Page 101 of The Deer and the Dragon
Without fighting the logic, I exhaled and shook my head. “The residents—the humans, that is—they can’t be ignorant to this shape. It’s enormous. It’s unmissable. And even if it just looks peculiar from the ground-level, it’d be ignorant to assume none of them had seen it from the air. What story have they been told?”
I looked up into the rearview mirror in time to see Az’s eyes darken.
Apparently, I’d brought up an excellent point.
We didn’t have time to discuss the answer before Caliban gestured toward the sort of driveway that could have existed in a horror movie about a haunted asylum. Except…it wasn’t. While the gate was wrought-iron and protected by gargoyles, and though the ostentatious fountains, exorbitant stonework, and manicured lawn hearkened back to old money, the building was entirely modern. Sterile, even.
I was suddenly aware not just of how cheap the car looked but of how poor I looked.
I’d grown up in poverty. I was used to the looks, the sneers, the sniffs as someone told me with their eyes that I wasn’t worthy to breathe their air. I’d left that life behind the moment I’d met Taylor and sworn never to return. I should have been pulling up in my Mercedes while wearing clean, bespoke lines. I wished Ianna had dressed me for this place. Instead, I was still in a thin tee, leggings, and the button-up of a filthy motel clerk. His compact car was the icing on the cake. It was the trailer park all over again.
We idled three rows from the entrance and eyed the building.
Wild Prairie Rose: A Venus Clinic.
“It’s a hospital?” I asked breathlessly as I stared at thebuilding. It had to be ten stories high and made of steel and glass. It angled out with sharp, modern architecture. Even from the parking lot, I could see the elaborate art within the lobby—the only floor that had not been mirrored for privacy. It wanted to be seen.
“It’s a private fertility clinic,” Caliban said quietly. “One of the most exclusive in the country.”
Venus. I pictured a naked woman, covered only by her impossibly long hair, standing in a clam shell while angels and humans alike tended to her. The second pantheon novel,Kingdoms of Salt and Sand,had been a conflation of Greek and Roman mythology. Venus was the goddess of love, beauty, desire, and, of course, fertility.
The breath left me as I remembered Dagon’s words. I repeated them quietly. “Astarte. She is called the one who conceives but does not bear.”
Caliban nodded gravely. “She’s a fertility goddess.”
My heart was doing odd things in my chest as I looked into the rearview mirror to see Azrames’s pained expression. The Phoenician had an element of violence that her Roman counterpart did not. I looked to my companion for confirmation. “Sex, love, and war, right?”
Caliban squeezed my hand. “I don’t know if I can let you go in there.”
I stared back into his silver eyes as I remembered the uncomfortable way the fish god had eyed me as he’d told me I was just her type. “Her priestesses were prostitutes,” I said, hating the way the word felt on my tongue. We’d barely begun to call it sex work in the modern era. She wouldn’t see it any other way.
I threw the car into reverse and left the grounds faster than either of the men could blink. I gritted my teeth as I pushed my foot to the accelerator.
“Love—”
“Mar—”
“If I’m just her type? Then it’s time to live up to the role.”
I’d spun out of the clinic and torn through the town, Monaco Grand Prix style.
I scrubbed from head to toe in cheap hotel soap, then wrapped myself in a towel, hair still dripping as I used the room’s phone.
“Hi, Venus Clinic? Yes, my name is Merit Finnegan. Mhmm. Yes! I’m glad you love the series. Oh, yes, it’s always so fun to meet a fan. Mhmm. I’ve just popped into town and would love to be seen. No, it has to be today. Yes, I understand she’s very busy. Would you be a doll and give her my name? Tell her who I am and then see if she still needs me to make an appointment.”
I stepped back into my filthy clothes and raked my hair out with my fingers, leaving the phone wedged between my ear and shoulder. Classical music scored my short wait until the receptionist was back on the line.
I used Merit’s clout and Maribelle’s authority as I said, “Oh, how kind of her to extend office hours. I’ll be there at five on the dot. Yes, yes. That’s right, South American lore. Oh, thank them for me! That’s so sweet. Mhmm. Yes, yes. All right. I’ll see you at five.”
My escorts asked no questions as I led the charge. The men talked quietly to each other—whispered battle plans on angels and Phoenicians and fertility—but seemed most interested in what I was doing as I marched them from the motel and back to our car, eyes set in determination. We were at the precipice of something terrible, and here I was, leading the charges. They kept curiously quiet as I navigated through the town.
I parked and walked past three shops until selecting one that looked precisely pretentious enough to be monochromatic and overpriced.
The saleswoman may have narrowed her eyes at me when I’d entered the store, but it took one moment of my posture and bored superiority complex for her face to flashwith attentiveness. I was a veteran to the game. Excuses were weakness. If I wanted to enter her establishment with wet hair and my tits out, that was her problem. I put her in her place with a look that could drop the temperature in any room. I flicked out my card, holding it nonchalantly between two fingers.
“I need two changes of outfits, a bag, and black heels.”
“Price range—”
