Nectar of the Wicked (Deadly Divine Book 1), page 3
“Flea,” he said, beyond exasperated now. “Even if I did know exactly how to get you in, I would take the answer with me to my grave.”
Cheese and disbelief clogged my throat. I swallowed thickly with a wince. “You would do such a thing to me?”
“I would.”
I scowled. “Why?”
“Because I care about you, and I will not see you die because I gave in to your fanciful dreams. Go home and get to thinking about where you might like to work.” With that, he stole through the swinging door of the kitchenette with his cheese to his private quarters on the other side.
I waited to see if he’d return when the teakettle whistled. He didn’t.
It was odd to feel both relieved and saddened by someone’s absence.
Staring at the corner of the kitchen I’d cowered within as a youngling, I couldn’t decide where the sadness even came from. I healed quickly, yet I’d received a thin scar upon my arm at the age of seven years from a plate Rolina had thrown at me while I’d huddled with my arms over my head.
I shook off the memory and finished the last of the raisins.
The sadness wasn’t from missing her, I surmised as I changed into my finest gown of pleated emerald cotton with a cream satin bodice. Rather, it stemmed from knowing the woman who’d never wanted me had lived more than half of her life with nothing but grief and hatred.
And an unshakable belief that had failed her in the end.
I couldn’t bring myself to do anything with her belongings. This entire apartment, even the scant furniture and belongings within my own room, was all hers.
Never mine.
She’d always made it abundantly clear that I was a guest—an unwanted one—so the only comfort I found was when I could forget that fact by escaping into books.
I looked at Rolina’s room one last time.
The bed I’d made that she hadn’t slept in the night before she’d died. The clothing and wineglasses she’d left scattered over the large space for she knew I would clean up after her. The white and brown toadstool dust speckling the small mirrors upon her dressing table.
Then I closed the door.
It was time to search for employment, lest I head back downstairs to the library in a few days to beg Gane to help me when I ran out of food.
I was tucking my feet within my scuffed slippers when a tapping sounded upon the door.
We rarely had visitors. Rolina loathed for those she drank her time away with to pay any attention to me, and no one had come knocking since she’d died.
I wondered if word would spread, or if I’d need to inform all of whom she’d known.
Madam Morin stood upon the other side of the door, her high cheeks adorned in a bright-pink rouge and the tight rust-colored ringlets sweeping down from her updo. “Flea, darling.” Her shrewd apple-green gaze danced over me from head to toe. “My, how you’ve grown.”
I’d hardly dealt with the madam who was our landlord. There was no need when Rolina saw her every other evening at the pleasure house. The half faerie was also a friend of Rolina’s, which was how she’d gained employment after her husband disappeared.
Yet a slow blink of her kohl-painted lashes was the only reaction when I informed her of my guardian’s fate.
“Rolina’s gone.”
Morin’s ivory-gloved hand touched her ample chest. “I heard. Ghastly, isn’t it? What those wild ones can get away with.” Tutting, she said, “Such risky business, trading with the lawless folk. Why, you’re lucky to have escaped unscathed, dear darling.”
I nodded. I fell asleep each night to the memory of that flesh-and-bone-eating mist, knowing I had indeed been fortunate.
Sensing she was not here to offer condolences, I did my best to keep from growing stiff as I clenched the door and awaited the reason for this visit.
Morin’s smile waned, her hand sliding from her chest. “I do wish we could put off such a conversation, but it’s already been some days, and I’m afraid the matter cannot wait any longer.” Her gaze flicked over my shoulder. “Not if you wish to keep such a fine roof over your head.”
“The rent,” I said, my stomach sinking slightly. I’d begun to assume that was why she was here.
I opened my mouth to tell her I was looking for employment, then closed it when she spoke between pursed lips. “And there’s also the matter of Rolina’s other debt.”
“Other debt?”
Morin sighed and folded her hands before her. “As we both know, Rolina was fond of beautiful things, and beautiful things cost a lot of coin, my darling.”
