Marked by the Demigod Read online

  The thought of him disquiets her, though, as she unpacks by dumping her dirty clothes into her hamper.

  Not that their sex wasn't fantastic, it was sex. But it's like the sudden and energetic sex, after months and months of nothing, elevated the status of the night in her head.

  She flops onto her bed and sighs.

  She should've gotten Jake's number herself, instead of the other way around.

  Trixie sits at the restaurant, her blond hair curled within an inch of its life and her clothes pressed perfect. Aimes feels visibly jet lagged next to her.

  It's that inevitable pause, after the greetings, where two adults have that moment where they have no clue what to talk about.

  "They fired me." Trixie bursts out, at the same time as

  -- -- "I got laid." Aimes blurts.

  They stare at each other for a moment, then Aimes claps her hand over her mouth. "Oh my god, Trixie, are you okay?"

  "It's fine, it's just one client, but it's the one with the neatest house set up and I had just done a ton of work on the couch setup with the lighting and they decided they wanted someone with sfx experience and I had so much fun with their system." Trixie deflates in her perfectly pressed suit.

  "Who the hell needs sfx experience to decorate a house?"

  Trixie shrugs, despondent. "It's not bad, it's not crippling, I just really liked it and I thought it'd be good for my portfolio." Because she's the type who has a portfolio. "And I got it from the old boss, so if he hears I was fired from it he might not send me out as much, and ugh." Over dramatic, she buries her head in her hands. "Can I come over this weekend and do something that's not related to home decor?"

  Aimes nods.

  Trixie sits there, a frown across her pretty face, before she looks up, startled. "Did you say you got laid? Like, actually laid?"

  "Actual sex happened," Aimes confirms. "Actual got picked up at a hotel bar in the middle of Kansas and had sex with a stranger."

  "Jesus Christ." Trixie picks up her iced tea, toasts her with it. "Was it good?"

  She clinks her glass against hers. "Strangely so, yeah. He seemed wound up about it, though."

  "Think he was married?"

  "I really hope not, he mostly seemed...like he hadn't had sex in a while, you know?"

  Trixie' eyebrows raise. "So over quick?"

  Aimes laughs, a surprised burst of noise. "Not at all, just...like he was shocked at everything I did. Like he had it built in his head what the night looked like and everything I did was way out of the plan." And that she was the most surprising part of it. "Gave me some super sweet wine and stuff, was super nicely dressed for a bar in Kansas."

  Trixie watches her, eyes keen, for a few seconds. "So...not a librarian."

  "He said he was just passing through. It was almost a stereotype of a hotel hookup. Like in the movies."

  Their food is delivered, and they take a moment to pick at it.

  "Was he handsome?"

  She nods, looks across the crowded patio. Across the street, a homeless man stares at her, eyes bleary but insistent.

  Aimes ducks her head. "Do I have something on my face? Some pimple or something I'm missing?"

  Trixie sits back, evaluating perhaps a moment too long. "Well...."

  "Trixie..."

  "Nah, you're fine. Your skin is even clearer than it usually is. Why?"

  Aimes shrugs, feeling irrational, like she's making it up. Like she's just on the lookout for things to be weird after such a weird hookup. "Just...see that homeless guy over there? He's staring. A punk on the plane stared. A different guy at the hotel stared. A girl in traffic stared." And it sounds even more ridiculous spoken out loud.

  "You're just noticing it cause you were horny for so long and now you're not." Trixie raises a perfect eyebrow.

  "Yeah cause that makes sense."

  "Still nothing from Rocky?" Trixie asks, sharp. "I can't imagine him thinking this is okay."

  "Yeah, well," Aimes pushes her salad around. "He was the one that dumped me, he can't expect me to not pursue other things while he fucks the secretary, that's unfair."

  "She's a receptionist, not a secretary," Trixie says, gentle, "he's not that much of a stereotype." She sits back, as if the restaurant table was her throne. "But that's a good point. You should sleep around more."

  "It was a nice surprise. Actually having another person with the orgasm." Trixie cracks a smile and delicately extends her fist for a bump. "Rock on, you deserve that."

