The Eater of Togas

It Sure Looked Strange to Me

"I heard snarling and mewling, Natta Magus," Senator Tuccius whispered, his face whiter than his toga. "From my dressing room. Like a lynx I once saw in Cisalpine Gaul after it made a kill. Chilling it was."

The senator paused, and I nodded at him to go on.

He licked his dry lips. "It was dark, so I held my lamp up into the room. That's when I saw it. Over there." He motioned toward the open closet where I, Tuccius, and my Praetorian partner Vitulus inspected the scene. White cloth lay in shredded heaps on the red-tiled floor.

"It was the size of a small dog," the senator said, "but its body was hairless and purple. The color of veins. When I entered, it turned to me with one, all-yellow eye. It had a single red horn. When it saw me, it growled, then unfurled purple wings and flew at me. I dove to the floor; I'm not ashamed to admit it. But it went out the door, up through the atrium, and out into the night." He shuddered. "Senator Fannius Cilo told me he found the same creature in his home. I thought he was drunk..."

I glanced at Vitulus. He stood thin-lipped and grim, his hand on the hilt of the pearl-handled gladius on his belt.

I looked back at the senator. "So you're telling me that...a one-eyed, one-horned, flying, purple daemon was eating your togas?"

The senator nodded. "It was very strange to me."

Ah, damnation.

"Excuse me," I said through clenched teeth. I hurried out of the room, out the front door, and onto the Via Gallieni on Rome's Caelian Hill. I put my hands on my knees, took several deep breaths, and prayed to the Unknowable Will that I could hold back my laughter.

It was late afternoon in Rome on a humid, cloudy spring day. Rome's ever present miasma—a pleasant mix of wine, feces, and body odor—always rose with the temperatures, and today was no exception.

Citizens and slaves were running their final errands of the day. Shop owners were preparing to close their doors. Three women dressed in gray slave tunicas gave me a wide berth as they carried laden baskets from the Forum. Two vigiles—Augustus's new proto-police force—eyed me suspiciously as they shifted their clubs from shoulder to shoulder. A short, chubby man wearing a blue tunica and clutching a scroll cast a nervous glance at me and then hurried by.

After almost two years stuck in ancient Rome, I was used to the odd looks. I was about a foot taller than everyone and wore a black Detroit Wolverines baseball cap that helped me focus my magic. I got antsy when people didn't look at me strangely.

Vitulus came out and asked in low tones, "Are you well, Natta Magus?"

I stood straight and felt fairly confident that I'd brought myself under control.

"A one-eyed, one-horned, flying purple toga eater," I said.

Vitulus stared at me.

"And it sure looked strange to him," I said. Then the laughter burst from me in one loud bark before I could muffle it in the crook of my elbow. I glanced at Vitulus through my tears. He looked concerned.

"You're not well, then," he said slowly. "The senator's report sounds serious. I don't understand your mirth."

I took a few deep breaths and said, "There's this song in my time that...never mind."

Vitulus continued frowning. "It sounds foolish, but it is our duty to investigate these reports, even though they may turn out to be false—"

"Like the last six," I muttered.

"—because it only takes one true report to repeat the horror we defeated last fall."

I knew Vitulus was right. I came from a twenty-first century where magic was ubiquitous and powered the world. But I was abandoned here by a man I once considered my friend, who went mad and killed a lot of people. I'd stopped him and his daemon army, but aftershocks of his madness reverberated through the Republic as tavern tales and street plays. Now everyone saw daemons in their closets. And since I didn't know which reports were real and which were imaginings, I had to investigate every one.

I looked back through the senator's front door. "Yeah. I'll bring those toga shreds back to my shop. Maybe there's enough daemon spit on them for a finder spell. You can interview this Senator Fannius. If he saw the same thing that Tuccius claims, then maybe he has more info."

Vitulus nodded. "Claudia wants you to come for dinner tonight. She's under the impression you're starving in your Aventine shop at nights."

I smiled. "Well, not like I was before all these wild goose chases. You Praetorians pay me well for them."

"There is that. Shall I tell her you'll be there?"

Vitulus and his wife, Claudia, were my only real friends in Rome. A part of me hated taking advantage of that friendship by mooching meals off them every other night, but it was far more preferable to eating stale emmer bread in my Aventine shop.

"I'll be there. I'm sure this won't take long."

I should've known better than to tempt the gods with a comment like that.