Page 52 of Midnight in the Garden of Okay and Meh
“Was your esprit. I’m divorcing you because you are not boyfriend material,” the almost-sprite snapped back.
“I never told you that I was,” he argued. “I explained to you when you signed on to power my élan vital that I wasn’t a one-woman sort of man. I never have been, and I never will be.”
A snorting sound came from the corner of the antechamber.
Hunter glanced toward Mabel. “Pardon?”
“Nothing,” she said without looking up from where she was continuing to tap on her phone. “I just snorted derisively.”
“And you are ... ?” he asked, his arms crossed as he glared at her.
“Not really any of your business,” she said, pursing her lips as she continued to type on the phone. “Not unless you are ready to go to the afterlife.”
“You must be the reaper,” he said, his gaze lingering on her.
“Are we ready?” Sally asked, dumping the contents of Jim’s backpack on the ground. “I hope this is going to be enough mini-breathers. The shop where I get them is now sold out. Also, I had to guess on wet suit sizes, so no complaints if they don’t fit well.”
The next few minutes were spent in everyone stripping down to don the wet suits, although both the Dark One and the dragon hunter protested that they needed no such thing.
“You say that now, but when your toes drop off, you’re gonna be sorry,” Jim told them.
“The area where the prisoner is being held is icy to the point of disabling,” I said, and adjusted my sword so I could reach it easier.
“Shall we?” Hunter asked the sprite.
“OK, but this is the last time. You’re just going to have to convince another esprit to take over, because Sasha says I can work for her for a bit while I decide what I want to do.”
He bowed and held out his sword—two-handed, and beautifully scribed and gemmed—and she shrank down into a ball of brilliant yellow light that bobbed down the length of the sword before it settled into an empty socket at the cross guard.
I led the way, and although obviously no one could speak while we were underwater, I felt the shock and surprise in the two men as we swam deeper and deeper, weaving our way through the bodies that lunged and grabbed at us.
By the time the cold started to creep around us, warning we were near the prisoner Desislav’s confinement location, the booming of the ancient siren could be heard. I kicked forward, spotting the chain ... but no body was attached to it.
Jim flailed for a moment in an obvious attempt to express its disbelief in what it was seeing. I knew just how it felt. Despite the cold that started to freeze the blood in my veins, I dove deeper until I could touch one of the empty shackles that rested on the floor of the lake.
Pain seared through my hand, causing me to jerk back. I felt a disturbance behind me, and spun as quickly as I could to see a handful of boggarts attacking both Hunter and Finch.
By the time I had my sword out and swam up to dispatch as many boggarts as I could, the men had the five boggarts floating off without their heads, the nasty blackish-green blood snaking toward us in insidious tendrils. I pointed upward and the men nodded. We swam up and, with slowed movements, dragged our frozen selves out of the water.
“That’s ... holy shit, that was cold,” Hunter said, his pale green eyes looking stark. “I see why you recommended the wet suits. But ... where was this demigod?”
“Gone,” I said, sitting down on a step, waiting for my body to stop freezing and start to run as normal. “I don’t know how, but I suspect with how twisted the second manacle was, the curses woven into it depended on both pieces binding him.”
“Desi isn’t there?” Sally leaped back when Jim shook itself in a manner that sprayed her with water, and looked momentarily horrified before her expression smoothed out to one of mild interest. “He couldn’t have escaped the Hour, though. Not on his own. Someone would have told me if he—”
An alarm on her phone remarkably like the one that still echoed in the chamber sounded, and she glanced at it before smiling broadly. “Well, how do you like that? Evidently, Desi has broken free of his bindings and is loose in the Hour. Hashmallim and more boggarts have been dispatched to find him.”
“That’s just wrong,” I said, feeling more myself now that my hand had stopped burning where it had touched the shackle. I couldn’t imagine what it had been like to have that clapped to my wrist for more than a thousand years. No wonder the poor man looked so tormented. I had a strong urge to take him into my arms and soothe him like I would an injured animal, but shook that impulse away as foolishness brought on by the circumstances. “No one deserves that sort of punishment.”
The sound of running feet on the stone stairs leading to the lake filled our room, and it was with an audible groan that Hunter rose from where he’d collapsed on the floor. “Why do attackers never give you the chance to catch your breath before they strike again?”
Despite his complaint, I approved of the stance he took at one side of the stairs, while the Dark One did likewise. I noted he had picked up one of the morning stars previously wielded by a boggart, and was pleased when he moved into place opposite Hunter.
I hefted my own sword and bowed my head in prayer to the mother sun and father moon, asking them for the strength I needed in order to defeat my foes.
They boiled down the stairs in a mass of green, black, and gray bodies, the shadows of their misshapen forms oddly disconcerting as they flickered on the walls.
“Take off their heads,” Finch yelled as he swung first his sword, then the morning star, handily taking down two of the lead boggarts, while Hunter’s sword flashed in the light of the lanterns, the runes on it glowing with a brilliant gold light. “They’re hardier than you think if you don’t take their heads.”
