Fractured Magic (The Shadow Portal Book 1)

by N. M. Howell

  Raina’s voice was weak, almost hollow… “Lee?”

  “Yes?” Mr. Wing drew the word out.

  Raina remembered her huge sunglasses and removed them. “It’s me. Raina.”

  “Ai ya,” he said under his breath, features going round. He then came around the counter and grabbed her in a tight hug. “Derek said he had a visitor coming, but he didn’t say it was you!”

  Although she couldn’t breathe in the tight embrace, she felt a wave of emotion overtaking her. For the first time since setting foot on the train, Raina finally felt she had a friend in the world. Her chest grew tight at the strange sensation building behind her heart. A place inside her that had felt empty for the past five years.

  “Come, let’s go back in the office, where we can sit and talk.” Lee took her hand and led her to a short staircase at the rear of the store. He barked orders in Cantonese, and a harried woman took his place at the register. In the line, a dozen older Chinese ladies huffed like dragons in indignation.

  Bookkeeping threatened to swallow the office, and Lee moved a stack of invoices from a chair and then from the table in front of it. Family photos sat haphazardly on the makeshift desk, threatened to be swamped by reams of forms and receipts. Peeking out from piles of legers on a shelf, a television teased the news. Raina was shocked to see frames of cell phone footage of the attack on the portal. The words Fifth Anniversary of the Portal Attack scrolled along the bottom.

  When Lee Wing caught her expression, he hastily dug a remote from a pile of paperwork and turned the TV off. He took her small, pale hand in his own, his sweaty palm holding it tight.

  “Of course, I should have known you were the visitor.” Lee’s features sagged. “Five years already. I can hardly believe it. The time has gone so fast.”

  A deep, empty well opened inside her. She couldn’t find any words. She simply nodded.

  Those were the longest five years of her life.

  “It’s a tragedy what happened. I miss your people, your parents. Have you…”

  Raina slowly pulled her hand away, his skin suddenly burning against the chill that moved its way through her. She could only shake her head. She hadn’t been in contact with the Fae on the other side of the portal. She didn’t know if they were in danger, or whether her realm still even existed on the other side. She didn’t even know if her people were alive. These questions burned inside of her for five years, but she couldn’t seek answers. Not then. All she could do was wait, and it tore her to pieces every single day that passed.

  But now, after waiting out the sentence she had to endure after stepping into the position she’d dreamed about her whole life, she was free. The brand that marked her as who she was, the one she had once celebrated and wore with honor…the one that marked her as what she was when the war began…had finally vanished.

  “Five years,” she whispered, eyes falling to the place on her arm the glyph had been. Glossy tears stung her eyelids and threatened to spill down her cheeks. She held them back, as she had learned to do. She wasn’t even sure if they were tears of sadness or tears of joy.

  Tears of relief, perhaps.

  Her moment of reflection was shattered as Derek Wing burst into the office.

  “Raina!” he shouted as he lunged forward and scooped her out of the chair in a suffocating hug. He gave her a kiss on the cheek and held her at arm’s length. “Wow, I really like your new look. Kinda Goth military.” His eyes lingered on the wet patch on the front of her hoodie. “You’re wet. Why do you smell like coffee?”

  Derek remained, as her human friends described him, ridonkulously cute. His hair was shaved close on the sides and spiked up on top. He wore a rough silk jacket over a T-shirt and jeans. While he was broad shouldered and a head taller than his father, Lee gave him a back-hand slap to the shoulder.

  “Where are your manners?” Lee snapped in Cantonese. “This girl has been on a long journey. It’s cold outside. Get her some soup and some tea.” The older man ended his sentence with an exasperated huff.

  “Sorry, Pop, sorry!” He gave his father an apologetic look. But before he walked out the door, he gave Raina a lopsided smile that brought out his deep dimples.

  Her eyes remained on the door after Derek disappeared. That mischievous look had stirred a few embers deep inside her. Heat she thought had died when the portal fell. Perhaps it was simply the solitary life she’d led since. Even this smallest of connections, the resurfacing of memories, felt more pronounced than they might otherwise.

  Derek returned with a tray before she could had a chance to dwell on the thought.

  “Soup of the day, hot and sour.” He set the food before her. “Guaranteed to take the chill off.”

  Raina tasted the soup and found herself digging in before it even had a chance to cool. She wondered if she would ever get used to the idea that humans fully relied on nutrition for energy. Cut off from the Fae realm as she was, though, it was all she had.

  As promised, she felt herself warming.

  “I’ll leave you two to catch up.” Lee rose stiffly from his chair, hands braced on the edge of the table. “But don’t catch up too long. There’s work to do.”

  Watching him from the corner of her eye in the dim light as she sipped her soup, she noticed for the first time how much older he looked. Had it really been five years?

