Demimondaine Read online

  “Demimondaine” is copyright Zoe Miller, all rights reserved.

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  Cover art by pooch!
  A dread shadow slithered around the doorjamb. Bloodshot eyes zeroed in on fresh prey. Mere paces away, at the kitchen stove, stood a humanoid creature—a Demimondaine, in the aspect of cat, a sumptuous feast of primal aether in sentient form. Blissfully unaware of its peril, it concentrated on its cooking, flicking its tufted ears, swaying its rump, and swishing its lithe tail in the air in time with the crashing, atonal music that masked the shadow’s staggering, hungry advance along the floor…

  Fortunately, the shadow only got as far as the kitchen island before a wave of nausea halted is clawing advance. Briefly humbled, Marigold, witch and enchantrix extraordinaire, largely harmless (especially after a bender), and roused by nothing more devious than the aroma of simmering pasta. “Nicoooooo… isn’t it ready yet…?”

  Nico groaned, flicking the volume down on the stereo. When she signed up to be Marigold’s familiar, nobody told her that her primary duty would be cooking boxed macaroni for a boozy witch. “How are you still hungover? It’s five in the afternoon.”

  “I told you.” Dragging herself towards the stove with all the speed, grace, and painfully unkempt hair of a Japanese ghost out for drowsy vengeance, Marigold hugged her arms around Nico’s ankles. “When those pagans say paint the town red, what they really mean by that is paint your insides red. And what I mean by that is, it was strawberry daiquiris until the sun rose behind the headstones…”

  “Well at least somebody had a fun night.”

  “Ah!” Marigold was suddenly upright. She stood more than a full head over Nico, and that’s when she wasn’t looming on tip-toes behind her, hands clasped behind her back, grinning like the mad woman she absolutely was. “Is someone envious of my night with a group of luscious, intelligent, mud-covered ladies?”

  Nico rattled her wooden spoon around in the pot to shake up the pasta. “I was until the mud-covered part…”

  “Nico, dear.” Taking her familiar by the shoulders, Marigold bodily turned her. “You really must get a social life of your own.”

  “Well nobody invited me.”

  Offended, Marigold braced a hand over her heart. “I most certainly did! You dithered for three days before finally admitting you didn’t want to come.”

  “I—” Nico swallowed, hard. “I said I couldn’t come. I had work; someone has to keep the lights on in this place.”

  Some days she wished she’d stayed a cat.

  “Precious Nico, you know what they say…” Marigold leaned forward, eyes glinting with an almost criminal intent. Nico hastily backed away—but the granite countertop cut off her escape. “All work and no play makes a dry Demimondaine! You should be out there, living your life! Go places, do things, make some plans—” The chirruping sound of the kitchen timer going off, ignored, as Marigold cupped her familiar’s cheeks, grinding in thumbs. Her chipper tune suddenly dusky. “—get a little dirty, even.”

  Chirrup~chirrup!

  Nico received only about half of Marigold’s lecture, as her relative shortness—not to mention the careworn status of Marigold’s Wiccan Fest ’93 sleeping shirt—meant that lion’s share of her mental bandwidth evaporated with the bob of braless witch tits before her.

  Chirrup~chirrup!

  “Are we quite all right, Nico?”

  Stabbing a blind finger behind her, Nico silenced the alarm. “I go places!” Ohhhh, she was so mad her ears were twitching. Which made it easier to ignore the sudden influx of saliva in her mouth. She shook her head free of Marigold’s clutches with an angsty writhe. “I make plans! I get dirty! All the time… c-constantly, even! In fact—” Nico puffed out her chest and leaned forward, hands on her hips, and proud as a Palico. “I have plans tonight.”

  Marigold’s grin grew wider with every passing protestation. “Do tell, m’dear.”

  Nico ducked her head. It seemed like an aura of blue thunder was filling the apartment’s already overcrowded kitchen. She looked left. She looked right. She swallowed, her tongue piercing her lips. “Well, DeathFuck’s in town for their final show, so I—”

  “A concert? How nice. What are we wearing?”

  A lily pad sprouted beneath each and every step as Marigold, her hangover apparently banished, skipped all the way to hall closet.

