I held up a hand while I put the cellphone back to my ear. I had dialed someone else, and they had picked up.
Killian glared at me.
“Yup,” Medea said by way of answering.
“Hey, could you please call your girlfriend and ask her where in the body their fox pearls reside?”
“What?”
“I'm going to try to extract the pearls from the murderer.”
“Huh. Okay. Yeah.” She hung up.
“What the hell is it with people and bad phone manners?” I growled as I put away my phone.
“Manners are very important,” Hunter Do-hun, who was driving, agreed.
I snorted a laugh. “I guess that's how you see foreigners.”
“Not all foreigners. Mostly Americans.”
I snorted. “Fair.”
“Seren,” Killian started again.
“Oh, look, we're going into a tunnel,” I said.
The hollow sound of driving through a tunnel cocooned us.
“Fine,” Killian muttered. “Act like a child.”
“Says the man who calls everyone dude and wears a hoodie,” I said to Hunter Do-hun.
Do-hun pressed his lips together, but his shoulders shook.
“My hoodie is leather, and it's fucking awesome!” Kill shouted.
Chapter Thirty-Six
After we came through the tunnel, we crossed a bridge, then drove down into Seoul. A few tall buildings stood guard on the outskirts of the city, then they rose around us, getting closer and closer together the further we went. It reminded me a lot of entering Honolulu, Hawaii. The buildings were no more than five stories tall at first, with one-story structures in between them and whole residential neighborhoods on one side. Then those five-story buildings became the shorter ones, crouching beside skyscrapers. You can find similarities in cities all over the world. A city is a city. But there are also distinctions between cities of different countries.
Seoul wasn't New York or Chicago. The traffic wasn't as bad, even though there were five lanes at one point and some of the turns were odd, especially at those major intersections where pedestrians were crossing in all sorts of ways. You see Asian cities on television and think they're super crowded and loud. All those lights and cars. Because an American's reference point is places like New York City where it is super crowded and loud. I'll give you the crowded part. The sidewalks were flooded with people in the main areas. Not so much on the outskirts. But loud? No. There were traffic sounds, of course, but not the honking and yelling you hear in America. For such a busy place, it was surprisingly quiet and very clean. And it wasn't congested with skyscrapers. Don't get me wrong, there were a lot of them,many mirrored, but you could still see a good portion of the sky, and trees lined the roads.
All the technology I'd seen in Incheon was magnified in Seoul. The light strips at the sidewalks and digital bus signs were joined by video billboards that didn't just advertise products but directed and informed people. Vending machines on the streets looked like robots. It was like stepping into the future. Yeah, there was a lot to take in, but it was all so orderly that I didn't feel overwhelmed. I'm not a city girl, not by any means, but Seoul was all right.
All that being said, the architecture looked much the same as you'd find in any city. I'm sure there were touristy areas and other such attractions in Seoul, but we didn't see any on the way to the apartment. No fairy tale villages, Chinatown, or even a park. I did see a digital billboard featuring Angels. Or the human version which was close enough. Humans now had confirmation that all those pretty people with wings they painted in their churches were fairly accurate representations. Of course, the Angels on the billboard I saw were played by Korean actors. It made me wonder about Angels. Had I ever met an Angel with anything other than Anglo-Saxon features? How odd. I couldn't recall any. And I've met a lot of them. Was Heaven so similar all across the planet, that there was no racial diversity? And I guess what I'd labeled as Anglo-Saxon wasn't really that either. It was Angel features. Just as Demons had distinct features. I couldn't tell you specifically what those features were, but then I couldn't tell you what Irish features were compared to German either. So, there you go.
Before I could ask Sever about Angels and their lack of racial diversity (I mean Fairy had tons of different races but not Heaven or Hell?), I noticed the crowd gathered beneath thebillboard. They were dancing, singing, and banging drums. They were also dressed in white robes.
“What's that about?” I asked.
“Ah, you get to see one of the cults at last,” Hunter Do-hun said. “We warned you they're around. They're just not as . . . outspoken in Incheon. Here, they will parade through the streets. That's either the beginning or the end of one such a parade.”
“An Angel parade?” I contemplated this. “Huh. I forgot about the cults.”
“We thought everything would calm down eventually,” Killian said.
“They will,” Sever said. “It will just take some time. Maybe years. But they'll let it go.” He looked at me to add, “As long as we're careful about not being seen again.”
