There were suites carved into the stone, with the comforts of modern life and the cave aesthetics of the “good old days,” and caverns that filled with water at high tide for things that didn’t do well dry. Things that were too old or just too strange to pass as human had permanent residency and a very reduced rate for their stay—just the occasional favor, the odd atrocity to show willingness.
Huge strange mushrooms were grown in frilled tiers on the walls, brittle and flavored with the wine made from pallid underground grapes. Cash had never seen it, but rumor had it there was a larder stocked with the descendants of the missing Roanoke settlers somewhere down deep. For the right guests, drunk on mushrooms and wine, she’d lose them for a baying Wild Hunt under a sky of stalactites instead of stars.
It wasn’t the only hotel of its kind, although it was one of the oldest. Down here, monsters could dress up like it was the Middle Ages and pretend that one day they’d defy the Prodigium and throw off their humanity. Yet they could still get a Wi-Fi connection to catch up on the next season ofThe Witcherwhen it dropped.
The Great Hall was full of long oak-fossil tables striated with streaks of amber and the pressed bones of things even the Prodigium didn’t have a name for. Servants in livery moved between the tables and served up carved cuts of fresh meat on beaten brass platters or poured glasses of thin pale wine.
Like the Bell and Book, the monsters who came to enjoy the Abascal’s hospitality had shucked their humanity, but they’d left all of it at the door. Instead of human fashion that pinched wattled skin and didn’t have room for their wings or tails, they were in finery tailored to their monstrosity. A silk fringe tasseled a goblin king’s long, naked rat tail, and a harpy wore matched platinum spinner rings on her taloned hands and the long fingers of her bat wings.
It was gaudy and indulgent, all trailing sleeves of stiff brocade in brilliant colors and great gemmed metallic ruffs that framed the grim maws of folklore. Upstairs Cash had felt awkwardly overdressed in his jacket. Down here he looked monastic.
At the center of it all, even though she was tucked away in a booth near the back, Donna Abascal sipped wine and watched the eddy of politics move from table to table. Most of the guests swung by hers to pay their respects and show metaphorical throat. She’d remember them, although it would gain them no favors. The ones who didn’t come by she’d remember too, and take her pinch of flesh in some small, petty way.
Ellie called Donna “Grams” sometimes. If any of the cream of the Prodigium in attendance this weekend heard that, they’d choke on their own foot-long tongues.
“Are they all here for the wedding?” Cash asked as they took the last few steps down onto the uneven floor. Like every other rough touch in the caverns, every pothole and stalagmite stump was for the cave aesthetic.
Arkady dipped his head toward Cash and murmured through a faint smile, “Of course. Not all of them areinvited, but they’re to give everyone else the impression they are.”
He unlinked his arm from Cash’s and put a hand on the small of his back instead as he guided him through the tables. A few of the diners acknowledged them on the way past—a tip of a heavy, horned head or a glass raised in a slime-sticky hand for a brief toast—but others actively turned away to present a cold shoulder.
That was new.
Before Cash could ask, they reached Donna’s table. The wig was one he hadn’t seen before, short and a delicate shade of red that curled around her ears, but the woman under it hadn’t changed. The dust of her humanity had hardened like papier-mâché, dry and delicate. What looked like incipient wrinkles from a distance—the start of crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes and marionette lines around her mouth—were actually folds and cracks in the skin. Something paler lived underneath, and every day her maids papered over it with powder and grafts of thin see-through skin peeled from… someone. Somewhere.
There were always rumors.
“Belladonna,” Cash said. He didn’t bow. At first he hadn’t known he had to, and then… well, being a dick was his art. “Even you can’t be done with a bad penny, huh?”
She smiled and held her hand out. “Blood of my blood,” she said. The voice that came out of that dainty spider of a woman was a low, rough contralto. It was like rotgut in a crystal tumbler. “Sit. Break bread with me. Tell me how my granddaughter fares at the proving ground.”
Cash pulled away. Only the hand between his shoulders stopped it from being a step back.
What the fuck was going on?
Chapter Seven
“HAH, SHE’Sa scale off the old beast.” Donna chuckled as she looked at Cash’s photo of Ellie. Her fingers tapped like sticks against the screen, and she sighed wistfully. “It’s true, you know. The enemies you make at the proving camp are enemies you have their whole life.”
“They really hate it when you call it proving grounds,” Arkady said. “It’s Summer Camp now.”
She dismissed that with an impatient flick of her hand. “Whatever you call it, you never forget your first enemies. It almost makes me regret killing them all at once.”
It was never a good idea to have anything less than all your wits about you, dealing with Donna. Cash still risked a drink of the grave-dirt-grown wine to settle his stomach. It had a thin taste and a kick that made his eyes water.
“I hear they found your brother’s leg bone in the Catacombs in Paris,” he said as he picked over the sushi on his plate. The “they” were the Papacy. “That’s half of him reassembled. In another century you’ll be able to take him apart again.”
Donna smiled at him and slid the phone back over the table. Her fingers hadn’t left smudges on the screen, just a faint white powder like the shed of a moth’s wing.
“Almost, dear, almost. You can always find new enemies. Sentiment is a drug that even monsters can grow addicted to.” She took a sip of her own wine and arched an eyebrow at him. Her plate was cleared, bones cracked open and marrow licked out. “Although we all crave a little hit of nostalgia now and again, don’t we?”
The wine had soured in Cash’s stomach. He muttered something agreeable and took a second drink. Maybe it would calm the first down to have a friend. Was he dying? That didn’t make sense—why would she care? Wasshedying and this was some last mind game on her part?
“Speaking of which,” Arkady interrupted, “is Yana here yet?”
The question flipped Donna’s strange mood like a coin. She frowned and sat back in the booth. Despite her slight frame, it creaked under her weight.
“Not until tomorrow. Tomorrow evening,” she said, her mouth tipped down in an unhappy pout. “Why come at all, that’s what I want to know. Why marry and miss the party? It’s the last good time you’ll have until your husband gets you pregnant and you can finally hunt him through the woods for sport. Although, of course, some people like their husbands and don’t want to bury them under a cursed oak. More power to them, I say. We all have different needs.”
