The Hatter is Mad: An Urban Fantasy Novel (The Lillim Callina Chronicles Book 2) Read online

  The Hatter is Mad

  The Lillim Callina Chronicles Book #2

  J.A. Cipriano

  Copyright © 2014 J.A. Cipriano

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  Chapter 1

  Something crashed against my eardrums, snapping my eyes open and making me glance around my tiny bedroom as I leapt to my feet, heart racing and pulse pounding.

  A loud bang rattled off my front door so loud I could hear it all the way back here. I swallowed, taking a deep breath and forcing my heart to slow down as I crept forward toward the bedroom, adrenaline whisking the sleep from my addled brain. I wasn’t quite sure what time it was, but the sunlight streaming through the windows told me it had to be well into the morning.

  I tried desperately to figure out who could be at my door as the banging continued, growing more and more insistent by the second. From the sound of it, if I didn’t hurry, someone was going to kick in my door, again. I grabbed my overcoat off the back of a chair and slung it around my body and the feel of the revolver in my pocket made me settle down a little.

  Why did I grab my overcoat as I headed to the door? It was enchanted with spells that made it bullet proof, stab proof, and fire proof. Besides, there was near limitless space inside to hide my own personal armory.

  As I reached out to turn the knob, another loud bang outside rattled the inside of my brain. I stepped backward unconsciously, and my heels tangled in a jacket on the floor. I stumbled as the door flew wide open. My hand slipped off the knob, and I fell backwards. I lunged for it while fighting for my balance and tumbled forward, arms flailing wildly. I was jerked to a stop by the scruff of my neck mere inches from the ground. The fabric of my overcoat cinched around my neck, turning my cry of pain into a sort of gurgling rasp.

  “You should have been watching that last step. That one’s a doozy.” Melanie Stone grinned, holding me with both hands by the scruff of my overcoat as she stood just outside my door.

  She helped me regain my balance as I silently cursed the fairy cleaning-service. It had really slacked off lately on the whole picking up after me thing. If this kept up, I might actually have to start cleaning up after myself. I shook my head in disgust. That was so not happening. If there’s one thing Lillim Callina does not do, it’s clean.

  “So how are things?” Melanie asked, a strange smile on her face as her eyes ran up and down my outfit. I wriggled my toes in the pink footpads of my pajamas and sighed. That was when I realized I was standing in front of my friend wearing my navy blue overcoat and a pink onesie with sparkly ponies on it. I’d probably looked more ridiculous at some point in time, but I had a hard time remembering when.

  “I’m good,” I mumbled, making a point of looking down at her as I leaned against my doorframe as nonchalantly as I could. I was Lillim Callina, supernatural badass after all. If I wanted to open the door in my pajamas, who was she to make fun of me for it? After all, Melanie stood even shorter than my five foot nothing with curly, golden locks that made her face look pixie-like. It also made her black combat boots and matching trench coat and hat look almost cute, like a five year old who had gotten into her father’s clothes.

  She tipped her hat toward me like she was some kind of detective in a fifties movie, took the cigar from her lips and blew a small cloud of smoke from the corner of her mouth. Behind her, I could see her latest fling, Antonio scowling at me. He was over six feet tall and wore on each pinky finger a diamond ring that looked more like some lucky girl’s engagement ring than something a man would wear.

  Hey, I wasn’t judging. It was just that where I came from men dressed like men. My father wouldn’t have been caught dead wearing a dainty band like that on his pinkie. Then again, he could also chew coal and spit out diamonds, so he probably could have made anything look manly.

  Antonio stood motionless between the open door of his Beamer and the car itself. Apparently, he was in some kind of major hurry, which begged the question of why he came along at all. He looked like he was probably up to no good, and not because most people dressed in custom suits gave me that vibe. No, it was because he was tagging along with Melanie Stone, the resident trouble causing private detective in these parts. Guilty by association and all that.

