, it looked like any shop in the deepest Deep Darkside, but then you looked through the windows. The glass was dusty and draped with moldering black cloth. Trapped there as if frozen on a stage was a young Kraken fighting a unicorn foal, a battle that could never have happened on land or sea. The preserved body of the octopus was stretched out and posed, eggplant-colored tentacles dried and spread with the care a painter would give them on a Grecian urn, their lacy pink edges glistening with lacquer. The unicorn foal was likewise forever rampant, its knobby knees bent in fighting position and its tiny horn poised to strike the Kraken in its eye. Criminy and I both stopped to stare, and the moment didn’t end until the unicorn blinked.
“Right, then,” Criminy said. “Let me handle the door.”
There was no knob, handle, or latch to the grave-black megalith, although rough holes showed where hardware had once been. Instead, a heavy knocker shaped like a biting bludbunny sat in the dead middle, its teeth stained red as if it had recently eaten.
Criminy reached into one of the many pockets inside his coat. Even after six years of marriage, I’d still never explored the depths of the treasures and curses that garment held. The vial he pulled out was much smaller than the ones from which we traditionally drank, with barely a few drops of blood or blud therein. With the tip of his glove, he dabbed the red liquid onto one of the bludbunny’s teeth, then smeared it on the black wood, where it was instantly absorbed. He’d tossed the tiny vial before the door began to swing open with a sinister screech.
“Cheaters,” said an amused voice from within.
I held out my hand to Criminy, but he didn’t take it. The slight nod he gave me seemed to say, in the language of the long married, that I needed to keep both my hands ready for a fight. We stepped in side by side, as much as my belled skirts would allow. Although the shop had seemed cavernous and dark from the street, once we were inside, it was tidy and decently lit, a showcase of terror that immediately raised my husband’s sharp eyebrow and my own gorge.
Mr. Sweeting was nowhere to be seen, but the clockwork fox Casper had mentioned stepped smoothly from behind a jewelry counter and sat, copper wings folded, to stare at us in a politely demanding manner.
“Oh, do manifest,” Criminy said. “We haven’t much time, and I detest speaking with uppity clockworks.”
Something stroked my shoulder with an impersonal creepiness, and I spun, claws out and hissing. The dapper daimon stood just outside of reach, long arms folded, in a natty pinstriped suit. He was the very personification of the devil, right down
“Not much self-control in this one,” he said. “Tsk. At least I keep my pets on a leash.”
“Do you know why we’re here?” Criminy asked in his most polite tone.
“I know you’re not the unfortunate Pinky whose blood you painted on my fine door. And I can smell magic rolling off you like smoke from a fire, so you’d best tell me what you want before things get dicey. I’m trying to run a business here, and smarmy gits like you are bad for it.”
Crim gave an elegant shrug. “Oh, la.”
The daimon’s tail curled up to float over his shoulder, and he held out his bare red hand, wiggling six long fingers with altogether too many joints. “You know I’ll know if you’re lying, so let’s just get down to business, eh? Tit for tat. You know how it works, I’d wager.”
With his sly cat’s grin, Crim took the daimon’s hand, the red velvet of his glove matching almost perfectly the daimon’s own red skin. “I’m looking for an old acquaintance, a Blud witch named Hepzibah. Do you know where she is?”
“Not exactly,” Mr. Sweeting said blandly. “And now it’s my turn.” His head cocked like a mantis’s to stare at me with fiery eyes. “Tell us one secret you’ve purposefully kept from your wife.”
Crim chuckled to himself. “Clever. Very clever. I should’ve been more specific. Let’s see.” His eyes met mine, and something dark and sinister writhed in their depths, as if many such suitable secrets lurked in the pit of his heart. “Remember that hideous hat you had Antonin make? The one that looked like something a pirate might wear?”
My eyes narrowed. “The one that disappeared?”
He grinned. “I took it out on the moors and gave it to a bludelk. He looked so dapper with it shoved down over his antlers. When he attacked me for my crime against elk fashion, I ripped out his throat, drank him dry, and left him and the bloody hat for the bunnies.”
“I liked that hat, you bastard!”
A blithe shrug. “Guilty.”
Mr. Sweeting sighed. “Tit for tat, indeed. And now it’s the lady’s turn.” He released Criminy’s hand and wiped his palm off on his pants, then turned to me. As much as I wanted to take off my glove and steal the information I needed, it would have drawn his suspicion. Who, after all, would touch a dark daimon’s skin on purpose?
I cleared my throat, took his hand, and watched the venomous barb of his tail bob over my heart. “Where exactly will we find the Blud witch Hepzibah?” I finally asked.
“Underground,” he replied promptly. “Now, you will give me one of the following: your dearest wish, your favorite memory, or your firstborn child. Choose one.”
“You said tit for tat, you monster. A question for a question,” Crim growled.
Mr. Sweeting’s tail bobbed to focus on my husband. “Show me in a dictionary the definition of ‘tit for tat,’ then. You foxed me, and now I’ve foxed her. Let the lady answer.”
“Letitia, don’t—”
Mr. Sweeting snapped his fingers, and Crim’s voice went silent, although his mouth kept moving. “Only the lady may answer.”
I shrugged. “My firstborn, I suppose, since I’ll never have one.”
The daimon’s grin was monstrous and wide. “Oh, lovely.” He sighed. “Now . . .”
He was still holding my hand when Criminy leaped at him, knocking the daimon and me to the polished black boards of the shop floor. Crim’s mouth opened in a feral howl, but no sound came out. Sweeting was fighting like a roach being sprayed with poison, flailing with long limbs and muttering curses under his breath, his deadly tail struggling to sting Criminy even as it was trapped under them both.
