Page 42 of A Shade of Myself
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The small ferrybumped to a stop against the dock, and I grabbed the token, running my finger over the ouroboros, the smooth disc warm to the touch. I pushed my unease over Poe aside, a different anxiety taking over when the small gate swung open on its own.
I nervously stepped on board, the token held aloft. “Hello? Is there a ferryman I’m supposed to pay? Or ferrywoman?”
No one appeared.
“Ferry nonbinary individual?” I babbled. “I’m happy with whomever, I just want someone or something to accept payment from me because I really need to get to my destination.”
The gate clanged shut behind me and I jumped.
“Is that a thumbs-up that we’re good to go or am I stuck here like when bus drivers take a coffee break? Because if it’s the second, there’s a kid’s life at stake, so maybe they could get their beverage to go?” I sat down on the plastic bench running the circumference of the ferry, with enough room to seat perhaps two dozen people. The windows were nothing more than glassless square holes, the roof a hard canopy.
In the middle of the ferry there was a post with a large captain’s wheel attached. It turned itself to the left, and with another bump against the pier, the ferry pulled away.
The boat was silent, the ride glass-smooth despite the speed.
I sighed, relieved to be back on the demon’s trail, but with time to kill during the crossing to the rock, my thoughts wandered back to the game. It wasn’t productive to speculate on Poe’s motives, especially when I had to be in top form for whatever lay at the end of this journey.
Facts, then.
The one concrete detail from this round of blackjack was that of a new player. But on which of the many gameboards I played?
Ironic that for a person who prided herself on her love of facts and trivia, I’d found myself in a world constantly scrambling for the merest crumb. Everyone hoarded information: Poe, Tatiana, the Wise Brothers, even Laurent played things close to his chest at times.
Facts—truth—were hard won in the magical community. I guess that wasn’t so different from the Sapien world, where murders went unsolved and money buried all manner of truths, but there were still processes in place there, admittedly flawed, to seek justice and get answers.
Everything in the magical community was games and secrets and tricks, even for the simplest of matters. I laughed bitterly. Who was I kidding? Nothing in this world was simple.
Take this mission. My straightforward attempt to find a demon who could read a magic signature on Giselle’s necklace had landed me on a ghost ship about to sneak onto a mysterious rock and rescue a child.
I held my hair, whipping around in the breeze, out of my face. “Hey, Ferry, are you going to wait for me because I’ll need a ride back? Tell me children ride free.”
Come to think of it, Poe had said only that I’d be able to cross. Not cross back.
A hot, tight sensation sparked in my belly, sweeping through me like lit rocket fuel left unchecked. It blazed and incinerated, feeding off my fury at everyone seeking to dupe me. At myself for being duped.
“Listen up,” I said peevishly. “I am a woman with zero patience, zero tolerance for bullshit, and zero hesitation to bust you into splinters with my scythe. So, give me some assurance that I’ll get passage back this instant.”
I tried to summon my weapon to underline my threat, but as I was alone with no demons, vamps, or dybbuks on board, I failed. Anxious about what lay ahead and how I’d return to reality with a young boy’s life at stake, I hung out at the prow, watching the rock loom closer.
It wasn’t much larger than the real one back in Stanley Park, and I didn’t spy any signs of life, like demon hoards armed with quivers of burning pitch. I tapped the token against the window frame. Poe was many things, but I trusted their word that the demon was there somewhere. Hopefully Goth Girl didn’t have a nest in the trees up on top because my rock-climbing abilities made my trail-hiking skills seem positively Olympian.
Every so often, that huge tail slipped out of the water, keeping pace and close enough to be freaky but not near enough to afford me a view of what the rest of the creature looked like.
I gripped the window frame, leaning forward as if that could make the ferry go faster.
We finally made it to the rock, part of its face sliding away to allow the boat to glide inside. I drew my magic cloaking over me, my eyes needing a moment to adjust to the dimmer light inside the rock.
The stone wall closed, trapping me wherever I was, and, summoning up my courage, I scrambled over the gate and dropped onto the metal dock.
The air was a lot cooler in here, permeated with the strong odors of salt water and fish. Patches of lacy lichen fanned out over damp stone walls.
A steeply curved metal staircase with rubber grips on the treads and railing led from the dock down through a hewn-out space to a narrow high corridor lit by two strips of buzzing bulbs.
I stuck to the shadows as much as possible, skirting the pools of light, super paranoid, even with my invisibility mesh. The first door I came to was open. A man and a woman sat with their backs to me monitoring a wall of screens playing different CCTV footage. There were schoolyards and playgrounds, dark alleys and nightclubs, thousands of different places all teeming with life.
Every so often one of the pair would hit a button to freeze one of the screens and type something into their laptop. Was this an evil Batcave where demons monitored humans, seeking the weak to prey upon?
