The Shadow Verve Gallery

At first glance, the city of Westhampton looks like any other mid-sized midwestern American city. Farmland is no further than 20 minutes’ drive in any direction. The landscape is flat with trees interspersed amongst the buildings. There are wealthy neighborhoods and middle class neighborhoods and poor neighborhoods, and the people of Westhampton are generally friendly. However, Westhampton has a “secret ingredient” that makes it stand out: the Sable Street Arts District, which rumors say is a place where magic happens.

The Sable Street Arts District is home to a variety of boutiques and breweries, art galleries and cafes, and hole-in-the-wall performance venues. The people who frequent this part of town are mostly the “starving artist” type who can’t afford to live in the urban loft apartments over the studios and shops. Many of the artists and boutique owners themselves live in the places where they work; they themselves can’t afford studio or storefront rent and a separate place to live. In spite of this, the wealthy of Westhampton also deign to visit Sable Street, seeking to purchase miracles and to party in unusual, ethereal surroundings.

Halfway down Sable Street, a green banner glitters in the light of the setting sun as it hangs on a stone archway over a steep, dingy flight of stairs descending below street level. Viva Las Mariposas! the banner declares, advertising the event occurring below. Guitar and piano notes float out of the archway, calling to passersby. At the bottom of the stairs, two men wearing neon mohawks, leather pants, and unbuttoned white dress shirts festooned with paint splatters dictate who may enter the imposing double doors behind them and who is turned away.

Beyond those double doors, a four piece indie-folk band called Paragon Unfit plays on a small stage in one corner of an immense underground room. Gallery walls festooned with vibrant paintings cut through the space at odd angles. Multiple dark wood bars are set up around the space, each with a wall of shelves behind it lit up so that the liquor bottles seem to glow. Strings of fairy lights provide an ambient glow, and each painting has its own dedicated spotlight that fades from color to color through the rainbow spectrum. In a space between the stage and one of the bars, a woman in a gothic lolita dress, fishnets, and strappy patent leather platform boots stands next to a table that is almost completely covered by a vivid painting of butterflies in flight. She blows a kiss across the canvas and the butterflies swarm out of the painting to flutter around the room, causing onlookers to gasp and applaud in delight.

“Bravo! Bravo!” a pretentious-sounding socialite draped in Prada and Givenchy calls to the woman who brought the butterflies to life, who smiles but does not reply. Celestia Morelli, or Seelie as she is known to her friends, does not speak with attendees of these parties unless she has to. She’s already met most of them to create the paintings that are on display at this exclusive party for the wealthy and well-connected of Westhampton. Seelie instead shares a look with Junie, the keyboardist on the stage and one of her best friends, before drifting over to the nearest bar.

“Great turnout tonight,” the bartender, Adisa, remarks to Seelie. Her myriad tattoos almost seem to glow around her sparkly black halter top.

“There ought to be, with how much work we’ve put into advertising,” Seelie replies, gesturing to the flyers on the bar that echo their social media campaign: Viva Las Mariposas, presented by Shadow Verve Gallery and Belligerent Citrus Brewing.

“True enough.” Adisa and Seelie both know that none of the patrons will ever guess that the two of them are the owners of this party’s presenting businesses. Most of them have met at least Seelie before, but she would have been wearing no makeup and paint-splattered thrifted sweaters and mom jeans rather than her current goth witch glam look. As far as their top-crust clientele are concerned, the two of them might as well be part of the scenery. “Can I get you anything?”

“A virgin mojito, please.” Seelie would prefer to have alcohol in her mojito, but tonight she doesn’t dare. She needs to have complete control over her magic for everything to go according to plan. Invisible threads of energy thrum between Seelie and the paintings around the party space.

“Coming right up. How many are you hoping for tonight?” Adisa starts mixing the virgin cocktail. Of all the people around the bar, only Seelie and Adisa know they’re no longer talking about drinks.

“No more than five. We don’t want to get too crazy.” Seelie leans on the bar as she surveys their domain, which is well populated with Westhampton elites. A crowd of loud, drunk socialites is cackling nearby, swaying to the music with their flutes of champagne and fruity cocktails. Several other well-dressed guests mingle throughout the gallery space, flitting from painting to painting like Seelie’s enchanted butterflies that are still dancing amongst the fairy lights.

A pity we can’t take them all out at once, Seelie muses, tipping her gaze towards the exposed ductwork on the ceiling. That would arouse too much suspicion, give the game away. But we can get a few….

