III

Persephone

"I won't, shalln't, you can't make me... not ever!" Lottie found herself shrieking at a frankly alarming pitch. She'd been given some alarming news, granted, but the whisper of a flinch on the Shadow Man's face betrayed just how sharp her edge was. "Not if you were the last voodoo man in the world!"

Unfortunately, he laughed, leaning on his cane so that his shoulders seemed to pour in a straight line.

"I wasn't the one making wishes," he remarked dissonantly. "You wanted this."

"You stop saying that!" she barked and stomped her foot, only remembering after how Big Daddy used to call her a pony, igniting a shot of homesickness like a firecracker. "You can't make me marry you, you... you just can't!"

"You can't tell me what I can or can't do," he replied maliciously, and Lottie was so tormented that she did the one thing she knew she could do to him, and that was reach out to touch. With a moment of fury grabbing her by the seat of her pants she jumped out and pushed a palm flat over his face, shoving him away as flesh blanched and desiccated under her touch.

He staggered but didn't fall, though her fingers sizzled over his features and burned them away like old newspaper until she felt sharp, hard bone underneath. When she ripped her hands back all that was left was skull and furious eyes, even his lips burned clean off from his mouth.

It was awful and frightening, but Lottie didn't have time to go yellow because she had to run as fast as she could on a set of bedroom slippers. Before his temper brought hell down on her, she scooted off and swung back into the long hallway . If she could get far enough away maybe he'd give up, or she'd find a place to hide, or heaven forbid a way out of this horrible place.

Instead he laughed. From all the way back at the riverbank, he let rip a deep, echoing laugh. Then a shadow on the wall flickered and she was running into him with the force of a train.

"Not so fast," he announced, and she pushed backwards and wobbled, tipping clear off the back of her shoes. Before she crashed down on her backside something slipped between her hands and she grabbed out of instinct. It was his cane, an anchor to haul her back to the surface. His face had started to recover, leaving only a set of blanched streaks over each eye, blending with the whites. "That ain't no way for a proper young lady to behave," he taunted as he tugged her back upright.

"Get away from me," she burst, trapped and furious and sad at the same time. "You can't make me do anything. You can't even touch me!"

"No," he snarled, and raised up his cane like he was going to give her a big whack with it. She flinched but the blow never came. "I can't," he admitted, dropping it back to his side. "But you can't get out of here by yourself either." It was the first time he'd said it like that – with possibility.

"I can get out?" she seized. "There's a way?" His skin was finally closing up over the skull it had revealed, sealing around his eyes until they were whole once more. A blink and lashes appeared, irises still an unnatural shade of violet; insignia of his inhumanity.

"There might be," he commented. "But then, why should I tell you about it?"

"Hey!" she pealed. "That's not fair!" He was toying with her. It was all he'd ever done. Toy with her like his newest doll.

"You think any of this is fair?" he posed, leaning up against the wall and seeming impossibly long.

"You're making it a whole lot worse," she accused.

"Why should I do anything for you, Charlotte La Bouff?" he posed, looming in and setting the end of his cane under her chin, commanding her face to lift up to his, staring down like a wolf on prey. "What have you done for me? What would you do for me?"

"I... don't know," she mumbled. Nothing, she could say, but then talk like that wasn't going to get here anywhere but dead. Deader.

"There is one thingyou could do," he said slyly. Before she could ask, he held his cane aloft, the orb to her eye level, then with a flourish drew from it a shimmering glamour. It spread and enveloped her, painting the walls in shades of Lousiana and New Orleans until she was standing right there on the sidewalk watching the streetcars go howling by. It was almost real, except that no one had a face, they were all just fuzzy stock figures.

"I can't just let you go," the Shadow Man began in a drawling tone, "but there is something else. You see, I'm a bargaining man by nature, and I'm open to the suggestion of an exchange." As the word slipped from his mouth, doors opened and sucked them into Tiana's palace. It was painfully familiar, and still so bright and shiny and new. All of Tia and Naveen's love had made it beautiful.

