Twenty-Four
Tobias slid into the leather cushioned bar stool and ordered a straight bourbon from the bar tender who grumbled under his sour breath.
Abberline was not surprised to see him, glancing at him from the corner of his eye. "It's been a long time." He conceded and offered the witch a salute with the half-empty glass he had been nursing for the past hour.
"I'm not here for pleasure." Tobias said, voice tight, refusing to look directly at the vampire, afraid he'd lose his resolve.
"Neither am I." Abberline sighed. He was in the city for politics. It was hard with the divisions cracking the Night asunder, he was drumming up support for the Council, trying to get the other clans and Houses on board with the vampires. Preoccupied with such thoughts he had barely noticed Tobias sitting as taut as a bow string.
"Where is she?" The words slipped tremulously from the witch's mouth
"Saben?" Eyes narrowed, he had been trying not to think about her, her large liquid brown eyes staring up at him, provoking the sickly pulsation in the middle of his chest that was the cord that bound them.
There was the thud of the tumbler as the bartender lay down the neat glass of bourbon. Tobias offered a nod that was responded to with a stifled huff humph.
"I don't know." Abberline said it so softly Tobias strained to hear the syllables.
"Of course you do."
"She doesn't want to be found." Abberline said firmly the slightest of growls coming out of him.
"She's in trouble-"
"Always has been." He mumbled around a mouthful of drink.
They were eye to eye now. So much to say and so much they couldn't. They were far too important to be discussing one insignificant little street punk who slipped through the cracks of the Day into the bowels of the Night.
"Please." Tobias said under his breath. "We need to find her."
"We?" Abberline laughed. "You have a peculiar way of persuading me to do many things I know I shouldn't. If I didn't know better I would think you had be-spelled me."
He sipped from his glass. "I know about the boy."
Tobias paused at the last, lip trembling ever so slightly. Fear gripped him, a large invisible fist, fingers squeezing his heart, interrupting his breath.
"I suppose she's gone to get him back for you." Abberline shook his head, after all it had been inevitable, from the instant she had seen the boy, invading the territories of the Day, allowing herself to be lured by a life that no longer belonged to her. "She's still so young."
"She was telling the truth wasn't she? Mezereon took him."
Abberline shrugged. True enough. But this was not his business, he had severed his ties from Mezereon years ago.
Tobias stood gathering his coat closer to him by fingertip grip on the lapels. "What would he do if he knew?"
"Mezereon?" Abberline gave him a long hard look. Strange that he looked older, the soft subtle lines of age slowly appearing at his eyes, the corners of his mouth yet Abberline looked the same. Would always look the same. Tobias life was so fragile. His eyes hooked on Abberline's words, the pathetic strain of hope paper thin and nearing an open flame of reality. "He'd kill her."
"And you can live with that?"
He didn't reply. He wouldn't reveal the tumult of those thoughts, not to Tobias and never to himself. He had looked into Saben Mariley Frost's brown eyes and wanted to melt, to become something other than what he was, to be a good person, a worthy person.
He closed his eyes, swearing silently to himself.
"You're a coward." Yes.
Abberline shot out of his chair, moving from the slouch he had cultivated for some time, a hand closed round Tobias' throat. "I have learnt my lesson, boy. I will not be coerced into doing something I do not want to do. You will not use this thing as leverage to bid me as your servant."
Tobias had turned a shade of blue, choking, hands scrabbling at Abberline's immovable fingers. The bar tender glanced briefly at the scene and his eyes moved away.
Abberline released the witch. "If she dies-" he gasped between greedy lungful of breaths.
There will be terrible madness, I know the stories but that is all they are. Stories. I have lived many lifetimes with my sanity intact, before Saben Frost was a speck in the tapestry of the Moerae. I think I can survive many years to come.
"Are you sure you want to test that theory?" Tobias shot back, voice ragged and rasping.
Abberline returned to his seat and Tobias, adjusting his coat once again he left the Night club.
The vampire returned to his slouch, but it was too late, the witch's words had made its way under his skin. The same old glass, liquid congealing in the bottom, now clutched in his hand, clutched so tightly it shattered in his grasp.
"Shit." He whispered beneath his breath.
*
"I could do this for hours." Celsia said sing song rhythm to disguise her utter boredom.
She had Shen's wrist twisted painfully against his back, steadily adding pressure. The werewolf grunted and wheezed but did not speak, blood was already frothed onto his lips, seeping through the gap of a missing front tooth. "All you have to do is tell me where she is."
Muffled protests from the bound and gagged grey eyed woman Celsia had left in the corner. Celsia spared a short sharp glance in her direction. "I'll get to you next." Hissed between sharp teeth.
"I could break you, one bone at a time. Now tell me, Shen, where is she?"
