As she opened the door, the diner’s air conditioner chilled the sweat running down Robin’s back. Health Department certificate by the door boasted a score of 96. Jukebox was crankin’ out the hits: Johnny Cash, Shania Twain, Blondie, Rolling Stones. Right then, Bob Seger sang “Turn the Page,” and for some reason it made her think of musty tweed seat covers and cold dawns under a rust-orange streetlight. You walk into a restaurant, strung out from the road. How could anything bad happen in a clean restaurant with dirty music?
Accoutrements and pictures were nailed to wood paneling: framed photos of sportsmen (tee-ball teams in orange uniforms, a golfer holding a trophy over his head), pieces of antique farm equipment, hand-painted advertisements for local businesses. The center of the diner was a counter lined with stools where men sat quietly grinding up dinner—truckers, mostly, in chambray shirts and jeans, the backs of their necks like cooked hams.
Staring at the truckers’ broad backs, she considered, When you’re a teenager, you wonder if people like you. When you’re an adult, you wonder if you like people.
“Think that’s them,” said Kenway.
Three people quietly browsed menus in the corner. A dark, handsome Indian guy with coiffed hair and a trim beard. Gendreau, who’d had his hair cut short in a choppy shock of platinum blond; he looked less like a Slytherin alumni and more like David Bowie’s Thin White Duke. The other occupant of the table was an Asian woman graying around the temples.
Gendreau waved. “Hello, Miss Martine.”
His smile was light, but his brilliant eyes seemed tired. The curandero wasn’t wearing his Willy Wonka frock coat in the Texas heat, but a simple dress shirt and a pinstripe vest and trousers, both in raincloud colors. His silk tie was done up in some kind of elaborate knot. The scar across his throat was a puckered pink crescent.
The Indian man wore a T-shirt and jeans; the Asian woman was dressed in a white tank top, a droop of chintzy necklaces and bracelets, and a long skirt. Made her look like a beatnik schoolteacher.
A strange feeling came over Robin when she caught a knowing glint in the woman’s eye. She seemed familiar, like someone she’d known in middle school.
Where do I know you?
“Didn’t know you were going to be bringing your pet bear,” said the handsome Indian, pointing his chin at Kenway. British accent, a sleek and cozy guv, luv, and bruv brogue that made Robin think of dark cobblestone streets, the BBC, the London Underground. “Asha Navathe,” he said, shaking her hand. He indicated the older Asian woman. “This is Rook.”
“Asha Navathe to you, too,” said Kenway, shaking his hand.
“That’s—” Navathe blinked, confused, and then he shook it off and smiled. “Nice to meet you, mate.”
“Pleased to meet you,” said Rook. “I am an Origo.”
“The folks that handle artifacts?” asked Robin, recalling the conversation she’d had with Leon Parkin and Heinrich Hammer in the kitchen of her childhood home.
“Yes,” said Rook. “Sort of a cross between a museum curator and an armorer.”
“She’s our Q.” Navathe reached over to pound her heartily on the back. “Well, one of them, at least. She’s sort of middle management. Strong enough for an away team, but pH-balanced for administrative paperwork.”
“As long as I’m not a redshirt.”
Navathe smiled. “You’ll always be my Spock.”
Shaking her head, Robin said, “If this conversation gets any geekier, I might have to cut bait and run.” She looked around, tried to see if she could pick out any tinfoil-hatters, conspiracy theorists, or other wack jobs that might be listening to their conversation.
“There’s no one here to hear,” said Gendreau. “You probably wonder why we chose to meet you here. That’s why. Totally random. No chance of being overheard by an unsavory third party.”
“I figured you were … I don’t know, trying to make me feel at ease by meeting in public,” said Robin, “but in a place with minimum collateral casualties. A small, rural, out-of-the-way Podunk to mitigate damage in case I were to … Dia-blow.” She smirked at her own pun.
“You think we don’t trust you?” asked Rook. “Or are you afraid there’s a legitimate reason for that?”
