Page 63 of The Deer and the Dragon
I scrambled for an answer that would put this conversation to a stop and allow us a speedy exit. I shot a quick glance at Silas and caught his appraising, narrowed eyes before deciding it was a very, very bad idea to disclose that we were here for my great-grandma’s broach. My mother clearly didn’t know what the trinket was worth, but I wasn’t willing to bet our escape on Silas’s ignorance. He was sharp. And apparently the angel knew the one tool to wield against me that could genuinely hurt me: my mother.
At a loss for excuses, all I could say was, “She’s my friend.”
“She is not of this world,” my mother retorted. “If you truly had my gift, then you’d have the discernment to realize what you’ve done, Marlow. An angel of the Lord was sentto me to tell me about the spirits you’ve let into your life. I should have known when you began whoring—”
“Hey—” Fauna cut in, bristling at the word. She took a half-step as if to put herself between her mother and me.
“It’s okay.” I waved, urging her to stand down. My mother and I had had this fight on the last night I ever saw them.
It had been early June in my twenty-second year of life. I’d returned from Colombia with six thousand dollars in cash, and that had only been what I hadn’t been able to wire directly into my account. Taylor had been right. Between Buenos Aires and Montevideo, there had been more than enough opportunities for a girl to get ahead. Once my visa expired and I gave up my life in Colombia, I’d needed a place to bridge the gap between my transition back into North America.
My mom had cried when she’d hugged me at the airport—the Prodigal Daughter returned, she’d said. I was finally home to live a good life, to turn away from sin and distractions and worldliness. I didn’t have the heart to correct her.
In a fog of jet lag and reverse culture shock, I’d needed somewhere to crash while setting up the next phase of my life. They’d left my bedroom more or less untouched, save for the closet space that my parents had used to stash things that were better off out of sight and out of mind. I stayed at the time capsule in the woods for the better part of a week while scouring the web for my own place in the city. While I was on a weekend excursion apartment hunting, my mother had taken it upon herself to snoop through my things. She’d made no excuses for what had prompted her to go through my belongings—she never needed to. She was the parent, and I was the child, after all. She hadn’t been looking for anything in particular aside from a satiated curiosity when she’d found the money in the lining of my suitcase.
I vividly recalled the cloud of dread and adrenaline that had descended on me when stepping back into the house. My smile had faltered the moment I saw her sitting at thekitchen table, cash neatly displayed in front of her next to an open, glowing laptop.
She’d suspected drug trafficking, which, in hindsight, she might have preferred. Of course, she hadn’t stopped at finding the money. The moment she’d uncovered her treasure, she did what any good mother would do and immediately went through every means necessary to further violate my privacy. She’d managed to guess my security questions to get into my email and read exchanges between myself and my clients—both those over the past with whom I’d met up in my final weeks in Colombia and the clients I’d already arranged for the city. While helping herself to my computer, she’d googled an array of terms based on the acronyms in the threads, likeFSSWfor full-service sex work,GFEfor girlfriend experience, and had gone down a rabbit hole on findom. She had a few pictures of me, naked, face obscured, from my client thread open on the screen when I walked in.
I met the disgust in her eyes with speechlessness.
“I don’t even know who you are anymore,” she’d whispered.
It had been the Pandora’s box of fights.
We’d said every cruel, hateful thing we could conjure. We’d launched missiles at one another, bloodying the other with our words until we were little more than shreds. My dad had arrived at the house just to hear the tail end of the screaming, including me shouting just how much money I’d made in the past three months alone and how I was happier, freer, kinder, and better off as a sex worker than I’d ever been in the church or as their daughter.
She’d told me they had no daughter, and that she’d miss me when they were in heaven, knowing I’d be rotting in hell.
It was a fight I’d relived on therapists’ couches through boxes of tissues. It was a fight I’d used bottles of prescription medications to get through whenever panic attacks over my mortal soul strangled me. It was a fight that had forced me further and further from Caliban, demanding that I put upwalls, that I choose sanity, that I close myself off from the irrational hold on the fiction that my mother led.
And now…now the words tickled me as I thought of my Prince.
“I know all about your angel of the Lord,” I said, glaring at Silas, “and he’s a dick with an agenda.”
She turned and looked at Silas—actuallylookedat him.
Fauna and I gasped simultaneously. Despite our years of conversations on seeing angels and demons, despite knowing that her fae blood was thicker than mine, despite everything I’d learned, witnessing my mother make eye contact with an angel was staggering.
“He told me what you are,” she said. The tremble of her fury had passed. She spoke to Fauna now with frosty strength.
“Nice one, Silas.” Fauna glared. Then back to my mother, she asked dryly, “Did he also tell you whatyouare? Though, to be fair, I think I speak for the Nordes when I tell you: we don’t want you.”
“And he told me who you’ve sold your soul to.” She looked at me, ignoring Fauna’s goad. “Do you think I haven’t spent every day praying for your soul? Do you think I haven’t spent every night on my knees petitioning God’s angels to get you back? Do you think I want my daughter to spend eternity in the inferno? I love you, Marlow.”
Love.I nearly laughed at the word.
“I told you.” Silas spoke for the first time. His voice was quiet but firm beside her as he looked directly at Fauna. “We have a claim to her.”
“Silas, you’re a goddamn cocksucker,” Fauna grumbled. “And you can shove that claim up your master’s ass next time you’re kissing it. We’re done here.”
She grabbed my arm and yanked me toward the door. I winced as if preparing to plunge beneath icy waters as we closed the space between my mother and me. Fauna pushed past the woman and yelped when a small, electric shock stopped her. The jolt was enough to send her stumbling back,eyes wide.
My mom backed away, not daring to touch the demon and the whore as she watched Fauna grab for the handle once more.
She reached out her hand and tried again, cursing as the shock assaulted her. She lifted her eyes to where, just above the door, a protective ward had been hung—not to keep out but to keep in. She took several steps backward into the living room, panic rising as she scanned for an exit.
“I can’t get you out of here,” Fauna said, truly looking like a frightened deer in a glen as her wide eyes searched me. “I can’t get you out,” she repeated, taking another panicked step back.
