'Twas the Darkest Night Read online

  Loneliness settled across Elsa’s shoulders, the tepid warmth of a familiar, weary embrace. Elsa steeled herself and hauled it closer like a security blanket as she flipped the sign closed, and wandered back to the table.

  Yes, it was true—one day, time would run out. She'd be old and withered—and she would be alone. But that night wasn't tonight. Tonight, she had cake and bills to keep her company, and that was enough.

  It had to be.

  * * * *

  It was Excedrin or death.

  Rows of violins painted musical shadows across the north wall as Marshall shucked out of his damp trench coat and tossed it and his keys onto one of the cardboard boxes littered throughout the hallway—the last remains of an ill-fated engagement. A creature of the night, the vacant darkness clinging to the ash gray walls was of little consequence as he laced through the sparse monochromatic furniture to the guest bathroom. Gwyneth was stomping around in the master bedroom, searching for some pair of shoes she couldn’t live without.

  This…is ridiculous.

  First of all, it was Christmas—that in itself was enough to grate what little of his patience was left after dealing with the different brands of “shady prat” advertising, in particular, attracted. It was a holiday centered on overindulgence and guilt. Guilt for those who couldn't overindulge. Guilt for those who could and did. Bigotry, hypocrisy, and a spike in credit card rates all wrapped in a nice, large, tacky bow.

  Cutting on the faucet, he splashed his face with cool water and tried to purge the irritating turn of events from his mind.

  She'd promised she could be civil. She'd insisted they attend his agency's company Christmas party together to preserve his image and her reputation until an appropriately timed, formal announcement of canceled nuptials could be arranged.

  True to form, at the party she'd been nothing but a sparkling vision of coven, perched on his arm in a slinky white dress. Nothing but grace and smiles. She'd told all the right jokes. Snared the right brand of attention. Drawing in men and monster alike every time her ruby red lips parted with a sultry laugh. Yes, it had all gotten on swimmingly…until the drive home.

  He could still hear her. Demanding he answer her. Yelling. Crying. Trying to rattle the glass cage he wore like a second skin. All to the jolly little Christmas jingle the cabbie insisted on playing over and over again all the way across the damn bridge.

  The front door slammed shut down the hall, the echoes smacking Marshall's throbbing skull. Bitch. His annoyance cooled almost as quickly as it came. It was over. Gwyneth getting one last lick in wasn't going to change the fact she'd slammed his door for the last time. It was fitting. She’d always hated this place.

  He snatched the small bottle of aspirin off its usual spot on the edge of the sink and struggled with the child-proof cap. Surely, another reason to kick the next child he saw.

  Dry swallowing two pills, he yanked a fluffy terrycloth towel off the rung next to the sink and dabbed his face dry. The fluffy terrycloth was soft against his brow, a mild balm to the bloody Christmas procession lapping around his skull.

  The hallway was gilded with mirrors. Some of them old and ornamented. Others burnished and sharp. All of them different sizes and shapes, each one as unique—and as expensive—as the last. All of it Gwyneth’s doing. Arranged symmetrically in aesthetic lines, they wallpapered the narrow area into a twisted funhouse.

  Thankfully, his mother's vampiric heritage spared him from having to see his reflection. Spare droplets of water dampened the collar of his crisp black button-down and he tossed the towel against the wall for Beatrice, the cleaning lady, to fetch later.

  The sharp, sleek lines of his modern modular sofas and shiny stools cast angular profiles. The images vibrated as Marshall darted in and out of the moonlight spilling through the bayside windows facing the old, worn bridge and narrow channel. He collapsed onto his bed—the only thing Gwyneth hadn't appropriated after the break up. She knew better. He would’ve killed her over that. Easy.

  Being horizontal unleashed a flood of exhaustion, and he tried to calculate how long he could sleep versus how much work was waiting for him in the mahogany leather briefcase he'd abandoned somewhere down the hall.

  The cell phone tucked in his back pocket vibrated with an incoming call.