“No, I—” Even though her teeth were well taken care of, Robin thoughtfully rubbed her face, subconsciously trying to conceal her mouth. The anxiety there in this well-lighted restaurant, surrounded by strangers, was all too real. Made her feel like a Little Girl surrounded by Adults.
Incredibly frustrating. Alone, she was totally confident and in control of herself; she could talk to the millions of people on the other side of her camera without anxiety. But if you put her in a roomful of people, a roomful of eyes and faces, an invisible hand tightened around her throat. This was why she’d never been to any of those conventions they hold for YouTube creators, like VidCon. She dearly loved her viewers, but if she had to face a crowd of real people, she would probably curl up in a ball. Kind of thing that develops when you grow up living in the woods with no friends and then spend several years in a psych ward.
She thought back to the Top Dollar Gentlemen’s Club and wondered how she’d ever gotten through it.
Anger. That was how. Anger.
Well, that and liquor.
I can make you do anything, said Heinrich’s voice from the well of her memory. All I gotta do is piss you off.
“She hasn’t had any incidents since Blackfield,” said Gendreau. A ring on his left hand shimmered in the sinking sunlight, a square-cut ruby set in a Celtic knot of silver.
“You’ve said as much.” Rook’s stiff affect softened. “Look, I think we’re getting off on the wrong foot here.” Her hands were on the table, holding each other lightly, nonconfrontationally. “You probably think we’re some kind of shadowy, elitist cabal, don’t you?”
A waitress appeared from nowhere and took their drink orders. Robin eyed each of their faces in turn as they spoke to her. She felt like a cornered, feral animal, and hoped it didn’t show on her face. “I honestly don’t know what to think,” Robin said. “Don’t know much about you. Ain’t much on the internet about the Dogs of Odysseus.”
“As it should be,” said Navathe.
“We’re not the Illuminati,” said Rook. “After the old guard was pushed out of the order—the right-wing fogies that still believed in Crowley’s ways, the robe-wearers, the pyramid-heads, the bloodletters, the real Skull and Bones types—we’re all that’s left.”
Navathe injected, “We’re basically like a bunch of old college pals. A pack of pub mates that just happen to know how to do magic. We’re the underdogs, really. There are Illuminati types out there—”
“The old men that Frank ran out of the Order in the sixties and seventies went out to join other groups and companies, and found their own,” said Gendreau. The waitress returned with their drinks, handing him a water with three lemon wedges. “Those are the real cabals. They’re why I wanted you to keep quiet about what you were doing and discontinue your YouTube channel.”
After she left with their dinner orders, Navathe leaned in. “Some of those shady crews actually want to recruit you.”
“Recruit me?” asked Robin.
“A cambion is top dollar in occult circles. You’re the first known cambion since old times. If magic was football, there’d be scouts lining up around the block to sign you up for big-league teams.”
“But I don’t even know how to do that again. To … make myself demon again. I don’t even think it was me that did it the first time.”
“We know that,” said Navathe.
Robin relaxed. “So, you’re not afraid of me, then?”
The magicians glanced at each other. “No,” responded Navathe. “We’re not afraid of you.” He grinned and cupped Gendreau’s shoulder with a hand. “Papa G here has been quite persuasive as to your erstwhile harmlessness.”
Gendreau paused. “I don’t think that word means—”
Navathe pinched the curandero’s cheek. “You’re so cute when you correct my grammar.”
“I’m … I’m glad to hear that.” Robin relaxed so much she slumped down in the seat. She could have cried. “I’ve been worried ever since. I’m the one that’s afraid, then.”
“What do you mean?” asked Rook.
“You weren’t there when my demon father, Andras, changed me into that wire-sculpture demon thing, the same thing that he was. He corrupted me. I saw myself in a mirror. It was fuckin’ scary.”
“I’m partial to fucking terrifying, myself,” Gendreau noted, but then something on Robin’s face made him quail. “Oh, I’m so sorry.”
“I have nightmares about it.”
