This is a bad idea. I’m a coward.
But neither of those stop me from thanking Altair for the drink, and starting towards the VIP booth with shaky legs.
-5-
The bouncers blocking the door pull down their sunglasses (really guys? Inside a club?) and peer at me over the rims. Both of them have the same green eyes, but it’s not the sameness that gets me - it’s the gem-like quality to them, brighter and somehow sharper than regular human eyes. The bouncers must be fae, too. Go figure - I guess this entire club is run by them, more or less.
For a second I wonder if they’re captured and under Vil’s thumb, too, but then one of them grunts to me;
“Get out of here, little girl. This isn’t a place for you.”
I probably do look like a little girl in this dress. But I draw myself up to my full unimpressive height and raise my chin.
“I’m here for the gin rummy.”
The bouncers shoot looks to each other, then nod to me and open the door.
“Hurry up. And don’t make him mad.” One bouncer frowns.
“Or you’ll have to deal with both of us,” The other bouncer leers at me, and I quickly dart past them and into the safety of the room.
Except I see Vil sitting there on a leather sofa sipping a brandy and I realize I’m not really safe at all, am I? He smiles, motioning for me to sit down with one tanned hand, and I do.
I decide to start with the obvious.
“You’re a wizard,” I say. Vil raises one brow over his drink, then puts the brandy down on the ivory coffee table between us.
“That’s one I haven’t heard in a while,” He chuckles. “Usually it’s something along the lines of ‘bastard’ or ‘freak’.” I open my mouth but he interrupts me seamlessly. “‘Wizard’ isn’t quite the word for people like us, Miss James. It doesn’t fit. We have no wands, no incantations, we don’t fly on brooms or attend Hogwarts. All we have is the Brightness, in all its glory and its limitations.”
He leans back. “Because you’re here, I assume you wish to return my money and be rid of all this. I can understand - I was the same as you, when I first found out. Terrified, and overwhelmed.”
He’s got that part right, at least.
“What would I do, working for you?” I ask. Vil’s face lightens.
“Well, your contract would be for significantly less than the usual - I need your abilities for no more than two months. You would, of course, be living at my manor - the one you visited previously - for the duration of your contract.”
“I have school, and work,” I say instantly. Vil waves his hand.
“We can get you to and from your school easily. But you must remain on my premises for your work for me to come to fruition. If you’re too far away for too long, the projects would wither.”
“Projects,” I repeat warily. He takes another swig of brandy before speaking.
“Yes. You see, every Brightness works a little differently. Mine is apt at…force.” He smiles with all his searingly white teeth. “I can bend fae to my will, as you’ve no doubt recognized by now.”
“The silver collars?”
“Indeed. I can make those, and if a fae attaches them of their own free will, I can command them to do anything.”
“Anything except fight.” My words tumble out of my mouth and I kick myself. Vil’s mild brown eyes flash, but his smile reigns supreme.
“I see you’ve been talking to Dane. Yes, the lesser fae such as my bouncers I have no issues commanding to fight for me. But Dane and the others are…special.”
“How special?”
“Aren’t you a curious one?” Vil chuckles. “They are the sort of fae born only once in a lifetime. Not quite gods of the Bright Place, but very close. More importantly, I need them to fight for me.”
“Why? Against what?”
Vil stands, taking his brandy to the tinted window and looking down on the dancefloor below. I twist around on the couch to keep him in my view.
“The Bright Place was sealed off around the turn of the century,” He says. “By people like us - humans with Brightness, who thought it dangerous to let humans interfere with the Bright Place. It’s only recently, about five years ago, that their misguided attempts have been reverted.”
“By you?”
“No,” Vil grips his drink with white knuckles. “By someone with much stronger Brightness than I. A woman. She is afraid of it, and intends to seal it off again. But I cannot have that.”
I’m quiet, fiddling with the hem of my dress. All of this is fucking unbelievable but here I am, listening to it like it’s truth.
“The Bright Place can be used,” He insists. “Like any tool. Like any tool of mankind, it can be used for our greater good. The waters there can heal diseases of all kinds. The crops grow regardless of soil quality. World hunger and cancer would be a thing of the past.”
“But it’s the fae’s home,” I say. “Not ours. What if they don’t want it to be used?”
Vil turns his smile to me, something about it cold. “Snakes do not want to be milked for anti-venom, Miss James, and yet we do it anyway. Because we must. Because lives are at stake, because we can improve the world, one drop of anti-venom at a time.”
“But they aren’t snakes!” I jump to my feet. “They’re sentient! They talk and have complicated emotions and -“
“Twenty thousand dollars a month, Miss James,” He interrupts me and turns back around to the window. “No doubt Dane has told you I intend to link you to the high fae. He is correct. But I will not hurt you - so long as they fight against that woman for me. And with the sudden threat of mortality, I’m sure they will.”