The lady of the house was one defined face amongst a sea of storefront dummies. Tiana looking the best she'd ever looked, so excited and pretty and shining like something had lit the biggest fire right inside her. Lottie's heart twisted as her friend walked right past her without noticing, moving to Naveen who now appeared from over her shoulder. The two embraced, hand-in-hand right through the space where Lottie stood.

For a moment the image was perfect, but then Tiana broke away from her husband, walking into an empty space, while a shadow was growing underneath her. It got darker and thicker, and then in the blink of an eye she was gone.

"What do you think?" the Shadow Man purred just behind her ear. "I'll take her instead of you." Lottie said nothing, paralysed as she watched Naveen turning, lost for a moment. It would kill him, it would break his heart into a million pieces and no one would be able to pick them up again. But then his ghost looked right into her eyes and smiled like that – the way he always had. She remembered when he had sort-of-almost been hers, even though that wasn't the real him. The real him had been kinder and sweeter and even better than the fake one.

"Someone would have to be there for him," he prompted. "Someone to take her place... and who better? He was your prince first." Naveen's smile was everything Lottie remembered, and her stomach knotted as he stretched out a hand towards her – as if to invite her up for a dance this time.

But before he could move another step, his ghost was shaken up and erased. The restaurant vanished in a golden smoke, the glamour shattered as Lottie grabbed the Shadow Man by the arms and shook him and shrieked and screamed until her eyes blurred with furious tears.

"Why don't you just drag me down to hell right now!" she screamed in his face, bolder and stupider than she'd ever been before. "I would never, not ever! No! You're an awful man, you demon, you- you- how couldyou even-" His arms were creeping up in patches of white decomposing dust, but she didn't care and she kept on shaking like she was going to knock all the stuffing out of him.

"Hands off!" he snapped, pushing her away. As he laid his palms against her to shove her back, they blanched and became ashy. He backed away from her like she was the dangerous one, not him, and gripped his staff tight, waiting for the darkness to knit back across his flesh. "So you don't like that deal," he remarked playfully. "How about-"

Lottie ripped her slipper off her foot and threw it at him, for lack of anything else to hand.

"You wicked man!" she roiled, knocking off the other slipper and hurling at him too. It struck him in the chest and tumbled to the floor, not making much of a fuss in the process. She suspected that he didn't stop her because it made no difference to him, and he was at least entertained by her dramatics. "Don't you ever try to make a deal with me!" she warned.

"So I should just, how did you put it?" he queried patronisingly. "Drag you down to hell?" He was leaning on his staff again now, shoulders almost at forty-five degrees.

"Well," she said uncomfortably, hearing her own words and recalling whose temper wasn't meant to be aroused or he'd burn her to a crisp. "Not necessarily..."

"I must admit," he announced, propping a hand on his hip. "I expected you to think about it more."

"Well, you had me wrong," she said huffily.

"Perhaps I have," he intimated. "Perhaps we've both been wrong about each other." He gestured to a door that hadn't been there before. It opened and led into a garden, or, it looked like a garden. Lottie knew it couldn't be because they weren't outside and that wasn't the sky, but to hell if it wasn't convincing. "Come along in and sit down," he invited as if they were turning a page fresh and going back to the start. "You must be tired after that performance."

"No," she insisted, turning up her nose. He strolled on oblivious to her protest.

"Fine," he said curtly. "Stay out there." He washed his hands of her, lolling over an ornate garden chair like so much silk. "One last word of advice, watch out for the shrunken heads," he explained courteously, gesturing with his fingers to something the size of an orange. "They love to bite."

"Wh-" she began, but then with a farewell wave he commanded the door closed and it slammed in her face. Lottie had all of ten seconds before she was shoving it back open and dropping into a folding chair with a very distressed air.

"Fine, Shadow Man," she glowered as she gave in. "Have it your way." There was a garden table between them, set with empty plates. As if making an offering, he reached up across and turned one around, like setting a clock. It filled with food as he rotated it, then he picked up an empty glass and shook it, at which point it became full of water.