“She wakes up covered in sweat and goes into the bathroom for hours,” said Kenway. “Stares at herself in the mirror. Won’t let me touch her for a week afterward. Sometimes, she can’t sleep. Stays up for days at a time. Those days, we don’t do much traveling, and if we do, I do all the driving.”
“I know it’s still there. Still inside me, forever. Like herpes.”
Disgust passed across Navathe’s face. Robin studied her hands, the right hand with its scars and veins and wrinkles, and the unblemished left hand that looked ten years younger. The hand the witch Theresa bit off last Halloween, the hand that Robin inadvertently grew back with the power of transfiguration she absorbed from Theresa. The fingernails grew faster on that hand, as if the nail beds were more fertile, but the nails were soft and brittle and sharp, like a baby’s. She’d cut her face and the insides of her nostrils numerous times with those toddler razors. Woken up with scratches on her cheek. She had to keep them bitten down. They were painted, but she’d chewed them until only the quicks were black. “I may not look demon anymore,” she said, looking up, “ever since I pulled my mother out of that nag shi dryad tree and evidently earned my humanity back, but I can still absorb powers from witches and relics.”
“Even after burning the reborn Ereshkigal?” asked Navathe.
Rook shook her head. “All heart-roads lead back to the death-goddess. All those teratomas are a piece of her, a seed of reincarnation. So, if the magic still works, she’s still alive … somewhere there in the After. Or Before. Or whatever the hell you want to call it. All you did was slam the door in her face.”
“Ghost soup,” said Navathe.
“The huh?”
“Phantom fondue. Spook bisque. The primordial supernatural minestrone from whence we all came, and to whence we all eventually go back.”
“Anyway,” said Robin, “if you aren’t afraid of me or what I’m capable of, and you didn’t want to see how long my horns are, why did you want to meet me in person? We could have just as easily had this conversation over email or Facebook or something.”
Navathe smiled. “We didn’t want to see how Satanic you are, love. Just the opposite. We wanted to see what kind of a person you are. Off-camera, you know.”
“She’s a damn good person,” said Kenway. “An amazing human being, and an outstanding friend. I could have told you that.”
“Well,” grinned Gendreau, “you’re a bit biased.”
“Human being.” Rook reached over and clasped Robin’s fingers in gentle solidarity. Tattooed on the back of the woman’s hand was the algiz, the rune that protected them against baser forms of magic like the spell that made minions of the cats of Blackfield. Looked like a Y with an extra arm in the middle, and almost seemed to trace the blue veins under her skin. “That’s what we wanted to see. We didn’t want to see how much demon is in you—we wanted to see how much human is in you. Could have done without the secrecy and tall tales from G here, but it’s good to see mad old Heinrich didn’t rub off on you.”
Oh, he definitely rubbed off on me.
Gendreau dipped his head, his eyes flicking to the table in guilt. “Yes, well, I … I wanted to stave off this confrontation for as long as possible, because I didn’t know what you were all going to do once she was in arms’ reach.”
“You know us better than that,” said Rook. “It’s not that you didn’t trust us; it’s that you didn’t trust your grandfather, isn’t it?”
The curandero nodded. “Yes, I suppose that’s it.”
Navathe told Robin, “Francis Gendreau is the one that threw Heinrich out of the Dogs. He’s the most vocal of everybody about demons, being a demonologist himself, and he’s been the most opposed to contacting you since we learned what Heinrich did to you and your mother.”
“Frank and Heinrich’s father, Moses Atterberry, were in seminary together,” said Rook. “Moses became pastor over Walker Memorial Church there in Blackfield, and Frank went on to Italy to continue his education in demonology and…”
“Exorcism,” finished Navathe.
Ice rushed down Robin’s scalp as she made a connection. “Do you think it’s possible that he could exorcise the demon part out of me?”
Navathe winced. “Afraid not, love. That is an integral part of you. It’s in your spiritual DNA, so to speak. It’s not in you; it is you. Might as well try to exorcise the color of your skin. Or your hair.” He raised an eyebrow at her purple-and-black mohawk. “What is the original color of your hair, anyway?”