I shook my head. “I’m afraid I still don’t quite know what you’re saying.”
“I’ll put it plainly, then.” The madam lifted her pointed chin. “Rolina was my friend, so I gave her exceptions I cannot grant to others. She spent her coin boldly and recklessly, and ahead of her scheduled payments from the Lair of Lust.”
“Oh.” My stomach churned. “But I have no coin to offer you. She spent it all. She—”
“I know.” Morin and her husband managed one of the most profitable businesses in Crustle. I understood exactly what it was, and I understood what was coming when her eyes gleamed a second before she said, “But as sweet as you are, your problems are not my own. The gold must be repaid.”
Gold.
I was nearly too afraid to ask, “How much?”
She arched a brow at my audacity, but then relented with a sigh that failed to stir one tight ringlet. “Ten gold coins, plus the remainder of this month’s rent.”
Shit.
The remaining rent was almost an entire gold coin by itself.
Color drained from my face in a rush that chilled my blood. I had no way of finding such a large sum of coin, and this greedy female knew it.
“I can give you two days to come up with the funds, or”—a slight smile was given with her suggestion—“you can work for me until the debt is repaid and you are a month ahead in your rent.”
I failed to keep from scowling. “But Rolina was never a month ahead.”
“Again,” she said, the sugar slipping from her tone, “Rolina was my friend. You are a faerie I barely know.”
I shouldn’t have been shocked. I’d known where this was headed. I could scent it in the air between us—the thirst for coin beneath her cloying apricot perfume as the madam stepped forward.
I still tensed when she grasped my chin and gently tapped her long nail beneath it. “You’re of mature age now, dear Flea.” She tipped it up with a smile that revealed her sharp canines. Her green eyes roamed my face. “A very fine replacement you shall make.”
The words escaped me before I could trap them. “I cannot work in a pleasure house.”
“No?” Morin stepped back with high brows and a fluttery laugh. “It would seem you’ve been left with no choice, my darling.” Turning away, she said, “I’ll send for you when it’s time.”
Misunderstanding what I’d meant by that statement, she sauntered down the hall to the stairs. All the while I grappled to find a way to inform her that she didn’t want me, and that I would certainly fail in such employment.
I’d never even been kissed.
I should have been heartbroken.
The woman who’d ensured my survival, no matter how grim it had been, was gone. Forever washed from this world. Some tiny part of me should have felt guilty for not doing more to save her. For not adequately warning her of the danger that would befall us if her temper were to flare.
And I had been heartbroken. I’d lost my chance.
Now, I felt nothing but annoyance and an expanding anxiety for whatever loomed ahead.
Pacing the two-bedroom apartment while the bath filled, I stared at the gilded paintings of gowns and lamp-lit streets upon the walls and I thought of the coin. I thought of what it might cost to even so much as attempt to find another way to get what I wanted. To gain what might be my only chance at true freedom.
To finally find all the answers.
The Wild Hunt wouldn’t return for another year. Regardless, I understood now that it had been more than foolish to assume what I needed would be found with the likes of those who would end a life so swiftly because they’d been offended and lacking in patience.
No, there had to be another way. And whatever it was, it was sure to be expensive.
The sky had barely darkened when a gentleman wearing a mustard bow-tie and a monocle over one of his murky blue eyes arrived with a heart-stalling thud on the door. “Madam Morin awaits your escort to the Lair of Lust.”
“Of course she does,” I muttered, knowing better than to refuse although I didn’t need an escort to the building just down the street from the one I resided in.
I still hadn’t decided what to do. I hadn’t determined whether Morin had spoken true regarding Rolina’s debts, nor if it mattered. If she hadn’t, there was no way to prove such a thing. Especially when the evidence filled our apartment in the form of beautiful art, furnishings, wine stains upon the linen and carpets, and fine clothing.
In the end, there was nothing left to do but follow the gent and hope that I could make this meeting short by being honest with Morin about my lack of... uh, romantic experience. Then I would ask for more time to repay the debt, and find employment doing something I could actually do tomorrow.