  Nico blinked. A lake of starchy water frothed over onto the stovetop.

  “We?”

  ***

  From the moment they stepped into the orange halos of the venue’s crackling streetlights, Nico maneuvered herself to be just far enough away from Marigold at all times that people might not automatically assume they had come together.

  See, while she’d dressed in conservative concert chic—carefully pairing her fleece-collared canvas bomber jacket with a treasured, appropriately distressed, shirt of a genre-adjacent band to DeathFuck—Marigold, who had likely never been to a show without a theremin or a timpani or some other esoteric instrument that started with T, and certainly had never gone to anything remotely as cool as a farewell tour for the country’s GODDAMN PREMIERE FRICKIN’ UNDERGROUND SUCCUBUS INCHOATE MUSICIAN before she underwent her decade-long chrysalis, had decided the she part of we would be decked out in the full regalia of a witch-cum-librarian, up to and including the little golden opera glasses hanging off of her neck. Then, once they were in line, as if this is just what you did at one of these things, she spent the entire time chattering about-about-about potion recipes with the oaf in front of them. And like, did she have to come out in the full brimmed hat and everything?

  It was like… super embarrassing.

  Also, Nico was still feeling self-conscious about the look Marigold had given her cut-offs. Like, as if—Really? Given the weather, a little short aren’t they? And denim? With those boots? Why, they look like they weigh more than you do. And haven’t you ever heard of bootblack?

  It was a lot of judgment to impute into a single gaze, but Marigold was living proof that witches didn’t need magic to conjure shade.

  It wasn’t a big deal. It wouldn’t be a big deal. There was nothing uncool about it. There was nothing lame about going to see your favorite band in the whole world with your boss-slash-mistress-slash-powerful witch who gave you your corporeal form-slash-roommate.

  Entering the venue, Marigold shook out her hand, as if they’d laced the ink stamps with deadly nightshade this evening. “How long does this take to come off?”

  Nico sighed. Scratch that. Tonight would be hell.

  After they’d navigated the line and grabbed their drinks—did your mistress seriously ask for a negroni? From a place that sold everything out of plastic cups (and not even the fancy red kind you play beer pong out of)? Yes, Nico. Yes, she did—Marigold tapped her lips, surveying the scene from their remove by the far wall. “So what kind of music does this DeathFuck play?”

  “Are you kidding me?” Nico gulped down half of her beer and surveyed the crowd. “With a name like DeathFuck?”

  It wasn’t that dense near the front. She could probably secure a good spot before the pit got started.

  “Not classical, I expect.” Marigold had a particular kind of gormless smile in moments like this, when her cultural ignorance approached its apex. “I’ve never been to a concert like this. The melange of the crowd is…” She nodded adroitly. “Interesting. I detect at least three different chroma variances—”

  “Listen!” Nico was passing grateful that she’d forced Marigold to leave her notebook at home. “Listen, okay, it’s not a
concert and it’s not a science experiment, it’s a show.” And yeah, she was still a little salty that the bouncer had carded her and not Marigold. It’s because she was short! They always carded the short ones!“And I let you come with me—against my better judgement—so can you at least do me a favor and try to pretend that you maybe SORT OF KIND OF belong here—”

  The off-pitch peal of a barely tuned guitar pierced the speakers. A tall woman emerged into the spotlight, all fishnets, thigh-highs, and torn nylon, the spotlight glaring on her shining bouffant of blond hair. Feedback squealed into the mic as Selar-fucking-Let slapped the strings of her bass with the spade tip of her tail and screamed:

  “SLAYDIES AND GENTLEWORMS. WE. ARE. DEATHFUCK.”

  Man, fuck Marigold!

  So she was more than a little relieved when Marigold motioned for Nico’s wallet and fucked off to the bar to get another cocktail. As Nico muscled her small body through the now sardine-packed crowd, she decided if she didn’t see Marigold again until the end of the night—no, tomorrow morning!—then it’d be too soon. The pit called to her, seething with rampant, violent energy, and, though it took everything short of the jaws of life to part the pair of human-shaped meatballs at the edge of it, Nico forced her way in.

