Page 31 of Monsters of Midnight

“That doesn’t surprise me,” I said. “I’m fae. I don’t know anything about where the fae go when they die.”

“Well,” she said, looping her arm through mine and pulling me down the street a bit. I didn’t know what happened, but the minute she touched me it was like my perception changed. I could suddenly see creatures in the dark, that I hadn’t been able to see when I was alone, it had been just me until she had shown me who she was. And now I could see the demons walking through the night and the Valkyries floating up above.

“Now you can see Undirheim,” Oren said. “It’ll be easier to understand it if you can see all of it.”

“I think I have an understanding that this is where people go in between their final destination, and being on human territory.”

“Yeah, it’s kind of like a halfway house,” Oren grinned.

There was something cold and ominous about her grin, but I decided I wasn’t going to take it too personal. “If you’re a Valkyrie, why were you assigned to me?” I asked.

“That’s exactly what I was wondering,” she said, folding her arms across her chest. “I did some digging, and I found out who you are.”

I looked at her, pain shooting through my heart. “I’m no one.”

“You’re a demigod’s wife,” Oren acknowledged. “We don’t see those around here very often, so when we do, it gets special attention. It’s why you’re getting a Valkyrie escort.”

“You still haven’t told me where I’m going.”

“First we’re going to grab a coffee,” she said, steering me into a doorway that at first glance looked like it was just part of the regular stone and gray mortar walls, which seem to make up the buildings of Undirheim.

We stepped inside, and there were tables everywhere. The place was much bigger than it appeared from the small front piece. There was a collection of demons and Valkyrie lounging and chatting at the table interspersed with a third species, which mostly looked human.

“Who are all the others?” I asked.

“People like you,” Oren said. “People in transition. Moving from one world to the next.”

“Do you always take them to coffee with you,” I asked incredulously.

“Sometimes it takes a little while to get direction on some people more than others,” Oren said.

“You have direction on me,” I asked. “Right?”

Even though the thought of leaving Ryder was a dull pain, it felt like I was being called somewhere else, like I was being led forward to my next adventure, and maybe I would have to go.

“To be honest you’re the first banshee we’ve seen in here for ages,” Oren explained. “Fae don’t die very often and when they do, they usually streamline their way through this place, but a fae who’s forty and died so suddenly, one who is married to a demigod, well, you’re a whole different kettle of fish.”

She leaned back, eyeing me up. I suddenly felt somehow seen as one of those people who never quite fit in, just like I’d already always felt studied in science by all the geek guys.

“Do people ever get stuck here?” I asked as she waved her hand, and someone came forward with two drinks, both steaming hot. Strangely, when I went to touch them, the cup didn’t burn me at all.

“How can I not feel the heat?” I asked. I looked deep inside the mug, trying to figure out if it was dry ice making it smoke.

“This is Undirheim,” the Valkyrie said. “You don’t feel a lot of pain or a lot of pleasure. That’s why the demons and the Valkyrie are always going to earth to find special sensation. You get something there you don’t get quite anywhere else. It’s something you will never ever experience again.”

The way she said that suddenly made a deep, stabbing pain score through my body at the idea of never feeling the gift of pleasure or the truth of pain ever again.

Chapter 18

RYDER

This time, I didn’t want to meet me at the DGC in New York. I wanted to meet her not on the screen here either; I wanted to meet her on neutral territory, someplace where I wasn’t just showing up for work or she wasn’t coming into a monster dominated area. I knew there were a lot of risks meeting Vina. I could draw attention to myself. She could see a problem with my brother Magnus. I mean, I saw a problem, but it wasn’t necessarily something I wanted the DGC to deal with. I still needed to think about my mother.

With Ratchet out of commission, I didn’t have a lot of options on portals. So, I agreed to meet Vina back in Alameda. She said she had some business there to cover with the satyrs. I wasn’t surprised. As rebellious as Furlan was, when he needed help from the DGC, he would go and get it, and use them to his advantage. Undoubtedly, he would want to file some sort of a grievance with Vina.

We met at a very elite French restaurant run by some of the original French witches, who had passed down their culinary skills through the ages after the war between the fae and the demigods split the world in two. The Perdeux family had kept the spelling of their name and their culinary secrets to deliver one of the finest French restaurants in the world right here in Alameda.

The ambience of the fireplace in the small exquisite Victorian house, where people were greeted as if they were beloved guests. I knew some of these witches were pretty old and using some of their powers to keep their youthful good looks and build some longevity in their lives.

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