With the exception of blaming me for her husband’s departure and therefore her fate, Rolina had never spoken of her work at the Lair of Lust. At a young age, I’d eventually pieced together what working for Madam Morin required due to the scents she’d bring home.
The idea of exchanging pleasure for coin had never concerned me, but I wasn’t what they were looking for. Though I’d too often wished differently, I hadn’t any experience with bedding someone. Rolina had wanted me untouched out of fear that my Fae family might not accept me if I’d been sullied by anyone in the middle lands of Crustle.
I found it hard to believe that would be true, given the hungry sexual appetites of faeries. Then again, I’d heard and read multiple contradictory tales regarding my own kin.
The Lair of Lust was a narrow three-story structure jammed between another apartment building and the long-abandoned florist on the corner. The ornate front doors opened to a high-end bar and lounges. Glass chandeliers were visible through the heart-shaped window.
Light glowed within, illuminating finely dressed patrons seated at the bar and around candle-topped tables. The walls were supposedly spelled to keep the noise from leaking out onto the street and into the neighboring buildings along it.
My escort walked past the front entrance.
Fear was soon replaced with curiosity as I was led down the tight alleyway beside the dark florist and around the corner to a metal flight of stairs. If anything, after another night spent tossing and turning with inescapable images of flesh-eating mist falling from a rippling sky, I could do with the distraction.
We climbed all the way to the third floor, the door opening with a quiet creak. “After you,” the gent murmured, his bushy mustache hiding his lips.
I nodded my gratitude out of habit and waded into a dimly lit hall. Brass lamps lined the bowing walls between a long row of closed plum-colored doors.
“Down the end and to your left. She’s waiting for you.”
I turned back, but found no sign of the monocle wearing fellow, whom I assumed might have been Morin’s husband. The wood floor groaned beneath my slipper-encased feet. The sound of laughter and clinking glasses drifted up the stairwell from the bar below. But other sounds could not be heard. At the end of the hall, I stopped, each breath growing slimmer.
The rooms must have been spelled for privacy, too.
Perhaps a distraction wasn’t what I needed after all. A night of unbroken sleep and a week to make more plans and better sense of all this sounded much better.
“Have you any idea of the time?” came a shrill voice and a cloud of that apricot perfume. “I was beginning to think you might have escaped Darold’s escort.”
“I, uh...” Before I could form proper words, Madam Morin’s hand curled around my wrist and tugged me into a large room. “Wait, I think we should talk about something,” I said, and swallowed as I studied the piles and rows of garments and lace and wigs choking nearly half of the room. “First, I mean.”
Waving my request away, Morin released me. “In case you haven’t noticed, the third floor is predominantly staff quarters. This is where you will arrive and leave. Quickly now”—a wary look was given to the door I’d been dragged through—“there’s no more time for dawdling.” She then hurried me behind a privacy curtain in the corner of the room and thrust the heavy velvet closed. “Your client arrives any moment, and he does not like to be kept waiting.”
A dress flew over the curtain and landed upon my head.
After enduring Rolina for so many years, I was more than skilled at handling those with no patience. Yet alarm speared through me at the mention of he.
Struggling into the filmy mixture of elastane, lace, and organza, I snapped the peach concoction into place over my arms and hips with a wince. “Skies squash me,” I whispered, turning to the side to inspect the skintight bodice in the scratched mirror. “I look like a peacock.”
A volcano of organza and ribbon rose at my waist to then spill beneath my hips. It fell to the floor to barely cover my toes.
The curtain was ripped open.
Morin’s crimson lips pursed as she eyed me. “Hair up,” she said, a finger in the air as she circled me. “Leave a few curls out. He is sure to love the kiss of winter-touched hair over a slim neck such as yours.” Lowering to the floor, she clucked with disapproval as she attempted to pull the skirts down. “No shoes. Too tall as it is.”
