Florian bent low to listen, a giant next to Belphegor, this strange contrast of size and power, an odd reminder of how bad things could also come in small packages. “Hags?” Florian looked around us, stopping in place, his muscles still. “There are hags, too?”
“Do I look like the type of person who wants to do any sort of manual labor? Ever?” Belphegor scoffed and rolled his eyes. “Yes, hags. I sourced demon witches who knew their way around plants and plant life. They’re the ones who engineered the field system I have out there. It’s all automated, for the most part.” He tugged at his jacket’s cords and thumbed at himself, grinning. “Prince of Sloth, as if you hadn’t heard.”
I glanced around the mansion, through the crystalline windows and out into the gardens as we passed, but saw no sign of his alleged employees. “This place is so empty. Where are all your servants? And where are these witches, exactly?”
“First of all, this is the Court of Sloth. No one does any work around here until I need them to.” Belphegor raised one finger. “And not witches. Hags. I said hags. Because who else is going to be as good at hagriculture, am I right?”
I knew very well that Belphegor was the class of demon who could probably melt my face off just by looking at me, give me a vasectomy by uttering a single word. But I still couldn’t bring myself to even pretend to laugh at his stupid jokes. Florian gave it the old college try, though, chuckling uneasily through a face creased with concern.
“Ugh, you guys are no fun.” Belphegor gestured vaguely in the direction of the Crimson Gardens, where he was leading us. “They move around a lot. Pretty swiftly and silently, too, just the way I like it. But their leaders like to hang out in the redhouse.”
As we discovered not twenty steps later, the redhouse was just the Crimson Garden’s version of a greenhouse, colored in the same bloody cast as the rest of the prince’s di
mension. It was almost beautiful, this enormous structure sculpted out of panes of scintillating ruby, all suspended like stained glass in a maniacal spiderweb of black steel. But all you had to do was take one look through the glass to be brought down to earth once more – or hell, in this case.
The shapes of three women moved around the inside of the redhouse, their spindly arms pushing and pulling at great, heaving masses that glistened with what could have been either dew or ichor. I hated that you couldn’t tell whether the huge, throbbing bulbs they were working on were plant or animal in origin. That didn’t really matter, though, because they made me sick to my stomach either way.
Belphegor was supposed to be taking us out into the grounds of the Crimson Gardens, towards what looked like a huge, grand gazebo, but the witches tittered and shrieked at the sight of him, rushing up to the redhouse’s entrance as we walked past.
Instinctively my mind reached out for a weapon from the Vestments. It didn’t materialize just yet, but I trusted my body to do the work of being vigilant enough for me. It was always good to be prepared. Florian, on the other hand, staggered shakily away from Belphegor, ending up standing slightly behind me, as if he was using my body for protection, or at least a bit of camouflage.
“Lord Belphegor,” the first hag screeched, long, white hair spilling down her shoulders, her entire body shrouded in coarse brown robes stained with the saps and juices of the redhouse’s specimens. “We’d hoped to see you today. We’ve made quite a few interesting strides with – with that thing you wanted us to do.”
That last bit was spoken hesitantly as the hag looked between me, Belphegor, and Florian. She gave me a jagged smile as she finished, one that was mirrored by her hag sisters. It was then that I noticed how the three witches looked very much alike, down to the deep red stains on their arms that colored their skin from the tips of their fingers all the way up to their forearms. Their teeth were as white as their hair and skin, and similarly tipped in that strange uniform red. There was an eeriness about the three women, the color blanched out of their skin like vegetables, utterly inhuman. Of course, there was no way I should have believed the hags were anything near human in the first place.
Florian’s fingers dug into my shoulder and my upper arm, and I would have scolded him for overreacting if I hadn’t noticed the same thing that he had. The hags were all looking at him, as one, as a single unit. It was as if they’d fallen into a frozen, grinning trance, one that was only broken by the sound of Belphegor’s voice.
“That’s a discussion for another time, ladies. For now, I trust that you’ll do your best to make our new guests feel welcome.”
“Indeed,” said one witch. “May our working relationship be most fruitful.”
“May we all quickly reap the rewards of what we sow,” said the second.
The third one cackled. “I love puns, but I’m not very good at them.”
I groaned as softly as I could. Florian tugged on my jacket, then whispered in my ear. “I hate them.”
I whispered back. “Me too, buddy. Me too.”
11
The hags weren’t so bad, if you ignored the explosions and sounds of breaking glass coming from the redhouse. Throughout the day, one of them – who knows which – would come out tittering, hunched over with something clasped in her hand. Twice it was a gleaming phial full of unknowable, presumably noxious liquid. The last time, it was a shiny red apple.
Hah. I might not be the sharpest tool in the shed, but I know a thing or two about apples and witches.
“No, thank you,” I said politely each time, and each time the witch would cackle and snort as she shuffled her way back to the redhouse. I waited for the door to creak shut before elbowing Florian in the ribs. “They’re a pretty friendly bunch.”
He grunted. “They’re creepy is what they are. You know they want us to eat or drink the stuff they bring out, see what it’ll do to us.”
The sound of glass tapping brought my attention back to the redhouse. All three of the hags were pressed up against the panes, waggling fingers and smiling at us. I smiled back uncertainly, waving with a limp wrist.
“Okay, so I was joking.” I wiped my hand off on the back of my jeans like I’d just touched something unpleasant. “They’re totally super creepy.”
“Like I said. And that look was different. That looked more like they wanted to eat you.”
Something witches are known for, at least in the fairy tales. Demons, too. Beelzebub, the demon Prince of Gluttony, had made that very clear the first time that we ever met. He said something about wanting to sample my soul, how it would always grow back.
The day, if you could call it that, was hot in Belphegor’s hell, but I still shuddered. All things considered, tilling the soil, pulling up weeds, and doing some watering in the Crimson Gardens wasn’t the worst job either I or Florian ever had. This despite Belphegor’s warnings as he pointed out the shed that contained all his tools.