Once upon a time, there was a little girl named Isotta. Her name was her mother's, and her mother's name came from a beautiful woman who passed through the town just once to buy the butcher's horse. Just like her mother's namesake, Isotta was beautiful, and just like her mother's namesake, Isotta did not stay in the town long enough for the townspeople to remember anything besides her beauty and her name. However, Isotta had to fight to make them forget her so quickly.
She came from a poor family, where food was few and far in between, so when she stopped eating nobody noticed. The town church was old and smelled like the countless dead buried behind it, so when she stopped going nobody noticed. It was only when Isotta forgot to hide her smile that one boy, no older than her little brother, noticed.
The boy's body greeted the town with the tide when it came in the next day, and one by one more bloated bodies joined his. By the tenth accidental smile, the bony sheriff finally noticed the pale detail; the bodies held no blood. Week by week, the townspeople began braving the stench of the dead to pray for safety. Soon, Isotta's absence in the piers would be noticed. So she left.
The dirt roads did not notice when bloodless bodies joined their ranks, and the towns she passed through only noticed her face and her name. Her smile adapted to her surroundings, hiding the sharp teeth with a pulled up lower lip, and this served her well until she met him. He who changed his name with each town, who changed his coloring with each person, whose beauty and name were falsities to plague the memory of the towns he passed through.
When she met him, his skin was pale like hers, his hair black like hers, his eyes brown like hers, and his name Italian like hers. He introduced himself as Pietro, from 'nowhere important', but this first introduction only lasted a minute. When they each left town in the early hours of the next morning, he acknowledged her as someone he would be honest with.
"Good morning, Isotta. Where are you off to?"
"Where are you off to?"
"I asked first."
His eyes, brown like hers, did not show the light that normal eyes did. "Anywhere but here."
"So Florence." It was as if he could read her mind. Isotta walked her horse on the opposite side of the muddy road, not wanting to deal with witches. For two years straight, the rain had come down with such power and quantity that the crops drowned before they could even escape their seeds. So the muddy roads sucked at the shoes of her horse and kept her unwanted companion's horse at the same laborious pace.
He never answered her question, despite guessing the answer to his. They kept their eyes ahead and their mouths shut until the sound of carriage wheels wallowing in the mud shook them from their bitter feud. He spoke again, "A carriage ride would be a nice reprieve from this rain." Then his face shifted, so that his eyes no longer matched hers, his skin no longer matched hers, and his hair was whiter than the skin of the little boy she buried in the sea.
It was when the carriage slowed to a halt and the door opened that Isotta realized her Pietro had changed to match his next encounter. An old man with white hair waited in the carriage, and he looked at Pietro in delight. "Hello! Hello! I hate to see an old man out in the rain. Join me, at least until my destination or yours. My boy will take your horses and follow behind."
"I'm sure you wouldn't mind if my daughter joined us?" Pietro's accent had shifted from her countryside Italian to the high Italian their old companion spoke.
"Not at all."
The carriage ride was long and jolting, but it was dry and comfortable with the company of blood too old to smell delicious and blood too strange to pique her thirst. Partway through the ride, Isotta ran her finger along Pietro's suddenly wrinkled hands, but they felt as smooth as her own, proving the illusion of the wrinkles. Though each sudden encounter with him always brought a new face, in the three hundred years their paths crossed, she could always recognize him by the absence of light in his eyes. Four hundred years ago, their paths crossed for the last time, and it left her with a hole of curiosity in her soul, wondering what his true appearance was, his true eyes, his true hair, the true color of his smooth skin.
When she met Loch in the twenty-first century, in a rainstorm like their first meeting, the hole suddenly filled, but she could not remember why it had existed in the first place.
Loch could recognized the confusion of déjà vu anywhere, and he saw it on Dixie's face with every meeting. It granted him some small amusement as he tossed the Dread Harpy's locket on her desk. "This is my side of the bargain, now you give us yours." He never would have expected that someone he rarely spoke to in the past would fight so hard against his forgetting spell.
"Right..." She handed him a folder, which he handed to Skye. Her perplexed expression persisted. "Are you sure I don't know you from somewhere? Do you have a relative who looks similar to you? Maybe one from very far back?"
"No." Perhaps it would have been smarter to say yes, and leave her satisfied rather than prying at his spell with her frantic mind. It was too late to change his answer now, and he had to get to the interview on time.
Skye touched his elbow and led him out of the room, back to the endless grey hallway. "What room did June say we were interviewing in?"
"Six fifty-two." Loch read the numbers by the doors one by one, but Skye had clearly navigated office buildings before.
"Found it. Hurry up, slow-poke."
"I like to take my time and enjoy the roses of life."
