The streets of the city had all started to blend together in the summer heat. The pet shop's building itself seemed to be hiding, crouching back from the street like an enormous tile-and-stucco cat. Lizzie's clunker drifted into place in front of it, scraped the curb, and stopped. She got out, hot, sweaty, and furious as she crumpled the school's hand-drawn directions and tossed them in the nearest trash can. She missed.
The building's doors rose up in front of her, looking cool and inviting in the stifling heat. She tried to fan some air under her blouse as she locked her car, tucking straggles of hair behind her ears. She had worn one of her nicer outfits, wanting to give the impression of a cool, collected single mom, but that had been wiped out after five minutes in the car. Now soaked through with sweat and cranky, Lizzie strode to the doors and pulled on them. They refused to budge.
She stood very still for a moment, grinding her teeth. Perhaps they opened the other way. She pushed, and the doors stood solid. Lizzie tried to mop the perspiration from her brow. She thought she could feel people staring at her and flushed. Perhaps the more direct approach.
She hammered on the door with a closed fist, feeling horribly self-conscious and frazzled. The door opened just a few inches and a draft of cool air wafted out.
"It's about damn ti—" she started to say, and caught herself. A pair of eyes glittered out at her from the doorway and she bristled instinctively.
The door creaked open still wider and the staring eyes gained a face: a cute, raccoon-like creature. A preteen girl with the most freckles Lizzie had ever seen on a person held it in her arms, blue leash running from its collar to wrap around her hand. She stepped out, almost walking into Lizzie as she looked backwards and waved goodbye.
"Thanks, Countie!" she called, "I mean, domo arigatou! I'll take great care of Midori-chan!"
She brushed past Lizzie without even noticing, eyes now intent on her new pet. Lizzie ground her teeth some more. Looks like a fuzzy turd, she thought.
"Hot today, isn't it?" came a soothing voice from the doorway, and almost instantly Lizzie felt ashamed.
"I'm sorry," she said sharply.
A beautiful person stood in the doorway like a living, liquid shadow. Their face was sexless and radiant, peering from behind curtains of dark hair.
"Hello-um-ma'am?" she stammered. D shook his head.
"I'm afraid not." He smiled thinly. "Please, do come in. Welcome to Count D's pet shop. In here we have many animals, from common things like cats and dogs to animals that barely slide past the C.I.T.I.E.S list…"
The main room was decorated so ornately that Lizzie felt even more out of place. Silk shone, gold gleamed, light streamed out from strategically hidden lamps.
"You must be thirsty." The Count poured steaming tea into an eggshell-thin cup. "Please, go ahead."
Lizzie hunched on the edge of a sofa, peering about the room with a sort of shocked awe.
D followed her gaze with his eyes, watched her carefully study the filigree work in a wall ornament. He held her tea at arm's length.
"Ahem," he said.
She started, rising slightly from the couch.
"Um, no. No, thank you. Actually, I was told you could help me?"
"Really?" D settled in a high-backed chair opposite her like a giant silk bird alighting on a branch.
"Yeah." She pulled at her top unconsciously. "Caterpillars."
The place and its proprietor seemed to have stunted her ability to talk.
The Count smiled enigmatically. "Ah," he said, "caterpillars."
Lizzie fidgeted a little. "Well?"
D steepled his fingers. "Well?"
"What?"
"Raising or controlling?"
"Huh?"
The Count leaned forward and inhaled steam from his teacup, savoring it like a wine taster before taking a small sip.
"There are two different ways to approach the larvae of the order Lepidoptera. One is the practice of raising the caterpillars, propagating the species. The other is controlling the population through…biological means."
"Oh… raising, I guess."
The enigmatic man in front of her set his teacup down and clasped his hands again. "Then we have much to discuss. The order Lepidoptera covers a wide variety of winged creatures, from the humble Ephestia kuehniella to the regal Danaus plexippus. What particular species do you have in mind?"
Lizzie stood up and blurted out, "look, the school sent me, I don't even-"
The Count was standing and shushing her with his fingertips before she could blink.
"Let me show you to them, and then you can decide."
She wasn't quite sure why or when the Count took her arm, or why she stayed silent as they wound through numerous dark hallways. There was a pleasant, woody fragrance in the air that got heavier the longer they walked. Her body seemed to float freely after a while, bobbing like a cork in the wake of the Count's smooth stride. They stopped before an ancient stone door that looked as if it weighed a ton.
The Count smiled and relinquished her hand, opening the door at a touch. A blast of old, dry air hit her face and she coughed. D smiled gently and took her hand again, pulling her into the dim chamber behind him.
"Of course," he went on, "butterflies and moths have been present in art since time immemorial. They flutter through hieroglyphs, silk paintings, even through the minds of philosophers. Zhuangzi dreamed of a butterfly dreaming he was a man, and to the Greeks they represented the soul. And yet they are not without their detractors…"
Bodies. The room was full of bodies. Lizzie was dimly aware of terror, a sudden rush of panic, but it was distant, and did not seem to matter very much right now.
The people, whether corpses or comatose, were ethereally beautiful. Some hung from the ceiling, draped in sheer fabric, others reclined in sarcophagi, wrapped in gauze. All were perfectly still.
"Are they dead?" she heard herself ask.
D smiled at her secretively. "No, but not alive, either. They hover on the brink between the two, waiting to wake."
She passed among the tombs, idly dragging her hand along their ends. Here and there she thought she could see breath puff out from hidden mouths. She stopped at the end of an aisle.
