Page 99 of Nocte
“Ah, right. Payment.” Mr. Bim glances over his shoulder as if expecting someone to descend from the shadows and strike him down. When no assailant appears, he snatches the paper bag to his chest and reaches into his pocket for a small metal trinket. Not money, I don’t think. It is round and silver, with three holes drilled into the center. A small, round button.
“Pleasure doing business,” Poppy trills, watching him go.
Then, she crouches and tucks the button carefully into the first cabinet. “There,” she murmurs, bounding back upright. “All done. It is easy. The only real rule really is that payment must be given in exchange for every order.”
“What do you sell here, exactly?” I ask, curious. Unnerved. Those brown parcels are unsettling, but in the way the dusty books at the back of the archives were. Not offensive per se. Just…
Ominous. Secret. Unusual.
“I don’t know,” Poppy declares with a blissful smile and a happy shrug. “But I like the work in the shop rather than doing the other chores. Labeling is boring and I hate the dank basement. So, I work in here.”
She dashes to her broom again and pretends to sweep. When another customer enters, she performs the same awkward, strange exchange she did with the first.
A mysterious bag for a mysterious payment—a crumpled piece of paper in this case, which she treats with no less care than the silver button. Within hours, ten customers have come and gone, and ten strange objects now litter the bottom of the cupboard.
Suddenly, a heavy, tolling sound comes from behind us—a big, square box mounted onto the wall. It tolls, heavy and ringing like the bells back home. Ding. Dong. Ding.
“Lunchtime,” Poppy declares happily while shimmying from behind the counter. “This is my break. Altaris says that everyone, every day, deserves a break now and again. I like to do somecalisthenics.” As she skips to the door, she stretches her willowy limbs above her head. “Want to come with me? It’s very fun, I promise. Very invigorating.”
“She can’t,” Altaris replies from the mouth of the little hall leading to the main area of his “home.” I didn’t even notice him standing there. It’s as if he appeared from thin air. Maybe he did. “This one is bound by biology in a way we are not, my darling. She must eat at lunchtime, not run around the city. You go on, my dear. Have fun.”
“Okay!” Poppy slips from the main door and dances onto the street, her hair flying out behind her, blazing in the afternoon sun.
“Well, I can see she hasn’t eaten you alive, at least,” Altaris remarks with a small, cold smile. He doesn’t intend to be nice. He is wary of me. More wary than I ever was with Caspian.
As though I am the one with fangs that snap and bite. As though I am the one with a reputation for drinking blood and draining victims dry.
“I think we’ve gotten off to the wrong start, you and I,” the vamryre says, stalking forward. His hands are outstretched before him, a tray balanced on top. There is food on top of that. Steaming, warm, delicious-smelling food.
“It’s been a while since we have a guest with your peculiar appetites,” the man remarks, setting the tray onto the counter, within my reach—but not close enough for him to touch me. Or me, him.
“I admit my culinary skills are rather rusty, but I suppose that it is the thought that counts.”
The thought that counts. I stare at the tray, my mouth watering, gaze still wary. This man despises me—I can see that. He doesn’t even try to hide that. Yet…
The food he supplied for me is more than I’ve seen in one place, all at once. More variety than I’ve ever had. Soft, pillowy bread, not crusted and stale. Warm milk mixed with a delicious liquid that smells like earth. Yellow, sweet, fluffy eggs. Greasy strips of meat.
It is so much, yet it doesn’t seem enough once I swallow down the last piece. In a way, I am still hungry—not physically. But… I want to taste other things. Eat other things. Find other things denied to me. Things I never knew one could want.
“It seems that you’ve gotten on with that well enough,” Altaris says as I wipe my mouth with a white napkin supplied on the tray. He’s been watching me from his corner near the little hall. Watching me the way I watched Caspian rip his brothers and sisters limb from limb.
Confused but not alarmed. Surprised but not entirely disgusted.
“Now that is out of the way, we can talk business, you and I,” the vamryre claims, crossing his arms over his chest. “Your boy, the one of Cassius’.”
I swallow again and nod. My Caspian. Mine.
“How ever did you come across him? I know little of that realm, but I am aware that intermingling is frowned upon.”
“You had to…” I start to say. He had to be there. Everyone comes from the other realm. For a thousand years at least. Could he, perhaps, be from before that time? I don’t know. For some reason, I suspect he wouldn’t tell me, even if I asked. So, I don’t. “He found me,” I say.
“Ah.” Altaris nods. “No doubt to stir up trouble. Cassius and his lot cause their fair share of damage, even out here. But the fact that nowyouare here…” He frowns and runs a pale finger along his chin. “That is the strange part, my darling. Something you must explain.”
“I went through the portal,” I say. A lie. The tunnel Caspian led me through was not the original portal written about in the official texts that litter the archives. It was a dirty place, forgotten and damp, yet festooned with fae magic. Fae stones.
“No, that is not what I am referring to. How did you make it through in one piece? Fae are not allowed to leave that little stables, that much I know. They forbid it.”
“No,” I say. “Fae can leave. Through the portal.”