They were so beautiful, so perfect in a way he’d never be. It almost hurt to look at them. And they would last forever, untouchable, except when they weren’t. Adam knew with a deep ache that they were never more beautiful than when they lay with you.
He’d gotten lost before, entranced by beauty and eyes so pale that they stole the color from flowers or the red from his skin when they tussled. He fought to shake off the memory and the blush it brought. He would never repeat that mistake. He was here on business.
Adam straightened with a jerk when a classic car, a boat of curving metal in black and gray, raced into the parking lot. Adam gaped as it roared to a stop.
“Is that an Auburn Speedster?” he asked, unable to stop himself.
“1935,” the driver said. She had a clipped accent Adam associated with old movies.
Come to think of it, the whole place felt like an old movie, classic, cast in black and white, unreal and dangerously fantastic. He had to remember he could die here.
Tall and willowy, the woman towered over him.
“Do you like my dress too?” she asked, twirling. The garment, a slinky number with fins along the skirt, was cut from salmon-colored silk. It floated around her as she spun.
“Yeah,” he said. His gaze caught on the wrap of black feathers draped about her shoulders. It quivered in the spirit breeze, more alive than plucked, even when she came to rest, still and elegant as carved marble. “It’s, uh, pretty.”
In truth Adam never understood why anyone asked him about women’s clothes. He wasn’t a drag queen or any kind of fashionable. Just because he was gay?
He caught a sense of the woman’s power, the full effect of what stood before him.
All elves possessed more magic than any human, but they weren’t all the same. Adam did not know what determined their power, whether it came from age or existed from birth. They were ruled by queens and kings, so it made sense that bloodlines were involved, but he wasn’t even sure they had babies.
Some elves wore their magic like fine silks. From others it radiated like a too-strong perfume. Perak had been closer to human, safe to touch.
The wisps of power leaking through this woman’s glamour burned.
Seeing him realize his mistake, she tilted her head. A cold little smile pursed her lips. Adam took a backward step. Eyes darting side to side, he sought an escape. The elves, all dressed in classic suits and vintage dresses, ceased their strolling. As one, they turned to watch, their jewel-toned eyes focused on the exchange, their heads slightly cocked to the side.
Every nerve in Adam’s body thrummed in warning.
“I mean to say, my lady”—Adam made an awkward dip to one knee—“that it is most lovely and reminds me of more elegant times.”
That seemed to mollify her.
“You’ve come to petition the Court?” she asked.
“How did you know?”
She waved a hand, indicating the park.
“You’re a mortal practitioner,” she said. “The rest are gone.”
Only elves walked the dock beside the lake or rode the iron Ferris wheel. No humans strolled with them. No practitioners or supplicants, no refugees from the mortal world.
She put her hands on her hips and said, “Get on with it then. Petition me.”
“Oh shit,” Adam gasped, looking away from her. “You’re the queen.”
“You may call me Argent, if you like.”
Her smile expanded like an unsheathed blade. Adam averted his eyes as her glamour fell away, but for less than a heartbeat he saw more of her true self, the aspect of her whose full glory could blind or kill him.
He glanced away in time, but the image still branded his memory.
She wore a bodysuit of woven steel, unbreakable chain mail. The cut-out shape of a longsword opened at the high collar of the form-fitting dress atop it. It ran down, just past her belly, baring a line of perfect skin. The cross guard exposed a modest amount of cleavage. A great wheel of naked swords fanned out from her back in a terrible halo. A similar band of upraised blades marked her brow in a crown that would make brushing her hair an exercise in horror. The long strands were the color of polished steel. Its sheen reflected her eyes, so pale they could only be the whitest of gold.
She held a massive sword, its blade as wide and long as Adam’s body, as if it weighed nothing. To her it likely didn’t. He had no doubt she could cleave mountains with it. She laughed, a white sound, like winter, and his defenses, the layer of armor and wards he’d conjured to keep himself sane, cracked.