  Aimes almost doesn't notice the package sitting by her door, the delivery job was so half-assed.

  It's an Amazon box, about as nondescript as it comes. She turns it over in her hands as she goes into her apartment and gets ignored by her cat. It thumps ominously.

  Aimes doesn't order to her apartment from Amazon, so she leaves the package on her kitchen table.

  It sits there for three days.

  On Saturday, Trixie sweeps in, wearing designer pajamas and holding two bottles of wine. “Netflix and chill?”

  “Pretty sure that’s not how the phrasing goes.” Aimes grabs a bottle, starts to corkscrew it open.

  “We’re almost thirty. We can afford a little un-hip conversation.” Trixie plops on the couch, thumping her head against the backrest. “God I miss this couch.” When Trixie first moved out here, before she got her first gig, she spent three months crashing on the couch.

  Aimes’s smaller cat immediately pops over to Trixie and starts purring like crazy. The whole “crashed on the couch for three months” means that the cats prefer Trixie over Aimes, for some fuck all reason. It's almost cute, but at the same time Aimes just wishes they'd love her like that.

  “Oh, a package?” Trixie points from her couch. “When the hell do you get packages?”

  “Right, that came in.” She grabs her box opener and starts to open it, though it’s absolutely covered in tape. “I forgot about it.”

  Trixie raises an eyebrow, petting the small cat. “You got a mystery package and you forgot about it?” The small cat arches up into the pats, as if it’s the best thing ever.

  “I was busy?” The cardboard is inundated with tape, to the point where there’s no surface to easily cut into.

  The box crumpling in her hand, Aimes manages to puncture through the tape with a distinct popping sound. "Jesus," She mutters, trying to saw through the tape.

  Trixie watches her with wide, unblinking eyes. "Are you sure it's for you?"

  Aimes twists the box around, showing her the label.

  She saws through the tape, and the box comes open with a pop and --

  Laying at the bottom of the box, large, is a single chef’s knife.

  "Um." Aimes says, more out of an instinct than anything actual to say. "Um."

  It was shiny, very shiny, with a dark wooden handle, elaborately carved.

  "What is it?" Trixie scrambles over the couch. "What --". She looks in the box, then falls silent, then up at Aimes. "You didn't order that?"

  "Yeah no." Aimes picks it up. The knife fits, solid, in her hand, a hefty weight. "The hell?"

  "And no gift note or receipt?" Trixie grabs the box, tilts it around.

  The shining metal almost has patterns in it, swirls of metal while still being very, very shiny.

  "Trixie, what is this?"

  "It's a knife, Aimes, that's pretty self explanatory."

  "No no, the metal." She tilts the knife, catching the swirls and patterns in the light. "Look, the pattern and such, it's --"

  Trixie leans in close. "Bronze, I think. It's expensive, that's what it is. And creepy."

  Aimes very carefully sets it down on the table. "Huh."

  They stare at it.

  "Any chance your mom could've...?"

  "My mom knows to send stuff to the office." Or at least she did the last time they talked. You know, eight years ago.

  Trixie picks it up. “Well. Wine and Netflix day got weird.” It catches the light, almost pretty.

  If it was
n’t so fucking sinister, it’d be gorgeous. The wood looks engraved, but rubbing a thumb over the handle reveals no difference in texture.

  “Seriously though, who sends a knife without a note? Aimes,” Trixie turns to her, sudden, “Aimes, did you somehow get a stalker? You should report this to the police.”

  Aimes takes the knife back, finds an empty drawer in the kitchen and shoves it in there. “I think I’ve been too busy to get a stalker. I’ll ask my grandma if a cousin sent it.” She shoves the wine back at Trixie. “What did you want to watch?”

  Trixie gives her the that’s-not-how-we-deal-with-things but-I’m-not-sure-if-I-want-to-deal-with-it look, like she’s the one being unreasonable with this. “Did you give your home address out to anyone recently? Any delivery guys who seemed a bit too invested in your food? Any cute mailmen?”

