, “What if I went and found it for you.” “Do you know where it is?” Mistrial repeated herself in the same curt tone. “It would really mean a lot to me.” Mistrial’s brain ran through suggestive dialogue that might lead to a more erotically transactional outcome but came up blank. She would just have to do a nice thing out of the goodness of her heart. “Come on,” she pushed up off the bed onto her tip toes, “I believe it is in the cellar.” She went and retrieved a candle and Heathcliff tweaked the wick with her black, sparkling fingers and it flickered to life. They descended and opened the door to the cellar, the cool and clammy air of the earth below gently whippling around them as they passed through. “Are we allowed down here?” Heathcliff asked “Yeah, it’s just not safe.” The stairs groaned underfoot. “What's that mean?” “It’s just what Kate says when she wants someone to not doing something, she doesn’t say you can’t do it, she just says it’s not safe.” “So we’re not supposed to be down here.’ “We can be down here, it’s just not safe,” the stone underfoot was cool and moist. “Are there curses and traps?” Mistrial shrugged, helpfully-unhelpfully. They walked through rows of yellowed linen thrown over shapes of furniture, bird cages, glass jars, bottles, kitchen goods. “My mother’s house," Heath volunteered, apropos of nothing, "has a room with a hairy little fanged man with coyote eyes in it and if you don’t solve his riddle he bites a finger off.” “That sounds extra. Your mother sounds extremely extra.” “That is precisely her problem.” “You still have all your fingers though.” "Yeah he never got me. But he's unpleasant in other ways too." They came to a flooded corner skittering with silverfish, mold creeping up the far wall. “Do you think I’m beautiful?” Mistrial asked her. “Yes. You’re like a big cat.” Mistrial snorted in amusement, the image of a big cat never quite translating into anything romantic. They descended down ramped halls stacked with barrels on either side. “I think you’re very lovely,” Mistrial told her. “Kinda hate who I am,” Heath said. More stacks of antiques draped in dust cloth. Enough to furnish an army. “Lovely like a big bird,” Mistrial reached out and pinched Heath’s grimy hair, feeling its tensile strength, “hair’s all red like plumage.” Heathcliff sucked spit away and swallowed it, unmoved but also unbothered. They came to a space cleared out around a black iron cauldron surrounded by stubby, buttery candles that had guttered out some time ago. A large boudoir, locked. Some bookshelves. A blonde maple chest set before a mirror that Mistrial opened and a small deringer-style pistol swung up on a lever and fired with a loud snap and a puff of carbon. She looked to Heathcliff in the startled silence afterwards, then laughed in relief. Heathcliff ran her hand along the rough cauldron, and peaked around its sides, “I think this is an artifact of Astaroth,” she said. “Oh, is he cool?” Mistrial asked. “She. I don’t think I’d characterize any of the demons as particularly cool.” “Do you hang out with them a lot?” “I don’t think I’d characterize my relation to them as a sort of hang-out.” “Will you summon one for me?” Heathcliff puffed her cheeks with air, “Not if I don’t have to.” There was another chest and Mistrial swung it open from a safe angle this time and it was full of liquor bottles, some glowing with faint radiation. She pulled one of the glowier ones out and yanked out the cork, casting an evil smile upon Heath. “I don’t think we should,” Heath said. Mistrial sniffed it, sharp, chemical, and herbal. She knocked it back and took a swig. It was extremely rough on the throat, but also incredibly promising with an immediate wave of intoxication. Sshe smiled through the pain and handed it to Heathcliff who after some consideration drank it and immediately exploded into a spray of stinging liquor and coughing. Mistrial laughed at her. They continued drinking past the pain and wound up sitting in the cauldron, its sloped sides nicely contoured for their back, their legs entwined around one another, and their lively discussion suddenly dwindled when Mistrial scooched down so her warm crotch pressed against Heathcliff’s. They had just started into kissing with intensity when the great iron lid slammed shut over them, sending them into paroxysms of involuntary shrieking. They scrambled up and pushed against what force was holding it down with their backs and on either side of the lid they managed to squeeze themselves partially through and peered up and around at Kate Hex perched upon them. “Hey girls,” she said, cross-legged, “didn’t I say it was dangerous down here?” Kate laughed at their incoherent attempts to read her the riot act and scooched down off the lid and lifted it up for them to let out, “don’t be so sour,” she said, “a little surprise is good for the blood vesicles now and then.” Kate stopped and reached down into the cauldron and pulled out the empty bottle. “Wish y’all hadn’t drank this though. You’re really not supposed to drink that stuff if you’re not under possession,” she studied it over, “I mean, you might survive it.” “What do you mean might?” Heathcliff shot Mistrial the look. “Sweeties, this is Beelzebub juice, you drink it when the spirit of demons are upon you. It’s like a alchemical thing. Drinkin’ it as you are, well, it kind of might kill your asses dead.” Heathcliff's look had advanced in intensity. “It’s probably just a sad fight ahead against internal organ failure at this point,” Kate carried on, her voiced touched with some regret, “now I might have a spoonful of antidote, but seeing as how I’m down a bottle I’m just not feeling too charitable.” She sidestraddled her desk bench and brought out a pen and paper, jotting down a few lines.” “What is it you want for it?” Heathcliff stepped forth, standing over her. “Well, I have a few things I’ve been intending to shop for and I think if you bring it back by cock-crow you should be alright.” She handed over the list, and Mistrial stole up next to Heath to read it through. It wrote:
“Tell you what,” Kate unlocked the boudoir and brought out the broom, “y’all come back with my things and I might even give you your gal here back,” she departed with it through the ghostly shapes, “y’all hurry up now,” she said, not looking back, “sometimes it’s high-time to take a wild dog headlong.”