“Hail to the Guardians of the Watchtower of the North,” Adam said without hesitation, closing his eyes before he saw more, before he lost his mind or worse. “I seek your wisdom.”
“No,” she said, interrupting. “You seek my brother. We’ll find him in the ballroom.”
“You do not want to hear the rest?” Adam asked. Eyes still closed, he rose to his feet. He’d practiced it for hours, alone, with Perak—learning how to speak to royalty for occasions such as these, occasions he’d hoped would never arise.
“Not really,” she confessed. “I know most immortals like titles and ceremony, but all that bores me so.”
Adam liked her—or thought he would, if her towering presence didn’t make him want to cower in terror.
He heard a click, the close of her little clutch of a purse. Magic rushed around him and subsided, her magic hidden beneath her glamour.
“You can open your eyes now,” she said.
He did, and the terrible queen had become the elegant flapper again. She offered Adam her arm.
He took it and found his own clothes transforming as her magic, cold and quick as snow melt, ran over him.
His jeans and tee had changed into a black suit, with a stiff front crease on the pants and a fedora atop his head. Everything fit perfectly.
“Silk underwear too,” she said with a wink. “Just in case it comes to that.”
Adam swallowed hard. He didn’t say anything, but he clenched his fists that she’d toy with him. He clung to his anger, and the memory of Perak’s abandonment, determined not to be charmed.
The queen’s heels clicked on the cobbles as she led him toward the tower. Square, over a hundred feet tall, it shone, its thousands of white lights incandescent above them. He thought again how much it felt like a black-and-white movie, leeching the colors away, though his hands held their pinkish, human tint when he examined them.
Squinting, Adam forced his Sight to show him the mortal side. He had to fight for it, to press his meager skill past the heavy magic. On the Other Side, the tower remained. It had seen better days. Many of the bulbs were out, and the structures around it were shuttered or partially collapsed. The ballroom at the base was boarded up.
“Lovely, isn’t it?” the Queen asked, following his gaze into the mortal world. “It is a shame your people do not restore it to its glory.”
“It is,” he agreed, a little surprised he meant it.
The elves had their flaws. They had little respect for mortal property or their brief lives, yet they clutched the past to their hearts. Die-hard preservationists, they loitered near ruins and hoarded ancient things.
Adam could admit he had a streak of their fixation. He loved the Cutlass, despite the pains it took to keep her running. He loved the tarot cards Aunt Sue had given him. Even the asylum, Liberty House, had appealed with its crumbling brickwork when he’d first arrived, before the days locked in isolation in a room with torn, padded walls and ungentle orderlies began. Adam had hit one of them once, and they’d bound his hands, hung him from a hook, arms stretched above him, balanced on his toe tips, for hours. He rubbed his wrist now, remember the soreness and the chafing of the rope.
The queen released his arm and opened the ballroom doors with a slight shove. A wooden floor of gleaming planks stretched beneath a b
lue-painted ceiling that floated above a colonnade of alcoves. Dancers spun in waltzes, which Adam felt had to be inaccurate. The elves loved period cosplay, but they often got the details wrong. He thought they had the clothes right, but he was no expert. Even if they didn’t, and even if they looked old-fashioned, they were beautiful.
For all their faults, elves weren’t small-minded. Men danced with men. Women danced with women. In one or two cases, three or four waltzed together in a way that made his eyes hurt when he tried to follow their footwork. Their grace could be painful. He remembered lying on a bed of flowers, entwined with smooth skin and contented smiles. Adam shoved the memory away. He had a reason for coming here. He wouldn’t let their games, or his past, distract him.
A young man sat playing the piano, a gleaming white beast of a full grand. It stood against the colorful backdrop of the bandstand. Dressed in a suit of cloth the color of platinum and a fedora with a white satin ribbon, he emanated power. He had to be the knight. An aching feeling swirled through the crack the queen had put in Adam’s defenses and he forced himself to unclench his jaw. The emotion wasn’t his own. He would not let it rule him.