  The only delivery she ever gets to her home is Thai food, and it's delivered by a very kind middle-aged Thai woman. Trixie knew this.

  “Some wires got crossed, I’ll check with people.” Aimes flops on the couch with her glass of wine, and both her cats skitter away.

  Trixie gives her another disapproving stare, then delicately sits down at the other side of the couch.

  3

  And she's been having dreams.

  She's not a person who sleeps well enough usually to dream . If she dreams at all it's glimpses of emotion; quickly forgotten and quickly fading. It feels too raw to talk about, but it adds to the feeling of off-ness, the deep pit in her stomach that won't stop falling.

  Not that the dreams are bad, per say, but vivid. So vivid she wakes up with the sheets twisted around her legs and her core wet and aching.

  Of course they were all about that hook-up. Jake.

  They aren’t a rehashing of that night in the hotel - every night it’s a new sex dream. Every night it’s like he comes to her, in a new place and a new bed and a new room, and they fuck. Just...fuck.

  She hasn't felt this well rested in years.

  A small part of her hates that all it takes is a few nice wet dreams for her to feel better about her sleep schedule.

  That Friday, Aimes has to drive all the way out to the Pasadena branch. Which is lovely, don’t get her wrong, but it’s a bit of a drive on a Friday afternoon. Everyone is fleeing Los Angeles, and all the freeways converge into one giant clusterfuck.

  So by the time she pulls up to the old building, with its tall spires and way too small parking lot, she wishes she could just live closer.

  And despite all its grandeur, even they have library technical issues with their software. Evan has been there all week since he’s gotten back from his trip, and he can’t make heads or tails of it, so they had to call in Aimes.

  Not that she minds, a certain amount of job security is always nice.

  She pushes open the hefty door to the library, and a blast of air condition and old book smell hits her, and it’s just the best. She waves at the security guard then climbs the four sets of stairs to the offices on the final floor.

  Evan and the head librarian, Dave, hunch over one of the computers, frowns on their faces. Dave peers at the computer, the picture of a librarian. Hair gone gray, he’s thin and his face seems stretched out, like too little skin pulled over too long of bones.

  Evan is a nice man, middle-aged, and in the least intimidating bracket of humanity.

  Dave lifts a hand in greeting to her, not breaking eye contact with the computer. “It won’t input the correct Dewey system,” he says in lieu of hello.

  Evan grimaces an apology to her for that.

  “I thought your library isn’t even on Dewey anymore?” Aimes grabs a folding chair and drags it over.

  “It’s not, but Pasadena High School is doing a project on it now and your program’s supposed to work in it --” He looks up, does a double take, and blinks.

  By now it has been a week of random strangers doing the double take, so Aimes gives him a thin-lipped smile. “Did anyone go into the code?”

  There’s a suspicious lack of answer, so Aimes twists and looks at Evan. “Did you check the base code?”

  He shakes his head.

  “So you were just fooling around in settings.”

  “We’ve done all the toggle settings, so they should be working fine.”

  “But if someone deleted that section of code to actually make it work, the toggle would still be there, just not work.” She risks a glance at Dave. He’s staring at her, wide eyed, as if seeing her for the first time.

  Fuck that.

  “This’ll take me about an hour, that okay for you Dave?” She turns back to the computer.

  No answer.

  She sighs again, refusing to turn around and deal with the staring. “Dave?”

  There’s a strangled sound, as if he’s trying to speak but can’t get it out, then he coughs. “Yeah. An hour. That should be fine.” There’s a pause, then, “Pasadena High School students will be in around 2:45 to try again.”

  “I’ll be out of your hair by then,” Aimes opens up the code, the tips of her ears burning. Seriously with the staring, it’s getting old.

  And she’s known Dave for like five years, so he should be above this. Whatever the hell this is and whatever the hell his problem is.

  “Hey Evan, would you mind hitting the east Pasadena branch to make sure it’s still alright?”

  “They don’t have the Dewey system project there,” Dave pipes up.