"The grey roses of wallpaper-land?" Skye snickered, holding the door open for Loch to enter. It felt like kingly treatment, until Loch remembered the rule of ladies first.
"Welcome! Welcome! We looked over both of your files yesterday, and everything checks out. It's always great to have cultural diversity in the company." The cheerful woman waiting within the room had the build of a wrestler and the face of a bull, but her voice sounded like a near replica of June's. However, her cheer seemed much more genuine than the previous day's tour guide as she leaned forward to whisper, "Companies with diversity always get better ratings."
Skye smiled and exchanged a glance with Loch, who could do nothing but shrug. This woman had only spoken a few sentences, and he was already confused.
"My name is Viola Scarlatti, but you can call me Ms. Scarlatti. I'm going to be your new boss! Isn't that exciting?" Skye smiled and nodded, while Loch tried not to look confused. "Great. This isn't so much an interview as it is an introduction. I heard you two want to work in the field, so I'm going to explain the basics and pass you on to our top field agent. Alright? Great." She elongated each 'great' as if the word gave her the energy to launch into her next high-speed cluster of words.
"So, since you two are married – the gay thing adds to diversity, too! – we're going to keep you together. I'm sure you'll work together very well." Loch saw Skye's grin broaden in the corner of his eye. "You'll need these ID tags -" she slid two laminated tags with their passport photos, names, and a barcode across the table. "- which will get you to every room but the basement. Unfortunately, we had a little security breach last night, so only scientists and employees who are depositing new demons can go to the basement. All you need to do is show your demon to the receptionist, and they'll unlock the basement button for you. This is the first time this has happened, though so it probably won't happen again. The demons don't seem too clever from what we can tell. Hunting them reminds me of when I went hunting with my pa as a kid..."
Never before had Loch thought the humans would interfere with Other business. The whole reason the Others had remained separate from the humans in the past was because the species was so painfully oblivious to the world in front of them, but now they knew too much and not enough at the same time. Loch tuned out the rest of Viola's chatter as she dove into topics unrelated to the company or even demons, then focused again when he saw her stand.
"It is always a pleasure to meet a couple as nice as you two." Neither of them had spoken a word since entering the room, so her definition of nice had to be mixed with the definition of silence. Viola shook hands with each of them, then made one more use of her favorite word. "Have a great day."
Skye draped his arm over Loch's shoulders as soon as the door shut behind them. "Are you ready to go demon hunting?" He pointed at the phrase printed beneath the name on his nametag. These people genuinely called themselves demon hunters. Loch did not know what to expect next. Even the Others who did hunt demons for a living just called themselves hunters, or in some countries exorcists.
"Uh – sure." Loch tried not to focus on the arm around his shoulders. "Didn't she say their top field agent would be working with us?"
Skye shrugged and hit the elevator button for the first floor. "Mr. or Ms. Top Field Agent is probably waiting for us in the lobby, and if they aren't we can always ask the receptionist."
The doors slid open to reveal a woman with dreadlocks to her knees. "Good morning, you two. I heard I'm playing babysitter today. Have you seen a demon outside the cubes before?" She turned and started walking before she finished saying the first word, so they started walking to keep up. Keeping pace was no problem for Skye, but as always Loch found himself the shortest and slowest member of the group. His skills had never included speed, or even mild exercise.
"Nope. I've heard about them from friends, though." By his expression, Skye seemed to find working for the other side both entertaining and exciting. "They're faster than us." Skye could probably break every swimming world record without trying if he wanted to, but Others stayed out of the Olympics. It was a human competition, so outside interference would be unfair.
"That's for sure. They're faster than us, and when it comes to escape routes, they're smarter than us. So to catch them, you have to scope out every escape route and trap them. I specialize in the trapping itself, but I have a girl working for me who designs the traps. She'll make them for you, too, since you're in the field like me." Walking at what Loch decided was breakneck speed, she led them down to the subway and paid for their tickets.
"The company can afford cars, but we only use those when we need to transport the demons. I'm just showing you two around today, walking you through the steps. Tomorrow, we can get to the real fun." She popped an earbud into one ear and slid her sunglasses down. "See these? They have the goggle technology built in. The goggles work better, but these let you see most of the creatures." She glanced around the subway, so Loch popped an extra layer of shadows on the one Other he noticed.
"Did I tell you my name? I'm Iris. I know your names. Duke, the tall Hawaiian, and Wade the short something or other. You're from Spain, right?" Loch nodded, but she had already turned to Skye. "You ever been to Hawai'i? I thought Hawaiians had thicker bones than you, but you look like a waif. You aren't anorexic, are you? You need all the energy you can get to chase down these demons."
