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a feathered pawn
teizel
Esmeralda has to accept the bargain of her own accord, but that doesn’t mean she couldn’t use some convincing. The other night wasn’t my best performance, and I’m not too proud to admit I botched it. I was feeling overly crazed, too primed by the curse to strike to think it through rationally like I should’ve. My little prey doesn’t know my kind, and she has no reason to believe I’ll keep my end of the bargain. Or that I’m even capable of it, to be fair. She needs to see it; to imagine what life could be like, if she won the game.
Meilin appears at the entrance of my room as I’m buttoning a silk shirt over my chest. Her reflection is hazy and distant in the mirror, but I’m attuned to her presence enough to know appearances can be deceiving for spirits.
“Have you come to mock me for my defeat?” I ask without turning.
Meilin is on edge. Spirits don’t wear their emotions on their scent like humans do, the constant smell of rot their permanent fragrance, but Mei has never been good at masking her body language; even in death, her movements get robotic, snappy, when she’s agitated.
“Please don’t fret,” I continue. “It was a momentary lapse in judgment. She won’t be running much longer.”
“What if you moved on to another target?” Meilin asks, surprising me.
I turn to look at her. Her face is scrunched, her flat and narrow nose eaten up by her sharp cheekbones pulling in.
“Still going on with that idea? I’m not backing out now,” I huff. “I wouldn’t even know how to go about forcing the curse to abandon a target.”
Meilin rolls her eyes, leaning as if she could actually touch her back to the wall. “Now’s as good a time as any to find out.”
“Mei, no. This conversation is a waste of both our time. Esmeralda will play the game.” I loop a belt around my waist and adjust the chain dangling from it. “I rather think she might be quite good at it.”
“What if she’s too good?” Meilin blurts out.
I look over my shoulder with a raised eyebrow.
Meilin sighs. “What happens if she wins?”
I can’t stop a bitter laugh. “All my dreams finally come true? I get out of this purgatory, I return to my family, I claim my place in the line of succession, I…”
I shake my head, clenching my teeth. There’s no reason to entertain a possibility so far-fetched, I’d sooner return to the Beyond by waiting for the end of the world. “There’s little chance Esmeralda will find the answer, but she might get us closer than we’ve gotten before.”
“And what if she does win?”
I run a hand over my face. “What is this third degree for, Mei?”
“We’ve been doing this for so long…”
“I have been doing this for so long. You’re a blip on the radar, in comparison.”
Her eyes narrow at that. “I was thirty when I died. I’ve spent more time being your support spirit than I did living my own life.”
I roll my sleeves, careful to keep the fabric as smooth as possible. “You’re free to quit this quest any time you want, Mei. Just choose to move on. There’s an entire world waiting in the Beyond. Make a new life for yourself. Death is the beginning.”
Meilin chews on her bottom lip with a ferocity more appropriate for a beast than a human. There’s something the little spirit is keeping for me, but right now the least of my concern is unpacking her problems.
Using her moment of contemplation to my advantage, I grab my phone and wallet from the ornate oak desk in the corner and saunter to the door. It takes a minute for Meilin to escape the fog of her own thoughts enough to notice I’m gone. Her movements don’t echo in the massive Victorian mansion, but I have no question she’s on my heel. I don’t slow or turn to confirm. When I make it out of the front door, I draw a sigil on the gravel. Meilin makes it to the entrance just in time to watch me cast a containment spell on her.
“Seriously?” she hisses.
A lazy grin spreads on my lips. “You’re an interference right now. Once you’ve gotten your mind on straight, I’ll consider letting you in on the hunt.”
And with that, I set out to find my little prey.
In hindsight, that doesn’t prove hard to do — my first bet is a safe one. I peruse the stacks lazily, hands behind my back, as voices float in from the back of the bookstore. Esmeralda’s is unmistakable, honeyed and alto-like. The other one is higher pitched, older, and though I don’t immediately recognize it, I can venture a good guess it belongs to Esmeralda’s boss. While I can’t catch the full extent of their conversation, I do hear something about a ‘handsome young man,’ and that makes me grin, because I may be handsome, but I’m neither young nor a man. By the way Esmeralda shuts down the conversation, her thoughts can’t be far different from mine.
“You’re impossible,” she tells her boss. “I told you there’s nothing going on. Let me get back out there, I think a customer walked in.”
