Vanity Scare Read online

  “Hey, can you get that?” Christina asked, tying on her apron and the gloves she’d used the first time she repotted Timothy; Hades only knew what her plan was now.

  “Sure,” I said. “Please don’t hurt yourself moving Timothy.”

  “I won’t.”

  The doorbell rang again. I opened it smiling, or trying to smile, at least. My face was probably closer to “run, the end is nigh” than “welcome to my home; can I get you some coffee?”

  “Hello,” said the woman who’d been ringing the bell.

  And I just. Wow.

  It was one word, one word, and I felt myself melt like the incompetent pile of butter I was. My tongue flubbed in my open mouth. I wasn’t totally sure I had hands anymore. Or legs. Or anything.

  She was beautiful.

  Striking, actually; the kind of beauty that jumps out of a magazine cover and punches you in the face.

  Small, Asian, long black hair, pretty eyes. White sun dress, Spartan sandals.

  A belt of very nice throwing knives.

  And something else that made her very clearly not just a pretty Asian girl with knives. I didn’t know what that something else was, but it gave me a heebie-jeebie feeling like wind howling through the pipes.

  “My name is Osenna Warkley,” she said. Her voice was all chocolate and honey and every other dumb, cliché thing anybody’s ever said about sexy voices. “Are you Quillan Carter?”

  “Uh,” I managed, which was about as eloquent as I was going to get.

  “Good. You’re going to help me.” She smiled and stepped into the house. I didn’t realize I’d moved out of the doorway until she disappeared around the corner into the living room.

  “Um.” I swallowed hard and snapped back into myself. “I, um. Hey, wait!”

  I ran awkwardly into the living room behind her, feeling like all my muscles had turned to molasses. They weren’t working right, and with every step I took, I thought I was going to buckle and fall over. Like, puppet-with-all-the-strings-tangled-up-in-a-squirrel-that’s-having-a-lot-of-trouble-getting-down-from-this-tree levels of stumbling.

  I braced myself on the back of the couch. Woozy, kinda sweaty for some reason. The room was spinning like a damn carousel. What the fuck?

  “I’m Osenna,” Osenna was saying to Christina.

  Christina was in the living room now, covered in dirt and water and smiling as she removed her gloves.

  “Hi, I’m Christina. And I guess you know Quillan?” She extended her hand.

  Osenna took it. Her head bobbed as she looked Christina up and down, and I don’t know what face she was making, but it was enough to make Christina raise her eyebrows.

  “You’re going to help me find Dagan,” announced Osenna in such a way that brooked no arguments.

  “Um,” said Christina, and she looked at me. “We are?” Her frown suddenly deepened and she added, “Wait, what do you mean find Dagan?”

  “I mean, find Dagan,” said Osenna. She walked over to me and sat down on the couch, touching my hand as she turned back to Christina, and I swear it was like being struck by lightning—no exaggeration. Touch, zap, gone. It was all I could do to stay standing.

  “Quill, are you okay?” asked Christina.

  “Yeah, fine,” I replied. But the words came out more like, “hmmyemafmm.” Like a whimpering puppy. Absolutely pathetic. I cleared my throat and clicked my tongue and tried again. “Um. Yes.” If I said it slowly, it almost made sense.

  “Babe, you should sit down.” Then Christina was at my arm, guiding me across the room to a chair far away from Osenna. Her hand was warm, and the skin she was touching was warm, and that warmth was spreading like water over cold tile.

  I plopped down into the chair like a ragdoll. The world wasn’t spinning so much anymore.

  “You have a last name, sweetie?” asked Christina.

  “Carter,” I mumbled. I honestly wasn’t sure if that was the right answer, though. I have a last name, right?

  “Not you, honey.” She patted my shoulder and kept her hand close to my neck. I reached up to grab it, missed, tried again, and nearly slapped myself full in the face. What the fuck was wrong with me? Christina took the hand herself and squeezed it.

  It was so weird. I felt kind of drunk. The feeling was fading a little, but still. I looked up at Christina and thought, my girlfriend is so pretty.

  “Were you talking to me?” Osenna asked innocently, but not real “innocently.” It was the kind of “innocent” voice people use when they’re guilty and only acting innocent; the “little ole me” kind of innocent.

