by Perry, D. R.
“Earth to Tony.”
“Yeah, okay.” He cleared his throat. “You asked me if I knew where the magic school was like you thought I was just a regular guy and not a crime lord’s kid.”
“I did. And then I apologized for asking such a stupid question. And that’s when you said—”
“Ain’t no such thing as a stupid question.” Tony chuckled, not the reaction I’d expected.
Remembering the first time we met had me close to tears for some reason, as though it was something dead and buried. Angry tears, of course. Not at Tony, either. If he had trouble remembering, it had something to do with being mostly dead for a week. I swallowed it all, letting the wind flash-dry the remains of my near-crying experience.
“And do you remember what happened after that?” I banked, wheeling around as I saw the hunting party. I went on ahead of them, due southeast. The interloper had gone that way, according to the moon-tinted energy trail he’d left behind.
“Yeah.” Tony banked, too, flapping to catch up before speaking again. “You started asking me the weirdest questions you could think of.”
“Can a refrigerator enter the Boston Marathon?” I let my voice travel back in time to that sunlit day, trying to recapture the lost moments.
“Can a spider web catch a cold?” Tony chuckled.
“Does butter fly?” I glanced at him, only to find him staring at me.
“Okay, I get it.” He looked away. “So the question isn’t stupid. So answer it, maybe. Why me and not a troll with rank who happens to owe you a big favor?”
“Don’t get me wrong, Gemma’s a good person and all, but I like having you around, Tony.” I brushed my hair back over my shoulder and turned to look again at him. Our eyes met like the divide between the light and dark sides of the moon.
“Well, nobody’s perfect.” He didn’t blink, even with the wind.
“Oh, Tony.” This time, I broke our gazes. Good thing, too. “Look, someone’s down there.”
We banked, landing on the peak of an oddly pointed hill. I bounded down the hill’s south side, arrow nocked. At the bottom, no one was there. I turned, intending to call Tony off, and saw the door. I pointed, showing Tony the heavy chain and locks barring our entry. He jerked his chin at the ground, which offered up a set of footprints, canine and heavy enough for the creature we sought. They disappeared under the door.
“Can you get in?”
“You’re kidding, right?” He smirked. “People with paws can’t pick locks.”
“Look at it again, though.” I leaned over, casting a shadow over the mechanism.
“Huh.” Tony squinted. “Looks like it’s four legs good, two legs bad as far as this door’s concerned.”
“Animal Farm?” I rolled my eyes. “At a time like this? Can you open it or not?”
“Yeah, this is why everybody loves me.” Tony squatted to get a look at the latch. “My breaking-and-entering skills are so desirable, they cause throngs of people to weep and fall at my feet. I’m a regular robbery rock star.” He rolled his eyes.
“Hoo, boy,” I said after I stopped giggling. “We’re not breaking and entering. The king’s sent us on a Quest, and this is still his demesne.”
“Well, this thing ain’t budging.” Tony stood up. “At least, not with mundane effort.”
“What’ll we do?”
“Don’t worry, I’ve got something up my sleeve.” He tucked his right hand in, then pulled something out of his coat, leaving the trench half dangling off his back. I giggled.
“Literally!” Both my hands covered my mouth. “Sorry.”
Chapter Thirteen
Tony
“No, don’t.” Before I could stop and think, my left hand shot out and grasped her wrist. “Don’t cover your laughter. Don’t apologize for it.”
“Okay.” Olivia lowered her hands, turned them, and held them in front of her, palms out. She looked me right in the eye and said, “Sorry.”
I laughed so hard my whole body did a shuck and jive. I stepped on the tail of my trench coat, slipped, and went ass over elbows into the door. It opened, and I fell across its threshold, just barely managing to keep hold of the magipyschic lockpicking tools in my right hand. I gazed up at Olivia, momentarily stunned like a mouse at midnight.
