“Don’t use that tone of voice on
me
, boy!” Uncle Esau snarled, his golden eyes growing as dark as a storm cloud. “You’re nowhere near sorcerer enough to threaten me.”
“Are you so sure of that, Uncle?” Hexe retorted, squaring his shoulders.
“That’s enough—from
both
of you!” Lady Syra said sternly as she wedged herself between her brother and son. “Esau, I invited you because you are family, not because I wanted to listen to another one of your antihuman screeds. Besides, it’s a little late to be concerned about humans inhabiting the family homestead. Mr. Manto’s been living in the basement for half a century now.”
“It’s bad enough Father allowed the oracle to take up residence,” Uncle Esau grunted in disgust. “But at least
he
has a talent!” He jerked his head angrily at me. “This nump has no occult gift whatsoever! I told Father he was making a mistake allowing human psychics and mediums to take up residence in Golgotham. It was only a matter of time before the others would start to trickle in. Now I’m warning
you
, Syra—once you start letting garden-variety numps into the neighborhood, there’s no stopping them!
“First it’s the psychics and mediums. Then it’s the ‘artists,’ and then trust fund numpsters. Next thing you know, we’re surrounded by chuffing numpies, gobbing away on those accursed cell phones and putting a Star-bucks on every other street corner. They’ll gentrify us out of existence. Can’t you
see
that?” he shouted, the bulging veins on his forehead threatening to burst through his skin. “You would think the humans would have been satisfied after they stripped us of our lands, slew our dragons, and scattered our people to the winds. But no! Still they hound us! Every day they do their best to destroy our culture with their damnable technology. Cell phones. Satellites. Microwave ovens.
Feh!
Soon our children will be as weak and slack-jawed as the numps’ worthless brats. Our people were building citadels of living glass while humans were still throwing their dung at one another. If I had my way, the fires would burn again and the skies once more grow black with their ashes!”
“Esau! This is
not
the time or place!” Lady Syra said, doing her best to keep calm. “Since Father left the house to
me
, I’m the one who has the final say-so over who lives there. And I have no problem accepting Ms. Tate as my tenant.”
“Sure, take up for him,” Uncle Esau sneered. “That’s what you
always
do, no matter how foolish his decisions may be. You’ve always coddled him, Syra. The boy can’t even support himself. Everyone knows it’s impossible to make a living Right Handed. He’ll never amount to more than a jumped-up nimgimmer!”
“That’s enough, Esau,” Lady Syra said sharply.
“You know what I say is true, Syra! You can’t stay blind to his weakness forever.”
“I said that’s
enough
, Esau!” Her tone was so cold you could almost see ice crystals hanging in the air. “I’m not speaking to you as your sister.”
Esau raised an indigo eyebrow in surprise. “Ah. So
that’
s how it is.” He glanced at the raven riding his shoulder. “It would seem we have offended the royal ear, Edgar.” The familiar cawed in agreement. Esau executed a formal bow to his sister, one hand placed above his heart. “In that case, I beg your leave, milady.”
“You are free to go, sir,” Lady Syra said with a curt nod of her head.
With a dramatic flourish of his coat, Esau marched out of the pub, leaving nothing but embarrassed silence in his wake.
Lady Syra heaved a huge sigh as she watched her brother leave. “My. How very public that was.” She turned and gave me a wan smile. “Please forgive my brother, Ms. Tate. He is a necromancer by trade, and I fear it has warped him. I assure you that I do not share his prejudice.”
“Thank you. I appreciate your standing up for me.”
Lady Syra turned to her son and gave him a peck on the cheek. “I hope you won’t think ill of me, sweetheart, but I’m going to call it a night. It was a pleasure meeting you, my dear.” She was smiling as she left, but I could tell that the confrontation with her brother had affected her greatly.
“I’m
really
sorry you had to see that,” Hexe said as he returned to the booth. “But I warned you about Uncle Esau.”
“He’s rather, uh, opinionated.”
“He’s a racist asshole.”
“I was trying to be polite.”
“Why bother?” Hexe snapped. “He doesn’t care what humans think about him. And it’s obvious he doesn’t care about alienating his family. I hate him for how he treats my mother! She bends over backward to incorporate him into family gatherings and celebrations, only to have him shit all over everything.”
