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I still had a few hours to kill before my dinner with Lucas, but I wanted to see Calliope before I met the werewolf king. In spite of the rush I’d gotten from besting Gregory without ever having to draw a weapon, I was still feeling queasy about what had happened the previous night. Surely the Oracle would be able to shed some light on the creepy development that had me craving snacks with a pulse. Or, at the very least, she’d be able to give me some bagged blood so I didn’t risk running out at an inopportune moment.
But—pathetic as it was—I wasn’t quite ready to hear her verdict.
If I was becoming more of a vampire because I was now one of the Tribunal, I wasn’t sure how I would deal with that news. The extra power that came with the position was awesome, but what if it was at the cost of my already tenuous hold on humanity?
It wasn’t like I could do anything about it. Ascending to Tribunal leader was a one-way trip. Unless I let another vampire off me in a fight, I was going to be sitting on a throne for the rest of my days, no matter how badly it chafed my ass.
My visit to Caligula had brought up another uncomfortable question I wanted an answer to. The two white-haired fae had said there was something wrong with my sword. I figured they were crazy, but at the same time I wanted to know for sure. Instead of going to Calliope’s, I found myself standing in front of a familiar storefront in Koreatown.
A plush Hello Kitty toy winked at me from the store window.
“Well, what do you know?” I gaped at the squat building, which glowed faintly red in the gaudy lights from the restaurant across the street.
It had been years since my first and only visit inside, but nothing had changed in all that time. This was the very place I’d bought the sword I now carried. A strange tingling sensation fanned down my back and urged me forward.
Fueled by a curiosity that almost burned me from the inside, I pushed the door open, and the bell jingled a familiar greeting. The store was thick with the smell of incense, but underneath it was a stench I remembered like the clinging remnants of a bad dream.
“Hello?” I called out.
Heavy footfalls thumped from the back of the store, and once again the feeling of an invisible hand pushed me farther into the store. If I didn’t know better, I’d say the sword itself was ushering me forward.
When the short, round Korean man stepped through the curtains at the back of the room, he blinked his oil-black eyes at me a few times, then his lips parted in a beaming, mostly toothless grin.
The smell of decay was more potent now that he was in the same room as me. I hadn’t gotten confirmation the last time we met, but based on the smell and his strong silent demeanor, I was betting he was an ogre.
“Do you remember me?” I asked, inching forward until I was standing across from him with a glass case filled with weapons between us.
He nodded and pointed excitedly to the sword slung over my shoulders. I could no longer ignore that the simmering tingle on my spine was definitely originating from the blade itself. Though I’d refused to let any of the fae at the club take my sword, I didn’t feel the need to deny his request. The sword had once been his, after all. I slipped the sheath over my head and placed it in his open palms.
As soon as the sword was out of my hands the tingling stopped, as if an electric current had been running through me and the moment I let go of the wire, I stopped being shocked.
Weird didn’t even start to cover it.
His toothless grin widened, and he bobbed his head excitedly. “You bonded,” he said. His voice was soft and in glaring opposition to what I imagined an ogre should sound like.
“Excuse me?”
“You. The sword. You have spilled much blood with it.” Up and down went his head like a robin digging for worms after rain. “It sings your name now.”
“What?” I wished someone was hearing this with me. Maybe it would make more sense to them.
“You brought it back to life.”
“It’s a sword.”
He shook his head. “So much more.” He caressed the weapon with time-worn hands, the skin tissue-paper thin but his fingers still deft and strong. “So much more.”
I reached out for the blade, but when I touched it the whole katana crackled with energy. The ogre dropped it on the glass counter, and we both took a step back. His eyes were wide as he looked from the weapon to me. My own fingers were trembling from the shock.
“What was that?”
The ogre narrowed his black eyes at me. “Has the blood of the dead touched the blade?”
“Uh, yeah. Vampire assassin.” I pointed at myself.
“You have tainted fae metal with the blood of the dead?”
“Well the sword didn’t exactly come with an instruction manual.”