"It's not that simple." Shen erupted and Celsia released him. He collapsed and took minutes to pick himself up, he was carefully dusting off his jacket, smoothing down his greasy hair, wiping the blood off his jaw.
"Talk."
"You know exactly what she wanted." Shen said glaring at the vampire through a swollen eyelid. "Knew it even before you introduced her to me."
Celsia shrugged. Maybe she did. Maybe she had envisioned the whole thing the instant Abberline had confided in her.
"So I gave her what she wanted." He smiled then, showing the gap in his mouth. An empty space of gum where gold used to sit winking in the light.
"How did she pay you?" Arms now folded across her chest, sharp nails tapping an impatient rhythm on her own arms.
Shen looked over at the grey eyed witch.
"Oh." Celsia smiled, approaching the witch who was bound and gagged and smelt of sweet fear. She ripped the tape off her mouth, revealing ecstatic breaths. "I know you, don't I dearie?"
The woman coughed and hacked, trying to replenish her lungs, deaf to the vampire who was now inspecting the residue of skin of the woman's lips that had clung to the tape.
Eventually, a rasping voice erupted. "What's going on?"
Celsia laughed and even Shen looked amused, they shared a brief look between them. "I don't think she knows." Celsia said with a small shake of the head.
Shen shrugged. "Makes no difference to me, she's mine now."
Celsia tsked, shaking her head from left to right. "Do you know who she is?"
"She's mine." He took out a cigarette, as if his face was not broken and bleeding. "Should I care?"
"You should care a great deal." Celsia ran her fingers through the slightly damp but still exquisitely silky black curls. She stared into the equally exquisite features which were now drawn into a mask of distress. "You're royalty, aren't you? A right royal Witch."
Shen snorted reams of grey smoke through his nostrils, fingering the swollen tissue of one eye. "What are you babbling about, baby?"
"Even you know your histories, yes?" Celsia asked irritably.
Shen shrugged again exhaling more grey smoke, clogging the intimate space of the room with it. "Sure."
"Hearth women are a distinctive breed."
Shen spluttered. "You're saying this," pointing at the woman, "is a Hearth Woman?"
"Is that what I'm saying?" Celsia's smile was razor sharp.
Blaise's eyes narrowed into tiny slits whilst Celsia's smile widened to a grotesque size.
"Couldn't be true." Shen slapped his thigh. "I think she paid me more than she owed."
"Yes, a clever little girl, isn't she?" Celsia didn't think Saben had it in her.
The grey eyed woman looked to and fro, barely comprehending their dialogue. She raised a finger, pointing at Shen as he had pointed at her. "You're telling me that I've been sold to him?"
Celsia's smiled widened on her terrible monstrous teeth and the room filled with the scent of witch magic.
*
Saben crouched over the hand made fire. Spreading her fingers to feel the heat of the flames. Heat she couldn't truly feel. It couldn't match the icy cold temperature of her bones.
Echoes vibrated through the basement halls, ominous leviathan sounds in the semi-dark. It was a place to wait. It was why Buddy Shenker Finder Of Lost Things had brought her here, the firefly tip of his cig arching in the air as he bid farewell. I'll be back, baby girl, just you wait.
So she waited. Fingers kneading the currents of heat, fingers so close to the lick of orange her skin turned black. Mesmerised by it. Mesmerised by anything that could take her mind of off Daniel. The little boy who had been sold as meat. The little boy who was her son.
An icy breeze whipped through the room the flames trembled and she shuddered.
"Penny for your thoughts."
Saben turned round swiftly to see a young girl, immaculately dressed, looking like a miniature woman but she could be no more than thirteen years old barely on the cusp of puberty. She wore a red and green plaid dress and stank like roses on the verge of rotting.
She blinked large blue eyes at Saben and offered a sharp toothed smile. "Penny for them."
"Who are you?" Inevitable shallow question. Who are you? No more or less than the next creature. Saben shook her head, confused. Her question forgotten. Both insignificant and fleeting as the smell of flowers veiled her mind.
"I can't read minds, you see? Not my talent I'm afraid." The girl moved closer, inspecting her with a bird like tilt of the head. "My name is Iris."
"What do you want?" Saben asked softly.
"It's not about what I want Saben Mariley Frost, it's about what you want. What you've been waiting for." She smiled again, unnatural teeth, too large for her child-size mouth, it was a unwholesome gash across her face and Saben was no longer convinced that she was a child at all.
"And what do I want?"
She laughed reminding Saben of the dulcet tones of a wind-chime. "You want to come with me of course."
And for an instant it was true, she so desperately wanted to follow Iris her hands trembled with the want of reaching for the girl's hand. "Where will you take me?"
"To where it all began."
Saben reached out her hand…