Olivia Adler made everything all right. Her wide-eyed eureka moments, the way she masked high humor with deadpan. Her very presence put me at ease. As a partner in any venture, the owl shifter was second to none. She only used her powers for good, never letting her anger hurt anyone but herself, tears its only outlet. I knew she cared about me, but if there was a time and place for us, this wasn’t it. I’d wait forever for her.
Flopping on flagstones, I swung my arm out behind me in an attempt to grab the loose sleeve of my trench coat. I felt naked without its comforting weight around both of my shoulders. With that thought, I stopped moving and took a deep breath.
“Hey, Olivia?”
“Yeah?”
“If I got vanished in the middle of my autopsy, why do I have my trench coat and all its tricks?”
“Hoo, boy.” She crinkled up her forehead. “I don’t know. I bet Kiki does, though.”
“Yeah, maybe.” I shook my head. “That doesn’t feel right. Dunno why. Could be because Gnomes don't think much about mortal things like wanting our particular clothes.”
“I agree about Kiki not acting on her own to get you here.” Olivia reached a hand down and I took it, letting go as soon as I got up. Clammy hands, no bene. Her grip lingered, though, implying that she didn’t seem to mind.
“Well, okay. So you think good old Godmom knows more about who did than she's telling, then?”
“Yeah. She has to know, has to be covering for whoever ordered it.” She scratched her head. “It makes no sense, though. I mean, why?”
“You’re a bit new to the whole faerie favors thing. It makes sense to me, and here’s why.” I took a deep breath, counting to five. Then, I let it out, not bothering with the numbers. I was past that, at least over the matter of Kiki and her fake-outs. “There had to be a favor involved to get me into the Under. Whoever owed it, that’s who gave the orders, made the arrangements.”
“But why hide it, then?” Olivia shook her head that hair of hers tumbling all around her face. I clasped my hands behind my back to keep from reaching out to stroke it.
“The person who owed her has got to be extremely high on the food chain here.” I looked out the door, up at the eternally twilit sky.
“Ismail?”
“Dukes are small fish.” I shook my head. “Besides, djinn can’t vanish people without being bound to a lamp.”
“Oh, Tony.” Olivia’s eyes were like twin moons. “I know who it was. The one who’s let Kiki stay here all this time, as though it's a privilege owed to her. R—”
“No.” I held one finger to her lips. “Don’t say any of his names. If he wants this secret kept, we have got to respect it.”
“Okay.” She blinked, then reached up and took my hand. “I just wish I knew why.”
“Simple.” I sighed, trying to ease out of her grasp. “He needs me here, helping you. Shoulda known.”
“I’ll take it.” She squeezed my hand. “For now. And only because we have a wolf shifter to track.”
I froze. “The interloper’s not Kiki?”
“No.” She shook her head and started off down the darkened corridor. “I’m not sure who he is, but he’s been in here without permission since spring.”
“Interesting.” Our footsteps echoed, mingling in ways I told my imagination to stop extrapolating. My fear for my godmother melted away.
“How so?”
“Some Feds came to Rhode Island back in the spring, after the whole Dennison pack business and before that drive-by on Blaine, Kim, and Jeannie.”
“Did they get an anonymous tip or something?”
“Not so anonymous, actually.” I glanced her way, saw her nod. “I overheard Dad mention helping wi
th procuring something to take out a Harcourt or few.”
“We know that didn’t go so well for him, thank goodness.”
“Yeah, but that’s not entirely the point. One of the Feds was a Psychic, Special Agent Natalie something. She’s the one who ordered a Summoner to put a brownie pretending to be home decor in there. Her partner was a wolf shifter. He went missing before Blaine buried his stepdad.”
“Hoo, boy.” Olivia paused, tilting her head. “I think we’re getting close.”
“Yeah, hush time.” I made a gesture like a zipper over my lips, and she nodded.
I stepped more carefully, trying to mask my footfalls. Olivia copied me, and it worked, making me wonder if there was anything she wasn’t automatically good at. The resulting quiet revealed a faint scraping of claw against stone up ahead in the distance. I also saw a hint of light. Even with my dimmed sight, movement snagged on my attention like hooks in canvas. Or one of those infernal laser pointers.