“Yeah, about your mother—why is she called ‘Lady Syra’? I mean, it’s not a stage name, is it, like ‘Professor Azar’ or ‘Madame Lola’?”
Hexe looked down at his tankard of barley wine, avoiding my gaze.
“So, are you going to tell me the reason?” I prodded.
“I will,” he replied. “But you have to promise me that it won’t change things between us.”
“What things?” I asked, my helium-filled heart suddenly racing.
“You know.” He gestured at the empty space between us. “Our friendship.”
“Oh.” I tried not to sound disappointed. “Of course. Okay, I promise.”
“My mother’s family members are the direct descendants of Lord Bexe.”
“The last Witch King? The one who signed the Treaty?
That
Lord Bexe?”
“One and the same.” Hexe nodded. “Except that he wasn’t really the last Witch King. The royal family didn’t go away—we simply no longer have a standing army or hold court. My great-great-grandfather Lord Beke, the one I told you about, was responsible for bringing the Kymerans to this country and was the founder of Golgotham. His son, Elas, inherited the title of Witch King after him. He had two children, Jack and Eben. Jack was the heir apparent. ...”
“The one who got lost on the third floor?”
Hexe gave me a smile. “Nice to know you pay attention. Anyway, my grandfather ended up having to take Jack’s place. When the time came to pass along the title, he chose my mother over Esau, making her the Witch Queen. It was an unusual decision on Grandfather’s part, but not unheard of.”
“So that makes you . . . ?”
“Prince Hexe, heir to the throne of Kymera. Such as it is.”
“So
that’s
why they were calling you Serenity.”
“It’s an anachronistic form of address,” he said with a shrug. “It’s not like being the Prince of Wales, or even the Prince of Monaco. My title and a dollar won’t get me in the subway. But that’s the real reason Uncle Esau is such a prick toward my mother and me. Of course, she feels guilty about it. I’ve told her time and again that it’s his problem, not hers, but she still tries to find ways to make it up to him.”
“Why were you afraid of telling me this?”
“Because being royalty—even fucked-up witch royalty—makes people act differently around you. When I was growing up, I was never sure if people liked me for myself. Take Dori, for instance. I always got the feeling she was more in love with my
title
than with
me
.”
I leaned forward, dropping my voice into a conspiratorial whisper. “I realize this is going to sound completely fake, but I
totally
know how you feel.”
Hexe was too polite to verbally respond, but the look on his face was openly dubious. I didn’t want him to think I was one of those types that, no matter what the situation, tries to one-up whomever they’re talking to. However, since he had finally come clean, I decided this was as good a time as any to reveal my own secret.
“You know that Tate isn’t my given name, right?”
Hexe frowned. “But it’s on your checks. I saw it when you paid the rent.”
“Yes, but that’s my
business
account. I’m actually incorporated as T.A.T.E. That’s what my initials spell. It’s short for Timothea Alda Talmadge Eresby.”
Recognition dawned in his eyes “Eresby? As in Timothy Eresby? One of the richest men in the country?”
“That’s my dad. But I understand exactly what you mean about people seeing you as
what
you are instead of
who
you are. My last boyfriend, Roger, attached a great deal more importance to my being an heiress than I ever have.”
“You said your family was rich, and I knew you were a trust fund baby, but I never dreamed—” He caught himself in midsentence, a chagrined look on his face.
“That’s okay, Hexe,” I laughed. “I
am
a trust fund baby. It’s the truth, after all. But I’m
not
a numpster.”
“I wouldn’t have rented to you if I thought you were.” He leaned back and rubbed his hands together eagerly. “Now that we’ve revealed our secret identities to each other, what do you say we enjoy the party my mother was kind enough to throw for me? Just wait until you try Lafo’s parsnip and prune cake. It’s even better than his dark chocolate turnip bread.”
“Yum,” I said, forcing the corner of my mouth up into a smile. “Sounds delicious.”
A few hours and several tankards of barley wine later, we headed back home, our bellies full of Lafo’s unique culinary efforts. Hexe was right—the cake had indeed been delicious, although I drew the line at the candied sea horses and the deep-fried starfish.
