“If you’d just sent a total stranger into the sewers to find your missing sister, would you run off before she came back with news?”
“No,” he admitted. “But I also wouldn’t send a stranger into the sewers to find my sister alone.”
“Do you even have a sister?” I knocked on the window next to the door, peering into the gloom. I didn’t see any movement. That didn’t necessarily mean anything. “You know way too much about my family, and I don’t know anything at all about yours.”
“No. No siblings. No family of any kind.” He continued watching the storefront, expression not changing. “I was an only child.”
“That must have been nice. Nobody stealing your stuff while you slept, or setting snares on your bedroom floor, or digging pit traps in the front yard.”
“Your siblings did all that?”
“My sister is special.” That was putting things as mildly—and nicely—as possible. I knocked again, squinting into the dark. “I really thought they’d be here.”
“Perhaps you could leave them a note?” I gave him a sharp look. Dominic winced. “Perhaps not. I’m really not sure of the etiquette here.”
“Do you know what the etiquette would be if they were human?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Well, assume that when Ms. Manners says ‘human,’ she really means ‘sentient,’ and run from there. It translates pretty well to everything but dining, dating, and divorce.”
Dominic eyed me oddly. “Divorce?”
“Oh, yeah. Like when nue split up, the male generally gets sacrificed by the female and fed to the relatives to avoid creating bad blood between the two sides of the family.” I shrugged. “People are weird.”
“It will never cease to amaze me that you say these things in places where anyone could overhear you. What’s to stop the populace from decrying you as a witch and rising against you?”
“I don’t know. A couple hundred years of social evolution, combined with a general failure to believe in anything that doesn’t have a Wikipedia entry? Except most cryptids have Wikipedia entries these days, so that’s maybe not such a good measuring stick. You know, most of the edits on the Sasquatch entry are actually made
“That’s something else that will never cease to amaze me. Your wealth of useless knowledge.”
“Everybody needs a hobby.” I knocked a third time. “I’m getting a little worried. The snake cult’s only been taking girls before this, but if the dragon isn’t waking up, they may have decided to mix it up a little. See if maybe the problem is that they’re offering him the wrong kind of snack food.”
“Should we break in?”
“Maybe.” Something finally moved in the darkened shop. I exhaled. “Okay, good, maybe not. Please be nice to them, okay?”
“I shall do my best.”
Footsteps became audible as Rochak approached, undoing the deadbolt before opening the door. He looked worse than I felt. “You came back.” It was almost an accusation.
“I told you I would.” I gestured to Dominic. “This is Dominic De Luca. He was with me when I met your sister.” I didn’t offer Rochak’s name. If he wanted to identify himself to a member of the Covenant, that was his choice, not mine.
At the moment, he didn’t seem to be leaning in that particular direction. He stared at me like I’d just announced that I was standing on his doorstep with Jack the Ripper in tow, and demanded, in a low hiss, “And you brought him
“If I may,” interjected Dominic, “I already know the location of your business, having been here once before, and I accompanied Miss Price with no intention of either harming you or notifying my associates of your presence. You have my word that I intend you no harm.”
“See? He comes in peace.” I looked at Rochak gravely. “May we please come in? I can guarantee Mr. De Luca’s good behavior.”
“It’s true,” said Dominic. “She’ll shoot me if I misbehave.”
“With pleasure,” I added.
“I wouldn’t want to miss that,” said Rochak, and stepped backward. “Please, come inside. Sunil is upstairs.”
Even with the lights off and the customers gone, Gingerbread Pudding smelled of sugar and honey and the sharp sweetness of candied ginger. Rochak didn’t speak as he led us through the kitchen and past the employee break room to a set of stairs behind a door marked “Employees Only.” His silence wasn’t a surprise. He had to know what my showing up without Piyusha meant, and if he wanted to wait to hear for sure until we were in the presence of his brother, that was his decision. I try never to tell others how to grieve.
The stairs ended in an airy, well-lit hallway. Jars of honey sat on low shelves with candles burning beneath them, covered by mesh lids to keep out any errant flies. The heat was enough to spread the sugary sweetness through the air like incense, until the whole place smelled like the home of Willy Wonka’s trendy older sister. The décor was a blend of traditional Indian and modern American, and the walls were covered with photographs of people who were clearly family. Pots of honeysuckle and live sugarcane lined the windowsills, all clearly thriving.
Dominic stuck close to my side, expression growing deeply uncomfortable as he looked around the upstairs hall. His training had probably prepared him for caves, dank lairs, and horror movie kitchens with bloodstains on the walls. Unless the Covenant had changed a lot more than he was letting on, it hadn’t prepared him for polished hardwood floors and lumpy modeling clay “vases” of the type I recognized from Antimony’s kindergarten year (before she moved on to homemade shrapnel grenades).
The room at the end of the hall seemed designed to serve as a combination kitchen and dining area, and was larger than the living room at my sublet. Sunil was at the stove, sautéing something in what smelled like more honey. He looked up when we entered. Seeing the look on Rochak’s face, his own face fell, expression fading by inches from mere worry into something utterly empty of emotion.
“Piyusha’s dead, isn’t she?” he asked.
Unable to find the words to answer him, I nodded.
“What happened? Where is she?” His voice was even blanker than his expression, as flat as day-old soda.
“She’s still underground where I found her,” I said, once I could force myself to speak. It was hard to make myself look at him, rather than staring off at some point in the distance—some point that wouldn’t look at me with accusing eyes. “I found her shortly after I went down. I’m … I’m sorry.”
“You just
“Rochak, be nice,” said Sunil.
“Why? So they won’t kill us, too?” Rochak glared, hands balling into fists as he looked from me to Dominic and back again. “How dare you leave her behind?”
“I left her behind because I thought you’d like to know what happened to her, instead of sitting here forever wondering if she was going to come home.” I shook my head. “The people that took your sister, they’re … they’re not good people, and she wasn’t the first.”
“We knew that,” snapped Rochak.
“Well, they apparently knew that somebody might come looking for her, because they left guards with her body.” The two Madhura were silent. “Have either of you ever heard the dragon princesses mention something called a ‘servitor’?”
“I … I don’t believe so,” said Sunil, a note of caution creeping into the emptiness of his voice. Rochak glanced at him with clear alarm. Sunil didn’t acknowledge the look as he continued, slowly, “The term isn’t familiar.”
“Your brother seems to recognize it.” I focused on Rochak. “What do you know?”
“Nothing! I—nothing.” Rochak looked away. “It’s not right to leave her down there. We need to recover her. See that she has a proper burial.”
“Which will be easier if we know what’s going to try to eat us when we go down to bring her back for you,” I
