Page 47 of Midnight in the Garden of Okay and Meh
She narrowed her eyes at me. “Have you thought of a form a little more useful?”
“Like anything could beat this one?” I asked, and gave another shake that had her sputtering rude things in French, but I paid her no mind as I followed Parisi back into the unpleasant lake.
This time, Parisi held out one of the lanterns she’d snagged on her way back into the water, and swam down with it held out in front of her like a beacon.
It revealed row upon row of bodies, long chains from their hands descending into the depths. I have to admit, for a few seconds, I was doubting the wisdom of trying to find my dad, but before I could figure out how to convey that to Parisi, she swam onward, her sword held in one hand, and the lantern in the other.
I figure it had to be about at the end of our ten minutes of air when we hit a part of the lake that was cold. Like, intensely cold. The sort of cold that even the thickest of Newfie coats won’t keep out. Parisi gestured, and dove even deeper until we could see a metal grid on the lake bottom, from which all the sinners’ chains ascended.
A black shape loomed before us. Parisi hesitated for a moment, turning her head to look at me. I didn’t know what she wanted, so I just nodded and hoped that if something really bad was in what looked a whole lot like a black shroud, I’d have enough time to get my replacement form just right.
And then she reached out, tearing the fabric off the body that hung there so silent, encased in cold that I could start to feel freeze my body.
The body twisted around to face us. I couldn’t see much other than he had long black hair, dark eyes, and an expression that made my stomach want to flip-flop. He stared at Parisi for a moment, then arched back, his legs kicking out while he tried to use his shackled hands to grab her. She jerked back out of his reach, dropping the lantern in the process. It settled to the ground beneath us.
I noticed that the mini oxygen tank was starting to frost. My body was definitely freezing, my heart rate slowing down to the point where it was hard to see or even think.
And that’s when I saw the shadow emerge from the right. One minute we were a few yards away from the man in the black shroud, who continued to struggle and thrash, his face contorted, and the next, three boggarts were on us, one of them stabbing at my side with a nasty dagger.
I don’t know how Parisi fights on land, but submerged in a lake filled with 1,300 sinners, she was the best I’d ever seen.
The second the dagger stabbed into my side, Parisi was there, kicking at the boggart before doing a very slow twirl to swing her sword at the two who were closing in on her from behind.
Green leaked out of their headless bodies, the surprised expressions on their faces enough to distract me from the fact that I could no longer feel my legs.
The third boggart took one look at Parisi and swam off. Without looking at me, she grabbed my collar and started to haul me upward.
Halfway up, the oxygen ran out.
We surfaced to a dull throbbing sound that seemed to echo through the stone itself.
Sally was pacing the shore, her hands gesticulating when she saw us. “There you are! What have you been doing down there to set off alarms?”
“Boggarts,” I gasped when Parisi more or less dragged me out of the water. My legs felt completely numb, and I was having a hard time getting my lungs to take in oxygen. “Three of them guarding the dead guys, including the one who I think is my dad. Parisi killed them. I think I have frostbite on at least half of my body. Man, if I lose another toe, I’m going to be so mad. I’m missing two as it is. Minus three is just not a look I want Cecile to see.”
“We have to leave now,” Sally said, and for once, the look of amusement that usually lurks in her eyes was gone. She packed everything into my backpack, and Mabel was waiting impatiently at the entrance to the stairs up.
“But we didn’t get my dad,” I said when Sally tried to lift me to my feet. My legs felt like rubber and didn’t want to hold my otherwise magnificent form. “He’s still down there, seriously pissed.”
“We don’t have time for this,” Sally said, and with a couple of words sent me spinning into the Akasha. The regular part of it.
I looked around at a startled troll who held a yoga mat and a large water bottle, clearly about to pass by the location where Sally had flung me.
“I really hate it when people treat me like a demon,” I told the troll.
“Dude,” he said in a surfer drawl, then proceeded past me.
It took a half hour before I felt my toes again, and a few minutes after that, a familiar sense of being pulled started down my back. I sat down, letting the feeling consume me.
“Jim! Are you all right? Parisi said you were freezing, and had lost some toes. Here, I have an electric blanket for you. Just sit there and let me cover you in it.” My vision cleared and Aisling loomed into view, her face twisted with worry.
“I’m OK now,” I said, rubbing my head on her leg as she knelt next to me, because even a demon lord needs to know you love them. “Parisi saved me, although I had no idea that Sally could banish me to the Akasha. I thought only you or a duly authorized representative of you could do that.”
“I have depths,” came a Southern drawl from behind me. I gave a little shiver of pleasure when the heat of the blanket soaked into my still damp coat. “Or so my current partner says. Romantic partner, not Terrin, although, come to think of it, he’s made references to my naughty side more than once. But there we are.”
Sally was seated on the couch in Ash and Drake’s living room. Mabel was gone, but Parisi was curled up in a chair with another blanket around her. But it was her expression that had me getting to my feet and going over to nose her hand. “Hey,” I said.
“I knew him.” Her face was a mask of confusion, her eyes dark with pain. “I knew him, and yet, I didn’t. That was him, yes? The one you want freed? He was in such torment.”
