Danse Macabre (Angel Devourers #4)

1

The bar was bustling with the crowd as usual even though it was a weeknight, and one of the reasons why – other than great food, great alcohol, great ambience – was that the bartenders and the waiters were all exceptionally handsome men and beautiful women.

They were exclusively recruited by the owner of the bar – Purgatory – and aside from being beautiful, they were also very lethal in case the customers started to get rowdy even though this area was a neutral zone for the supernaturals.

That would mean that all supernatural beings were welcomed here without prejudice, as long as they composed themselves and not picking a fight that would get you permanently banned by the owner.

Most of their customers also knew that if you had an unsolved problem, you could go to the back of the bar and knock on the red door at the end of the long hallway, and ask for help – with sufficient payment that sometimes was not all about money.

The solution and the payment were mostly depending on who was in charge that day – and today was Freyja’s turn to man the red door, and she was the most difficult person to deal with of all the others.

Freyja was a very beautiful young woman with lightly tanned  Asian porcelain skin, long silver dreadlocks and eyes the color of the galaxy. She was tall and fit, and favored tank tops and shorts for her daily clothes. She was also the youngest of them all and she was pampered by the all-male family members to the point where no one ever said no to her – except for Dottore. He was the oldest one and everyone respected him, including Freyja.

But although Freyja was a spoiled brat, her work was clean and fast and untraceable. The only issue with her was the payment that she demanded.

Instead of money, she wanted things that caused the client to have a headache because it was so outrageous, like the limited edition figurine of some anime protagonist that was issued 10 years ago, or the life size custom made anime figure that was so inconspicuous, no one ever heard about them, or even an outdated specific manga from twenty years ago in prime condition that was not sold anywhere. 

Other than her quirkiness and odd form of payment, she was peachy as long as the term was fulfilled.

Right now – while waiting for a client to come – she was facing the opened laptop and in the middle of choosing between the 1:10 anatomically correct figure of Zhong Li, Al-Haitham or Wriothesley to buy from her favorite seller online, when the door was opened and a woman entered.

From the look of it, she was going to bawl her eyes out soon, so Freyja decided to buy all three figures to soothe herself before she went down in the rabbit hole of grief and sorrow and whatever this woman would ask her to do.

After clicking buy all and express shipment, she faced the woman with a smile on her face.

“Welcome. Please sit down. Can I help you with anything?”

Dottore always told her that she had to put on a smile when she faced the clients, so she did. Put on the fakest smile she could muster. And apparently it worked, since the woman smiled back sadly and sat in front of her.

She was a beautiful woman in her mid forties, and from her clothes, Freyja could tell that she was not well-off. The dress was a good one with a classic cut, but it was faded and worn out, and even though her shoes were classic Italian leather loafers, it was not without the signs of wear and tear on them. She also brought an old Italian leather tote with her, and her makeup was carefully applied to hide the shadows under her eyes.

Classic and dignified. And Freyja suspected she came from a fallen nobility – just like half of the other supernaturals out there.

Or maybe she just loved thrifting, she didn’t care.

“Hi, I heard that you can help me with my troubles…?” Her voice was so soft, even Freyja, who had excellent hearing, had trouble with it.

“Well, we can assure you that we will hear you, but as for a solution, it will depend on the problem. But don’t worry about it. Tell me what troubles you and I will try my best to help.”

Hopefully something interesting that could make her go somewhere exotic or kill someone strong.

“Uhm, my son is missing.” She let a tear fall down on her smooth cheek. “He was supposed to be with his grandfather, but my father never saw him and it has been a week since he disappeared.”

Goddamnit. Another boring missing emo teenager case.

“Okay, how old is your son? And has he done something like this before?”

“He’s 18 and no, he has never done anything like this before. He’s a sweet boy and always helps me and takes care of his younger siblings and his grandfather. There’s no way he would leave without saying anything to us.” She couldn’t hold back her tears. “Please, help me find my son. I will pay anything as long as he comes back.”

“Do you have his photo? And please write his description and places where he spent most of his time and any friends or girlfriend, anything that could help us find your son.” Freyja gave her a piece of paper and a pen.

“Yes, yes, I have his photo.” She rummaged through her bag and took out a picture of a quite handsome boy with long hair that still had not lost his baby fat, and he wore… eyeliner?

She took a more closer look at the picture and saw that he also wore blush and lipgloss. And also eyeshadow.

They were subtly and expertly worn, but no one could deny that the make up was there.

Just yesterday Masayuki – or Yuki for short – explained to her about the new gender thing that the youngsters seemed to prefer today instead of just male and female, and she didn’t really pay attention to Yuki’s explanation. They could identify themselves as an attack helicopter for all she cared, but now when she faced the problem in real life… she didn’t know what to say.

“Uhm…” She tapped her long finger with French manicure on the table while searching for polite words to ask the distressed woman so that she did not offend her. She was usually brash and to the point, but even she knew that at times like this, it was not a good move to offend customers – plus because she wanted something out of this.

“My son identifies himself as a woman, and that’s the reason why I am very concerned about him. There were many times that he was the object of the school violence by those bullies, and there was also no definite punishment from the school against his bullies.” Her voice became more distressed as she told Freyja her son’s backstory.

“Which high school?” 

Of course there was no way that those humans would know that there were supernatural beings amongst them. If they did, they would do the only thing that they did best – got rid of them or did some inhumane experiments on them.

From her own experience, she knew that humans did not accept nor appreciate those who were different from them including their own kind – fellow humans. So what would make them give an exception to a confused supernatural being? They would torture the poor teenager more. Or maybe even accidentally killed them – or not.

Damn she started to get anxious about this case. She had a feeling that this case was not as simple as it looked.

“Ah, apologize, did I forget to mention? My son went to school for idol training at Morgan Entertainment.”