Home for Horny Monsters Ch. 055

Emily appeared before them, standing in a room he recognized. It was the hidden room in the tower, and a dark figure hovered in the middle of the room. It was the shadow man, and he was holding his hand out to her.

"She will die, you know? They all will die, but the fox means something more to you, doesn't she?" The shadow's form was frayed along the edges, as if a single errant thread might cause him to unravel. "I'm offering you experience and knowledge for such a small price."

"I'm not sure." Emily's arms were crossed. "It's a piece of my soul. What will happen to it?"

"It will be very safe with me, I assure you. It won't even hurt. It'll be a part of you that you don't even realize is missing." A grin spread across the shadow, which created an opening in his head like a comical stick figure. "As of now, you are destined to fade from this world, never having advanced to the next stage of the game. You are one of the last players, which means you have a chance to win it."

"I want to know more about this game. I keep having these weird dreams about it, but they never make any sense."

The shadow nodded. "Every Caretaker's journey is different, and some of them never once heed the call. And should you win, then you could be looking at the ultimate prize: immortality. Centuries to spend with your beloved, maybe even the power necessary to extend her lifespan as well."

"Immortality comes at a price. That's one of the first rules of magic." Emily had stiffened up, withdrawing from the shadow.

"That is correct. However, this game pre-dates the rules of magic. It creates a loophole, as you would call it."

Emily bit her lip, then looked at the stairs behind her. Mike imagined that she was picturing Yuki, asleep on their bed and blissfully unaware of what was about to happen next.

"I can feel your love for her. It is a warmth that I crave for myself, but will never know unless you pay the price." The shadow's tone had shifted, and he was now pleading. "One small piece is all it will take, and you can have forever with her if you want."

"I... I..." While Emily debated her response, Mike felt Yuki tighten her grip on him. He squeezed her back, causing a sob to break free.

"I accept." Emily held out her hand, and the shadow took it, and a dark tone played that caused ripples to spread across the scene, changing it so that they were now in the Library. Emily was by herself, and was frantically pulling books down from the shelves.

"No, I will not. I will not!" She was shouting at nobody that could be seen, and then her face twisted up and her eyes turned black.

"But if you don't, you will never be able to save her or the others." She was speaking again, but her voice was different now, deeper and more threatening. "She would want you to have it, to use its magic to complete your spell."

"No!" Emily shrieked and grabbed at her face, her hands curled up. It looked like she was about to claw her own eyes out. "I can't do that to her! I've already left her in that tower for so many years, I..."

Her face twisted, and her eyes were dark once again. "What is a few years compared to eternity? All things can be forgiven in time."

"I won't, I—"

"Emily?" It was Sofia. She came around the corner of the stacks. "Were you talking to someone?"

"Just...just myself." She turned around, and Mike saw the black fade from her eyes. "Did you find anything about the rat king?"

Sofia held out a book. "Yeah, so strange thing really, the rat king is..."

This memory faded as well, and now Emily stood in the hallway of the second floor. Around her, the rats were cowering in fear as she twitched and spasmed, and one of her hands opened up, allowing a shimmering emerald to fall out of it.

"Why...what was I..." When she looked up, Mike saw that only one of her eyes was black now, and when she spoke next, only the corners of her mouth moved.

"You just did big magic, didn't you?" This time, the bad voice was even stronger. "I sensed that you did something, hid something perhaps. What have you done to us?"

"Get...get out of my head!" She slammed her forehead into the wall, causing plaster to fall and the rats to flee, though a braver one scooped up the emerald on its way past. "Get out of my head!"

Her scream shattered the room, and now they were back in the master bedroom. Emily hovered before them, and she was looking now at Yuki.

I'm sorry. Emily spoke using sign language, and the fact that Mike understood it perfectly was an equal surprise. He felt Daisy shift by his ear, and he remembered the spark that had passed between them during the incident in the tub.

Interesting, he thought.

Yuki let out a choked cry and ran from the room, and Mike was about to follow when he heard a whisper in his ear.

"Wait." It was Emily, and he turned around to see that she was floating only a foot away from him. For a moment, her form was stable, as if her connection was finally strong enough to come through. I need to tell you something, she signed.

