1. Kami

1

Kami

I grimace at the slide of rough rock under my ass.

That fae guy saw me, saw my djinn captor take off, heard me screaming for help, and left.

"What an asshole."

The blare of the fae hunting horn sounds again, this time farther away.

Before I can think what that might mean, heavy footsteps return. I turn and glance up at the huge figure looming over me, blocking out the moonlight.

He's thick with muscle, the ink-black of his skin smoky under the moon's touch, his eyes, all three of them, open and alight with fire.

When he opens his mouth to grin, he shows a mouthful of sharp teeth. Except for his lower left fang, which is partially chipped.

He rubs a tongue over it, following my gaze. "Hurts like a bitch when I bite into something hard, like bone." He glares. "I guess I'll have to go for something soft, like the tender flesh of your belly."

I release the invisible bonds on my wrists and ankles, sit up, and smack him in the chest. "Maybe if you wouldn't have tried stealing my food, I wouldn't have ripped that turkey leg from your big mouth two years ago."

He gives me a hurt look. "You're so mean."

I push off the altar we've been using and rub my back and butt. "Next time, we need a smoother surface."

"Where's the fae? Did you eat him already?"

"No." I huff. Ahza always acts like siphoning energy off people is the same as feeding. It's totally not. I've never consumed actual people flesh in my life.

I need energy to sustain the magic inside me. But I actually eat berries and nuts, and yeah, the occasional cooked fowl. I'm a civilized kind of girl. "He took one look at me and walked away. Can you believe that?"

Not many men have ever refused me. I'm pretty cute, and the boobs rarely miss.

Ahza looks me over and shrugs. "Maybe I should have been the one on the altar?"

"Maybe." I frown. "Screw that guy. Typical fae. Think they're too good to help the rest of us." A sentiment I've seen time and time again. "Speaking of fae, what happened with the hunting party?"

He beams. "I led them north of us. They got sidetracked by a party of oni and a few banshees."

I grin. "Good job. And great work with the third eye. That even freaked me out."

Ahza laughs and shrinks to his normal size. He can assume any form and often does when we're on the hunt for food or coins. Though technically a djinn, he's not one of the more powerful ones like he just pretended to be.

He's a master illusionist though, and he can fly. Unfortunately, his chosen form is a black and white crow, and he's addicted to things that shine. The bit where he turns to smoke and vanishes is all an illusion while he runs his scrawny ass away to shift into a bird.

"So what now?" he asks.

We both look in our supply bag. We've got enough rations to last us another week or so. I don't actually eat that much when I'm intaking spirit energy. My normal appetite is nothing like Ahza's, who seems to have an infinite pit for a stomach. But we are low on coins.

I groan. "We're going to have to take on a few jobs."

"You thinking information gathering or killing people?"

I just look at him. Now just a head taller than me and slender with cinnamon-brown skin and two pale brown eyes, he can easily pass for a regular.

My pointed ears and ability to regulate my skin tone allow me to pass as fae.

In the eighteen years we've been together—nearly all our lives—neither of us has ever been a killer. Ahza, however, likes to pretend we're badasses. As if there's some kind of shame in stealing from and not killing people.

He clears his throat. "Right. Info it is." Ahza bends his arm, elbow out, and waits for me.

I plunk our bag on my back and link my arm in his. "Onward, my stalwart thief."

He smiles. "Thief sounds so much better than pitiful beggar."

"Or monster."

"Dimwit."

"Fuckhead."

He chuckles. "Beastie."

"Slut."

"Whoreson. "

We continue the many insults we've been called over the years as we make our way toward Sacred Lakes.

The wealthy town is our target, and they're not going to know what hit them once we've passed through.

Three months later

Ahza and I are on a new job for the fae mob boss who controls the northernmost lake in this crazy rich town.

"Oh, I have one," Ahza says, his gaze bright.

"I'm sure you do."

"Bitch-bag."

I narrow my eyes. "That's directly aimed at me and not you."

"Oh, is it?" he asks, all innocence.