  This was where she belonged. A thrown elbow here, a shoulder check there, and her brain vibrating so hard in her skull from impact she thought she was about to achieve liftoff, Nico was having the time of her life. She was like a leaf in a whirlwind, flung here and there, the human wall collapsing backwards into a living net to brace her, catch her, and throw her back into the fray, redirecting her energy in a smooth motion. In the interim of one such impact, panting her breath back into her lungs, Nico’s eyes inadvertently fell on Marigold—which was no surprise, familiars had those sort of knacks of attunement with their tethers. What was a surprise was that she was sitting up on the second level. On the balcony. Where the nerds watched concerts, oh my god! She was even sitting! In a chair! Like a nerd!

  The speakers shrieked feedback and her ears popped.

  I wanna build, screamed SelarLet.

  A way-too-rowdy teen bullrushed right into her guts, and Nico clocked a full two seconds of airtime, landing with nothing short of a ballerina’s poise (it helped that the friendly mosher she stumbled back into hooked their hands under her armpits to keep her on her feet). An amalgam of hands threw Nico back into the pit. Nico accepted their gift, flinging herself back into the fray with renewed energy. Limp arms spinning like a top, she rebounded off a chubby girl wearing a thousand neon bracelets and right onto her ass.

  Marigold was… talking to a… Nekomata.

  I wanna burn, roared SelarLet.

  The girl yanked her back onto her feet and, laughing, embraced her in a dense hug and spun her around like a sack of potatoes. Nico cackled into her ear, screaming with fear and thrill, and grabbed tight onto the thick braids of the girl’s coarse hair, feeling her boots clip someone’s shoulder. The chubby girl dropped her with a ruffle of hair and sent her off with a violent shoulder check and, as Nico felt the bruise form on her arm, it was like this was the first time in her life blood had ever existed in her veins. The song crescendoed in a static squeal hard enough to pierce time and space. Nico was so psyched she could vom.

  Marigold looked like she was… buying the Nekomata a drink.

  I wanna blight, howled SelarLet.

  The blood evaporated in her veins, steaming to heady gas inside her skull. Marigold threw herself directly into the middle of the pit, bleating a war cry and aiming her entire body weight head-first like a guided missile into the biggest, brawniest target she could find. The low blow hit rather high, on the 7-foot-even mass of muscle.

  “Watch it!” The meat-mass shouted, or something approximating that. The pumping blood in Nico’s ears was almost as loud as the second drum solo of DeathFuck’s third track off their first EP, DeathDrive Instinct.

  “You watch it!” Nico shouted back, directly into the meat-mass’s solar plexus. She lashed her hands out, and, reflexively, the meat mass lashed their hands out, and Nico stumbled backwards, and the crowd barely caught her this time.

  Roaring, she prepared a shoulder charge, deciding “this far and no further.” She’d suffered enough indignity for one night. This was the line! She was absolutely not going to let this slight go unanswered.

  I wanna—

  Her boot treads stuttered over a sticky patch of spilled beer, her ankle twisted, and with the pain came a flare inside of her as, a microsecond before her nose bashed into the concrete, her eyes locked on to Marigold and the Nekomata as that stupid fucking bitch cat, laughing and twirling the straw in her watered-down gin and tonic, wrapped each of her twin tails around Marigold’s wrists.

  Man… fuck Marigold.

  ***

  She’d just about gotten the nosebleed under control when the paper towel dispenser ran out.

  Normally she’d be completely cranked to exit the pit with such a stellar badge of honor—self-inflicted as it might be—but she couldn’t stop thinking about that frickin’ Nekomata. Goddamn yokai; oh, oh, not only do I have an extra tail, but I achieved humanoid sentience out of nothing more than an insatiable lust for vengeance and my sheer-frickin’-willpower. I didn’t need a witch to give me humanoid form, I just assumed that of my slain master! Well not all of us are lucky enough to have dead masters in the first place, Samantha.

  The worst part was the meat-mass was actually pretty nice about standing her up and walking her to the bathroom.

  And blood had dribbled all over her frickin’ Toxic Flux Impact shirt. Yes, the one from the pop-up that she’d had to beg to Marigold camp online for while she went out and did errands to buy rosemary and sage and f-f-frickin’ thyme—!