"Um..." He wasn't sure if he should try to call Yuki back, but he still didn't have that sick feeling in his stomach that came when he was in danger. "Make it quick, I guess. But if you can pick just one method of talking, that would freak me out less."

This is more efficient. Easier to concentrate and the madness will return. Don't trust the shadow.

"Oh, don't worry. That bastard is plenty pissed at me because I refuse to buy what he is selling."

Emily let out a silent sigh, then signed some more.

I needed her to see.

"Yeah, well, we saw plenty. Why are you still here, Emily? Why haven't you moved on?"

Can't move on without the rest of my soul. She pointed to the gap in her head, and he frowned, doing his best not to shudder. The shadow still has it, locked in his castle.

She hung her head now, but her hands kept moving. I thought I was trying to get her back. When I forgot her, all I could focus on was getting my soul back, but I was about to die. I tried to extend my lifespan, but only made things worse. It turned out he was in control all along.

He had so many questions for her, but he already knew the one he wanted to ask the most. "What is the great game? I heard him mention it."

A game created by the Architect. When he built the homes, he hid the same prize inside of each of them, and it was a game that has been played for centuries. Nobody knows the rules, and nobody has ever won. Confusion is supposed to be part of the puzzle.

"Why does the shadow want your soul?"

He needs it to survive. He's like you and I, a player in the game. When he died, he was able to hang on somehow using soul magic, and he needed my soul to subsist, to keep playing the game. It gave him access to the house via my body, and toward the end, he was controlling me all day.

Mike opened his mouth to ask something else, but Emily flickered. The temperature in the room was warming, and he noticed how tired she looked. Tendrils of darkness were crawling in through the slats, and she turned toward them in pained resignation.

The madness is coming, she said. One more thing to show you.

"I..."

The room swirled with black clouds, and when they fell apart, he was standing in his room once more. Emily stood in front of her mirror, and her eyes were completely black. In the mirror, Emily's eyes were blue, and her face was pleading.

"The naga is up to something. She should have been finished with the key months ago." Shadow Emily clenched a fist, causing the knuckles to pop.

Emily shook her head, then pleaded with her hands.

"I suspect that you have done something else. This body feels like you wore it recently. If it wasn't for your mortal need for sleep, I could just wear you around all day." Shadow Emily paced before the mirror. "This form will not live much longer, and I need results. The others have been long suspicious, and I suspect my memory spells are wearing thin on them."

Emily silently stomped her feet and shook her head again, her curls falling along her shoulders.

Shadow Emily grinned, then moved close to the mirror. "If not for the unique abilities of your little cat burglar, I wouldn't have been able to formulate the magic necessary to alter memories. Such a unique talent wasted, but nobody even noticed when I altered the house last month. I can move from room to room, undetected, and because I am not the true Caretaker, all I have to do is make sure you don't see it happen is to stuff you away in the Black Place, and let the geas do the rest of the work for me."

Emily was mad now, and she placed her hands against the glass, her fingertips turning white from the pressure.

"I wonder..." Shadow Emily's face stretched into a grin. "I wonder what would happen if I killed one of them? Do you think I could get away with it? Maybe the gargoyle? Or that nasty little goblin?"

Emily was now frantic, and she was clawing at the glass.

"Oh, I know. I could use my magic and cave in part of the nymph's spring. She's been asking some rather uncomfortable questions recently, and it would be a shame if I forced you to watch."

Emily was silently shouting 'No!' behind the glass.

"Then tell me what you did!" Shadow Emily pressed her hands to the reflection, right on top of Emily's. "Tell me what you did or I kill the nymph!

Emily's face scrunched up with resolve, and the glass between their hands glowed bright yellow.

"Are you seriously trying to take your body back?" Shadow Emily laughed, but Emily's face scrunched up in concentration. As Shadow Emily kept laughing, Emily's hands slid through the glass and merged with the shadow's arms, as if they were being worn like gloves. The laughter stopped as Emily used those hands to strangle her own body.

The gasps became whispers, and dark veins sprouted along Shadow Emily's face. Inky black tears fell from her eyes as Emily kept squeezing, and after several minutes, her body went limp.