Speed was the only way we’d catch our quarry. I went on, lengthening my stride and facing my ears full forward. Olivia followed, her shorter legs meaning she had to let go of my hand. That was fine with me. If the wolf pounced, it’d get me, and she’d have a chance to shoot. But I wondered what good copper arrows would do against something allergic to silver.
Fortunately, we were in a tunnel, not a barrow or network of caves. The floor was even, definitely paved with something better than cobblestone. My strides ate the distance to that glimmer ahead. I heard a faint scrabble again, then the earthy thuds of a heavy animal cantering on bare earth.
I broke into a flat-out run, racing from the tunnel like a whiskered idiot, and got clocked in the head by something cold and slobbery with gamy-scented fur.
“Gah!” I had to fall, so I did it with a purpose. Tuck and roll, defend the neck and belly, then try to stand. Going prone in any battle was a death sentence, and I couldn’t afford those anymore.
I stood facing a wolf over half my height, the light patches on its brindled fur reflecting the moonlight. A long, low growl twinged my whiskers. My tail flicked. I felt like an Unseelie gunslinger at Low Noon, except I wasn’t armed. Not for a fight like this, anyway. I belonged to a shifter pack with a wolf Alpha and hadn’t carried silver since joining it.
But I had my reliable old wits. I remembered the king’s gifts. I reached toward the button, wondering if there was anything in the history of either world more absurd than a kitty cat facing down a werewolf with a silver button, and then the button morphed in my hand.
I held a dagger that was weighted perfectly for my grip and preferred fighting stance. I blinked. If this wolf was a Fed, I didn’t want to kill him. There’d be consequences outside the Under, and anyway, the guy hadn’t done anything to me. He’d come to Rhode Island in response to my anonymous tip, after all. But the dagger might make him keep his distance.
“Hold it!” Olivia stepped between us, pointing the business end of her bow at the mystery wolf. The tip of her arrow gleamed in the moonlight, silver as the night was long.
“But that’s supposed to be my bane.” The words were for Olivia, even though my eyes never left the wolf’s. “How’s it silver now?”
“It’s part of what I am.”
“Huh?”
“The king told me I can change the arrows into whatever’s best to fight a given enemy as long as I fire them in the Under. There’s no time to tell you more.”
I shut my mouth before it caught the faerie equivalent of flies. My godmother hadn’t lied, technically. She’d mentioned cat shifters, copper being my bane, and the Garters, and I’d snagged the first assumption in my claws like an awkward kitten. Kiki’s half-truths two, Tony Gitano zero.
“Leave the king’s demesne, and I won’t have to use this.” Olivia glared down the shaft of her arrow. “I’m giving you ten seconds.”
The wolf whined, looking up at me. I shrugged, flicking my tail deliberately this time. I couldn’t help it; the shifter should have turned tail faced with two silver-armed opponents. He wasn’t trapped. The way east was clear. And then, I understood half of everything.
“He needs our help.” I lowered the dagger but kept it and my stance at the ready. “You can’t run to the queen, can you?”
The wolf whined again. He thumped his tail twice, eyes going all melty like a puppy’s, except gold with blue flecks. Where had I seen a werewolf with eyes like that before?
“But he can’t stay here.” Olivia shook her head. “If we fail the Quest, the king basically owns us.”
“Yeah, okay. I get that.” My whiskers twinged, the idea my thoughts chased more exciting than a low-noon pizza. “What did the king say your Quest was, exactly?”
“He said—” Olivia’s eyes widened. “Oh. Tony, you’re a genius!”
“No way the Goblin King would say a thing like that,” I mumbled. I cleared my throat and put on my best outside voice. “What did the king say?”
“He said, and I quote, ‘There’s a creature there without my permission. That cannot be.’” Olivia eased back on the bowstring and smiled.
Something thudded against the ground, kicking ruddy fallen leaves into the air. I chuckled. The werewolf’s tail, of course. He was definitely pondering what we were pondering.
