Curse of the Divine Read online

  “Part of me recognizes this place,” Griffin said, a crooked grin curling his lips as they went in search of their room. The entrance was at the rear of the building, and Celia had little confidence they’d be able to find it without traipsing around the whole town again. Griffin tilted his head up, exposing the long line of his neck, his chest expanding under his dark trench coat, and added, “There’s a hint of madness in the air.” He looked eager to breathe it all in.

  They found their room eventually—four walls, two beds, a small table with an oil lamp, two rickety chairs, a jammed window, a cold fireplace, and not much else except insect vermin, probably.

  The floorboards creaked under Celia’s weight as she pulled back the covers on the bed with a wince, prepared for the worst. After a thorough inspection that thankfully didn’t reveal evidence of bugs, she collapsed into a chair . . . which promptly shattered under her weight.

  “Of course,” she mumbled, picking herself up.

  That was when a burning sensation on her thigh jolted her: another inked message from Dante. She muttered under her breath—he truly had the worst timing. If he kept her awake all night again with his nonsense, she was going to find a way of flying to Asura to snap every one of his pretty inkling fingers. He’d messaged her every hour in those first days after she’d left.

  At first she’d responded, just quick updates about where they were going, what they were doing, thinking that might placate him. She ignored him anytime he expressed concern, every shred of sympathy or offered understanding, and each I’m so sorry, Cece. She couldn’t handle those.

  His messages had slowed to once or twice a day lately, but she hadn’t responded in so long, she wasn’t sure why he wasn’t getting the hint. She never wanted to use her ink again, which she’d told him with her last message. Yet he still tried to poke her into responding.

  Griffin added his pack next to Celia’s in the corner and busied himself with inspecting the other bed, humming under his breath. Where she was close to collapse, Griffin looked liberated and free, his movements less stiff, as if the fresh, mad air had fed him well.

  Celia closed her eyes against her headache (and her Dante-induced thigh ache), sitting on the edge of the bed and trying not to whimper. Sometimes she could almost, almost forget about her headache; other times it flared and took her by surprise. Either way, the near-constant pain was making something inside of her shrivel. It was so hard to be strong, continue on, and hurt all the time.

  Griffin’s next words were softer, though she still heard a lingering smile in his voice. “Now that we’re here, you need to find a healer. There’s no need for you to suffer if the headaches are getting worse.”

  “I’m not the one who needs a healer,” she said. “And they aren’t getting worse.” They’re just always bad.

  Griffin cocked his head to the left, as if listening to her unsaid words.

  “Let’s check out Stomp Night,” Celia said. Halcyon—and all the answers he had about Diavala—was closer than ever. A headache wouldn’t stop her.

  But before she left the room, she made sure the bunch of wisteria blossoms Griffin had stolen was well-hidden at the bottom of her bag.

  Chapter 4

  Celia was the first at the bar to place her order, leaving Griffin at the door, examining who he would corner first for information.

  Many of the locals examined him right back, with appreciative smiles and nods to friends. Hey, hey! Look at that stranger . . .

  Celia hadn’t forgotten the way people tended to respond to him, but there hadn’t been a time for him to shine in weeks. He would have no trouble getting people to talk, although staying on topic might be a different matter. He’d already launched into a loud soliloquy—a stranger in a strange town, a vagabond in search of adventure—and a lengthy narration of his impressions, as more and more people turned their eyes to him.

  The bartender was even shorter than Celia, with long hair and dainty features. “What can I get you?” they asked, unsmiling, as they watched the pub quickly fill up and eyed Griffin with undisclosed fascination.

  “Absinthe, and a description of Halcyon Ronnea.”

  They arched an eyebrow as they poured the drink. “He’ll be here tonight, most likely.”

  “So I’ve heard, but I’d love to know what he looks like so I can find him.”

  The bartender slid the drink toward Celia without answering, stealing glances at Griffin, perpetually ready to take his order.