As soon as he loosed my hand, I was up in a bestial crouch and looking for the clockwork fox, which had razor teeth around Criminy’s boot and his now bleeding ankle. I’d been with the caravan long enough to know Mr. Murdoch’s favorite way to disrupt an automaton, so I sneaked around behind the thing, wrapped my arms around its plated abdomen, and grabbed one paw with both hands, yanking the metal foot pad loose from its ankle joint.
The thing didn’t notice, as it continued to shred my husband’s fine boot, but I didn’t smell blud yet, which meant I had time. I hunted around for two wires, one white and one black, and touched their twisted copper ends. A spark lit up and traveled over the finely made clockwork, ending in two puffs of smoke from its eyes. It went still, and I pried its jaws from Crim’s ankle, freeing him up to kill the bastard daimon he straddled, his fists pummeling Mr. Sweeting’s smug red face.
Mr. Sweeting put up more of a fight than most creatures that encountered my husband. As soon as his metal fox was down, he bucked Criminy off, rolled to his feet, and lurched toward a bookcase of pickled monstrosities in jars. Hard on his heels, Crim leaped up and shoved him hard, right into the shelf. Jars rained around them, crashing on the ground in a sparkle of broken glass and rubbery pink grotesqueries. The scent of alcohol and formaldehyde filled the air, and my predator nose itched horribly, even as I rubbed it on my sleeve. Crim had Sweeting by the lapels now, and he shoved the screeching daimon into the bookcase again, even harder, and the whole thing started to tip forward with a terrible squeal. I grabbed the back of Criminy’s coat and tossed him across the room as the entire shelf of jars fell on top of a screaming Mr. Sweeting.
Even then, he didn’t stop fighting. As he tried to crawl out from under the heavy wood, I heard the slurred language of magic in his rasping voice, and the squishy things from the jars began to twitch and writhe toward me as if coming alive. Crim was yelling at me, but no sound came from his mouth, and I had no idea what he wanted me to do. Finally, he ripped off his glove, pointed to his hand, and then pointed to the daimon’s long red fingers curled around the edge of the bookshelf, struggling to prop it up.
“Oh!”
I ripped off my glove and plopped my bustle on the bookshelf, earning a muffled “Oof!” from the crushed Mr. Sweeting in between his spells. My fingers brushed his, and the jolt struck me.
“There’s a boulder outside London, by the wall. You touch it, and it opens into catacombs. He wasn’t lying. She’s underground. And my grandmother is with her.” I gulped. “Behind iron bars.” Crim was still staring at me, his mouth clearly enunciating words I couldn’t hear. “What else do you want, for goodness’ sake? Just kill him!”
Criminy rolled his eyes and leaned over to check his boot, which the clockwork fox had all but savaged. His mouth took a decidedly grim turn downward. He stomped on the crawly jar-things that were approaching him, shot his cuffs, ran, and jumped on top of the bookshelf, right over where the daimon’s chest must have been.
There was a massive crunch, and the muttering went silent. Like a child on a trampoline, my deadly husband jumped up and down a few good times, his knees almost reaching his chest. Each time he landed, there was another crunch, until finally there was only a sucking squish, and blackish blood seeped from under the bookshelf, making me step back as it ate holes in the dark wood.
“Well, that’s better,” Crim said with a grin.
“Oh, you can talk again?”
“Means he’s dead. Which is good, because we need to chop off his tail.”
“His tail?”
“Yes, love. The one with which he stung me.”
And then my elegantly attired husband, grinning like a possum, pointed to his neck and fell to the ground, unconscious.
14
I’d lived with Criminy Stain long enough to know that whatever was happening, I just needed to follow his directions. The best thing I could do was to chop off the daimon’s tail and get the hell out of that shop. At least sharp objects were plentiful. Judging by the array of knives and saws hanging on the wall of the back room, Mr. Sweeting did a good bit of his own taxidermy and meat processing. The hardest part, of course, was getting the huge bookshelf off his crush
The wound was easy enough to find, thanks to the fact that one side of Crim’s neck was red and swollen under his cravat. I didn’t know whether to pull out the barb or leave it, and no matter how much I shook my husband and yelled at him, he wouldn’t wake up.
Even in a world without gangrene, that wasn’t good.
Soon I had the entire length of Sweeting’s crushed tail wrapped in a sackcloth bag I’d found behind the counter. In addition to the surgical table and cutting instruments, the back room held the sort of treasures one would expect to find in the attic of a haunted house, and after a bit of digging I uncovered an ancient wheelchair that looked as if it belonged in an asylum. I lugged Criminy into it, draped the bagged daimon tail across his lap, and hurriedly wheeled him out the door, leaving nothing but wreckage and a smashed and bloody daimon behind the closed door.
My first thought was that I had to find someone who could fix Criminy.
My second thought was that it was a damn shame he wasn’t conscious to rifle through the daimon’s goods, because the Bludman in me instantly recognized that such delicious, magical plunder of his enemy’s belongings would have made Criminy ecstatic.
Maybe we could come back, if he lived through this.
If it was strange for a Bludwoman to push a dead man in a wheelchair holding a blood-spattered package through London’s Deep Darkside, no one showed it. Even in the nicer part of Darkside, no one stopped me or offered to help. Had I passed a chirurgeon or a midwife, I would have begged for help on my knees, but as it was, I continued with single-minded, ferocious determination to Demi’s cabaret.
And yes, we did attract some attention once we reached the nicer streets. But I didn’t stop, not even when a Copper blocked my path on his heavy-boned bludmare. I just curved the wheelchair right around them, shouting, “My husband is sick, sir. Please excuse us.” My desperation and tears must have been convincing enough to warrant pity, as I waited to feel the salt spray of his water gun across my back but never did.