  “My dearest Melanie, to what do I owe this lovely visit?” I asked as I stepped back to shut the door in her face as kindly as possible.

  “I’m well. Thanks for asking,” she replied, leaning against the door frame so I couldn’t close it without hitting her. “How are you? Still posing as vamp bait?”

  I glared at her as the heat rose on my cheeks. “No. I’m over it,” I growled.

  “So Caleb finally called you back?” she asked in that annoying way she did when she already knew the answer.

  We’d met six months ago while I was posing as a teenage runaway at a vampire owned half-way house. Why was I doing that? Because Caleb left me in the middle of the night without so much as a goodbye, and I was angry. I bounced around vampire boarding houses, busting heads for a while after that.

  If Melanie didn’t find me, ignore the fact that I was only seventeen, and teach me some tricks of the trade, I’d probably still be luring vampire johns to their doom.

  “No. I still haven’t heard a word from him.” I sighed and stared at my feet. “Why do you ask?”

  “Lillim, I do actually care about you. You’re like the little sister I never wanted,” Melanie said, smiling sweetly. “And there have been some weird occurrences over the last few days. If I trust my gut at all, it tells me your ‘things’ have something to do with it.”

  I shrugged my shoulders. “As far as I know, there’s nothing abnormal going on in the supernatural world.”

  She put her hand against her face and rubbed her temples before letting out a long sigh. It was her dealing with me gesture. I saw it nearly every time I irritated her. Melanie blew out a slow breath that reeked of tobacco, and my stomach tried to crawl out my throat.

  “I was never really good at asking for help. You know that.” She stopped talking and stared at the floor as if looking for the right words. “I know you’re good at finding things, specifically strange things.” She waggled her fingers like she was casting a spell. “Things others aren’t so good at finding, if ya catch my drift. Antonio might have found something, and I want you to look into it.”

  “I have been known to find a bauble or two upon occasion. What do you need found?” I smiled and leaned against the door. As much as I disliked Antonio without actually meeting him in person, I was sure he was a millionaire and could totally pay me. I liked that a lot. In fact, it moved him to nearly the top of my list of people I tried not to hate without a good reason.

  She pulled a sealed envelope from her coat and thrust it into my hands. “Let me know when you find out what’s going on. Your usual rate is in there with a little bonus. You know, for ice cream.”

  Melanie was one of the few people who knew I could do magic and that I could be bought. Especially if I was being paid to do something I was already interested in. This though, this seemed a bit off. She referred jobs to me before but…

  “Trust me. This is right up your alley.” She turned and moved down my walk toward Antonio and the Beamer. He seemed even more agitated. Briefly, I wondered why he was in such a rush. “And next time, try not to answer the door in your pajamas. It’s really unprofessional, t
hough the ponies are cute.”

  I fought the urge to yell at her as I shut the door. Instead, I leaned my back against the doorframe and tore the top off the manila envelope. A smile crossed my face as I dropped its remains to the floor. A while back, Melanie told me how she liked to save manila envelopes for use at a later time, to save both money and hassle. I smirked as a glossy photo slid out of the mangled envelope and into my hand.

  If Melanie hadn’t given it to me, I wouldn’t have spared it a second glance. It was of the most completely average looking man I’ve ever seen walking down a street carrying a briefcase. He was wearing a royal blue suit with a navy fedora. Even his shoes were blue. On his wrist was an oversized watch that seemed blurry in the otherwise clear photo. It was circled in red marker with There it is written next to it.

  I turned the picture over. Written on the back were several completely incomprehensible symbols. I set it on the pile of candy wrappers covering every square inch of my desk, and I looked inside the envelope. There was a neon blue post-it note that said, “He's murdering the time.”

  Chapter 2

  “Damn!” I cursed, crumpling the edge of the photograph in my hand.

  “What?”