"What do you think?"
"Beautiful." She breathed.
"Now which one will you take?"
Lizzie pulled back from the brink of…wherever she was, and became herself again. "Silkworms. I was sent here for silkworms."
D's Cheshire grin widened ever so slightly. "Ah, Bombyx Mori, a lovely choice. Offspring of the silk moth."
Lizzie nose crinkled. "Ugh, I hate moths. They're so…" she trailed off, throat suddenly tight.
"What?" D asked gently.
"…ugly." She crossed her arms on her chest, looking around at the finery. Her bra strap had crept down her arm on the walk down. She chased it back up again.
"Really?" the Count's face showed mock surprise. "She is ugly?"
Lizzie followed D's pointed finger and gasped. A woman hung suspended in front of her, moon-colored robes trailing the ground. She had the face of a fairy queen and the dress of a Chinese empress.
"This is the royal lady herself, descended from the original caterpillars kept in the Forbidden Kingdom. Legend has it that Empress Xi Ling-Shi found the secret of silk when a chrysalis dropped into her teacup, unraveling silk threads finer than any human worker could spin. The discovery helped to build an empire…a humble, ugly moth."
Lizzie's hand crept towards it, jerking back as D's voice went from soothing to sardonic.
"I'm not here for a moth," she spat out, "I'm here to pay a fee so my son's school can have some worms that crap thread. I don't need to be here!" without realizing it, she had raised her voice.
D's gaze was level and cool. She hadn't noticed until now, but his eyes were two different colors. "I see. But…I would like to give you one. Free of charge. With your school payment, of course."
Lizzie gazed around the room, eyes wandering lazily from body to body. The nutcase wanted her to take one. Fuck, she was in the same room as a madman, and she couldn't even get up the effort to be pissed off about it.
"Whatever." She shrugged dismissively.
D held out his hand. "Which one would you prefer?"
She stalked down the aisles, growing impatient. Jordan had been left in her neighbor's care since noon, and she didn't want to give the old busybody any more fuel for gossip than she had to. She glanced from tomb to tomb, reading and trying to make sense of the names. Some of the lovelier hanging beauties had their names embroidered on their shrouds, most of them, she figured, were moths. It was a shame and a waste, she thought, for all that beauty to turn plain. Then she turned her eyes to the figures lying in coffins. They had more nondescript coverings, but she felt that they hid a loveliness under their wraps that made her ache inside. Giddy, she practically danced down a row, stopped, and turned around.
A slight, feminine figure was swaddled in great drifts of gauze, chest rising and falling ever so slightly. Lizzie felt her heart pound with excitement as she turned to D. "This one. I want this one."
D's expression was unreadable. "I see. Let me draw up a contract."
The piece of paper seemed fairly straightforward, but the words blurred and her hands shook as she tried to read it. She gave up after a few tries and just signed it. D told her more about its care, what she should do once it hatched, but she was no longer listening. There was no body in sight, but D handed her a carved wooden box. Inside a chrysalis lay nestled in blue satin. She tripped to the door, a strange lightness in her heart.
"…should the occasion arise." D intoned. "And now, a last warning—"
Lizzie crinkled her nose. "What, now a warning? You have me halfway out the door and now a warning?"
D smiled with the patience of a mother. "With some caterpillars, there is a slight risk of—"
"Let me put it this way," she broke in, "if anything happens, anything, I'm calling the cops on you quicker than you can say Jack Robinson."
With that parting shot, she hip-checked the door open and vanished into the mid-afternoon haze. D watched her leave.
"Yes," he said, "a slight risk, though not an unforeseen possibility."
The androgynously lovely man sat in the one comfy chair in the office, picnic basket on one arm.
"But of course we had a picnic today," he said, as if outings with the man who dedicated his life to incarcerating him were completely natural.
Leon rested his forehead in his hand while Jill smiled disarmingly at the Count.
"Well, we never said you couldn't," she said warmly, "but first we need your help. There's been a disappearance...one of your customers."
"Really?" He buttered a small croissant. "Which one?"
From behind his hand, Leon growled, "Elizabeth Greenwood, you asshole."
As Jill rolled up her sleeve and prepared to smack her partner, a shadow fell over D's face. He dropped the croissant.
"Oh," he said, "her."
Leon looked up just in time for Jill's fist to graze the air by his ear. "You remember her?"
"Yes," the Count sighed, "sadly. Very few customers walk off in the middle of care instructions, and those few stick unpleasantly in my mind. I was just giving her a quick lesson on the risks of caterpillar care—"
"Risks?" Leon snorted. "Oh no, it might develop a taste for blood! Whatever you do, don't look like a flower!" This time Jill's hand connected.
D made a wry face as he retrieved his croissant. "No, detective, you are thinking of the smaller picture. There are several insect species that, when introduced to the U.S., destroyed entire crops and upset the balance of the native ecosystems forever."
Leon bolted up, unmindful of the spreading pools of sweat under his arms. "You gave her something like that?" he hissed.
"No, of course not." D narrowed his eyes. "Such things are not pets, they are natural forces that must be respected and monitored. But many insects, though in theory 'harmless', can carry danger with them. The mosquito is a vector for many different diseases, a humble beetle can contaminate entire warehouses with its brood, snails will contain the eggs of—"
"Enough." Leon waved his hands as Jill squirmed in disgust.
"But you see my point. The insect I gave her was perfectly harmless, but it was…vulnerable."
Author's note: yes, this is going to be mostly about insects, peppered with little bits o' trivia.