“Persuasion might be required at the beginning,” the Gray Man admitted.
“You are talking years.”
“I am committed,” he replied. “So long as I can get a decent number of people who are interested in that vision. People I like.”
Here was Laumonier, finally, one of them on the phone. His face suggested he was trying to contact the third one, but the third one was not in a condition to answer. The Gray Man would discuss this with them after the sale had happened. In a persuasive way aided with some truly fantastic weapons that he had found on the Lynch farm.
Seondeok said, “I am not people you like.”
“You are people I respect, which is nearly the same.”
Her smile said she knew he was sucking up to her and she accepted it nonetheless. “Perhaps, Mr Gray. This is according to my interest.”
This was when Piper Greenmantle arrived.
Well, it was not her, at first. It was dread first, then Piper. The feeling struck them like a wave of nausea, rocking from feet to head, sending hands to throats and knees to pavement. It was early afternoon, but the sky suddenly seemed darker. This was the first sign that this sale was going to be something remarkable.
So, first dread, then Piper. She arrived flying, which was the second sign that things were going to be somewhat unusual.
When she landed, it became obvious that she had arrived on a rug of tiny black wasps, which dissolved when they touched the asphalt.
She looked good.
This was striking for a several reasons, first because rumour had it that she had died before her smarmy husband had been killed by wasps in his apartment, and she was clearly not dead. And secondly because she was holding a black wasp that was nearly a foot long, and most people didn’t look as serene and put together as she did when holding a stinging insect of any size.
She strode over to Laumonier, clearly intending to cheek-kiss, but they both bowed back from the insect. This was the third sign that things were going to be somewhat unusual, because Laumonier ordinarily made a point to never look alarmed.
“This is not good,” the Gray Man said under his breath.
Because it was obvious now that the dread was coming from either Piper or the wasp. The sensation kept hitting Seondeok in ill waves, reminding her painfully of her year of being mad. It took a moment for her to realize that it was verbally reminding her of her year of being mad – she could hear the words being said directly into her head. In Korean.
“Thank you all for coming,” Piper said grandly. She cocked her head, eyes narrowed, and Seondeok knew that she was being whispered to also. “Now that I am single, I intend to move independently into the business of luxury magical items, curating only the most extraordinary and otherworldly of crazy shit. I hope you all start to trust me to be a quality source. And our kickoff piece – the thing you’ve come all this way for – is this.” She lifted her arm, and the wasp stepped a little further towards her hand. The crowd shuddered as one; there was something quite wrong about it. The dread, plus the size, the real weight of it moving the fabric of her sleeve. “This is a demon.”
Yes. Seondeok believed this.
“It’s favoured me, as you can probably tell by my fabulous hair and skin, but I’m ready to pass it along to the next user so I can find the next great thing! It’s all about the journey, right? Right!”
“Is it —” started one of the men in the group. Rodney, Seondeok believed his name was. He didn’t seem to know how to finish his question.
“How does it work?” Seondeok asked.
“Mostly I just ask it to do stuff,” Piper said, “and it goes for it. I’m not really religious, but I feel like somebody with some religious background could really make it do some cool tricks. It made me a house, and these pumps. What could it do for you? Stuff. Shall we start the bidding, Dad?”
Laumonier was still not quite recovered. The thing about being in the demon’s presence was that it got worse instead of better. The opposite of getting used to it – that was the sensation. It was a wound that increased from ache to stab. The whispers were hard to bear, because they were not really whispers. They were thoughts, mingling helplessly with one’s own, difficult to prioritize. Seondeok had survived a year of madness, though, and she could bear this. It was not impossible to tell which thoughts were the demon’s: They were the ugliest, the most backwards, the ones that would unmake the thinker.
A few of the folks in the back were leaving, retreating wordlessly towards their cars before things got ugly. Uglier. Ugliest.
“Hey!” Piper said. “Don’t just walk away from me. Demon!”
The wasp twitched its antennae and the people twitched in rhythm. They twirled, eyes wide.
“You see,” Piper said through gritted teeth, “it’s really quite handy.”
“I think,” Laumonier said cautiously, looking at the frozen buyers, and then at the faces of their peers, and then at his daughter, “this might not be the best method of displaying this particular good.”
What he meant was, the demon was creeping everyone out and it was hard to shake the idea that they might all die at any time, which was bad for business both present and future.
“Don’t use that passive-aggressive stuff on me,” Piper said. “I read an article on how you have basically been undercutting my personhood for my entire life and that is totally an example.”
“This is totally an example of you overstepping your knowledge,” Laumonier said. “Your ambition is constantly outstripping your education! You don’t even know how to transfer a demon.”