“Dark chestnut,” said Robin. “Okay. It’s my turn to ask a question.”
The Origo smiled. “We’re an open book.”
“Yes,” said Navathe, smirking, “and just like a book, I am full of good sex and big words.”
Rook quipped, “You’re also going to have a bad ending.”
“I’m assuming you guys are magicians like Doc G here,” Robin said, tucking one foot under her leg and hunching over the table, speaking low. “He can heal people … What can you guys do? What are your relics?”
The Dogs of Odysseus seemed hesitant. Navathe sat back and folded his arms. It was probably meant to seem authoritative, but to Robin it looked more like a protective gesture, as if the temperature in the room had gone down ten degrees. “You’re … you’re not going to suck the powers out of them, are you?”
Robin echoed his earlier smirk. Come on, you already know me better than that.
Reaching into her purse, Rook brought out a Zippo and flicked it open. “Mine is the Gift of Manipulation, psychokinesis. This lighter shell contains a lock of hair from a teratoma extracted from a Czech witch in 1909.”
“Like Marilyn Cutty?” asked Robin, her arm-hairs prickling.
“Aye.”
“And then there’s mine,” said Navathe, opening the messenger bag sitting on the floor by his chair. He took out a snow globe and placed it on the table. Inside, a cartoon alligator stood on a popsicle-stick surfboard in a drift of Styrofoam snowflakes. Around the rim of the globe’s base it read: I SPENT CHRISTMAS 1988 ON DAYTONA BEACH!
“Let me guess,” Robin said, “you can make it snow?”
Navathe shook his head. “Nope.”
“Control an army of surfing alligators?”
“… Nada.”
“Capture people in a glass ball?”
“What—? No, I can’t capture people in a glass ball.” The look of bemusement on Navathe’s face evaporated. “It controls fire, mate. Pyromancy,” he said, flourishing the last word in a duh, what else would it be way. “The Gift of Wrath.”
“Fire?” Robin pointed at Rook. “She’s the one with the Zippo lighter, but you’re the firestarter?”
“Twisted firestarter.” Navathe asided, “I’d keep going, but I was never really into the Prodigy—more of a Chemical Brothers man, myself.”
“No one ever said magic had to make sense.” Rook put her lighter away. “The artifacts serve as conduits for the teratomas’ power. We can’t channel the raw magic the same way you or the witches can. Magic is all about metaphors, you know. Connotations. A lot of it is channeled by inscriptions and moving parts. Frank claims there are relics that can perform necromancy. An egg timer, namely.”
“Necromancy?” asked Kenway. “Bringing the dead back to life?”
“Aye. Well, not so much back to life, you know.… Well, you wind the egg timer backward and it’d bring someone back. For a little while, at least. While the timer was running. Not the same as resurrection, according to the records; they were more like golems, dumb dead brutes with nothing but violence in their heads. That’s what the records claim, anyway.”
“Speaking of relics,” said Gendreau, “do you still have that watch I gave you?”
The watch with the hidden power that lent Robin telekinesis and provided the secret weapon she needed to defeat Marilyn Cutty. “I do.” Robin jerked a thumb in the general direction of the garage where they’d parked Willy. “In my stuff back in the RV, but the heart-road inside is closed. If you want to use it again, you’ll have to put another teratoma in it. Had to devour the power inside to be able to use it.”
“Devour the power,” said Navathe, clenching his fist at her. “That would make a magnificent tagline.”
“That will take years, perhaps decades, of re-bonding, re-augmenting, re-training,” said Rook. “I wish you’d spoken to us before you ruined a relic, Robin.”
“I didn’t exactly have your number. Not to mention I was pinned to a wall and trying not to be killed by a witch at the time.”
The magician had no response to that.
