Ishtar didn’t have a car or even a driver’s license. She didn’t feel they were necessary when Olympia came equipped with an extensive network of public transportation. The only downside was in that she had to walk half a mile and through a park to get to the nearest bus stop because her house was in a relatively undeveloped area. The houses in her neighborhood were all fairly spread out and hidden from each other by indigenous foliage.

It was early evening by the time Ishtar got back from her errands. With a bag of groceries hitched over her shoulder, earbuds in her ears, and a half-eaten crape in hand, she started the walk back home. She was in a pretty good mood, too, until some squirming caught her attention.

Her glasses had slipped far enough down her nose that she could see over the rim, and what she saw was a murder of imps. They were creepy little things, shaped roughly like a typical gargoyle statue, bearing claws and beaks and the feathers of crows.

Ishtar pushed her glasses up and the things disappeared. She had no business seeing things like those imps. She didn’t want to see them. It was unusual for them to gather and crawl around the branches of the trees like that and she didn’t want to know what they were up to, either. They never bothered her, but their unusual swarming made her nervous. She picked up her pace, desperate to get back to the safety of her home.

It didn’t matter.

Ishtar was almost to her front gate when a creeping dark came at her from behind. It overshot her, enveloped her, blotted out the trees, her house, the fading light of the sunset, everything.

The only other thing in that dark void was another woman.

Well, something that looked like a woman—a tall, imposing woman with five horns protruding around her head and black, talon-like nails. She stood a few feet away, glaring at Ishtar with nothing short of murder in her ethereally green eyes.

That was the only thing Ishtar was able to comprehend before she lost consciousness, unable to breathe in the void.

***

What woke Ishtar up was a demanding throb in her temple. Her brain wanted more caffeine. She naturally shoved herself up and swung her legs out, intent on grabbing some Advil to take with her coffee, but her feet didn’t find the edge of her mattress.

She wasn’t in her bed.

She wasn’t in her room.

Her initial assessment, upon opening her bleary eyes, was that she somehow ended up in an unnecessarily large bed in the center of a huge, decadent gazebo. Random treasures littered the floor—precious stones, jewels, beads of gold and silver, stretches of embroidered silk, it was like finding herself in the center of a pirate’s wet-dream.

Then she noticed the seemingly endless forest. The starless black sky. The moons casting everything in an eerie green light.

“What the ever-loving fuck…” Ishtar whispered.

“This is the Otherworld.”

Ishtar jumped a little and whipped her head around.

Lounging on one of the dipping rails lining the edge of the gazebo was the woman-looking creature. A higher spirit, no doubt. She didn’t seem quite so intimidating lying there like that—like she had nothing to do and no desired to do anything except laze around.

“My realm,” she added, as if that was supposed to clarify something for Ishtar, and shifted her gaze back out to the sea of trees.

Ishtar scooted off the bed and started tiptoeing her way to the spirit.

“And,” the spirit continued, “loath as I am to suffer it, your new home until I can find—”

Ishtar, not listening, grabbed the spirit by her collar and pulled her in sharply.

“What the fuck, lady?” she growled, face contorted in an aggressive grimace. “Who are you and why am I here?”

The spirit, initially looking at Ishtar with surprise, adopted a flat scowl.

“Well aren’t you an impertinent human,” she noted. “I suppose Violet has more to do with that than Holly.”

Ishtar huffed and released the spirit’s collar, muttering, “Of fucking course…” She crossed her arms and glared determinately. “So who are you? Did you kidnap me to get their attention or to piss them off? I gotta tell you, though—Holly’s probably gonna kill you for this no matter what your reasons are.”

“So you know nothing, then?” the spirit questioned with a trace of disappointment.

Ishtar, misunderstanding, said, “Lady, you don’t wanna know what Holly did to the last people who tried to fuck with me.”

“I know exactly what she did,” the spirit corrected. “It’s common knowledge. It’s also entirely irrelevant. I’d normally never bother with a human like you, but Holly has waltzed right into a troublesome situation of uncertain severity and is forcing me to protect you.”

Ishtar frowned. “So you’re Raven, then?”

“That is what the Hollalluog tend to call me,” the spirit qualified.

“And you knocked me out and brought me here…”

“Begrudgingly,” Raven said, “because this is the only place I know with absolute certainty that you will be safe.” In an undertone, she added, “I didn’t mean to render you unconscious, though.”

Ishtar was still for a moment before pressing her hands together. She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly and then tilted the tips of her fingers toward Raven and said, “No.”

“Excuse me?”

“I’m not cool with this.”

“Irrelevant.”

Ishtar huffed indignantly. “Look, I don’t know what kind of contract Holly made with you, but I’ve got a life and while I acknowledge the fact that she must’ve pissed a real nasty bastard off this time if she thinks it’ll take a higher spirit to protect me, I’m not going to let it screw my life up. Also, I have a throbbing headache, so I need some coffee and Advil like right now.”