Queens, kings, knights, and pages. They were titles. Sometimes the relationships were unclear. They might not even be family. Argent had called the knight her brother.
Feeling Adam’s gaze, or simply bored, the man stopped playing. The dancers stopped in place, as fixed as marble statues, their feet frozen, some lifted in midstep. None of them breathed hard, as though their long turns through the hall were effortless. Perak, too, had rarely shown any sign of physical effort, and Adam had considered it a point of pride when he could bring the elf to it.
Adam mentally pinched himself. He had to stop thinking about Perak. He had to focus on the here and now.
Business. Business. He reminded himself as the queen greeted the man.
“Silver. Brother. I bring you a gift.” She unfolded her long arm in Adam’s direction. “A mortal practitioner. He carries a petition.”
Adam knelt again, keeping his head low as the elven prince rose from the piano bench. Like his sister, he hid his true nature behind illusions. The Knight of Swords pressed a hand to Adam’s head. The cool fingers ran through his hair once, twice with a wash of magic. It didn’t quite burn, but it flooded him with warmth. That thrumming in Adam’s nerves ran ever deeper. He didn’t like the presumption, that Silver thought he could just touch him like that. Adam wrapped his defenses tighter, lest Silver sense his anger. He needed their help.
“Rise, Adam Binder, Witch of the Plains, and tell us what you seek.”
Adam forced himself to breathe, to not bare his teeth. He’d felt hands like those, slim and graceful, on him before.
“You know my name, lord?” Adam asked, scrambling out from under that touch and finding his feet.
He shook. It had happened. They knew him now. They’d want things, alliances and fealty. They’d want him to fight for them or spy upon their enemies. Scheming things, elves. Pretty, deceitful, and likely to vanish when you needed them most.
“The ether buzzes with whispers of the practitioner who dared challenge a Reaper,” Silver said.
Adam could not suppress a flinch. He wanted to avoid any kind of fame, but especially the sort that could get him killed.
Silver looked Adam over, hat to feet, his expression amused and maybe a little concerned. Either way, Adam felt the gaze burrow beneath his skin, into his spirit. Sounding a bit angry, like something he saw there perturbed him, the elven prince asked, “What do you want, Adam Binder?”
“I want to know about the spirit,” Adam said. “The thing in the sky over Denver.”
“Are you sure?” Argent asked. “It killed the other practitioners.”
“It has already tried to kill me,” Adam said. “And failed. But it has possessed someone. I need to make it let them go.”
Adam kept it vague. They less they knew the better. Knowledge. Power. Asshole elves.
Silver and his sister exchanged a glance. It was only a moment, but in it, Adam felt certain they clashed, two tidal waves contending over a seagull. He’d never know what passed, was said, or who won what—but he felt certain he was the seagull.
Silver gave a tiny nod.
“Walk with me,” he said, pulling a straight cane out of the air. He led Adam out of the ballroom and into the night. Silver tapped his cane on the floor and the music resumed, the piano keys moving though his hands no longer touched them.
Cowed by that little flare of magic, Adam walked beside the knight, his head slightly ducked. He appreciated Argent’s gift of the hat. It let him hide his face and the crease he knew must mark his brow.
“Where are we going, lord?” Adam asked as the night air, colder than in the mortal realm, struck them. Silver’s scent, a faint cologne of fresh-cut grass and lemon, reached him on the breeze. Adam tried to remember what Perak had smelled like, had tasted like. He’d thought he’d been in love.
“I need a drink,” Silver said. The cane tip rapped on the wooden steps as they descended to the tower’s base.
An elf in a crisp white shirt, bow tie, and black vest manned the bar. A silver-and-marble art deco edifice, Adam did not peek at it in the mortal world, expecting to find it ruined.
Sometimes the overlay could be disturbing, like the time he and Perak had tumbled in a field of teal flowers singing lullabies to the moon. On the mortal side, his Sight had showed a field of long, bleached cow bones. Seeing it killed the mood, especially for Perak. Elves had a complicated relationship with death.