  “But if the code is wrong there, it’d be good to clear it up before some rich high school has an issue, right?” Aimes raises an eyebrow at the code so she doesn’t do it at him.

  As if sensing the tension, Evan nods and leaves. He’s never the most social with coworkers, despite being charming for the little old ladies.

  The moment the office door clicks closed behind him, Aimes swivels in the chair and faces Dave. “Okay, what’s this.” She demands.

  Dave blinks at her, wide eyed. “What --”

  “You seem spooked by me.” She stares him down without any issue. Dave’s a librarian, he’s never been the type to take to someone being aggressive. “Dave, we’ve known each other for like half a decade now, what the hell is this?”

  She sees the indecision in his eyes, the look of vague panic, then the acceptance the moment he does actually cave.

  “What did you do?” He asks, his voice quiet, as if asking a shameful secret. He pulls over a chair next to hers

  “Don’t know what you mean. I went to a conference, came back, and randos on the street have been staring. Just like you did.” She looks him in the eyes, and he ducks his head away.

  It’s a long moment, with the only sound the muted resonance from the great vaulted room below them, before he sighs. “You don’t know what it is you did?” He asks, voice soft and a bit pleading. “Are you really gonna make me explain this?”

  She nods. Like hell she knows what she did.

  Dave plays with a scrap of paper, a nervous tick that he’s done since she first met him. “Last time I saw you, you were a normal person,” he starts, face twisting. “You didn’t seem to have any issues with anything...you know.” He stops, helpless. “You know.”

  She leans forward, and he leans back. “No, Dave, I don’t know.”

  He blinks rapidly at her, jaw working. “Seriously?”

  “Seriously.”

  “Fuck.” He whispers, and it’s probably the first time she’s ever heard him swear. “Man. Fuck.” He scrabbles his hand over his face, as if wishing he’s anywhere else. “I can’t believe I have to do this.”

  Aimes sits back, an odd feeling of detachment sitting in her stomach. Like Dave’s panic isn’t about her, and isn’t really going to hurt her. Like his mini freak out isn’t actually about her, but about some fictionalized version.

  “It can’t be that bad.”

  His eyes widen, and he leans forward, sudden. “It’s not going to take you an hour to fix the code, is it?”

  “Nah, five minutes tops, I sa
id that so Evan would leave.” She smiles at him, delicate, showing her teeth, and gets a thrill of satisfaction when he blanches. “Spit it out.”

  There’s another fleeting moment of hesitation, before he springs up and makes sure the door is clicked shut.

  “In this world, there are the normal people, and there are the...un-normal people,” he starts. Aimes would mock him, but he’s obviously struggling for words. “There’s people, and then there are the people of fairy tales. Changelings. Dryads. Incubus. Gods. Those sort of people.”

  Her stomach settles into a feeling of wrongness. “Right. Of course there are.”

  He gives her a stern look, and she’s immediately reminded that he is still a librarian. “We can...tell when someone is a normal human, or not. Last time I saw you, you were normal. Now…” He opens his hands wide, a helpless motion. “Something has happened, and something un-normal has marked you.”

  “Yeah that’s bullshit.” Marked her, like she was a tree that a dog walked by too much.

  “You asked.” He scrubs his face again. “Did someone give you four apples that you ate one a day?”

  So now it’s her turn to blink. “Um, what?”

  “I’m trying to figure out what this person did to mark you.” His face is 100% serious, no joking. “There are a lot of different ways, and I don’t want to miss something just cause I didn’t think of it.”

  “You’re bullshitting me.” She says, flat, her mind racing. The only thing unique of her conference was the sex, and…

  “Do you need me to prove that this exists?” He stares at her, at her face blanching, too careful, like he knew the idea in her mind. “Because I can.” He holds out his hand, like to a small child, and Aimes doesn’t know if she’s seen something so sinister before. Just his long hand, the skin too tight and dry over the bones.

  She balks. “What do you mean, prove it?” She blurts out, the silence feeling more threatening than her words. The hair on the back of her neck stands up, and it’s not cold in the office, but she ruthlessly suppresses a shiver.