  “Innocently” was starting to sound funny. Like it wasn’t a real word.

  “Inn-o-cent-ly,” I said, rolling my tongue over the word.

  I lied. Whatever was going on with me was getting so much worse.

  Christina leaned down and whispered in my ear, “Keep breathing, honey. She’s a siren.”

  Ooooooh.

  I heard myself reply, “But she didn’t sing.”

  “I don’t have to,” explained Osenna. She crossed her legs and leaned forward a bit, just a bit, and it looked like she was pulling her arms together to push out her boobs. Not that I was looking. I wasn’t looking.

  “I’m not looking,” I told her.

  Osenna’s smile was as captivating as it was creepy. Like if cotton candy had teeth. “Of course you aren’t, sweetie.”

  That felt weird. “Sweetie” is just a word, but it’s Christina’s word. For me.

  Osenna was staring at me. But not just staring. Leering, that’s the word. Leering with, like, twenty e’s.

  “Leeeeeeriiiiiing,” I whispered. The word tasted wrong. Like, sprinkles-in-pasta wrong, weird wrong.

  “So!” Christina clapped her hands together once, really loudly. Louder than she meant to, probably. Christina’s bubbly, but they’re quiet bubbles. Champagne, fountain-in-a-rooftop-garden bubbles. “Dagan. Finding Dagan.” She leaned forward a little, putting more of her weight on me. I squeezed her hand. She’s so warm all the time, it’s amazing.

  “Dagan.” Osenna pulled the word out of her mouth like a magician’s scarves. Slowly, and like she was just trying to confuse the rest of us. She sighed dramatically. “He’s disappeared.”

  “Okay,” said Christina. She looked at me, probably asking a question with her eyes, but they were so damn green, I couldn’t read them.

  “Your eyes are really green,” I told her. “Like, the greenest green that ever greened.”

  She made that little half-quirk smile and patted my face. “Thanks, babe.” Back to Osenna. “Where did you see him last?”

  “Pain.”

  Dagan’s night club. His, ah, sex club. There’s isn’t a better word for it.

  “His erotic lounge, downtown,” Osenna continued, sounding bored.

  “Right, I know where it is. When?” asked Christina.

  “Hmm…” Osenna leaned back and twirled a thick strand of black, black hair around her finger, bobbing her foot up and down, up and down. Her sandals looked expensive. If she was in personally with Dagan, they probably cost something obscene.

  “Four days ago.” She cocked her head at Christina and ran her tongue over her lips. “Have you been there?”

  “On business,” Christina said.

  “Never pleasure?”

  “No.”

  “Oh. Pity. I’d love to see you there sometime.”

  Christina didn’t look bothered, but I could feel my face going rutabaga-red. I looked down, thinking, are rutabagas even red?

  “Maybe,” Christina replied, totally flat, like Osenna had just recommended a new coffee shop or salon or something. “So, Dagan disappeared four days ago?”

  “Yes,” answered Osenna.

  “And you’re sure he’s not just out doing something… somewhere? Dagan definitely seems like the kind of guy who just disappears randomly.”

  “He is that type of guy,” Osenna responded, “but he’d never disappear without saying s
omething to me.”

  Christina and I looked at each other. We weren’t even close to close with Dagan, but if he’d ever had a dedicated girlfriend, that seemed like the kind of thing we would know. Somehow, though, “he never mentioned you” didn’t seem like the appropriate thing to say.

  “Are you two together?” asked Christina, doing her best to hide her confusion. She didn’t do a very good job.

  Osenna’s face… it didn’t light up the way most people’s faces light up. It was like she suddenly had a flashlight under her chin, and she was about to tell us a really scary story. She looked evil and smug.

  “Yes,” she said. Then she shrugged. “And no.”

  “But mostly yes?” clarified Christina.

  Osenna nodded. She released the strand of hair from her finger and sat up a little straighter—boobs first, not that I was looking.

  “She really can’t help it,” Christina whispered to me. But Osenna was looking right at me, so she had to know what she was doing. I’d never met a siren, but there was no way passive magic could make me feel… this… um…

  The material of her dress was a lot thinner than it looked.