  Not a chance in hell. He buried his face in the downy goose feather pillow and yanked another one over his head. Whoever it was would have to wait. His nose twitched and he buried his face farther into the pillow. Vanilla and some kind of sweet spice. Gwyneth.

  He waited for a pang of guilt, of want, or even the tell-tale rumblings of his more insidious cravings. Nothing. It had been two weeks. And yet, he felt nothing. Not even the stir of the sexual hunger inherent to his father's incubus heritage.

  Maybe his lack of nostalgic desire could be explained by pointing to one of the partner’s secretaries. Their earlier exchange in the coat closet had been the very fodder for his and Gwyneth’s ensuing vehicular argument. Or maybe he didn’t miss Gwyneth because he'd never loved her at all.

  The cordless phone resting on his nightstand rang.

  Marshall arched a brow. Persistent little imps.

  The answering machine beeped in the hollow silence. Gwyneth’s throaty and sultry purr filtered through the darkness. “You've reached Gwyneth Cage and…come on, say your name… Fine, you big baby…You've reached Gwyneth Cage and Marshall Ansley. We're not in right now, but leave a name and a number and we promise to bite back!”

  An illusion of synergy in their relationship—he hadn't even been there when she’d recorded the message. They'd never talked about it. Not even in those instances when they'd both been home and simply decided to let the machine pick it up. It just was. Much like most of their relationship.

  “Marshall Pierce Greenwood Wingates Ansley,” his mother's dry British accent clipped his names to pieces, “I demand you pick up this phone at once. I know you're there… Very well, don't speak to me, I am just your mother…”

  He rolled his eyes. Oh, the drama…

  “Marshall, it is important that I speak with you. It's about the business… Here, Henry, say something to your son. No, I will not desist, Henry. Henry. Henry, I am speaking to you. He is our son—oh, then what good are you?” She huffed, “Well, Marshall, I hope you’re happy. Between you and your sister, you've both managed to ruin Christmas at the Wingates’ this year.”

  The line went dead.

  Marshall rolled over onto his back. Twisted shadows spun and swirled across the high ceiling. Theatrical old bat.

  About the business, she'd said.

  There was nothing to talk about.

  Just because Sir Henry Ansley, CEO of Cerberus Banking and Associates, used his mother for his demonic lust cravings did not make him his father. Especially since he’d gone to great lengths to ignore his son for the better part of his life. Ansley and his company could burn, and his mother could join them if she refused to see reason.

  Marshall loosened his satin white tie and sat. Time to go to work.

  He'd barely made headway into the latest mock-ups for Spider Shine when his cell phone vibrated across the large glass desk. He grabbed his coat and a pack of Benson and Hedges, and stepped out onto the small terrace outside of his home office window.

  Snowflakes fell at a steady pace, and he cursed the cold, threading his arms into his jacket. He pinched the phone between his shoulder and his cheek. “Ansley.” White puffs of breath lingered like specters as he fumbled for a cigarette with numbing fingers.

  “Ansley, this is Hill.”

  He lit the cigarette and blew out his first stream. “Good evening and Merry Christmas, Ms. Hill.”

  “Don't play coy with me, monster.”

  Johanna Hill was a hulking woman in spirit and appearance. He wasn't sure how a woman—and a human one at that—had come to hold the reins of such a large monster-founded company, but he wasn't particularly interested in beating the gnarled bushes to find out. He did, how
ever, have every intention of stealing the seat from under her ample ass. But all in due course and time. Some of the other partners at the Mirage Agency had already started to whisper about offering him a stake in the company. He would play her game until then.

  “How can I be of service, Ms. Hill?”

  “You're engaged right, Ansley? To a vamp, right?”

  “Coven, actually. Well, not—”

  “What do you know about Sinister Stitches?”

  “Small boutique of clothing imported from the Veil. Operates downtown, near the docks. Leather, corsets, fishnets. Apparel for the wicked,” he smirked into his next drag, “if you're into that sort of thing.”

  “And its owner?”

