April 11th
“All things can be seen through,” she says, “it is the nature of things.”
http://nocturne.noctalis.com/codex.cgi?Witch-Girl_+_Mirror_Heart_+7+18+_Seeing_Through
“It’s only scratches,” Desdemona says, from the wheelchair. “I’ll get bruises tomorrow, but the doctor says it doesn’t look like anything’s broken. They’ll x-ray to confirm and I’ll be back home in a few hours.”
“That’s good,” Stacey says. “But the wheelchair…”
“Everyone gets a wheelchair here. Don’t worry.”
“I’m not worried!” Stacey says, a little too quickly.
Desdemona turns to Amora. “Find out if I can leave for a bit, go to the cafeteria.” She turns back to Stacey, “we need to talk.”
They settle in the garden next to the cafeteria; Stacey on a bench, Desdemona in the wheelchair in front of her, the two demons standing to either side of each girl.
“We were set up,” Desdemona says.
“Ramiel said it was suspicious,” Stacey offers.
“Did you?” Desdemona says, looking up at Ramiel. “That’s remarkable.” She turns back to Stacey, who is looking at her through narrowed eyes. “Sorry,” Desdemona says, a tad bashful. Then her voice turns serious, “well, we know the attacker came for the box, so let me go back to the beginning.” She takes a breath. “While I was in Paris, this guy started talking to me, while I was Under Leaves. Name of Louis Balfour. It was just chatting, really. He was a mage, of course, to have seen me at all.
“He told me that he had an ancestor who had been on the Titanic. That he was, in fact, named for the ancestor. He said it was a pity that the spellbook of his namesake was lost. I thought it was entirely random, at the time. Sometimes people just want to chat, yes? No more nor less than that. Then I come home and there’s a brochure for the auction with my mail. I find my shoes missing. And you know the rest.”
“That’s a pretty good trap,” Stacey says. “It seems like someone would wonder why a brochure for something with such a limited audience as an auction might turn up as junk mail, but no one really thinks about junk mail, do they?”
“I should have. Any witch would have. I squandered Lucifer’s Gift.”
“It’s not your fault, Des,” Stacey says, with a softness to her tone that surprises Ramiel. “I never asked you how you knew. No one would think about it.”
“Even granting all that to be true…”
“There’s another thing. We were all busy, so I asked Izzy to handle the auction for us. There was one other bidder who really wanted it, drove the price up.”
“Who’s Izzy?”
“Azrael, a friend of ours. We can trust her.”
“How does ‘Azrael’ become ‘Izzy’?”
“Izra’il,” Amora says. “It’s another translation from the original Arabic. Rather a morbid choice for a name.”
“Err…” Stacey says. “She didn’t really have a choice, exactly. She’s kinda the original.”
“Azrael is in the city? Our city? This city?”
Stacey nods. “Yeah, she’s been for a while. She’s not against us, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“Wait,” Desdemona says. “You… asked the Angel of Death to… run an errand?”
“When you put it like that– It sounds– I mean. We were busy! And it’s not like I have so many friends.”
“You’re… friends?”
“She and Ramiel go way back. We met for a job and… we started hanging out. Anyway, she has plenty of time, with the new hires at her firm. Oh!” Stacey fishes in her purse, takes out a name card. “I’m not sure if you will, but if you ever need…”
Ramiel plucks the card out of her hand. He had no idea that she had it.
“She’s a she,” Desdemona breathes, with a sort of awe.
The name card is black. In embossed silver, there is the stylised design of a chess piece – the knight, a horse’s head – next to the letters “DAT”. Her name reads “Ezra Elle, CPA”. He hands the card over to Desdemona.
“CPA,” Desdemona breathes.
“She says it’s really dull,” Stacey says, and adds, loyally, “but she’s really good at it.”
Ramiel thinks, Izzy and the words “acceptable losses” do seem to go well together. He wonders what “DAT” stands for.
“Hey,” Stacey continues, “now that you’re back in town, you can hang out with us.”
“Can I? It must lovely.”
“You must! There’s this great restaurant we go to, after shopping.”
“Shopping? With Death?”
“She likes to wear this black hoodie thing. And I was like ‘I love the theme and all’ but you don’t have to wear your work clothes to go shopping. And she was like ‘work clothes?’ as if she had never thought of it before. I mean, she has no boobs to speak of, but –”
And. We’re off.
“– like all-the-time-all-the-time. So now I’m trying to get her to remove her sunglasses,” Stacey finishes.
“You really shouldn’t,” Ramiel says.
“Why not?”
“She doesn’t have eyes.”
There is a moment of silence as this sinks in.
“How does she see?” Stacey says.
“Her eyes are on her feathers.”
Stacey digs in her purse, pulls out Izzy’s peacock feather.
“The design,” she says, looking at it, “does look somewhat like an eye.”
“That’s…?” Desdemona says.
Stacey holds it out. “Hold the stem, the feather itself is an anaesthetic.”
Desdemona takes the feather, looks at it through eyes brimming wide with wonder.
This is why, Ramiel thinks, we have paparazzi. Because people are so easily impressed by celebrity for some reason. Stace would probably know why. Best never to ask her. And why is it even noteworthy that “she’s a she”? Hell’s leadership is exclusively female, which is why all of you witches are female.