"Don't starve yourself on my account," he excused, plucking a piece of bread right off her plate looking at it like he found it curious. "You have to be hungry." Her stomach did rumble, but she kept her hands in her lap. Lottie was sure right down in her gut that something was wrong with that food; in no other respects had he been a kind or gentle man. This couldn't be the only good thing he offered her.

"Still not hungry?" he queried, raising a cup to his lips and drinking. It looked like it could've been wine, although she wouldn't know for sure. They probably had real alcohol down here.

"No," she insisted, and he scowled, teeth pushed together like he was going to make them stick.

"Don't eat then," he snapped, his temper fraying like so much worn hallway carpet. "Starve. You'll die here just like you would in your world."

"Take me back," she said stubbornly. "I'll eat when I'm at home."

"You can't go home," he murmured, and she believed it less and less each time he said it.

"Then you might as well kill me," she proclaimed, and it was the biggest bluff since Big Daddy bet all her inheritance on a pair of hearts and the whole table folded.

"Why would I do that?" he replied, tipping his hat from his head and running long fingers through his hair.

"Because you want to?" she suggested obliquely.

"Do I now?" he answered question with question, playing her for whatever fun he got out of all this. It occurred to her that if he was lonely in this big old world with only shrunken heads for company, maybe squabbling with her was the best thing he had going.

"I sure figured that was what all the teasin' and scarin' and telling me I'm gonna die was," she indicated, and he made an indifferent gesture, like that was normal manners to him.

"You are going to die," he pointed out. "All by yourself, just like everyone else."

"Except you," she commented, and he narrowed his eyes at her.

"I'm different," he answered coldly. She suspected he didn't want to tell her just how different he was. Secrets were his only armour, if he couldn't even raise a fist to her.

"What did you ever do to get all this?" she asked spitefully. It seemed like immortality and being king of the underworld was a pretty rich reward for being an evil witch doctor and getting in debt with voodoo spirits.

"You think it's easy?" he suggested cruelly. "You know nothing."

"Doing magic tricks and scaring me half to death doesn't seem awful hard to me," she remarked haughtily. He shot her a smile like he'd cut one out of her cheeks to match, and scoffed in a way that seemed to leave the air ruffled.

"There's more," he was unable to resist saying, as Lottie could see he wore all his pride like a fine suit, even here, even condemned to undeath.

"I don't believe you," she claimed with blatant insincerity. He wasn't going to reveal his secrets if she asked for them. Now was she just a tantrum-throwing toddler who could only scream and cry, she knew how to lure and pry her wishes out of people when she needed to.

"All right," he said sourly. "I'll show you, just to shut you up." Tuned like a banjo. Lottie could've said there were easier ways of silencing her, but why would she point out a thing like that? She didn't know exactly where she was going with this, but the more she knew, surely the easier it'd be. Fighting wasn't going to get her anything with this man, she knew that – and he had once been a man. Big Daddy always said you caught more flies with honey than vinegar, and Lottie had sugar to spare.

He got up and she rose with him, but he didn't leave the room, garden... whatever it was. He walked to a gate and stepped through, an old-fashioned squeak crying in the hinges as they passed. He put a hand up to the scenery, and then from being full of depth and sense, it became flat as a painting, fingertips curled underneath it and swept back like a curtain. The facade with which he painted the walls of her prison came off, and the stood on the precipice of nothing, overlooking a huge chasm. In the distance Lottie saw cliffs of the sharpest, angriest kind. Like they'd been physically ripped apart by some demonic hand, and from one edge poured hot gold, shooting from the banks and spiralling away into an endless drop.

"What is that?" she blurted with a defensive reaction that she hadn't realised she needed to make. Though her toes seemed to overlap nothing, she didn't feel as if she could fall.

"The end of the river," he answered divinely. Lottie was conspicuous of every angle to his body, like he was a bunch of shapes just slotted together, when he turned to her and asked, "want to see the bottom?"