  Beside me, Christina giggled and closed my mouth with her hand. My teeth clicked together.

  “What’s wrong with him?” asked Osenna. She said everything slowly, with a lilt, and she drew out her vowels. Like she was trying to talk to whales but just couldn’t get her heart into it.

  She was pointing at me. Her skin seemed to glow in the dark. Even though it wasn’t… dark.

  “No magical defenses,” said Christina. “Whatsoever.” I couldn’t get a read on her voice. Either we’d laugh about this later, or she’d laugh about it alone as she buried me in the backyard under Timothy.

  “Do you know where Dagan lives?” asked Christina.

  TWO

  Quillan

  “Yes,” Osenna crooned. Her voice pulled on something in the pit of my stomach, like I’d swallowed a fucking hook, and she was tug-tug-tugging with every word.

  It was so weird though, because it wasn’t like with fairies in the Netherworld where you saw them and your brain shrank back into that primal “I must fuck it or die” place; it was like a moth-flame situation. I didn’t want to do anything, and I didn’t want her to do anything—I just wanted to get closer. I wanted to hear that bizarre wind-chime voice jangling in my ears like steel keys. I wanted to feel her breath move the air around my face. I wanted her the way a kleptomaniac suddenly wants a shiny rock or a stapler or a bowl of plastic vampire teeth.

  I needed her.

  “Sit down, sweetie,” said Christina, and she pushed me back down into the chair with an unceremonious fwoomping sound.

  “What?” I asked. My whole body was dream-numb, like I was sleepwalking. I probably had been, sort of.

  Christina patted my shoulder and gave me a “bless your heart” smile that could crack glass. I looked at my shoes, feeling very small and very stupid.

  “I’m sorry,” said Christina, turning back to Osenna, “I know this is going to sound stupid, but have you checked his apartment? Or his house, or wherever?”

  “No.”

  Christina and I blinked at her in joint confusion. We looked at each other briefly, though the uncertainty on her face was definitely more coherent than mine. I couldn’t tell what my eyes were doing, and there was a decent chance my tongue was sticking out.

  “You have… look… live… where… hooooooo,” I said, embarrassingly.

  “You haven’t checked where he lives?” Christina translated.

  Osenna slowly flattened her skirt and placed her hands in her lap. The movements had an odd fluidity to them, like all her base motions were scripted. Like these were pre-programmed idle animations.

  She smiled. Hades, that fucking smile. Like the sting of something sour in your jaw.

  “No,” she said, sweetly, sweetly, sweetly. I swallowed the sound and swear I felt something gooey and gloppy drop into my stomach. It sat there like a hunk of caramelized maple syrup and I made this pathetic whining sound.

  “Why?” asked Christina. I tried to nod to show I shared the question. It didn’t work even a little.

  Osenna shrugged, as though it was obvious. “I didn’t have to check his place because he hasn’t been at the club.”

  “I’m not following,” Christina said and frowned.

  Osenna huffed out a breath of indignation but then explained. “If Dagan was home after all this time, it means something is very wrong. And whatever that wrong is, it could still be at his house and could be dangerous, and, well, look at me.” She spread her arms wide, elbows bent, to show her tiny body. “I wouldn’t stand a chance against whatever that wrong thing could be.”

  I wanted to say I’d protect her. I didn’t really want to protect her, but I really, really wanted to say I would. I wanted to sit at her feet and promise her that nothing would ever hurt her, ever. But if saving her involved going literally anywhere else but the couch she was sitting on? Nopety-nope, I lived there now.

  You live here, anyway, with this couch and with Christina… your girlfriend. Remember? pointed out some vaguely sober part of me that was becoming more and more disgusted and amazed by the thoughts I was having.

  “Plus, I really don’t want to be the one to find his body if that’s what’s happened,” Osenna continued and then inspected her nails for a few seconds.

  “So, you want us to go to his place and make sure there’s nothing nasty going on there?” Christina asked.

  “Oh, I do hope something nasty’s going on.” Osenna leaned forward, lips slightly, slightly puckered. My vision was going all wavy, and she kind of looked like she’d been stung by, like, twenty bees. “But I’m talking about the right kind of nasty.”