After the waitress returned with their food, the next few minutes passed in a quiet interlude of scraping forks and slurping drinks. Robin couldn’t help but watch the magicians’ faces, wondering what they were thinking. “So, what happens now?” she asked, wiping her lips with a napkin. “Am I in the order, or, I don’t know, consulting for the order? Or did Doc G make a fatal oopsie by being my under-the-table Judi Dench?”
Gendreau crowed laughter at the ceiling.
“Bond got you pegged, M,” said Navathe.
“For real, though”—Robin centered the conversation again—“are we cool? Is this a new-employee orientation, or are you sizing me up for a cell?”
Rook licked her lips thoughtfully. “It’s taken a lot of coaxing to talk Frank Gendreau into letting you work with the Dogs as opposed to containing you, or eliminating you outright. For what it’s worth, the three of us have all been convinced of your humanity since we first laid eyes on your video series, as well as the rest of the subordinate Dogs.”
“We like to call ourselves the Underdogs,” asided Navathe.
“G here has been fighting for you ever since he came back to Michigan,” continued Rook. “Whatever transgressions Heinrich committed, you’re not at fault here. That award goes to the dead guy.”
The iron ball that’d been sitting in Robin’s bowels lost a little of its heft. “That’s good.”
“Not that we honestly stand a chance even if we did decide that you were too dangerous to ignore,” said Gendreau. He carved off a piece of ham (he was eating ham and eggs, which surprised her, as she’d had him pegged as a rabbit-food-eater), and then he added, “You’re a girl wrapped around an atom bomb. I’m only glad you’re on our side.”
“I don’t know.” Robin mopped up the last of her ranch with the end of a chicken finger. “I’m not that bad.”
Rook shook her head. “You are powerful. We feel”—and here the magician glanced at the others, and then back at Robin—“that with training, and the right preparations, that you can learn to harness, bring out, and more fully utilize that side of you, that latent demon inside of—”
“No,” Robin interjected, “I don’t want it to come out. I like it where it is: where I can’t see it.”
“But—”
“You don’t know what it’s like to look down at your hands and see hollow claws made out of wires, and … like the demon you just tore apart, you wonder if you’re full of spiders, too.”
“Full of spiders?” Navathe and Gendreau said in unison.
“Yes. When I pulled the demon apart, there was nothing inside of him but spiders. That’s how he changed me in my mother’s house—he infected me with those spiders.” A familiar tingling sensation crawled up Robin’s scalp as she remembered that black night in the Hell-annexed Victorian. When she looked up after clawing at her head, the magicians were staring at her as if she’d gone mad. The diner seemed ten degrees colder.
“Real spiders?” asked Navathe.
“I don’t think they were ‘real’ spiders,” said Robin. “When they touched me, it was like being molested by the ghosts of perverts and psychos. The spiders were wicked thoughts, black cravings with legs. Abstract. Crawling, violating metaphors.”
Navathe winced. “That sounds horrible.”
“Not as horrible as seeing them chew away my humanity and turn me into the same kind of monster as Andras.” Robin’s appetite was at the door, threatening to leave. “I think I can live like I am now. But … I don’t think I ever want to be that thing that I was, ever again.”
“So … what?” asked Rook, “does it require coming into contact with a demon to cause a full transformation?”
“As far as I know.”
What does it take to change me? she wondered. Do I have to get hurt to do it? Will it happen every time I get seriously hurt? What if I’m in a car accident and I demon it up in the hospital?
Maybe if I let them help me, I can learn how to control it. Not to be able to Hulk out whenever—
(Were you about to say “whenever you want”?)
Maybe if I let them help me, I can learn how to keep it from happening again. She looked at her hands, the one that was just old enough to hold a beer and the other one that looked like a high schooler’s. She flexed the younger hand. She could still imagine the texture of her demon hand, like a combination of driftwood and vulcanized rubber. Twice as large as her human right hand, a green-black eagle foot big enough to squeeze a volleyball flat.
Her fingers had scraped against each other hollowly, like bird bone. She could remember feeling it resonate in her teeth.
Are you sure you want to give that up?
I want to control it. I want to put a leash on it.