Page 5 of Ogres Don't Play

“Don’t tell me, and I won’t have to lie.” He handed me a handkerchief. “You’ll probably want to purchase a change of clothing. You look like a building fell on you.” His eyes twinkled and then he stood, brushed off his spotless pants and meandered back towards the music hall like he’d never had a guilty conscience in his life.

I wiped my face on Tiago’s handkerchief and noticed the amount of pale dust that came off. I definitely needed a bath and something to wear that would blend in with the usual citizens of Singsong City better than my now ripped, formerly black frock-coat.

The music hall owned several places in the city to house musicians, and the apartment in the Lydian hadn’t been occupied for some time since Libby married her vampire. I’d stay there, just across the hall from Libby’s two-world suite and if things turned worst-case scenario… No, if my dad came for me, I wouldn’t ask for help, because whoever helped me would be ashes. Richard would be the one who killed everyone. My brother was the lionest lion of them all. He had no compunctionagainst ending a life. He believed in the continuation of the soul, that once a body was put to rest, the spirit could be at peace. I believed that, except that when I was the one sending thousands of souls to their rest, I couldn’t quite commit. Nope. I’d almost single-handedly destroyed my own division thanks to my hesitation. Hope would kill me if she saw me again, whether she thought I’d be at rest afterwards or not.

It was getting late as I walked towards the second-hand clothing store where the shop owner had an ever evolving stripes fetish. This month it was black and white, which went with her makeup and wardrobe and the black-and-white-striped suit that was next-level.

“Hey, Stripes,” I said, walking in and browsing the first rack by the door.

“That’s not my name, just my art. Also, no animals allowed. The last time you came in with your bird, you torched an original Dior.”

I snuggled Yaga, who gave Stripes a cold chicken-glare for not appreciating her magnificence. “I’m supposed to take the blame for the werewolf who decided it wanted to chase my beautiful magical beast? Fine. I’ll take my business to Oscar. I need a few outfits, something comfortable, spelled for defense, cheap, and machine washable. Have you considered coming down to the music hall to take part in the beautiful work that we do to serve our community?”

She snorted and came around the counter with narrowed eyes. “I serve the community just fine, giving Oscar’s Emporium some healthy competition. What are your priorities? You can’t have all of those things, particularly spelled for defense and also cheap. Also, do you know how hard it is to spell things that are machine washable?”

I blinked at her while I considered her coloring, her bright eyes and pointed features. Did she do her own spellwork on herclothing? She must have some strains of witch blood mixed with her humanity. “I can honestly say, no.”

She frowned as she circled me slowly. “I have a floral silk robe that is beautifully spelled and will be hard for traffic to miss, so you could consider that as part of the defense spell that you don’t even have to pay extra for.” She gave me a closed-mouth smile that managed to be diabolical and demure at the same time. Maybe she had some fairy blood in her, too.

“So it’s hideous? Figures.”

“But it’s comfortable and well-spelled. Although not machine washable, you can spell it clean, no problem, using your music magic. And for today it’s on sale, along with the rest of the floral department. We could do a whole floral theme for you. Think what a statement that would make.” Her eyes sparkled with her machinations. Definitely fairy blood.

“That I shop sales and have no sense of professionalism,” I muttered as I sat down on the bench against the wall under a billowing veil attached to a white wedding dress that would fit a giant or an ogre. Ogres. I sighed heavily as I remembered that massive chest that had been covering me for hours. I was too tired to fight the inevitable with my limited funds. I’d get back to my own place and my own clothes soon enough, but today Stripes would win the battle. Also, I secretly had a thing for florals, but I’d never tell a soul. “Do your worst.”

“Seriously? You’ll let me florify you?” She giggled and then went to work, running up and down the aisles with her arms outstretched like a mighty striped bat taking down her prey. I appreciated her enthusiasm. Someone should have enthusiasm. For me, the weight of the world was crushing me even if I wasn’t still literally buried alive.

Chapter

Three

Ifelt better after I woke up the next afternoon, having slept like the dead from the moment I’d crashed after my long, delicious bath. I’d also napped a bit in the tub, but that’s what happened when a building fell on top of you.

After I finally dressed, I looked like a fairy garden threw up on me. I hadn’t noticed the sparkles on the slim floral pants while I was in the shop. Oh well. They went with the sparkly slippers with embroidered flowers all over them. They weren’t cozy slippers. Nope. They were pointed and had a small heel, but weren’t terribly uncomfortable. I could wear my boots, but they weren’t spelled to keep me out of harm’s way, so I wore the fairy slippers along with the rest of the garish costume. Oh well. No one would recognize me in these clothes, particularly once I put on the wide-brimmed hat with flowers poking up all over the brim. They swayed as I walked, carrying Yaga in my arms as the final accessory of my outfit. No, that was the broken harp I still had slung over my back.