  I glanced over my shoulder to see the ethereal form of my soulbound ghost, Hisen Mattoc, sauntering toward me. His presence was still a little irksome, since I hadn’t intended on acquiring him per se. He’d come along as a sort of package deal when I’d gotten reincarnated. Since then, I was, for lack of a better term, stuck with him.

  Though Mattoc could make his clothing look like anything he wanted, this time he had settled on wearing jeans and a white sleeveless t-shirt. His short black hair was spiked outward so that it framed his high cheek bones. A pair of wrap-around sunglasses hid his eyes from sight. He glanced at the mess on my desk and before I could say anything, cut me off with a wave of his hand.

  “You know, Lil, if you keep eating all the Halloween candy, not only will the young’uns not have any treats to go with their tricks, but you’ll get fat.” I glowered at the ghost, but he continued. “And don’t give me any of that rubbish about how snacks go into a separate stomach. The only place they go into is that soon to be gigantic ass of yours. Keep it up and there’s nothing but bright purple spandex in your future.”

  “I love you too, Matto.” I felt heat spread across my cheeks. My clothes did feel a little tighter than they were a year ago when I was sixteen.

  I glanced at Mattoc. He was standing with his back to me, staring at the photo on my desk. He turned toward me a moment later, the color washed out of his ghostly form. Had something spooked him?

  “That is the Blue Prince. You know who that is?” he asked, eyeing me carefully. I nodded my affirmation. I knew who the Blue Prince was, but I hadn’t known he was the guy in the photograph. “Then you know he is one of the Lords of Death.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “Good!” he snapped. “Now, please tell me you’re not going after one of the Lords of Death.”

  I shrugged at him. “I just got that photo like thirty seconds ago. I didn’t even know it was of the Blue Prince until you told me.”

  “Lil, whatever this is, you don’t want to be a part of it. You’d have to be really stupid to go after Blue. Pissing off Zef or Rhapsody, that’s one thing. Those two don’t hold grudges. Blue… Blue jumps into peoples’ bodies to inhabit like he’s playing musical chairs. Piss him off and he might take your meat suit out for a ride.” Mattoc gave me a pleading look. “You do not want that.”

  “I know,” I snapped. “Unlike the other three Lords of Death who have had the same hosts forever, Blue has the unfortunate habit of burning his hosts to ashes.”

  “Yeah, so unless you want to be turned into an ashtray, I suggest you pack a bag and hightail it to ‘Not Here’s Ville.’ If he is here and is running out of time, he could be searching for a new host. You do not want that new host to be you.”

  “Look, I have no reason to think he would be here looking for me.” I sighed, letting out the breath slowly and carefully as I tried to ignore the bad feeling settling into my stomach. Something told me this hadn’t shown up on my doorstep by accident, but still… It didn’t make any sense. “Besides, I don’t even know what he looks like, Mattoc. If he’s here for me I’ll never see him coming.”

  I grunted and turned my back to him. Halloween was just a few days away, and I doubted that the arrival of the Blue Prince in my sunny subdivision of Southern California was a coincidence. At least… I was pretty sure that this man was the Blue Prince. It was rumored he’d mastered time itself. Which, while an impressive power, didn’t scare me all that much.

  What scared me was that the Blue Prince had, supposedly, been burning through hosts like there was no tomorrow. If he was here and looking for a supernatural body to jump, I would be the most likely candidate, and while the idea of near limitless power was appealing, being a puppet for an insane god was not high on my ‘to do’ list.

  There was a screech of tires squealing on the asphalt outside and the sound of gunshots exploded through the air. I turned my head toward the noise as a silver BMW crashed through my front door. I dove sideways as the car slammed itself in the wall behind me with a thunderous crash. Two giant handprints were embedded in the front end of the car as though an incredibly strong being grabbed it.

  Antonio’s body was twisted to the side, the seatbelt the only thing keeping him from slumping bonelessly to the floor. Blood was running down his face like a river. Melanie was screaming as she struggled to pull Antonio’s broken body free of his seatbelt. The front windshield was shattered and flame was curling around the edges of the hood.