  He couldn’t recall a mental image of the owner of the old Victorian-house-turned-boutique. Some kind of hybrid, with a tie back to the Unseelie. All the way to the Court, from what he'd heard. He'd never encountered her at the store the times he and Gwyneth had wandered in. Apparently, she was a recluse, preferring to leave the running of her business to her coven kin. Daughters, he'd heard. Not that he was going to impart any of that to Hill. On the contrary, knowledge was power.

  “Nothing much. Why the interest? It's a ratty little hole in the wall.”

  “What if I told you that ratty little hole in the wall is about to become this agency’s biggest account?”

  “Shall I consider myself told?”

  “Yes.”

  “What's the play?”

  Silence. The call hadn't dropped, he didn't have to check his phone to make sure. Her breath was strong and steady, even loud to his sensitive ears. The sound of her scheming was even louder, like rusted cogs and clockwork grinding and locking into place. Her large, brown eyes were probably bright with the thrill of it.

  Finally, she let out an especially resigned sigh. “Yesterday, for no apparent reason Teles—”

  “—the siren?” Marshall’s mind swam with images of sultry olive green eyes and random threads of raspy lyrics and lilting, haunting musical notes.

  “The very same—No, no, that's fine. Bring those mock-ups right here. Why, Chris, you’re sweatin’ like a whore in church. Are you scared?” Her voice sharpened with amusement. “You should be… Anyways,” she said, addressing the phone once more, “the siren walks into the store and decides she loves it. She wants to buy a partnership from the owner, Madame Mari, and launch an inter-realm fashion line.”

  A veritable jackpot.

  Marshall crushed the filter between his slender fingertips. “How did you get wind of this?”

  “My reach is very, very far.” Johanna chuckled, but it was a mirthless sound. “Want my job, do you?”

  He weighed the outcome of several responses and decided on honesty. Anything else was a declaration of defeat. “Yes.”

  “Honesty. Hmm, I like that,” she continued. “In any case, this is what I need from you. You're going to come in tomorrow morning and pick up two tickets to where Madame Mari is spending Christmas with her family. She really is some kind of hermit. I couldn’t even find anyone who’s glimpsed a picture of her.”

  Warning lifted the hairs on the back of his neck. “And you want me to do what, sign her?”

  “Yes, precisely. Bring Gwyneth. From what I did get on her, the family image is a must. Don't mess this up, Ansley. I spent a lot of money tapping my contacts in the hospitality industry to find out where she’s going to be. I won’t tolerate failure. This account is what we've been waiting for. And we will have it.”

  “You’ll have to do better than that. I don't even know what Madame Mari looks like.”

  “Use some of that voodoo you monsters are always carrying on about.”

  “Hill, the fey… You're human, you don't understand. They have glamours that—”

  “Sign that stupid fairy and I'll make sure you have your partnership.”

  Marshall's mouth went dry and he shook his head, trying to reason through the red haze of ambition. “Hill—”

  “Do it, Marshall—or it's your job. See you in my office in a week. Oh, and Merry Christmas.”

  He chucked his phone over the railing. She's out of her bloody mind.

  Marshall pocketed his frostbitten fingers in his jacket, staring over the balcony after the phone as if it would rise from the grave and float back up over the iron railing to haunt him. Hill didn't understand. A fey who didn't want to be seen wouldn't be. It was their prerogative. One of the few blessings making their particular brand of miserable existence—whatever that was like—bearable.

  Besides, he was a cambion. An organic chimera of human, vampire, and incubus—he wasn't a witch or some other manner of creature who regularly manipulated magic. He wouldn't even begin to know how to go about bypassing sorcery as powerful as fey glamour.

  Maybe he could start over. Maybe he could convince some of his clients to leave with him and start up an agency of his own. The thought was daunting. Even if it wasn't for the non-compete clause he'd signed as a part of his contract with Mirage, he didn’t have the money or the capital to invest on such a grandiose start-up without having to…

  Use a shilling of his father’s money—Ha. He’d rather get kicked in the fangs.

  The shop door swished open and a faint bell rang. He tracked the noise. Warm yellow candle light washed across the snow-covered pavement beneath the terrace.