The new sushi place was in a part of Song I didn’t usually visit, not that I really had time to hang out in Song even if I had the motivation. I felt better, more hopeful after my rest, and I was humming under my breath as I took the stairs from theapartment through the Lydian, and down into the bowels of the earth where it became a different building filled with infernal creatures. I didn’t see anyone on the stairs, like monsters preferred elevators.

“Where’s a pretty little girl like you going all by yourself?” A monster growled as he came into sight as I neared the bottom floor. He was half-shifted, so his ears and fur let me know exactly what I was dealing with.

I smiled brightly. Werewolves were the backbone of the musician’s group I was slowly gathering from Song. “Your voice is splendid! In the lower ranges? How high can you sing?”

He gave me a double-take and pressed himself to the wall as he came towards me, obvious fear in his eyes. “You don’t look like the new music master.” He sniffed and then flinched. “You are the new music master. Look, I don’t want any trouble. I’m just here to visit my niece. Neither of us have good voices.” He spoke with a gurgle, like he was intentionally trying to distort his tone.

I sighed heavily but still passed him my card as he tried to slip by. “If you should change your mind, or if your conscience presses upon you along with the weight of Sing above us, always threatening to fall into Song and crush everything unless we uphold the city with the power and magic of song, give me a call.”

He took the card then, once he was safely past me, sprinted up the stairs like a monster was after him. I was smiling rather cheerfully after that. Nothing felt better than putting the fear of musical responsibility into a werewolf.

The streets weren’t terribly busy, but shops were starting to open for the night shift, the time when Singsong’s undercity really came to life. Ha. As if you could call the shuffling undead alive.

As I walked towards the new sushi place, I checked my phone for directions. It should be directly past this block. A building with enormous lion sculptures guarding the steps, made out of beige limestone, stretched up to the cavern’s roof on my right, and on my left was a garden with a distant castle poking up behind trees. The distance to the castle wasn’t possible since you could see above the garden another building through the block that should have come down much closer than the other side of the castle. It was a pocket of extra space tucked into Song. Was it legal to put something like that in the undercity? It couldn’t be structurally sound. I had no idea about licensing, but the magical garden and distant castle were very pretty. Several pixies and vampires walking towards me then turned through the gate, arrows pointing to ‘Wonderland.’

Ah, Wonderland. That’s right, one of the werewolves in my singing group had said something about losing his shirt in Wonderland, which was apparently a casino where you went because you wanted to lose your shirt. I looked down at my floral robe and underneath to the tight tank top with a flower-shaped cut-outs along the hem which was a few inches above the line of my floral pants. They probably wouldn’t take my shirt or my robe. So why did that make me happy? It did. I felt happier than I had in a long time, maybe because my dreams had been filled with ogres rescuing me even though I absolutely did not need anyone to rescue me, particularly an ogre. Except that without that monster, I’d be dead. He’d saved me for no reason that I could tell, simply because he’d wanted to.

There was good in the world, and that meant that there was hope. If an ogre could do good, then surely there was a reason to smile. The lamps down here were tuned and sang beautifully for me, like they recognized me as a friend, and I sang back, not loud enough for anyone to notice, but greeting them like old friends.Had I tuned this part of town or had Libby? Either way, it was lovely.

When I got to the corner past Wonderland, the street to my left was filled with pawnshops and a place advertising rooms by the hour. A brothel? Shudder. My brother used to go to a brothel frequented by vampires and poison them with his angel blood. It was the weirdest thing to think that he’d willingly let an infernal creature chew on his skin, but he said it was quite enjoyable, relaxing, like getting a back massage or getting drunk. He couldn’t get drunk, not really, and a massage with his huge angel wings would be terribly awkward, so I wasn’t sure how he knew that they were similar. Anyway, my father had been quite displeased at my brother openly going to brothels to get blood-sucked, but since it wasn’t immoral, he couldn’t stop him. Eventually, he was banned by the brothel owners themselves, because sick vampires were bad for business, I guess. Angel blood was addictive and practically irresistible, but someone had resisted and Richard had spent weeks afterwards playing music with me until he found a new hobby in the weapons forge.

My interests never changed. And here I was in Singsong City, the most musically magical city in the world, slowly bringing the music back to life. How could I help being happy? I stepped off the curb, hurrying across the street before the spider-looking vehicle got to me. You know, legs instead of wheels, and some top-hatted infidel riding on top of the mechanical and magical creature. I’d seen those kinds of things on battlefields. It was ludicrous to see an enormous spider mech being ridden down a mostly civilized street. I stood on the curb watching him ride by, staring too openly because he noticed and raised his hat.

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