WHO Luna WHEN Friday WHERE Staten Island WHAT Checking out the new digs WARNINGS violence
The day was chilly but clear, the sun bursting out from the occasional clouds with great gusto and pricking down on the top of Luna's head.
Though taking the train to Staten Island made her journey almost an hour longer than it needed to be, Luna had chosen that option so that she could get some reading done. Any time she tried to read in an uber or a taxi, drivers always tended to interrupt her. On the train, no one bothered her.
Besides, Luna had always liked the trains. She had grown up in Albuquerque, which had no train system, and when she'd moved to LA she'd quickly learned that while it had trains, they were almost more hassle than they were worth. There were some parts of the city that were well served by the system, but Luna had never been lucky enough to live in those places. So moving to New York City had been a change: a twenty-four hour train system that could get you almost anywhere in the five boroughs, cheaply and relatively quickly.
The ride to Staten Island was less familiar to Luna than some other routes which had become mundane. She’d only been there twice before and those had both been with the car to go to a Turkish supermarket and collect (what Peitho referred to as) the only ‘real’ kaymak cheese in New York. Both times Luna had treated herself to a couple pieces of lokma for the trip.
She’d done the same for herself today, and now as she walked through the grounds of Hecate’s newly purchased old mansion, she was licking the honey off her fingers.
The property around the house took up a complete city block, and seemed as though no one had taken care of it for a long time. There was an abandoned rose garden where it was hard to tell what was dead and what was just looking lifeless because of the season, and right behind that a stone fountain with a thin layer of murky green water, the mermaid statue looking down upon it all as though she didn’t know how her home turned into such a neglected mess. A few rows of wild and unpruned hedges suggested (at least to Luna’s mind) that someone might have once attempted to build a small hedge maze, but had never completed the project. From the house, the trees and bushes were thick enough that Luna couldn’t see the streets, not in any direction. The only suggestion that she was not in the wild was the traffic sounds that came from every side. The greenery didn’t have the complete power to make Staten Island disappear.
Luna took a few notes on her phone as she walked around, earphones in and hair tied back out of her way, jotting down who would need to be called for what. Sometimes she wasn’t sure and just noted down the problem to remember to google it. (Did you call a plumber to make a fountain go again? Or was that a general construction job?)
Luna herself would be of no help to this garden: while she could look after houseplants fine enough, this sort of garden maintenance was far beyond her abilities. Besides, Luna didn’t have the time to come to Staten Island and spend all day doing it herself. Hecate had hired her for her delegating expertise and she was going to show the goddess that it hadn’t been a mistake.
(She was desperate for Hecate to see that Luna had been worth sticking her neck out for.)
Hecate didn’t yet have the keys for the place – or hadn’t given them to Luna – and so she pressed her cupped hands to the window and looked through the dirty glass to see the inside. It didn’t look too bad, just a little forgotten about. She could tell why Hecate liked this place. She had a penchant for lost and abandoned things. After all, she’d taken care of Luna after she’d failed Hermes, hadn’t she?
Luna made her way slowly around the house, looking in all the windows she could find, trying to build up a map of it all in her head. She could picture herself one day living in a place like this, maybe with some kids. Maybe. It was almost impossible to predict her future, so dependent it was upon the desires of Peitho and Hermes.
She was picturing one of those future possibilities – a house like this, two kids, a dog, a husband or a wife – when something slammed into Luna from behind and she hit the building in front of her, forehead smacking against the window frame, breath almost knocked out of her (but not quite). Before having a chance to recover, someone grabbed her by the arms and spun her around, slamming her back into the window even harder than her front had hit it. Her eyes rolled back for just a second and when they found focus again, it was on a semi-familiar face.
Dunkin Dude. That motherfucker!
Luna yanked at his grip, once, sharply, and found that it didn’t slip her free of his grasp. “Get your fucking hands off me!” Luna spat, more disgusted and angry than scared.
“Shouldn’t be sneaking around people’s houses,” he told her, his voice low and threatening, his face too close to Luna’s to be comfortable. “Never know what will happen.”