  Without thinking, I grabbed the door of the car and yanked. It was stuck. I took a deep breath, trying to concentrate as fire started to poke out from underneath the car. The overwhelming smell of gasoline was soon drowned out by the acrid scent of smoke. Not good.

  I reached out with my mind, focusing the magical energy around me into sheer physical strength. It traveled into my body and into my straining muscles like how heat travels through your body after a sip of hot chocolate on a snowy day. I heaved backward while bracing my foot against the frame of the car. With a loud screech, the door came free in a spray of sparks. I flopped backward onto the ground as Melanie scrambled out of the car.

  I pushed the wrecked door to the side and crawled to my feet. My pajamas stuck to my sweat-covered skin like wet paper. I pushed my hair away from my face and glanced past the burning car toward the giant hole where my front door used to be. Swell, I was going to burn down my apartment for the second time this year. My landlord was going to evict me this time. I was sure of it. No one gets two chances to burn down an apartment without suffering unpleasant consequences.

  “Melanie, get him out of here. I think that car is going to blow,” I squawked, making my way toward the hole where my door used to be.

  “We can’t go out through the front. It’s still out there,” Melanie shrieked, apparently unfazed by me ripping the door off the car. That wasn’t good. She pulled Antonio from the car, and he slumped on the ground at her feet. Also not good.

  “What’s out there?” I knew I shouldn’t have asked but the words had already slipped out.

  A voice echoed in my ears, loud even over the raging inferno rendering my apartment to ashes. “I am out here! I am Grollshanks, the greatest orcish swordsman of all time! Come out here and face me, Lillim Callina of the Dioscuri.”

  I gulped. I didn’t recognize the name, but that meant little. Someone who could fling a car through my front door was not someone I wanted to mess with if I could help it. I mean, it was technically what I had been trained to do since I was a small child, but still…

  Melanie’s eyes were wide with fear, but she still managed to get Antonio to the back window by herself. At least one of us was doing something because that burning car was going to explode soon. I spared her one last glance and shook myself into action.

 
; “It’s got to be here somewhere,” I growled as I scattered the debris of my desk in a frantic search. There was an explosion to my left, and flaming wreckage rushed toward me as my hand closed around a sheathed sword. I pulled the sword free, frantically saying the words to put a magical wall of force between me and certain doom. The wreckage struck my magical shield and threw me backward in a cacophony of roaring flames and shrieking metal. It was so hot, the heat singed my hair even through my magic.

  My body crashed through the remains of the big window that used to enclose my front wall. I landed hard on the grass-covered lawn in front of the property and slid to a stop. Opening my eyes, I instinctively patted myself down. Good! All the important bits were still there. My overcoat shielded me from the worst of the blast.

  I rolled onto my hands and knees, heart still pounding with adrenaline. A green skinned figure roughly eleven feet tall with a shiny silver mane towered over me. Its face was contorted into a smile of delight, but it was hard to tell since its incisors were tusks the size of my fist.

  The creature looked down at me and rapped one fist against its gilded breastplate. While the sound rang in my ears like a gong, it was the symbol of a hand clutching a broken hourglass engraved on its armor that stopped my breath. It was the symbol of the Death’s Edge.

  I’ve never actually seen one in person before, though it was talked about in hushed voices back in the Dioscuri academy. One hasn’t been seen in almost a thousand years.

  The Death’s Edge was a silver medallion rumored to heal the wearer from any injury. It was a great thing to have if you never ever lost it. If you did, well, you died.

  “It is I, Grollshanks, the greatest orcish swordsman of all time. I have come for you, slayer of dragons. You will face me, and you will die.”

  Chapter 3

  “Death’s Edge, huh? So you’ve been around the block a few times. Big deal.” I couldn’t help myself. If I didn’t mouth off, I was going to freak.