Page 49 of Demon Queen
The next week fell into a new normal, mornings in the shop, evenings at the den, where I spent my time working on my display, sending Regis to get everything I needed while Straldi took over bodyguard duty. The basement became filled with prototypes that Regis found amusing. Not that he’d mention it. He was far too civilized to mention anything so shocking as the fact that I was obsessing about the wardrobe of my animatronics mini-monsters.
Mixl wasn’t so polite.
He poked my six inch monster statue so it fell over onto the scaled layout of my candy kingdom spread over the floor. “You have real demons who are willing to dress in ridiculous outfits for you, and some can weave the most complicated glamours I’ve ever seen, but you want a bad robot? That’s stupid.”
I picked up the little monster and placed it carefully upright on the place of honor, where my candy duchess now stood. “My customers are human. I need there to be an element of obviously fake so that when the spotlight shines on Dorian up on the balcony with his magma chest and glowing eyes, they take it for another human-made robot, or at least a very good costume. You can only push people so far over the edge of normal before they rebel. Rebels don’t buy truffles.”
“That’s right, little dude,” Straldi said, cutting into an apple, tentacle beard waving. “Have to keep the sheep from running. No offense,” he added to me.
Mixl shot a sideways look at me, dark eyes gleaming. “Sheep is right. Do you ever get tired of being so defenseless and weak?”
Ouch.
I stared at him, his words cutting me deep. Lucy had the whole lethal vampire thing going on, and Honey had alwaysbeen an amazing fighter, but I’d always been the flaky dancer. “No, I love being defenseless and weak. Thanks for asking.”
He scowled darkly. “You don’t have to be quite so easy to kill. You could work at toughening your baby skin. Straldi said that’s possible for humans to get tougher. Or you could turn into a vampire or something.”
I gurgled a laugh. “That does sound delightful. Unfortunately, I have other things to do. Tell me more about heaven.”
“If you ever went there, you’d never leave.”
“It’s that amazing?”
He wrinkled his nose. “She wouldn’t let you leave. There’s a dungeon in the basement filled with her less stable pets.”
“Is there a key to her dungeon or are they all sealed in? Unable to die, unable to go…” I made it sound as dramatic as possible.
He rolled his eyes. “There’s one key to everything. It unlocks the front door and everything else in the place.”
“Oooh. One key to rule them all! Who has the key?”
He narrowed his eyes at me. “Why do you want to know? Is this like that time when you went to talk to the White Rabbit?”
I shook my head. “Absolutely not. I’m just wondering how Dorian freed you.”
“Everyone wonders about that.” He frowned and then smiled brightly. “The Jabberwocky has the key. He guards the front door, and the key. No one has ever defeated him. He’s a terror, all fur and teeth, so don’t think about it.” He said that last with a stern frown.
“With eyes of flame, whiffling through the tulgey woods? That one? What is it exactly?”
“Undefeatable. Also, if you actually killed the Jabberwocky, the Zombie Queen would know immediately and come back andkill you. Also, she hardly ever leaves Heaven. Also, stop thinking about it like it’s possible. It’s not.”
“Everything’s impossible until someone does it. Not that I have any intention of assaulting heaven. I mean, look at me, all soft and weak and helpless. It would be suicidal. I’m not suicidal, just traumatized.”
He stared at me with a furrowed brow. “Trauma? Like decapitated limbs?”
“Exactly like decapitated limbs only emotional. Tell me more about Heaven. It’s in a different world, so how do people get there and back? Are hell and fairyland in the same world, or different? And how can a place be heaven when it’s full of zombies?”
He blinked at me. “How do you get there? You did not just ask me that.”
“I don’t mean actually, more theoretically. Like, is there a key that unlocks a door to this other world, or do you need to fall down a hole to get there?”
“A rabbit hole?” He shook his head. “Drigo needs to chain you up.”
“I feel like you’re not supporting my intellectual curiosity.”
“It’s not intellectual if it gets you killed. This is going to get you killed.”
“Asking questions never hurt anyone.”
