“You sound like my mom,” he huffed.
I pulled my mini Taser out of my desk drawer and thunked it down. “Unlike your mother, I have weapons and am licensed to use them. Were you a willing participant in the kiss?”
“Yeah,” he mumbled.
“Then that’s the end of it. If Ellie wants to kiss you at a party and then date someone else, that’s her right. Enjoy the memory and do not disparage that girl again. Understood?”
“Yes. Geez.” He pointed to the two lone pakoras that neither Priya nor I had eaten yet. “Can I have one?”
I held up the Taser. “Go away. Now.”
Arnav slunk off.
A jackhammer started up outside in the latest round of constant construction tearing up Gastown’s streets. Its pounding matched the headache taking root in my temples.
Mrs. Hudson had dismissed the other toys and was now slobbering contentedly on the cow’s head.
“I’m impressed you figured it out about the other boy,” Priya said.
“My powers of deduction are unparalleled.”
We clunked the two last pakoras in cheers. There was no point keeping food from Priya. Especially anything made by Geeta. Priya’d just change all my passwords in retribution, and I’d been locked out of my accounts too many times during our university days when Geeta first started feeding me to want to go through Password Hell again.
“Well,” Priya said brightly, stuffing her laptop into a computer bag, “Arnav lived to see another day, so my work here is done.”
“I hate you.” I let Mrs. Hudson lick my fingers clean.
“Kiss your dog for me.” Priya grabbed her coat, and left.
Mrs. Hudson settled down to snooze with one paw on her new bovine friend.
Before diving in to Mayan’s case, I slid the wooden ring on for a quick library jaunt. Hopefully a good night’s sleep had cleared Rafael’s head and we could discuss what had happened like two non-ensorcelled human beings.
It was the first time I’d come to the library and no one else immediately showed up. I puttered around, searched the bottom shelf for any notations on yours truly (no success), and sent six text messages to Rafael over the span of twenty minutes. There was no sign or word from him.
He’d still show up to the team meeting, right? His embarrassment wouldn’t overpower his duties, would it?
Returning to the office, I opened the new shiny laptop that Priya had bought me. I’d protested such a generous gift, but Priya had declared my old laptop an affront to technology and insisted she was doing this as much for herself as me.
It was a very Priya statement, and especially in light of her post-kidnapping struggles, not a gift to be refused.
Checking that Mrs. Hudson was still asleep, I googled Mayan Shapiro. Her various profiles for the past year were filled with images of a fashionable woman with sleek burgundy tresses. Always dressed in black, the photos were mostly of Mayan at various hot spots, interspersed with her work on behalf of the Lung Cancer Foundation, her fitness regimen, and the occasional photo of her in a bikini on some tropical beach with a drink.
Mayan came across as poised, confident, and sought-after socially.
I examined the photos and posts from two weeks ago, flipping back and forth between those and the previous entries for any differences.
It was such a subtle thing that I almost missed it. Every photo prior to that time showed her wearing a necklace with a diamond heart pendant. None of the photos since then had it.
Me: What’s the deal with Mayan’s heart pendant?
Imperious 1: Good morning, Ash. I did sleep well, thank you for asking.
Me: You need to get over this small talk fetish of yours. The pendant?
Imperious 1: It was her mom’s. Mayan’s worn it since Dani passed away from lung cancer when Mayan was twenty-three. Why?
Me: She stopped wearing it right around the time that she came to see you.
Imperious 1: She wouldn’t take it off. Not willingly.
Levi’s anxiety punched through the cell signal. Time to distract him.
Me: FYI, I spoke with your charming father this morning. I think he has a mole in your office.
Imperious 1: Old news, Sherlock. We’ve been feeding him information for months.
Me: How devious of you. I’m impressed.
Imperious 1: That’s a euphemism for turned on, right?
Me: *middle finger emoji*
Smiling, I returned to my search, stopping on a photo taken last weekend of Mayan at some club. Not somewhere trendy, more a cocktail bar from the 1960’s, a grand dame painted in heavy reds with velvets and brocades where you could still see her regal beauty, even if it was faded. That was unlike Mayan’s usual hangouts, but it had a retro charm that appealed to me. The bartender probably knew how to make a proper drink and served it in a heavy, cut highball glass.
The extent of my thoughts would have been “cool,” were it not for one thing: the image carved into the bar of a heart with a crown and scepter. I zoomed in on the photo.
What was a Mundane like Mayan doing in Hedon?
Chapter 7
Nowadays, there were three ways into Hedon, a place stitched together from pockets of our reality but existing outside of it. The first was via a gold coin that took the user anywhere in that world that they wished to go, free of charge. The second was by using bronze tokens, which also took a person directly to their desired location, but with a cost, usually in the form of a memory. That added to the Queen of Hearts’ insights about a person, because knowledge was power. I’d recently tangled with those tokens, and while handy, I wasn’t sure they were worth the price of admission.
The final way in was with a plain coin stamped with an “H,” which was used at one of the fixed entrances located in our world. These only required a cost the first time you entered.
Traveling to Hedon: painful, dangerous, and for me,