  Christina didn’t flinch. “He’s been gone four days?”

  “Four days,” answered Osenna.

  “Okay,” said Christina. “We’ll go look in on him. Do a wellness check.”

  A wellness check, I thought. A wellness check for motherfucking Dagan.

  “Brilliant.” Osenna stood and clapped her hands together. “Let’s go.”

  “Woah, honey, hold your horses.” Christina took a few steps towards her and away from me.

  I reached for her feebly. Really, it was more of a flail. Like a Barbie limb, it just kinda… flung itself forward and stayed there.

  “You want to go right now?” she continued. She had her mom voice on, and she was doing that thing where she raises one eyebrow and kind of cocks her head, like, “really?”

  She’s gonna make a really stellar mom, guys. Best in the world.

  Osenna laughed. “No. I want you to go right now. Like I said. It could be dangerous.”

  “We’ll go later,” Christina assured her. “There are things we have to do first.”

  Osenna looked between me and Christina with snake eyes. Lots and lots of snake eyes, like Medusa, all the little green heads ducking and peering and looking just a little too hard.

  “Oh?” she asked. “What things? Perhaps I can… assist.”

  Heh. Ass-ist.

  Fuck, I am not okay, I thought.

  “Gardening things,” Christina answered. No venom, like she was talking to her sister. Like Osenna hadn’t just kind-of-not-really asked if we were gonna have an open-invitation orgy, which sounded like a bad idea for more reasons than I currently had brain cells. I was all melted wires and googly eyes on the inside. Coherent thoughts were for suckers.

  “Pity,” said Osenna. She stood, slowly, and smoothed out her dress, slowly, and turned to walk towards the door. And she walked. Slowly. I think “sashay” is the right word. She was doing this really deliberate hip swing and it was like one of those spinning black and white illusion things. I couldn’t stop… staring… at…

  “Wait, how did you find out where we live?” Christina called after her.

  But she never responded. The front door snapped closed, and I was catapulted back into my body
from somewhere very far away.

  I turned to Christina immediately. “I am so sorry, I don’t… I mean, she just, and I don’t even think she’s that pretty, but I felt so weird—”

  Christina kissed my lips, quickly, disappearing before I could kiss her back.

  “Um,” I said.

  She laughed, the kind of high-pitched, giddy laugh that happens when you’re shivering. “It’s okay, Quill—she’s a siren. It’s magic, and it’s not like you did anything.”

  I pushed myself out of the chair and followed her into the kitchen. “I’m really sorry.”

  “Babe, it isn’t your fault. It’s like, the longer you’re around a demon, the angrier you get. Sometimes, there’s just a thing creatures do to the air in a room, you know?”

  “I’m sorry. I love you. You’re the prettiest thing in the world, no exceptions.”

  “I know how you feel about me, silly,” she said reassuringly, smiling—not smug, but maybe enjoying herself a little too much. She touched my cheek and patted my face. “Now, to Dagan’s.” She walked around me and put on her coat, grabbing her gun from the drawer in the little table by the front door.

  “To Dagan’s,” I repeated. “Really?”

  She strapped on her holster and slid her Op-7 neatly into it. There were stickers all over it, vector ice-cream illustrations and some pudgy gray cat from the internet. “Well, to the store first, and then back here, but yes, really.”

  “Um, no?”

  “What?” she asked. “The siren needs our help, so we should help her.”

  “We should first decide if this could be… definitely, one hundred percent, a trap.”

  She raised an eyebrow at me and crossed her arms. She smirked. Hades, it killed me when she smirked. “A trap?”

  “Yes!”

  “Why would she want trap us?”

  “I don’t know, maybe Dagan’s up to something,” I answered with a shrug. “Maybe he wants to trap us.”

  “Dagan wants to trap us?”

  “Yes, what’s so crazy about that?” I threw my hands into the air like I was trying to flip a table. “He’s a demon, Christina, and he’s an asshole!”

  “We don’t not help people just because they’re an asshole or a demon or both,” she said. “Are you sure you’re not just feeling self-conscious about helping the girl who just spent ten minutes melting your brain with her boobs?”