“Ooooo! I found mine!” a drunk twenty-something squeals, pointing at one of the paintings. Her painted self is wearing the same ivory beaded flapper dress and feathered headband as the real person, and it’s a true likeness, staring out at the party like the socialite’s reflection would from a mirror. She reaches out and touches the canvas, and her painted self mimics the gesture.

“WHOA!” she and her friends all squeal, stepping back from the painting and laughing like hyenas. The painted woman also steps back, seeming to laugh.

“Damn, it’s so good! No one does portraits like that girl in Shadow Verve,” one of the drunk woman’s friends exclaims. “Let’s go find mine!”

Seelie smiles to herself as the two of them stumble towards another painting, but her fists clench at her sides. Patience, Seelie. The young ones are never her primary targets at these events. They don’t have the power and influence to be truly dangerous to society.

“Here’s your drink,” Adisa interrupts Seelie’s musings.

“Thank you,” Seelie accepts the drink and takes a long, citrus-mint sip. “Any recommendations for tonight?”

“The Pillar of Salt is always a good choice.” Adisa points to a line on her “specialty cocktails” menu on the bar. Seelie nods and scans the room. In only a few seconds, she spots him: Mortimer Salt, the CEO of Walsingham Cured Meats. He stalks through the crowd like the other attendees are beneath him, though nothing else about him makes him stand out; he wears a boring black suit and tie, and his salt-and-pepper hair is styled in a typical businessman cut. Even so, he carries himself with a haughtiness Seelie imagines having first belonged to Louis XIV of France–a quality that would have been far more understandable in that context. Painting Mortimer Salt’s portrait last month tested Seelie’s patience to the point that she considers it a miracle she didn’t take his whole soul into the painting then and there. He wouldn’t make eye contact with her and talked the entire time about his accomplishments and his wealth and all his fine extravagant possessions. That afternoon was a nightmare, but now Seelie has him exactly where she wants him: walking up to the portrait she painted of him that contains a piece of his soul. She shifts her drink into her left hand and makes a few arcane gestures with her right hand while whispering against the rim of her glass.

Mortimer Salt stops short in his journey across the room. His eyes fix on the painting of himself. A smile spreads across his face and he moves towards the painting as if transfixed by it. Seelie snaps her fingers and the light focused on Mortimer’s portrait dims slowly, providing a little more cover for what’s to come. Paragon Unfit launches into a loud, upbeat number, and around the room people cheer and start dancing.

When Mortimer reaches the painting, he chuckles to himself and remarks how good he looks. His fingers rest against the canvas with a proprietary air. Seelie’s focus tightens. The painted Mortimer Salt puts his hand against the real one’s fingers. His face lights up with surprise and ecstasy. Then the canvas yields to his hand, accepting it like a bowl of water would. Then a crackle of electricity snaps across the canvas, almost too quick to be seen, casting the man’s hand back to his side. The CEO’s eyes roll back in his head and he falls to the floor, a dazed smile on his lips, utterly senseless. No one seems to notice except Adisa, who presses a button under the bar.

The painted Mortimer Salt looks down at the body on the floor and his eyes widen in panic. He runs to the edges of his painting, then pounds against the canvas, screaming obscenities that only Seelie can hear. A black lipstick smirk crosses her face for a second. The mohawked event security staff, Donovan and Lionel, come from the front door and pick up Mortimer Salt’s body before it attracts any attention. The way they carry him, upright between them, it would seem to anyone watching that he’s just had too much to drink. No one would guess that his entire soul has been consumed by his portrait, nor that he’ll be found dead in his bed in the morning, presumably from a stroke or something equally common and boring.

“LOOK! THEY’RE DANCING!” a giggly socialite squeals across the room, tearing Seelie’s attention from Mortimer. The young woman is halfway across the room from Seelie’s latest victim, pointing at another painting depicting a group of young women. The painted ladies dance suggestively across the campus, lifting their skirts in a tantalizing way.

“Great distraction,” Adisa whispers near Seelie’s ear. “Someone’s here for you.”

Seelie looks away from the dancers and finds herself face to face with a tall man with a sharp jawline and eyes that are black from edge to edge. His smile reveals unsettling pointed teeth.

“Azolloth. You’re early,” Seelie murmurs, taking another sip of her mojito. Her demonic partner isn’t meant to materialize until at least 3am, when everyone is too wasted or high or sleep-deprived to pay him any mind.