  “Simple-minded cat.” Elsa's raspy, whiskey voice splashed across the air like hot amber liquid on crackling dry ice cubes, melting and warming…and please-bartender-pour-me-another. “I can't believe I'm going to this stupid club. Of all the harebrained…” Her complaints dulled to a string of irritable mumbling.

  He leaned a hip against the narrow ladder of the fire escape. And people thought he was a cranky prat.

  Tying a faded floral-patterned scarf under her chin, she stormed off into the snow-capped world with purpose. Her long, sandy brown wool coat dragged along the ice as she crossed the street and marched across the bridge. A breeze lifted the snow, sprinkling the white dust on her cherry red waves. They shook as she huffed. In the months he'd been renting his apartment from his five-foot shrewish shopkeeper, he'd never seen her smile.

  Not once.

  They'd gone through the leasing proceedings in staunch silence. He experienced that sometimes with humans who were often afraid and intimidated by the supernatural power bowing off of him in waves. He imagined it was a natural survival instinct. But she wasn't human—it was clear she was a monster of some sort. What kind, he didn't know. Some kind of witch, maybe. He'd never had any reason to inquire…

  Actually…

  The wooden shingle hanging over the vacant shop swung in the breeze.

  In large, bold Olde English, it read: Bits and Pieces.

  Below it, in a smaller, irregular, and handwritten script: Arcane Emporium for Rare Charms, Glamours, and Artifacts.

  What if…

  Surely, a shop such as hers would…

  The idea took shape in his mind.

  Marshall leapt over the edge of the terrace. Snow crunched under his shoes as he landed with a tactile grace.

  He'd work out the particulars later.

  Chapter Two

  A witch. A club. This time of night? She could only be going to one place.

  Cars screeched against the salted black ice. The light changed. Marshall followed the general direction of the crowd across the white pedestrian lines. It was past curfew and everything without teeth had long ago abandoned the streets. As if deadbolts and dry wall could keep the terrors of the night from falling.

  Murders of vampires reigned and ruled New Gotham like nobility in Helsing leather dusters, Dracula fan-collared cloaks, and Armani. Deadly. Fluid. They skated across the pavement with tactile grace. Sleek, romantic silhouettes carving sharp lines through pulses. Their faces were cast in darkness, the only sign of life the occasional slip of an ivory fang.

  Schools of witches and wizards, enchantresses and mages upheld the traditions of learned ar
tisans and skilled merchants. Barefoot, modern druids journeyed alongside witches weaving spells in their trailing medieval gowns and velvet hooded cloaks, their staves and staffs striking the snow.

  Packs of weres and shifters stalked the streets in different combinations of leather, denim, combat boots, and bad attitudes. Like the druids, some of them chose to go barefoot, some even naked. Well, not completely—the vampires wouldn’t allow it. Armed to the teeth, they bared toned, rippling muscles and raged in rowdy packs of four or five. Proud to be the city’s pillars and rabid underbelly.

  The occasional human followed, their nervous excitement fresh and absurdly out of place. Pretty things in hooker heels, mostly. Sinners who surely could have done better than trekking to where the monsters preyed and played.

  A small family of brownies scurried alongside the daunting Gothic horde. Three small children, two boys and a girl, trailing behind a stocky mother swaddled in a ratty old sack of some sort, and a father whose flat nose was buried up to the interstate lines of a map almost as big as all of them stacked together. Strange. Even minor fey, like brownies, rarely crossed the Veil to slum it amongst lesser beings.

  “Yes, yes, we turn here,” Father Brownie mused aloud.

  No taller than a tree stump, with a mole dotting the side of a wide, sincere mouth, the mother was a round ball bouncing along. She held on to her straw hat through a gust of northern wind, “Honestly, Harold, can't we just ask someone for directions?”

  “Nonsense, I know exactly where we're going.”

  “Indeed,” she agreed wryly. “The wrong way.”

  “Ouch!” The small girl behind them yelped, and swatted her brother's hand away from her pigtails. “Mother.”

  “Leave your sister alone, John. Harold,” she lifted her thick eyebrows, appraising their general company, “I don't think…”