“I’m not sneaking, I’m-” He shook her sharply, smacking her head again. “Hey! Quit it!”
Dunkin Dude leaned in even closer to her, his breath on her face, his eyes slightly bloodshot.
"What makes you so special to her?"
Oh my god, Luna thought, the realisation dawning on her as he dug his fingers into her upper arms. This is about Peitho!
The number of men and women that Peitho had brought home, completely enraptured by her, was immeasurable by Luna's reckoning. Luna having to get rid people the next morning who desperately hoped that Peitho would call them - please tell her to call me? I know it was just a one night thing, but please? - was a regular occurrence, and she had gotten good at giving them no false hope. You had to be straight with them: Ava is not going to call you. This is over. Here, drink this coffee but then you have to leave.
Some of them had gotten demanding with Luna, wanted to know who she was, wanted to know what she thought she knew about any of this. Sometimes Luna got bitchy with them, said she was her girlfriend and that while 'Ava' might have had a fun night with them, Luna was the one she always came back to. But mostly Luna just played secretary and ushered them out of the apartment.
It had seemed like only a matter of time before one of them would get too fixated to just walk away, and Luna couldn't believe she hadn't considered that she would become the object of their frustration. But now it seemed obvious: Luna was the one who kicked them out. Luna must be the one getting in the way.
"Get over it," she sneered at the man. "She never cared about you."
“You don’t know shit about-”
“I know all about it!” She gave another yank of her arms, but he wasn’t budging. Luna narrowed her eyes at him and then she laughed, without mirth but full of a wild and dangerous sense of triumph. “You’re making the worst mistake of your soon-to-be very short life,” she spat. “When my people find out that you’ve even touched me, they’re gonna slice you open, dick to throat.”
“You think you’re so special.” His hands tightened and Luna took a heavy inhale in place of the hissed breath she wanted. “You think-”
“I am special,” Luna told him, arrogant and furious and unwilling to back down, not from some idiot human who didn’t even see the real world. “I am chosen, and you are nothing, will always be nothing.”
He made a growl of frustration and smacked her head again. (Fucking ow!) “You’re deluded!” he told her. “You think someone’s going to come save you? Going to come kill me for you? Wake up, you dumb bitch. It’s just us.”
“You’ve signed your death warrant touching me,” Luna laughed and he suddenly let one of her arms go and brought his own up, jamming his forearm against her throat and pushing.
Anything that had been funny suddenly disappeared completely. His arm felt as hard and unyeilding as rock beneath his jacket, as though it wasn't even flesh at all.
Now that she could feel the horribly familiar feeling off her airways being blocked off, true panic began to rise in Luna for the first time. Her vision swum with the thought of Michele bearing down on her, pushing her down on the couch as his meaty hands shook her by the throat, his weight on her body, his eyes full of fury, his-
Different scene, different time, different place, and yet: the same, the same, the same. She made a choking sound as he pressed her forearm harder.
No, no, no, this wasn’t going to happen! No, no, NO!, Luna wasn’t going to let this happen!
NO!
It was the sheer panic and terror that allowed her the strength to break out of his grip on her arm, absolute almighty unbridled horror of this path that gave her enough to reach up and slash her nails across his eyes, enough that he screamed and stumbled backwards.
That was all she needed, and Luna bolted away through the tall grass and passed the rose garden, grateful for her hours spent at the gym, grateful that she’d dedicated herself to pushing her body past its limits, grateful for the arm off her throat even if she was sure she could still feel it. She ran out of the yard and off the property, shoes thudding against pavement and arms pumping at her sides, grateful as well for the sensible boots she’d worn today for walking through unknown gardens, grateful for the way her lungs burned with every breath and told her that she was still alive, still breathing, that Michele had not taken her there in the mountains and he had not taken her today either.
She only stopped running when she reached the safety of the inside of a bodega, gasping against the front counter as she tried to breathlessly explain what had happened to the clerk who’d looked ready to pull a gun when she burst through the door.
It took far too long for Luna's breathing to get back to normal, and even after it did her hands kept shaking for much longer than that.