I twist my hands in my dress nervously.
“You will be my gardener,” Vil continues. “You will tend the high fae and the lesser fae as I cannot - for your Brightness is suited to it.”
“To…what?”
“Nurturing, of course,” He smiles at me again. “I can only bind with my Brightness, but you nurtured that cactus so well the Bright Place gave it a soul. That’s no small feat. Think of it as a work-stay arrangement - you will have a place to live, a salary, and utmost freedom, as long as you do your job. You may keep the initial twenty thousand, and you will gain forty thousand more by the end of your term with me.”
The stacks in my bag feel heavy like coal. Sixty thousand dollars is a helluva lot of money right now, or ever, really. That’s two years of college - the rest of my college, as a matter of fact. Mom and Dad wouldn’t have to help at all. It’s tempting. It’s terrifying. But all I can see on the back of my eyelids is Dane’s neck, collared - Altair’s face, full of despair.
I don’t know the half of what I’m getting myself into, do I?
Fuck it. Fuck it on a shitty waterbed - I’ll do it.
“I’ll do it,” I agree. “But I need more than your word you’ll let me go at the end of two months.”
He laughs. “My dear Miss James, I cannot break my word. My Brightness is to bind, remember? It binds me, too.”
“Prove it.” I demand. His laugh turns to a dark chuckle.
“Very well. I promise I will never harm your left hand.”
He strides over to me and swiftly shatters his empty glass over the ivory table. I scream at the sound and scrabble away, but he grips my left arm like a vice.
“Let me go!”
“I promised,” He says dully, and shoves the jagged, broken glass towards my hand. He’s going to cut me, holy shit he’s gonna actually cut my fingers off -
Just before the glass bites into my skin there’s a flash, like the silver collar made on Dane when it hurt him, and the glass dissolves into sand right before my eyes. Vil lets go of me, brushing beach off of his hands.
“See?” He reaches for my left hand with his own, and I’m too stunned to stop him. He strokes my hand gently, then squeezes it. Soft at first, then harder, and harder, until it hurts - and like clockwork, tha
t flash again, and he staggers back from me, his hand that squeezed mine sizzling slightly like it’d been roasted over a fire.
“I can never hurt your left hand as long as I live. I promise you, Miss James, I will release you from my service at the end of two months.”
“And promise me -“ I gulp. “Promise me you won’t try to control me like the fae.”
His face erupts in a smile. “Oh, you ignorant darling. I can’t bend anyone to my will but fae. That silver collar I put on you the first day was just to keep you quiet, and transportable. Our powers of Brightness never work anywhere but on fae.”
“Promise me,” I insist. Better safe than sorry with maybe-Satan.
“I promise I won’t try to control you with my Brightness,” He says finally. “Is that all?”
“I guess I can’t make you promise to not kill me or the high fae,” I say. Vil’s grin is almost civil. Almost.
“Indeed. If it helps, think of me as a terrible boss - a necessary evil to getting what you want. Now - will you do agree to the contract?”
I breathe in, somehow knowing the second I agree everything will change. College, worrying about Mom and Dad - it all seems so simple compared to this.
“I…do.”
There’s another flash of light, and I feel something cool around my neck. I touch it - that silver collar again.
“This will allow you to move between our world and the Bright Place easily,” Vil says. “Simply touch it, and a high fae will come to you soon and bring you across either way.”
He stands, and makes for the VIP room door. “You will report to my manor at approximately ten a.m. tomorrow morning. Pack light - I will provide most of what you need to live and work comfortably.” He pivots, then pivots back. “Oh, and Miss James - you may tell no one of this. That collar assures it.”
“Like anyone would believe me, anyway,” I grumble. He smiles.
“Have a pleasant evening, and I will see you tomorrow.”
****
Altair calls me a cab and doesn’t judge me, which is nice of him on both accounts, and when I get home the urge to blow a fraction of my twenty thousand by ordering celebratory pizza consumes me. But the more I think about it, the less hungry I actually am. Maybe it’s the fact I’ve just sold my soul away to the devil. Maybe it’s the fact the Bright Place is definitely real and Vil has powers and so do I, I guess? He’s waging war on a lady who definitely has the right idea about sealing the Bright Place off, and I’m going to help him do it. I basically just signed up to be a supervillian’s sidekick.
When I was a kid and read comics and watched shows about wizards and superheroes, I’d always assumed I’d be on the side of truth and love and justice and all that. I might be on the bad guy’s side, but the bad guy’s side is paying a lot of money, and it’s the only side that’ll let me try to free Dane and the others. If I can free them, get them out of those collars and their binding, then Vilmor Van Grier won’t have any power, anymore. He talked a big game about helping people with the Bright Place, but he can’t fool me - he wants it for himself. He’s clearly already used some of it to make himself rich as sin.