  Celia turned on the barstool to the person sitting next to her, a rotund soul with dark smudges on his face and hands that looked as if he’d been working in a mine. Or perhaps he was an artist and worked with charcoal. “Hi,” she said. “I’m new in town and would love to talk to your mayor, Ser Ronnea.”

  After a brief interaction, the same result.

  Then another. And a fourth.

  With each person she talked to, she slammed back a drink. Everyone was friendly enough, and apologetic about it, but no one could tell her what Halcyon Ronnea looked like, even though he’d apparently run the town “for quite a while” as the miner/charcoaler had said. From the roundabout descriptions and reverent tone of the locals, Celia imagined a much-loved grandparent complete with fancy suit and floral hat. Perhaps a few bonbons in one pocket and a handkerchief embroidered by his own grandparent in the other pocket. A wink and a story for anyone willing to pause a moment and listen.

  But instead of elderly Halcyon getting confused once in a while—forgetting he’d already told that story, misplacing the handkerchief—it was the entire town around him that was suffering from memory loss.

  Celia and Griffin had decided on a divide and conquer approach, but every once in a while he slid up next to her and reported that he was having the same luck. His smile grew with each non-report, as if this were a Most Fun Puzzle instead of aggravating as hell.

  Celia moved from table to table—“Do you know Halcyon?”—her frustration mounting and her drunkenness following along like a diligent puppy. Many Wisterians started to express worry about her well-being, which only pissed her off more.

  Griffin’s loud, booming laughter cut through the din. He was talking to someone at the bar—a young person with a shaved undercut of brown hair, the longer hair on top flopping over one eye, and a vivid black sunflower tattoo on their shoulder—whose stiff body language was the polar opposite of Griffin’s.

  Something about the cut of their frown felt familiar to Celia. They sat backwards on their stool, leaning against the bar, slamming back drink after drink with a scowl that got fiercer and redder with each drink and the longer Griffin talked. They were frightening in a caged animal kind of way, looking to pounce, nodding absently at Griffin’s happy conversation.

  Leave it to Griffin to find the one person in the room who couldn’t be swayed by his charm and to take it as a challenge.

  Turning away, Celia fell into a chair at one table without even asking if she could join. Two people stared at her, their faces frozen mid-sentence, their laughter cut off abruptly by her entrance. “I’m looking for Halcyon Ronnea.”

  One of them was rough-cut and jagged, with oily hair and sharp features bordering on hawkish. The other was different in every way: as polished as marble, not a hair out of place. A duo of opposites, Celia couldn’t fathom what they had in common. Her sentence had been slurred enough that the one with the oily hair asked her to repeat herself.

  Before either of them could answer, the stomp part of Stomp Night began. People beat out a rhythm with their feet, reminding her painfully of the Rabble Mob shows, where the performance itself has a heartbeat. Griffin whooped and jumped on a table, feeding off the familiarity, earning laughter and applause. A few people pushed at one another to join him.

  Griffin was clearly enjoying himself, but to Celia it felt more like the bang of war drums, the sinister beat of illness or revenge.

  The pair across the table from her glared at her when she didn’t join in, their hands banging on t
he sturdy tabletop, adding different beats to the underlying steady thump of feet.

  With a weak smile, Celia banged on the table a few times. And then a few more. The “song” seemed to stretch on forever, with hoots and hollers adding a melody. More people hopped up on tables, wearing intense looks of concentration inside their smiles, as if the movements of their bodies had to perfectly match the rhythm and nothing else in the world mattered.

  The intensity rocked her. Sweat soon glistened on foreheads and necks, everyone, including the bartender and, surprisingly, Sunflower Tattoo, eventually taking part. It wasn’t musical or artistic as much as vigorous exercise, everyone exerting themselves to their capacity.

  Abruptly, Griffin launched himself off the table, and with one final smack on the tables and one final stomp of feet, the song ended. Unprepared for it, unsure how she missed the signal for the end that everyone else, including Griffin, seemed to recognize, Celia continued her tapping two beats too long.

  The polished gentlesoul sitting across the table smiled at her as everyone cheered around them, congratulated each other, panting and sweating, and went to refresh their drinks. After the boom of the beat, the chaos of conversation and laughter was a soft, feathery noise.