  Nico’s fist added a fresh dent to the (still) empty paper towel dispenser. “Motherf—who runs this place!”

  The crash of the kicked-open bathroom door met the aluminum impact in perfect harmony, a brassy voice chorusing with Nico’s. “Keep your money then, asshole! Won’t need it where I’m going.” In strolled a glistening sweat sheen of woman, all sinews, thigh-high boots, and hands-in-pockets attitude, her hair clinging to her angular face like shadowy seaweed. “A couple of pricks who got assholes where their mouths should be.”

  The bathroom was alive with sound: the echo of the door slam still reverberating against the tile, the distant thumping of the second opener taking the stage, and the whisper of the running water from the sink.

  Nothing, however, from mutely blinking Nico.

  “Who runs this place,” the woman added. Scrounging into her pocket, she came up with a wrinkled, paisley bandana and offered it with a flourish. “You okay, sport?”

  “Oh no, I’m fine! I can just get some toilet paper.” Only every other word was intelligible, splitting her attention as Nico was between speaking and heaving in giga-uncool snorkles of air through her now-probably deviated septum (did it work like that? (it probably worked like that (ah crap, how was Marigold going to pay for her medical bills (ah crap, how did Marigold pay for her own medical bills?)))).

  Such lines of internal inquiry were cut short by the debonair stranger applying the bandana before she could pull away. “The stalls? Good luck. They quit stocking ‘em after that Haruspex show where the fans took every roll of TP—” She glanced towards a corner of the room, quirking her lips open in a fang-baring grin. “Anyway.” The stranger drank in the ruin of Nico’s face, with a side-course of the ruin of Nico’s shirt; kind of a “flight” of Ruin, like people did with whiskey, or cupcakes. “Glad to see one of my fans had fun out there tonight.”

  “I don’t know if I’d call it fun,” Nico mumbled into the handkerchief, as the stranger guided her hand to pinch it around her nose. Somehow, she had enough blood left in her veins to brighten her cheeks, as the stranger tilted her head back, and the handkerchief turned rapidly crimson. Something tickled the back of her brain. “Fans?”

  “I figure if you’re in t
he bathroom now, then you must be, you know—” The woman raised a bushy eyebrow, and the chunky heel of her thigh-high. A long, fleshy tail emerged from behind her back, snaking up into the air beside her, and rotating its spade tip like an observant periscope.

  Nico blinked.

  “Holy shit, you’re… you’re… you’re…”

  “SelarLet.”

  “SELAR-FUCKING-LET!”

  “In the flesh.” A grin peaked the corners of her rockstar lips, as Nico practically gagged it out. “But just Selar’s fine.”

  “I-I-I didn’t recognize you without the blonde hair!”

  Selar ruffled out the thicket of black above her head. “The wig’s just for the act, picked it up from some cartoon.”

  Nico blinked. “You’re a lot… shorter… than you look on stage.”

  “Well, they say it adds a foot or two.” It wasn’t premiere wordplay, but the thrill of the moment drew a snort of laughter from Nico…

  …which had the regrettable side effect of dribbling a fresh dollop of blood down Selar’s arm.

  “Atch—! Watch it!”

  “Sorry!” Nico, embarrassed, turned to stumble away, only to twist her wounded ankle and go toppling down, and down, and down and, with both hands holding the hanky to her nose, that tile was getting awfully close—

  And then, it wasn’t.

  “Whew,” Selar said, putting her hands on her hips. “Close one.” Her tail pulsed around Nico’s waist, lifting Nico back to her feet easily as resetting a tumbled doll. “Hope you don’t mind, babe, but I figured that cute face of yours had taken enough hits for one night.”

  “Cute?”

  As soon as Nico’s boots touched ground, however, looking up into the overdone mascara fringing the eyes of Selar(fucking)Let, Nico buckled at the knees.

  “Easy!” Selar’s powerful tail embraced her under her rump, scooping her gently upwards into a firm embrace, and sitting her atop the sink. “You wasted, girl? Little thing like you should watch how much she drinks, after losing all that blood.”