“So we get his permission, capisce?” The sides of my face ached, kind of like how your arms or legs might after a good workout. I barely ever smiled, but this adventure changed all that.
“You should smile more often, you know.” Olivia nudged me with an elbow. “It looks good on you.”
“Keep on saying things like that, and I’ll never stop.”
“Oh, but you will. You’ll stop everything soon.”
I didn’t need to turn around, didn’t need my new ability to sense magic, either. I knew by the powdered oil scent of a gun under fine wool and that infuriatingly warm tenor who was behind us.
“Coming to work with your kid is the first and worst sign of helicopter parenting.” I turned around to see my father surrounded by the fuzzy frame of a portal from the mundane world to the Under. I wondered how he’d managed that until I saw him holding a magipsychic device he’d taken as payment in a Black Market deal. “Or haven’t you heard?”
“No, but I have heard about your bird.”
“You did not just go there.” Olivia’s voice almost covered the sound of her turning around. I glanced over my shoulder to see that she’d aimed her bow again. This time, the arrow wasn’t tipped with silver or even copper as I’d expected. It smelled like wood and glowed green.
“Don’t make me laugh.” Dad laughed anyway, his hand going to his shoulder holster and coming back with a silenced pistol. “That old toy won’t kill me. I will, however, kill you.”
“I know.” Olivia aimed directly at his chest and let fly, leaving herself undefended.
“I love you.” The words I’d held back from Olivia Adler all this time were finally free. I refused to be too late for her to hear them this time. Never mind that I’d never hear them back because I was about to bite it for the ninth time.
I jumped up between Olivia and my father, the copper-tipped bullet landing smack between two of the ribs on the right side of my chest. I felt the pain like a million wasp stings as it blew through skin and bone and went out the other side. Blood flew from my mouth as I tried to breathe, but my lung was shot through on two sides. I couldn’t get air, and could barely even get a scent. But I could still see.
The not-copper arrow buried itself in my father’s right shoulder. He laughed and pulled it out, and the wound closed. The hole in his suit’s dark fabric showed his skin up like an eclipse through a pinhole projector.
I dropped to my knees, then fell face-first on the ground. There’d been no question about putting myself between the woman I’d given my eighth and ninth life for and the murderous thug who’d sired me. My sight left me, but I heard one more thing.
“I love you too, Tony.” Olivia’s hand on my shoulder felt like ice, the
n fire, then comfort, then nothing.
I was adrift, not freezing like when Kiki had woken me. I hadn’t expected any pearly gates, but there was a name for the closest concept the religious set has to where I was.
“Limbo.” My voice didn’t sound like anything. I wasn’t sure there was such a thing as sound in that place. I tested it again. “This blows.”
“It does nothing, actually.”
The voice came from nowhere and everywhere at the same time. I wondered whether that was how I sounded, but what got my curiosity even more tightly gripped was another question.
“Who?”
“There’s no easy answer to that question.” The voice had a little lilt to it but nothing whatsoever that hinted at age, gender, or creature type. I just had to settle.
“Okay. Why?”
“You’ve made a big sacrifice for someone of extreme importance.”
“Thanks and all, but,” I waved what I thought might be my hand, “underwhelming doesn’t begin to describe this.”
The voice chuckled. “So, then. What is It you seek after your ninth life and death?”
“It with a capital I?”
“Aye.”
“Well, if it’s all the same, I’d rather go back to Olivia than anywhere else they say people go when they die.”
“One condition.”
“Anything.”
“In the very near future, you’ll have the chance to stop someone from gaining power. Don’t.”
I thought of my father and wasn’t sure I could live up to my end of that bargain. I’d been stealing from him for years because I didn’t believe in arms races, but the memory of Olivia’s voice, the last words I’d heard her say, made me believe that maybe great power could be used responsibly. I felt like there were two of me. Old Tony wasn’t up to that challenge, but New Tony was a whole different cat. New Tony might also be extremely limited because he’d probably be a ghost. Something about that didn’t feel right, though. At any rate, I was ready to answer.