  Celia’s gaze found Sunflower Tattoo just as Sunflower Tattoo’s found hers. Griffin had flopped onto the stool next to them again, resuming his unrequited chatter, and it almost looked as if Sunflower Tattoo were beseeching Celia for help.

  Celia tried unsuccessfully to hold back a snicker.

  “I know what Halcyon looks like,” the person across from her said casually. “But it’ll cost you.”

  His long fingers tapped the table with feather-light precision, playing a piano concerto on the splintered wood. It wasn’t the same as the beat of Stomp Night, but as if he were playing the unheard melody accompaniment.

  Celia was drunk by that point, but not drunk enough that she didn’t catch the look of confusion his greasy friend shot him, which was quickly covered. “Oh look, there’s Kosta,” the friend said, standing and taking his leave. “I’m going to say hello to them. We need to schedule another night for Imp tiles.”

  Piano Fingers nodded, a crooked smirk playing at the corners of his lips. His tenor had given Celia pause when she’d first sat down: too much bronze for the she pronoun, too few golds for no pronoun, and a mix of reds and silvers stirred in and flickering. Nothing was unusual in and of itself—there were as many tenors as people in the world, and pronoun classifications were a fabricated construct of linguistics that didn’t always match up easily to reality—but for the first time in a long time, Celia had hesitated before landing on he.

  “Finally, someone who’s willing to help me.” She matched his smirk with a look of wide-eyed innocence. “What payment would you need? I’ll give you anything.”

  His eyebrow quirked at anything, and his fingers stilled for a minute. His fingers were long and fine, looking as if they hadn’t worked a day in their life. And they perfectly suited the rest of him: smooth skin, short, light brown hair graying at the temple in a way that didn’t match his age, wide lips slightly curved into a smile, green eyes that didn’t care, and a suit so well fitted it had obviously been made exactly for that one body and only that body. Everything about him felt finished to perfection. For a second something tingled up Celia’s drunk spine: caution, maybe, her self-preservation whispering careful.

  “I’m sure we can come to some arrangement.” He leaned forward again, whatever perfume he wore giving the subtle scent of pine needles, and locked his eyes on hers. His hands had crept up the table, tapping closer. “But first, traveler, your name.”

  “But first, how about your name?”

  His smile got wider. “Ah, she’s not as foolish as she looks. Fine, then. Tell me why you want to talk to him.”

  I need him to help me defeat Diavala for good.

  But now she didn’t believe this stranger could help her. He was a con artist, and she’d presented as an easy mark (curse you, absinthe!). Celia regretted the lineup of glasses she’d emptied, at the same time wishing there were more of them.

  “We have a mutual acquaintance,” she said carefully. “Can you help me find Halcyon or not?”

  “Oh, I can help you,” he said. “How about we make a game of it? I’ll give you five answers to five questions.”

  Celia blinked. That’s exactly what she wanted, so why would he call it a game? A con artist and a fool, then. Or perhaps he was trying to be charming.

  “For some answers I’ll be lying,” he said, “and for some answers I’ll tell the truth. You’ll have to judge for yourself which are which. Uh-uh—”

  Celia stood, pausing a moment, but only because she’d gotten momentarily dizzy, not because she cared to listen to more of what he had to say.

  “I’m the closest you’ll get to Halcyon—that, I promise, is a truth. Your only free one in this game.” He leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest, enjoying himself. He glanced over her shoulder toward Sunflower Tattoo and nodded a greeting. Sunflower Tattoo snorted fire at him in response.

  Celia sat down heavily, turning her attention back to Piano Fingers, knowing that Griffin had noticed the brief exchange and would ask Sunflower Tattoo about it. “All right, let’s do this,” she said. “Is Halcyon Ronnea a real person?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why can’t anyone tell me what he looks like?”

  “Everyone else here has remarkably poor vision or poor memory, or there’s some sorcery afoot . . . I haven’t figured out which it is, but I’ll let you know if I do.”