I look at my phone - a missed text from Mom. I can’t tell her. I can’t tell anyone. I’m all alone.
But that’s nothing new, huh?
****
“Your duties will begin at nine am every day,” Vil leads me through the halls of his Bright Place mansion and I run like a bride on a treadmill to keep up. Quinn - who came to fetch me when I touched my collar this morning outside my apartment building - trails behind us quietly in his butler uniform.
“I can carry that for you,” He offers softly, and I jump a little. He means the giant backpack slamming against my legs - packed with my textbooks and notebooks.
“Thanks,” I say. “But this is how I get most of my exercise.”
His face remains flat and docile, like what I said wasn’t even a joke at all. Right, note to self; humor’s not gonna work with this one.
We pass the hall that faces the garden outside, and I stop at a tall window when I spot movement. There, on the lawn, wearing nothing but leather pants and an air of insufferable confidence, is Dane. He holds something metal, and I squint and realize it’s a freaking real-ass sword, sharp blade and cloth-wrapped handle and all. When he isn’t running his annoying mouth, he’s really nice to just watch. He steps and spins on the lawn, his long legs covering a shit ton of ground, and with all the grace of an albino cat he thrusts the sword into imaginary opponents, parrying their blows. Those blue-green gemstone eyes are so narrowed and focused - forget the blade, he could cut me with a look alone, and the way his one stray lock of white hair falls into his sweat-dewed eyelashes is infuriatingly magazine perfect. The sun shines down on his marble-skinned, sweat-slick chest, the long expanse of his torso imprinted with a flawlessly defined six-pack. It isn’t steroid-deep like a body-builder’s - he’s too lean for that - but it stands out enough to make my whole chest throb like I’m having a heart attack, and if I squint I can imagine his defined arms wrapped around me and lowering me to the warm grass, imagine my nails clawing down his wing-like shoulder blades as he thrusts that sword right into my sheath if you know what I mea -
“Miss James!” Vil shouts, dunking my sleazy daydream in a ice bath. “Tardiness will not be tolerated!”
I slap my red-hot face a few times and jog down the hall, leaving a silent and probably-disgusted Quinn in my wake.
Vil shows me the pool - a massive, celadon-tiled square of sapphire water beneath a glass ceiling - and adjacent to it is a smaller bathroom walled with rich mahogany and shelves of hand towels and all sorts of fragrant dishes of dried herbal mixes. Weird glass orbs float in the air, and when Vil claps they light up, spreading a soft glow onto the only thing in the middle of the room - a spotless claw-foot tub.
“This is a room where you’ll spend much of your time,” He says.
“I’m not that stinky,” I protest. Vil shakes his head, but I swear behind me I hear Quinn give a soft snort. I turn, but he’s stone-faced as ever.
“This is a bathing room for fae, Miss James, not humans. You will have your own bathroom in your room.”
“Then why am I gonna spend time here?”
“Collaring a fae becomes…a chore,” He says. “Humans require food and water and sleep to live. Fae require two things - blood, and Brightness.”
“B-Blood?” I stammer.
“I will take care of the blood,” He assures me. “As I have been taking care of the Brightness, too. But my Brightness is a restrictive one, as I’ve said before.”
“Hey, just an fyi; you’ve totally fucking lost me,” I comb my fingers through a dish of dry rosemary and sage.
“When you collar a fae, they are cut off from receiving Brightness from the Bright Place as they naturally do. They soak it up as a plant soaks the sun, but collars prevent that. So I’ve been providing them what little Brightness I can. It’s not enough, to be sure - which is why more expressive fae like Dane are so short and angry with everyone as of late. They are, to put it plainly, starving.”
“Okay, and my Brightness is…better, somehow?”
“Yours isn’t better,” He corrects with a frown. “So much as it is…looser. It flows off you in waves without you even knowing, or controlling it. It’ll be simple to feed the fae here.”
“Feed them.” I repeat. “In a bathtub.”
Vil smiles tensely. “The best way to encourage the Brightness transfer is through thorough physical contact.”
“Um.”
“You will bathe each fae under my control once a week, here, in this tub. It is specially designed to amplify Brightness absorption, so it must be done inside the tub itself. There are eight lesser fae including your cactus dog, and as of right now only four active high fae - the rest are dormant, and will need to be handled by you in their flower state.”
“The roses, you mean?”
He smiles. “Yes, exactly. The roses. The white, black, blue, and green are active, so the rest will need your attention. For the dormants you will not require the tub, simply going out to their greenhouses and stroking their petals and vines will be enough. I will give you a list, and it will be up to you to figure out a scheduled time for each fae. When you’ve done that, give it to me, and I will relay the information.”