"I eat more than enough. I just come from a tall, thin family. And I've been to Hawai'i several times, but I've always lived in the city. The mosquitos in Hawai'i can make paradise into a living hell, so it's not worth living there." Loch envied Skye's ability to get along with everyone he met. Loch had always succeeded at pissing off or terrifying everyone he had met before Skye, but before Skye he had never needed to do anything besides scare or annoy the people around him to get what he wanted.
At the third stop, Iris hopped off the subway with them trailing behind. She moved like a cat, which made Loch even more wary of her skill at 'demon hunting'. They stepped back into the rain and onto one of the nicest streets Loch had seen in the city. Even apartments on the most decrepit streets in the city had outrages price tags, so he could not imagine how much a place on this street cost.
Iris led them to the tallest, nicest, and newest building on the street. The bricks were fake-old, so it was either a remodel of an old building, or a completely new building built on the grave of its original. He briefly cast his mind inside the building, and found every room occupied by an Other. He could not imagine how Iris planned to capture that may 'demons', other than a bloodbath. Whatever her plan was, he was not going to give her the chance to carry it out. He flicked a stronger layer of shadowing over every tenant of the building as they crossed the threshold.
"One of my sources said this building was packed with Others..." Iris glanced at them and quickly plucked their nametags from their front pockets, shoving them into her pocket. "Those are just to get around our buildings, hence the barcode. You don't want to announce yourself to these demons. They're smarter than you think."
A group of Others – draconem, all of them – stepped out of the building's gilded elevator. Skye tensed up beside him, and Loch recalled the war. One of the draconem recognized Skye before Loch could create a layer of shadowing to hide his true appearance from Other eyes. Skye lifted his fingers to form a T then a peace sign while Iris scanned the room.
"You three, stay on this floor. Everything but the lobby is tenants only." The draconem at the front of the group raised the scales behind his head in warning. They definitely were not welcome, but at least there would not be a bloodbath.
Iris watched them carefully through her sunglasses as they left, then shook her head. "They were suspicious and downright rude, but none of them were demons. My source said he could see them everywhere. Maybe he wrote the wrong address for this one." As she spoke, Loch took note of the address on his phone's note app. While the original intention of joining the Hancocks was to bring them down, he could also make use of their knowledge for his own interests.
"Do you take note of just the locations where you find them, or do you take note of their identity as well? The identity they go by in the human world, at least," Skye asked. He took several steps towards the door, glancing back at the draconem glaring from the lobby chairs. Loch could not help but be curious as to where the Others staged the battles of this war. It was a strange war indeed if the draconem chose not to kill enemies on their own territory.
Their Hancock guide had no problem with Skye's need to leave. Iris had no interest there if she could not see the 'demons' she was looking for. She answered Skye's question as they walked back to the subway station. "Both, if we see just a small group or one lone demon. In situations where there is a large group of demons living in one area, however, we just take note of the area. Most demons are so accustomed to acting human that they gladly agree to a selfie if you compliment them. That way we can get their face on file to track down or search for in the city database." She turned to Loch as soon as they stepped onto the subway. "Do you have the self-confidence to do that?"
Amazing, he had gone from the most feared warlock in the human and Other world to the shy guy. His long silences used to terrify. Unfortunately, cruelty and terror would push Skye away. It was horrible living up to the expectations of others. "Yeah. Not the personality to compliment someone, though."
"And he finally speaks! You need to practice taking pictures on the sly, then. It takes more effort, but it's worth it if you don't have a sparkling personality like your boyfriend here. Or husband?" Skye nodded, his grin spread wide once again. "You two are an odd couple. I have two more places to try for demons, and if they don't work I'm firing my informer."
Her informer was excellent, so he was going to be fired. Loch hid each cluster of Others from Iris's sight, and took note of each location. Neither was a draconem hideout like the first, so Skye did not have to fear for his life again. Iris was disappointed by the sudden drop in the quality of her informer's work, but she did not seem to mind the fact that Loch and Skye had not seen any demons by the end of the day.
"Alright, you two. I'll see you tomorrow, nine o'clock sharp. Here's your nametags back, and remember to keep them in your wallet or somewhere inconspicuous so the demons don't see them. I'll try to get you some sunglass-goggles so you can see the demons on the street." Iris nodded as a farewell, not bothering with the official handshake that the other humans seemed to enjoy.
They took the subway back to the café, since the traffic had reached rush hour. It was an ill-named time of day, since nobody could rush anywhere. The cars lined up like dominoes, edging forward in short spurts then grinding to a halt after the short light fell back to red. The red reminded him of the irises of the vampire woman, Dixie. He stared up at the top floor of the building as he and Skye left, and felt a set of eyes staring back.