  “Why are you different?”

  He shrugged. “I wasn’t born in this town. I don’t have the same affliction.”

  “Describe exactly what Halcyon looks like.”

  “Well, he’s a charming fellow, always dressed in the latest fashions, with a keen appreciation for well-made shoes and long leather skirts. He has brown hair with a dashing shot of gray in it and green eyes—most of the time—and everyone who meets him wonders at his eloquence.”

  Celia processed the information, her eyes roaming over his brown hair, the gray at his temples, his green eyes and regal posture. She glanced under the table to confirm his footwear and ankle-length leather wrap. “Are you Halcyon?”

  He smiled. “Yes.”

  Celia wanted to punch him. She shouldn’t have wasted her time. She really shouldn’t have trusted that this would get anywhere. And she really really shouldn’t have had so many drinks. Her chair scraped the wood again as she stood up. “Enjoy your night.”

  He grabbed her wrist, and she blinked down at his hand. “But we were playing a game,” he said, clicking his tongue with a hint of aggression. This was someone who wasn’t used to being walked away from. “And you don’t yet know whether you won or lost.”

  She yanked her hand away, and he smiled, his canine teeth too pointy and biting into his lower lip. Sharp and dark.

  “Celia,” Griffin said, suddenly there. “Introduce me to your new friend.”

  The sharp, dark stranger shook his head. “We were done here anyway, weren’t we, Celia?” he said as he strode toward the bar.

  Even after she’d turned her focus to Griffin, she felt a lingering unease: the slow dance of fingers along her spine and the back of her neck, the hoarse whisper of her name.

  Celia let out a long, slow exhale. For whatever reason, Griffin did the same. His light joviality had disappeared, and now it looked as if he were trying to summon it back.

  “How’s your headache?” he asked, his head tilting to the left.

  “The same.”

  Then, with a laugh, he said, “That person with the sunflower tattoo on their shoulder haaaaates me.”

  “Did you get their name?” Celia would have loved to stop referring to them as Sunflower Tattoo. Her mind bees hated the mouthful.

  He nodded. “Lyric.”

  They both looked toward the bar. Something poked in Celia’s min
d, her bees murmuring something about names, introductions . . .

  “That’s a nice name,” Celia said absently. All Illinian children chose their own names when they got old enough, and the convention was to select either family names or traditional ones. Celia loved it when someone’s chosen name showed something of their personality: Griffin, Anna-turned-Anya, Lilac, Sky.

  Lyric.

  Lyric was still perched backwards on the stool, staring daggers at Celia and Griffin as an elegantly put together soul in a sharp suit and long skirt whispered in their ear.

  Celia had been talking to someone. They’d played a game, and she’d been convinced that he was lying when he’d said he was Halcyon. He’d described himself.

  “I found Halcyon,” Celia said. “I think. I don’t know.”

  She looked to the table where she’d been sitting a few moments ago: there were three people sitting there now, deep in a story, laughing loudly. She scanned each of their faces carefully, then moved on to the others mingling about.

  She couldn’t find him.

  Lyric took their friend’s arm and they walked past Celia and Griffin to the door. Everything about Lyric’s movements looked annoyed. “Don’t worry,” Lyric said, bumping Celia a little too hard as they passed. Their voice was gruff but melodic at the same time. “It happens to everyone.”

  “What does?” Where the hell had he gone? Griffin was scanning faces carefully too, returning the many smiles of his new friends whenever he made eye contact.

  Lyric’s friend gave Celia a smile, his crisp green eyes, perfectly smooth skin, and fancy suit all far too dandy for a Stomp Night at the Outside Inn pub. “The forgetting,” he said. He tipped an invisible hat to her, and she noticed his long, lean fingers—pianist hands, fingers crafted like slender masterpieces—before he scooted toward the door with Lyric.

  Celia wanted to laugh, but the stranger was right. It wasn’t that she had lost the person she’d been talking to. He hadn’t left the pub, slunk away, or joined another group.

  It was that Celia had no idea what the person she’d been talking to looked like anymore.