Silver took a stool and watched as the bartender mixed something into a martini glass. It looked clear, with just a bit of lemon in it. Sugar sparkled along the rim.
“Lemon drop?” Silver slid the glass in Adam’s direction as he sat.
“No, thank you,” Adam said with a bob of his head. It was unwise to eat or drink in the spirit realm.
Silver smiled. “I had to try, beautiful mortal. It is good to see you know the rules.”
“I don’t appreciate the games, lord. I came in good faith, and I need your help.”
“Then you know you have to bring me a gift.” Silver toyed with the glass’s stem, sliding a fingertip up and down its length. “A sacrifice.”
Adam took the car key from his pocket and slid it along the bar. The mirror behind it showed a pretty picture, a lovely young man in platinum sitting beside Adam, who wore all black. They matched in opposite, down to their hats, gray and black with satin and black silk ribbons. Adam wondered if Argent had meant some trick or insult by the way she’d dressed him, having his clothes mirror Silver’s in opposite. He shook off the curiosity. Elves were pricks. That’s all he needed to remember.
“Oh my,” Silver said, spinning the key atop the marble bar. “More my sister’s style. But I do like the color.”
“Can you, will you, help me?” Adam asked.
Silver waved a hand. A thread appeared in the air. Adam bit down on a gasp. He felt, naked, exposed.
Adam instantly knew that this was the line connecting him to Vic. It ran, straight and taut, through the wall.
Silver trailed a finger along the strand. The sensation thrummed, too intimate, beneath Adam’s skin.
“Follow that,” Silver said with an angry note. Like a hawk seizing prey, he gripped his drink and downed it in one long swallow. He stood, hefted his cane. Tilting his hat at Adam, he added, “And mind the Reapers.”
Adam woke in his bed.
“What the hell was that?” he asked, shaking from the sudden dismissal. Silver had banished Adam without warning. It didn’t hurt so much as it’d shocked, like rolling out of bed and hitting the floor. Okay, it had hurt a little, the knight’s magic wrenching him from spirit to consciousness.
Adam felt his body, checking that everything was where it was supposed to be. Something wasn’t right.
Beneath his jeans, the silk underwear remained.
“Elves . . .” Adam muttered, unable to resist a smile at Argent’s joke.
The door to his room opened. His mother stepped inside. She stood at the foot of the bed, glaring down at Adam, the faint smell of a cigarette wafting off her.
“Adam, sweetie,” she said, putting a little bite on the endearment, telling him she knew before she asked, “Did you do something to your brother’s car?”
17
Adam
“How am I supposed to get to work?” Bobby asked. He kept circling the empty driveway, like he could summon the Audi back.
“You can take the Cutlass,” Adam said from the edge of the driveway, trying to keep the guilt out of his voice. “Or I’ll drive you.”
“I don’t want Dad’s piece of shit,” Bobby snapped. “I want my Audi.”
The police had already come and gone. They’d asked their questions, none of which the household could answer.
“You didn’t hear them take it? It vanished sometime around three a.m.?”
Bobby had nodded and shook his head. Adam hadn’t said anything. He’d stayed in the house, sipping his mom’s coffee. No dose of milk would tame its bitterness. He sat on the couch near the door, craning his ear, waiting for the cops to ask him, for Bobby to ask him.
“It’s pretty common, sir,” the cop had said. Adam had examined him from a distance, comparing him to Vic and finding him lacking. “They likely took it for a joyride. We find them all the time, usually without any real damage.”
“How?” Bobby asked. “How does this sort of thing happen here? It’s a nice neighborhood.”
“We’ll do what we can, sir,” the cop said. “But honestly, it’s not a lot.”
Adam wondered how many of these car thefts were the elves’ fault, if the Queen of Swords took joyrides before leaving the cars by the side of the road.
“I’ll drive Annie’s car,” Bobby said. He collapsed onto the driveway, falling to his knees where the Audi had been. The concrete, pristine, was unblemished by oil stains. Bobby looked like he might cry.
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