1 Chapter 1
“This is actual nonsense,” she said, slamming her suitcase down on the bed, watching it bounce amidst the neat covers pulled tightly over the mattress. “I really don’t want to do this!”
Her companion, dark hair tied back in a loose ponytail, standing with her back to the bed, facing her own suitcase and the slightly open window, offered a pitiful shrug.
“Well, it gets you out of work for a bit, right?” she offered weakly.
“I likework! I likegetting paid! I don’t like having to phone up my boss from Victoria coach station with a little bit of a cough, pretending I’ve got the flu because you want to drag me all the way out—out—hereto stay in a bloody hotel room that I have to share with Mister bloody Mo of all people!”
Across the room, Mister Mo waved his arms like a penguin and looked faintly anxious.
“It’s okay, buds, we’re all friends here, right?”
“Not that bloody good friends, Mister Mo!” Aimi Underwood snapped, turning her attention fiercely towards him.
He shrunk further back into the corner.
With a sigh, Ayesha Swanson turned away from the window.
“Honestly, it’s not my fault. UKXD budgets aren’t what they once were and really I could only afford just the one room.”
“Then Mister Mo needs to bloody sleep in the hallway!” Aimi shouted.
Again, the large bodyguard trying to retreat into the corner of the room waved his arms anxiously.
“It’s okay, buds, I can spend the night in the bar, ah,” he paused, looking faintly uncomfortable, “especially if you need special lady time.”
“We’re not here for special lady time, Mister Mo,” Ayesha said, hefting up her Adidas sports bag onto her own bed and pulling open the zip. “We’re here because we have a job to do.”
Awkwardly, the large bodyguard looked between the two women, gently tapping his fingertips together and shuffling his weight from foot to foot.
“So that means I’ll be sleeping—?”
“In the hallway!” Aimi shouted, angrily ripping open her suitcase.
Ayesha offered her large companion an apologetic look and with a sigh, zipped up the sports bag on her bed once more.
“Come on, Mister Mo, I’ll buy you a drink.”
“Don’t make any noise when you come back in!” Aimi snapped, refusing to turn back and look at them as she pulled the tangled wires of her hair straighteners from her suitcase. “I plan on being asleep within half an hour.”
Ayesha nodded meekly.
“I’ll be quiet, don’t worry.”
“Yes,” her friend turned, her face ablaze with anger. “Yes, you bloody well will.”
* * * *
Her finger moved softly around the rim of the glass, a warm circle of melted water staining the wood below.
“So, tell me about these spidermenthen,” Mister Mo said, lifting his pint of unfamiliar lager and taking a deep swig.
Ayesha looked down at the melting ice cubes at the bottom of the glass.
“Well, primarily there’s Ziggy, who played guitar, jamming good with Weird and Gilly,” she offered.
“The otherspidermen,” Mister Mo said, lowering his glass, “the ones we’ve come all the way out here to see.”
“Tsuchigumo,” Ayesha said, still looking morosely at the remaining ice cubes and the last traces of her vodka and Red Bull. “They’re traders and merchants mostly, a nomadic people who stick to the mountains. Some of them can pass for human, others…can’t.”
“Well, if they mostly stick to these mountains, why aren’t Russian Xenobiology Division or Chinese Xenobiology Division dealing with them?” Mister Mo asked indignantly, turning to look around at the handful of people present in the hotel bar.
It was evening, the light of the diminishing day still flooding the richly textured carpet, highlighting the vast French windows, the plush velvet curtains, and the silent grand piano standing solemnly on a raised dais at the back of the room.
Six months had passed since Ayesha Swanson and Aimi Underwood had been reunited by chance and necessity; six months since they put the past to bed, since they had vanquished evil and forgiven spitefulness, crying in each other’s arms and promising to never leave one another despite the darkness that seemed to follow them.
A cold Christmas had followed, a gentle spring, and the beginning of a slow, blossoming summer.
She tightened her hand into a fist, particles of dull light gathering at will.
So much had changed…
“Because, Mister Mo, as you well know there is no Russian Xenobiology Division or Chinese Xenobiology Division. If there were, we would have killed them.”
She lifted her head and tapped the side of the glass, nodding towards the distant bartender—an effeminate man or a boyish woman, she couldn’t tell which—and gesturing towards the bottles of spirits hanging above the mirror opposite her.