Hexe and I strolled side by side while Lukas walked ahead of us, surreptitiously sniffing the utility poles and trash cans along the street. Part of me longed to reach out and take his hand, but I told myself that we’d both been drinking, and I didn’t want either my action, or his reaction, to be the result of too much barley wine and not enough thought. It was a lie, but one I could almost believe.
Lukas, on the other hand, had spent the evening engrossed with Meikei, and he was happier than I’d ever seen him. The chemistry between the teenagers was obvious, which made the course of their romance far easier to chart. Despite his harrowing ordeal in the pits, the young bastet’s heart was unafraid of surrendering itself. I envied the bravery his naïveté allowed him.
Despite the warm feeling in my belly and the lightness in my heart, my mind kept going back to what Esau had said about me. After a lifetime of being viewed as a freak, it felt odd to be denounced for not being weird. Even odder was the feeling that came with being condemned as the harbinger of cultural devastation. Although I instinctively disliked him, the necromancer had a point.
All I wanted was to be somewhere I loved living in, shop locally, try to get to know my neighbors, and go about my business as an artist. But I knew that if enough white twentysomething fellow artists joined me, eventually the culture and commodity such a community created would draw those farther up the gentrification chain, triggering the inevitable real estate feeding frenzy and the erasure of everything I loved about Golgotham.
As we walked down the narrow, canyonlike street back to the boardinghouse, I stared up at the lights burning in the high windows of the buildings that surrounded us, and I wondered who—or what—might live there and if they viewed my arrival in their neighborhood the same way as Uncle Esau.
For the most part, everyone I had met in Golgotham had proved to be extremely welcoming. But now I found myself wondering how much of that was not out of genuine friendliness, but because I was under Hexe’s royal protection.
Chapter 15
Canal Art Supplies, a second home to the Big Apple’s students, artists, and artsy-craftsy set since the Great Depression, is located on Canal Street, on the border between Chinatown and Tribeca. Sandwiched between fly-by-night stalls selling knockoff designer handbags, the store’s dingy exterior does little to hint that all six floors house everything from handmade paper to airbrush respirators. Compared to the big arts-and-crafts chains out in the suburbs, it’s definitely disheveled, and more than a little rough around the edges. But with its dark wood floors and pressed-tin ceilings, Canal Art Supplies has always offered a classic New York shopping experience.
As I entered, I was greeted by the faint but familiar smell of good oils and turpentine. I ignored the ancient elevator at the back of the store, which was not only excruciatingly slow, but also bobbed up and down like a yo-yo whenever someone set foot inside the car. Instead, I climbed the creaky stairs to the fourth floor, where the sculpting and pottery supplies were kept.
As I poked about the shelves, trying to decide on which color of plastilina to buy, I was vaguely aware of a half-dozen other fellow shoppers wandering the tightly packed aisles. Then someone tapped me on the shoulder. I turned to find myself staring at a young woman with a shock of copper-colored hair, harlequin-style glasses that framed a pair of emerald green eyes, and a tiny scar on her chin from that time I opened the door to our dorm room without realizing she was standing on the other side.
“Nessie!” I exclaimed as we both squealed in school-girlish delight and embraced each other. “How have you been?”
Vanessa Sullivan and I met our freshman year at Wellesley and became fast friends during Introduction to Sculpture. Our sophomore year we arranged to share a room at Tower Court, and we pretty much lived in each other’s back pockets until we graduated. She’s the closest thing to a sister I’ve ever known. We gave each other nicknames—I called her Nessie, and she called me Tate, which I adopted as my nom d’acetylene torch
.
“I’m doing okay. I’ve been throwing art pots for this pet cremation service out on Long Island to pay the bills. You would not believe the cash people will put down for an urn to store Rover’s ashes! What’s new with you?”
“I’ve got a show coming up at Templeton Gallery.”
“Chelsea? Sweet! You deserve the exposure.”
“What about you—you up to anything nowadays?”
“I just joined this new arts collective near where I live in Tribeca. We’re looking to do a group show in a couple of months. We’re called the Art Farm,” Nessie replied with a grimace. “ ‘Art Form,’ right? The guy who started it has a thing for puns—God help me. I’ll drop off some invites once the dates are set. You still live over on Crosby Street?”