“The arrogance you’ve assembled here is…tantalizing,” Azolloth answers in a low, rumbling voice. Like most demons, he feeds on sin and souls, and pride is his favorite flavor. “I couldn’t stay away. Do you have anything that can…take the edge off?”

“One, caught in a soul net and being extremely rude and noisy about it. Walk with me.” She takes the demon’s arm, throwing a casual glamor over him with a flick of her fingers so that the party guests won’t suspect what walks among them.

“Is this really necessary?” he hisses to Seelie, but his lips curl in a slight smirk, telling her that he doesn’t actually mind.

“Best way for you to get your snack without attracting attention. Which is what we both want,” Seelie answers. Her brow furrows as Mortimer Salt’s grating soul-voice echoes in her head, demanding his release. His likeness is still pounding on the canvas, trying fruitlessly to escape. Fool. That’s a one-way door, she tells him, wondering if the souls caught in her enchantments can hear her.

“Oh my GOD, this painting of Ralph Sedgwick just turned blue! It looks like he’s melting!” someone exclaims off to Seelie’s left as she and Azolloth approach the painting of Mortimer Salt.

“Just be quiet and don’t make a scene,” Seelie whispers to Azolloth when they’re close enough to touch it. Painted Mortimer is cowering behind a painted couch, terrified of something. The soul net victims always react to Azolloth this way. “If we play our cards right, we can get you a few more tonight.”

Another unsettling smile flashes across the demon’s face. “As you wish.” He rakes his fingernails across Mortimer’s soul net. A dark cloud of bruise-colored something comes out of the canvas with a sound like branches scraping a glass window, only for Azolloth to snatch it out of the air. In his hands, it becomes a gelatinous, writhing mass for a moment before he devours it, smacking his lips in satisfaction. In Seelie’s head, Mortimer’s screams and curses cut short, and she breathes a sigh of relief.

“Oh, that was decadent. I hope you’re right about tonight’s outcome.”

“Since you’re here, come enjoy one of Adisa’s drinks.” Seelie pulls Azolloth with her back towards her favorite corner of the room.

“Won’t be as tasty as what I’ve just had.”

“Maybe not, but she knows how to dress them up for…clients like you.” Adisa has the same sort of magical gift for drink making that Seelie has for painting and the members of Paragon Unfit have for making music. Events like Viva Las Mariposas give them all a chance to use their talents to undermine the rich and fight back against late-stage capitalism. Mortimer Salt, with his arrogance and his reliance on factory farming that is cruel to animals and destroys the environment to line his own pockets, was exactly the kind of person the witches of the Sable Street Arts District most want to take down.

“Maybe I’ll try one,” Azolloth relents. “Might as well break up the main dishes with an amuse-bouche, no?”

“Heyyyyyy, how can we get paintings of ourselves that dance like that?” a well-sloshed socialite in a sequined pink minidress slurs at Adisa as Seelie and Azolloth reach the bar. The drunk woman points towards one of the enchanted paintings, this one depicting sultry bellydancers performing a seductive routine. Her friends crowd around her, shouting similar things about how they want living paintings of themselves in their own mansions.

“Visit the Shadow Verve art studio, above ground and next door to where you came in, during the daytime,” Adisa answers smoothly while pouring them all shots of a sparkly golden liquor. “Ask for Celestia. She can create artwork that will exceed your expectations and imaginings.”

The women cheer and down their shots, then start making plans to visit Seelie’s studio. Adisa and Seelie share a look and a conspiratorial wink.

“Do you still make that Hellfire cocktail? I think my friend here would love to try it,” Seelie asks Adisa.

“You got it. And can I suggest that you try the Karmelon Twist for your next drink?” Adisa gestures with her drink shaker across the room. Seelie and Azolloth both follow the gesture across the room to see a tall blonde woman with a “Karen” style bob approaching a painting of herself. She stops in front of it, primping her tailored pantsuit and staring at her likeness in proud admiration.

“Great tip,” Seelie acknowledges Adisa before she starts another round of arcane gestures and murmuring against her glass.

“What are you doing, little witch?” Azolloth whispers into Seelie’s shoulder-length black waves.

“I think we’ve found your next course.” She gestures with her chin towards the blonde pantsuit woman, one Caroline Mellon, CFO of Synergy Corporate Enterprises. “Just wait a few more minutes.”