Raven turned her face away from Ishtar’s but glared sternly from the corner of her eye. “Do I need to spell this out for you, wench?” she asked. “I don’t want to do this. I am furious at Holly. I’d kill you and eat you, body and soul, right in front of her just to teach her a lesson if I could. I suggest you stop aggravating me, or I may choose to keep you unconscious until I find that foolish brat.”

Grumplepuss, indeed, Ishtar thought.

“Honestly,” Raven grumbled almost too quietly for Ishtar to hear. “What does she think a Spirit King is? I’m not some nanny.”

Ishtar raised an eyebrow. “You’re a…what?”

She remembered Holly telling her about higher spirits once when she was a small child, pouring over an old, old book about them.

“They all have sigils like this,” Holly had said, turning to a page on which seventy-seven sigils had been scribed. “They’re cool, huh?”

“What’s a ‘sigil’?” the young Ishtar had asked.

“Um…it’s…something that represents a specific spirit?”

“Like a signature?”

“Something like that. They’re mostly used to invoke the spirit they represent.”

“Invoke?”

“It’s like calling them and asking them to come over. Well, it’s not as simple as using a phone. I thought you should know what a sigil is, but don’t ever try to invoke a spirit, my love. Especially not a Spirit Lord or any of the Spirit Kings.”

“Spirit King… Aren’t you and Mommy friends with a Spirit King?”

“Friends…? Not really. Rather than ‘friends,’ it’s more like we’re protected. And the one who protects us is the most powerful Spirit King…”

Ishtar regarded the imposing spirit lounging before her. “You’re Amaymon? But Amaymon’s supposed to be a guy.”

Raven rolled her eyes irritably. “Ignorant wench!” she snapped. “Spirits don’t have fixed shapes. I can be whichever, both, neither, whatever I want when I want.”

“I know so many people who would be so jealous of you right now!” Ishtar exclaimed, and then realized, “But…wow. So when you said ‘my realm’ you actually meant, like, yours. But…if Holly—”

Ishtar cut off with a gasp. Her hand had wandered to her face of its own accord and a shock of pain shot through her from her nose and lower lip.

“Ugh!” Raven grunted. “Don’t touch them, idiot! Your headache is hard enough for me to deal with!”

“What the fuck?!” Ishtar demanded, turning round and round in circles, touching the areas more and feeling the bits of metal that shouldn’t have been there. “What the actual fuck?! Did you do this?! Did you pierce my face in my sleep?!”

She hadn’t noticed them, perhaps from the shock of waking up in an unknown place and being distracted by a headache, but now that she knew they were there, she was very aware of how much her columella and lower lip were throbbing.

“Stop touching them!” Raven commanded, standing. “Those rings are the only reason you didn’t die within five minutes of breathing the air here!”

Ishtar looked over her shoulder at Raven with controlled fury. “Take me home.”

Raven, glaring impassively, said, “I won’t—”

“Take me home,” Ishtar interrupted viciously, “right fucking now!”

Raven didn’t respond immediately. She was looking at Ishtar with disbelieving shock, like Ishtar had done something inconceivable.

She mumbled something Ishtar didn’t catch, and then said more clearly, albeit through clenched teeth, “Put your arms around my neck and hold on tight.”

“Um…” Ishtar hesitated. She put up an aggressive, self-assured attitude, but she knew higher spirits could kill a human with a single flick. Her mother and aunt told her so all her life. Raven was obviously angry with her now, perhaps because she yelled.

Holly would never assign a spirit to protect Ishtar, though, if there was a chance of that spirit choosing to harm her instead.

“Okay,” Ishtar said as she reluctantly raised her arms.

Raven held perfectly still until Ishtar, on tiptoe, fastened her arms around her neck. She couldn’t help but notice that Raven carried the pleasant scent of rain and apples.

Ishtar could only enjoy the scent for a split second, though. Without warning, Raven leapt out of her nest. Ishtar might have screamed if the action hadn’t sucked the air out of her lungs and she was too scared to breathe more in.

As they fell, Raven’s arms grew and sprouted feathers, black and shiny as the long hair swishing and whipping around Ishtar’s locked arms. She crossed her legs tight around Raven’s waist, too, seconds before they landed on a lower platform with a deafening smack! The stop was so sudden and powerful that Ishtar nearly lost her grip.

She managed to hold on, though, and stayed there, trembling, as Raven’s wings quietly transformed back into arms. Ishtar felt her raise her arms and was going to ask what they were going to do next, but was distracted by the sudden pain of something sharp cutting through her wrist. The sound of liquid splattering across the floor immediately followed.

Ishtar jerked back, legs still tight around Raven’s waist, screaming, “What the fuck was that?!”

“Don’t just move with no warning!” Raven shouted, trying to keep her balance.

Ishtar had just enough time to see that her wrist was untouched before a flash of green light blinded her and pulled her down into an absolute dark.