Straightening, her shrewd gaze dragged slowly over my physique. Unaccustomed to being so overtly scrutinized, I lifted my chin and curled my fingers into my palms to keep from covering my breasts. Which were at risk of bursting from their lace and satin enclosure, no matter how tightly wrapped. “Just how faerie did you say you are again?”
“I...” I frowned because I hadn’t, while wondering why it would matter. “I don’t know.” I tried not to laugh as I said, “A lot?”
A brow raised, Morin licked her teeth. “Show me those ears.” Lifting my hair, I did as requested, and a smile that appeared more hungry than pleased lit her green eyes. “Whatever you are, dear darling, you’ll certainly pass as full.”
Said ears heated and filled with my racing heartbeat as I attempted to ignore unwanted thoughts of what awaited.
“Come.” Turning, she beckoned for me to follow her back down the hall to a room at the very end near the exit. “Finish preparing in here. Hair, rouge, you know what to do. Hurry.”
The door slammed. Powders plumed from pots upon the once white and now stained furniture surrounding me.
There was only one other creature present. A male who sat at a stretch of mirror-lined tables edging the far wall. He’d paused in applying kohl to his eyes, and met my gaze in the mirror. “Fresh meat?”
I looked at the trays of glitters and powders scattered before him, unsure what to do. “I’m...” I swallowed thickly. “I think I might be sick.”
“Sit down,” he said with a scowl, then returned to lining his bright-emerald eyes. “You’ll ruin our tips with the scent of vomit clinging to us.” He was a faerie, or at least half, judging by the near-point of his ruby-studded ears.
I did as he said, but my hand shook as I reached for the jar of rouge brushes. Instead, I shoved it in my lap and stared at my reflection. My cheeks, high and sharply curved, were drawn, making my soil-dark eyes appear black.
I bit my lips to bring back their color. I could certainly do with the rouge. A ghost. My client was about to meet with a wraith. I was about to meet with a stranger, and I...
I couldn’t move.
Silence permeated like another flesh-eating mist. I twisted my fingers while silently reciting my letters in an effort to quell the unease noosing around my throat.
The male’s rich voice was gentler when he eventually spoke once more. “The first night is always the most daunting, but you never know...” He set the tiny brush back into a vial. “You might enjoy it.”
“Do you?” I asked, unsure why but needing his answer all the same.
He laughed, a buttery sound that both jarred and soothed. “Darling, do I look like I hate it? It’s the best job I’ve ever had, and believe me,” he huffed, “I’ve had many in my hundred years of existence.”
At that, I turned on the cushioned stool to better look at him. He appeared not a drop older than twenty-five years. Though that was no surprise. Even half-fae could live a few hundred years before signs of aging slowly took hold.
The male twisted on his stool, too. His thigh-high leather boots creaked when he reached down to his feet.
His focus sharpened on my face as he paused in tying the maze of laces. “Who in the skies are you, innocent one?” He sniffed. His neck rolled as he straightened, gaze brightening. “Such dark eyes for such a seemingly pure soul.”
I refrained from saying I wasn’t pure. I couldn’t be when I was more grateful than distraught over Rolina’s demise.
The door burst open.
Morin cursed viciously. “You haven’t done your hair.” I watched her scowl in the mirror. “Or so much as touched your face.” She looked over her shoulder into the hall, her complexion paling when she stared back at me and chewed her red-painted lip. She sighed. “Never mind. We’ve no time. Come.”
I offered a slight smile to the male who was now smirking at me and rose on weak legs.
As I entered the hall, the fear I could scent dampening the air grew stronger. Strong enough to realize it was not merely emanating from me but from the stiff-backed madam I trailed.
“Room twelve.” Halfway down the hall, she stopped and turned to me. Her apple-green eyes were glossy. “Whatever you do, do not displease him.” With that, she gestured to the slim stairwell beside her.
“But...” I frowned, thinking she would surely tell me more. “I don’t know anything. I don’t know what I’m expected to do or if—”