“You can have it,” Stacey says, almost glowing with benevolent generosity.
“Can I?” Desdemona breathes.
“I’m sure Izzy will give me another.”
Ramiel sighs. And now you’re giving away body parts.
“I used it on you,” Stacey says, “when we found you. It’s very useful, in our line of work. Do you hurt anywhere? Try it.”
“I do feel sore, the medicine is wearing off.”
“Try it!”
Ramiel looks away as Desdemona fiddles with her gown. Amora is looking at Desdemona, his expression unreadable. Stacey leans forwards, reaching across to join in the fiddling. She’s in a sundress and there’s a lot of cleavage going on. As annoying as she is, he thinks, she does have two good things going for her. Three, if you count her brain.
He smiles at his own joke.
Without meaning to, he glances again at her breasts, looks away. The involuntariness of the movement annoys him, as if he doesn’t have control of his own eyes.
He says, before she gets distracted again, “do we know anything else about the attack?”
They take a moment to settle.
“Well,” Desdemona says, “after the box was delivered, I left it there. We agreed we’d open it together. And you came back…” she looks downwards. “Sorry.”
Suddenly, Ramiel feels really uncomfortable.
Stacey’s smile seems a little brittle. “Let’s not talk about that anymore. What happened next?”
“I don’t remember anything new. After you left… I was in my room and there were sounds, yelling. Amora?”
“The attacker,” Amora says, “used some sort of force spell. I opened the door and I only got to see his wand before I was sent flying. He ran past me, grabbed the box. I was going for him, that’s why he went into Mistress’s room. He blasted her, blasted the windows. She was on the floor when I entered,” he nods at Ramiel, “you came through the window a moment later. Did you see anything?”
Ramiel shakes his head. “The street was empty. I am absolutely sure.”
“Invisibility.”
“Well,” Desdemona says, “that’s all we know. I didn’t even get a look at the guy.”
“So all we know for sure,” Stacey says, “is that possibly two people want the box. We don’t know who.”
“Yeah.”
“We don’t even know if the box contained a spellbook,” Ramiel says.
“I’ll find whoever hurt you,” Stacey says. “You don’t fuck with the friends of a Daughter of Lilith.”
“Thank you,” Desdemona says. She looks like she’s about to cry.
“It’s okay.” Stacey leans forwards to put her hand on Desdemona’s leg. “Stay with me, okay? Until everything settles down? You shouldn’t go back to your place.”
“Can I?”
“I insist.”
“Okay. Thank you. I should get back. It should be almost my turn for the x-ray.” She smiles. “Thanks for the feather.”
“That was very kind, inviting her over,” Ramiel says, as they fly home.
“There’s no point in kicking someone when they’re down.”
But… he does not say, you do that all the time. You love gloating. You practically live for those moments when you can push someone down and then follow up with a comment on how inelegantly they fell. Under the circumstances, you’ve been shockingly nice.
“I’ll sleep on the sofa,” he offers. “Des can have my bed.”
“So is ‘Des’ now, is it?” In his arms, he feels her entire body tense.
He flies in silence.
“Do you want Amora to sleep with me?” she says.
“Huh?”
“Well,” she says, in the tone one might use when speaking with a child, “if Des has your bed, and you’re in the sofa, where is Amora going to sleep, if not with me?”
“Well, no. I hadn’t thought about him.”
“He is pretty hot, you know. Agh! Whatever. You are sleeping with me.”
“Okay…”
“And… just to be absolutely clear, I am expressly forbidding you from touching her.”
“Okay…” He wonders what sort of authority she imagines she is wielding.
“And stop calling her ‘Des’. You should call her ‘Miss Wick’.”
“Surely that’s not necessary.”
“Fine. Whatever. Do what you want.”
He flies in silence. She is shivering, slightly, in his arms. He wonders if she’s cold, but she’s never cold; at least, not from flying. It’s part of the magic. Thermo-something, she had called it.
She moves herself upwards, until her face is next to his, over his shoulder, and her arms pull tight. She hugs him close, as he flies. “I hate you,” she says, softly.
“I’m sorry,” he says, hoping she does not ask what it is he is sorry for. Recently, he seems to be apologising a lot for existing.
“I’m such a girl.”
You really are, he thinks. But he suspects that she doesn’t mean it in the same way which he does. He doesn’t know for sure what it is, exactly, that she is upset about.
She’s crying, he realises. Why? He wants to explain himself – he did nothing wrong! – but he doesn’t know if it’ll make things worse. She barely makes sense when she’s normal… if she could just tell him.
If she could just explain her feelings like she explains everything else. If she could just tell him what it is she wants him to do. How she wants him to act. If she could just make it simple. But no.
He alights on the balcony and he places her down.
Without looking at him, she slides the door open, walks straight to her room.
There’s the thing, isn’t it? They have a machine now that allows you to see through a person’s body, but there isn’t a machine yet to let you look into their heart.
Her uncertain, unreadable, heart. It must be quantum. Her quantum heart.
No matter how much you want to, there are some things which you can’t see through. It is, he supposes, the nature of things.