Emily gave her a push, and her body slumped to the floor. Shadows fled, and the mirror image stepped outside of the glass, looking down at her own corpse with satisfaction.

Outside the room, the air filled with the song of a banshee. Emily took a step away from her own corpse and was almost out of the room when she grabbed at her temples in pain. Darkness streamed into the room like water and forming into claws that grabbed at her face and pulled. The hands whipped about, and then turned toward Mike.

"Shit!" Mike stumbled backward and fell into the wall as the vision burst.

Emily shook on the bed as the darkness enveloped her, crawling into the hole in her head. The room was now full of whispers that he couldn't decipher, and she turned into static once more and, with a final shriek, burst.

He ran out of the room and down the stairs to where Yuki was waiting. Without saying a word, he dragged her outside and didn't stop until they were at the edge of the fountain. Gasping for air, he looked up to see Amymone looking at them.

"Told you she was a cunt."

As if to punctuate the dryad's point, Emily's shrill scream resonated over the courtyard, and Mike covered his ears in the hopes of drowning it out.

As the echoes faded, he shook his head. Like everything else in his life, this was far more complicated than it had at first seemed.

Beth sat on the front porch, going over the documents one more time. In front of her, Sulyvahn was meticulously culling some dead roses from the bushes, whistling quietly to himself.

Mike's Will had been fairly easy to write, but she couldn't help but worry that she had missed something. All it would take is a missing signature, or even an unfortunate typo, and a lawyer with the financial backing of the Society would be all over it.

It also hadn't helped that Marco had been weird about it. While she had been able to draft the documents, it created a weird legal issue to write a Will for her employer and leave half of everything to herself. She had called her former coworker up and had him come over to properly notarize everything and act as a third party to prevent any accusations of legal malfeasance.

She had vastly underestimated Marco's suspicion of Mike. Before Mike's departure, they had done the signing in the front yard, surrounded by centaurs that Marco couldn't see. What should have been a relatively straight forward meeting had become a debacle.

"You all right, luv?" Sulyvahn had paused to look at her, scissors in one hand and a dying rose in the other.

"Yeah, just thinking." She had wanted Marco's help in going over her own documents as a second set of eyes. Instead, he acted hostile toward Mike the whole time, and Beth couldn't figure out why Mike hadn't noticed—until he told her that Death had been doing a running commentary of the proceedings over his shoulder.

Marco, mistaking Mike's attitude as condescension, had become even more agitated when Dana arrived looking (rightfully) half-dead. In the end, Beth had had to tell Marco to shut the fuck up and notarize their documents or she would tell his boss about his unprofessional behavior. Seething, Marco had rushed them through the process, then stormed off once they were done.

"Ye be looking more lost than anything, darlin'." Sulyvahn found a suitable rose bud and tucked it behind her ear, brushing a strand of hair out of her face. "Maybe we could be going fer a—"

The front door slammed and Lily came outside.

"Oh, there you are! I've been looking for you for hours now." She sat next to Beth and crossed her legs, then tossed her hair over one shoulder. "I had a question about who gets me when daddy dies."

Sulyvahn laughed. "It ain't been hours, ye scandalous harlot. I saw ye moping about on the roof just a wee bit ago."

Lily stared daggers at Sulyvahn. "Are you still here? Shouldn't you be hanging around a cemetery giving handjobs to lost souls or something?"

"Whoa, hey." Beth set her paperwork down. "That's no way to talk to each other."

"Oh, I dinna mind. The temptress has a harsh tongue, but it bothers me none at all." Sulyvahn picked another rose and held it out to Lily. "It's just banter, nothing personal, don't ye know."

Lily eyed the rose suspiciously, then took it. She gave it a sniff, then tucked it into her blouse so that the bud rested just above her cleavage.

"There, see?" Sulyvahn smiled. "Now I be having have something pretty to look at instead of that thing ye call a face."

"Suly!" Beth looked at Lily, afraid of how she would react.

The succubus looked down at the rose, then back at the dullahan. She raised her hand to the rose as if she was going to crush it, then set her hand back down. After a few seconds, a smile crossed her face.