I can't help chuckling. In our three months working this town, we've made a fortune stealing from the rich and giving to the richer. Sacred Lakes is predominantly fae. They have a fae monarch and an archdemon as his second.

The people loathe monsters and barely tolerate regulars, catering mostly to their own kind, those who bleed green.

Ever since The Meld, when the realms merged, people tangled, forever stuck. When the ethereals, spawn, and fae descended on humanity, they became infertile while the humans died out from an overflow of magic.

Then, ta-da! A miracle of nature saw the spawn and fae breeding with humans.

Note: ethereals corrupt existing regulars with magic. They don't breed.

If another ethereal pops into existence, it's because it literally pops into existence. No womb required. (Despite the rumors I've heard about them supposedly reproducing like the rest of us, no one has ever seen it with their own eyes.)

Though pretty much all of humanity died out, a few rare Pure—those with a hundred percent human genetic material—remain. The rest of us are blends with some bits of humanity tucked away.

Fae bleed green and tend to have magic. They also look fae: with pointed ears, six or more fingered hands, some with extra joints, larger eyes, and skin tones beyond those of humans.

Regulars bleed red and look human. They have little to no magic and skin in all shades of peach and brown.

Ethereals bleed gold—if they bleed—and tend to be major dickholes.

Spawn are the flipside of ethereals, having come from the same plane, but look terrifying and take pleasure in satisfying their hungers without remorse.

And then you have monsters, those creatures who might look human at times but come from spawn and fae parents. They used to be clearly identifiable, as they weren't very smart.

But they sure are now. Take vampires, the most devious of the bunch. Or werewolves, who have the strength of beasts and the cunning of true predators. They love to rub in our faces how very wrong we are about their abilities as cunning hunters when they devour us whole.

Yet of all the creatures inhabiting this world, monsters are the most hated.

Especially in the more bigoted towns, like this one.

I'd like to say Ahza and I are smarter than we've been acting, because both of us qualify as the hated few in this town, but working here has proven lucrative. So we've stayed, disguised as normal fae.

Returning to our derogatory conversation, I say, "Yeah, Ahza? I've got an insult for you." I pause for dramatic effect. "Mancy."

He flinches.

"Ha. I win."

Oh, do I. Mancy is short for necromancer—a person, regardless of lineage—who can manipulate living energy, possibly enter that place between life and death, and occasionally bring back the dead.

The term is used to really insult someone, like calling them a piece of shit or dead-fucker, but ten times worse. You call someone a mancy when you want a real fight.

Like any other kind of magic though, a necromancer isn't one size fits all. Just like all djinn have varying degrees of ability, so do Death's bitches, as I like to call them.

Or rather, call us.

A secret I'll go to my grave with—that I've been a necromancer my whole life. Even trained a little as a child before some shitty ethereal wiped out my village.

Because being a necromancer is the kiss of death. We are not allowed to live. Period.

"You do win," Ahza says. "Because there's nothing worse than a mancy. " He gives me an evil grin, knowing full well what I am.

"Ass."

"Bitch-bag."

"That's still not clever," I say as we go to meet our contact.

"Oh, isn't it? Quit whining and hurry up before we get in trouble."

Sacred Lakes, like most smaller towns, is run by a monarch and a constabulary. In the case of Sacred Lakes, a fae mob boss and his cronies enforce all the rules.

Ahza and I have been doing contract work for him, likely because we're not connected to anyone else in town, so he can trust we're not spying on him for any of the royal houses.

We're not high fae enough to belong to anyone here, in other words.

Though I can look very fae if I want to, I choose to be independent, like Ahza. We clearly appear average. Not noble, not poor, not criminal or gang-related.

We blend —my favorite word.

We've dealt with the mob boss, Rilitar, only once, and that was through an intermediary.

The other times we've gone through Folas, his assistant. So to meet with Rilitar at his private residence, we must finally be accepted into the gang as trustworthy.

I hope.

That or he found out we've been fleecing his apothecaries the past month to the tune of over 300 gold coins.

So yeah, this meeting could really go either way…