"Okay, I like this one. Yes, I was up on the roof earlier, but I wasn't moping. Mostly I was just enjoying the weather, but the real reason I came down was that Mike just went through the gate, so I thought I would come down and make conversation because..." Her lips curled up, and she looked around, then pulled money out of her pocket and handed it to Beth.

"What's this?" Beth asked.

"A retainer. For attorney-client privileges, so you don't go blabbing my secrets or something."

"You don't need that, you can just talk to me." Beth pushed the money back. "Besides, I'm not that kind of lawyer."

She was about to open her mouth again, but Sulyvahn was grinning.

"Oh, I'm not worried about you," Lily said to him. "If you do something I don't like, I'll rip your head off and shove it up your ass."

"And I'm believing that ye would, bless yer black little heart." He chuckled and took a step back. "There be other roses that need tending, so I will be leaving you two to yer business. It's me self wishing ye be having a grand afternoon, ladies."

Once Sulyvahn had picked up his bucket and left, Lily turned her attention back to Beth. "I'm worried about him."

It wasn't the directness of the statement that hit hardest. After all, Lily was rarely subtle about anything. Instead, it was that brief moment when Lily's eyes had shimmered with moisture, as if she was holding back tears. But as far as Beth knew, succubi didn't cry.

At least not on purpose, anyway.

"Is it because he went to the Underworld?" Beth asked.

"Ugh, that, too. No, it's that stupid cunt of a queen. When he finds her, you know she's not going to just give him what he wants. Even Cecilia doesn't want him to come, that's how dangerous she is."

"Wait, Cecilia? How do you know what Cecilia wants?"

"She's been bouncing around in his dreams. She can't see me, she only has eyes for him, but sometimes I hear what she's saying." Lily's head transformed into Cecilia's. "Stay away, Mike, she's going to hurt you, don't come for me, I'll be fine."

It was spooky hearing Cecilia's voice after so long, and Beth shivered.

"Have you told Mike?"

Lily laughed. "Do you think he would listen?"

"Good point." Beth looked out into the yard. "So, what could we do to help? He won't let anyone go with him, at least not into the faerie realm."

"Well, about that ten dollars..." Lily grinned. "The faerie queen made a deal with the builder, or Architect, or whatever we're calling him. She couldn't kill Romeo without violating the deal, and I imagine that the deal itself has to be on paper somewhere, right?"

"You want me to try and find it, don't you."

Lily nodded. "If anyone can find a loophole in her own deal, it would be you. Maybe it's something that can help him, or at least keep him from being turned into a toad or something." She stood and offered a hand. "Unless you'd rather go over that thing for a tenth time."

Beth laughed dryly. "So you have been watching me."

"Maybe." Lily motioned her hand at Beth. "And I think I know a good person to start with. C'mon, let's go."

Lily led Beth into the house, but she stopped in the hallway.

"Hold up, let me get these put away." She held up the papers.

"I'll be out back." Lily walked toward the back door and Beth went into the office. Despite being used as research central, Mike had kept it pretty neat. She walked to the desk and opened up her designated drawer and filed the paperwork inside.

She was startled when she heard a loud thump, then looked up to see that a book had landed on the desk. Nobody else was in the room, and she picked it up.

"Death, did you do that?" She wondered if the grim reaper was currently using the office. On more than one occasion, she had walked through him, but only knew this from the sudden chill in the air. "I'm about to leave, I'm just dropping something off."

She set the book on the desk and was almost to the door when it hit the ground. Puzzled, she looked back and saw the pages flipping by themselves, eventually coming to a stop. Was Death trying to tell her something?

Crouching down, she picked up the book and read the page.

"Samhain," she read aloud. "A celebration of the dead." Curious, she turned the pages and scanned through the document. The gears of her brain turned and her mouth dropped open.

While Mike had been so busy trying to figure out how to get to the Underworld, he hadn't considered what to do once he got there. Now, looking at the text before her, she felt a sense of triumph. At the start of Samhain, the veil between Earth and the other side would be at its thinnest, and the spirits of the dead would cross over, along with all manner of fae.

Could he use this to find the fae realm? It would be like swimming up a river, but if the Underworld really was a central hub...