  Derek took his father’s seat, and lifted the tea pot, filling two cups. He raised his in a toast. “To old friends.”

  Raina couldn’t help but smile as they clinked the thick vessels. The expression felt strained against her cheeks. “Thank you for helping me.”

  “No thanks necessary.”

  Her gaze strayed to the door. “Your father won’t tell anyone I’m here, will he?”

  “No. A lot has happened since… Since you left. A lot of issues are still up in the air. Some good stuff has happened, too.”

  Raina sipped her tea. “Like what?”

  “You remember my brother, Danny?”

  Her smile broadened, more naturally this time. “A total Glow-Getter.”

  Derek’s lips twitched at the edges as he raised his brows. “Not so much anymore. He married a girl.”

  “Danny got married?” Raina had seen a picture of the couple on Lee’s desk, but she always figured Danny Wing for a confirmed bachelor.

  “She’s half-Fae.”

  Raina’s grin twisted into a smirk. “Surprise, surprise.”

  “Dark Fae, that is,” Darek added carefully.

  Raina nearly choked on the piece of mushroom she’d been chewing on. “What?” she gasped, pressing her palm to her throat as she forced herself to swallow.

  She couldn’t sort out which part of the news shocked her most.

  Darek studied her. “They’re out in the open now, the Shadow Fae.”

  “The Dark Fae, you mean.”

  He shook his head. “That’s a little old school. Racist, maybe. After the portal fell, the Shadow Fae reached out to humanity. Humanity sort of embraced them. Some humanity. You know how that goes.”

  Raina did. She’d worked with Human-Fae Relations her entire career. Some humans could not abide the fact that non-human entities shared their world with them. But then, humans were all kinds of touchy about race. One time, she had compared Derek Wing to a young Tim Kang. His appearance, she’d made clear at the time. There was no trace of the seriousness the actor brought to his roles in Derek. Derek had nearly flipped out.

  “Tim Kang is Korean. I’m Chinese. It really bugs me when people fail to understand that there are different groups of Asians. It’s so racist.”

  “Humans haven’t had a race problem for thirty thousand years,” she’d retorted, “when the last Neanderthal died. You are all the same people, the same race. You put so much emphasis on one or two genetic expressions, when your species is the most closely linked genetically on the planet.”

  “What about you, the problems between Light and Dark Fae?” he’d countered.

  “Li
ght and Dark Fae are about as related as modern humans and Neanderthals. We’re related, but we’re not the same. Come on, Moth-Boy, you know your Fae facts.”

  But the Dark Fae now living in complete peace among the humans? She would have to give that a lot of thought.

  “I don’t know too much about her, but I’m guessing her magic bloodline is pretty diluted. Maybe all the bloodlines are now. The weird thing is, more humans seem to be attuned to magic since the Shadow Fae started interacting more. I wonder if the Light Fae hadn’t retreated into the realm if humans would be even more involved in magic.”

  For a few seconds, she could only stare at him.

  “You okay, Raina?”

  “Is there a bathroom?”

  He nodded behind her. “Through that door.”

  She bolted before he finished speaking. Inside the tiny space, she leaned against the wall. Her panting breath echoed in the tiled room. What was he talking about? It was so much to take in. At the sink, she splashed water on her face to calm herself. When she looked into the mirror, she hardly recognized what she saw.

  Worse, she felt no pull from the silvered glass.

  Like all Light Fae, Raina had an innate ability to scry, to communicate with her kind through reflective surfaces. She could no more remember learning to scry than she could learning to speak. It was simply a part of her kind, something they were born with no less a part of them than blood and bone.

  Raina focused beyond the glass, placing her palm on the mirror, willing a contact from the other side.

  Please, she thought. Please.

  Holding her breath, she thought she heard a faint impulse, but she’d been feeling that for years. It was all wishful thinking. Of course, now wouldn’t be any different. Why even try?

  Her heart sank, both at her broken magic and the last conversation she’d had with her parents. She’d been dismissive, flippant. Then the disaster struck, an attack that cut her off from her realm.

  Perhaps forever.

  “It’s a seven-story walk-up, ultra-cozy, but at least there’s no view,” Derek said on the staircase. The ancient elevator was out of service, he explained, as it usually was.

  Both of them were out of breath and stopped to rest on the final landing. Derek pointed to the end of the hall, leaning against the wall, trying to get his wind back. “You don’t have luggage?”

  She shook her head, unable to speak.

  “Thank God.”

  At the end of the hall, he opened the door to what Raina assumed was a walk-in closet. But, no, it was a doorway leading to a tiny bathroom. A kitchenette was rammed beneath a window overlooking the tenement facing the other street. She saw no bed, but Derek walked to a fixture on the wall.

  “Murphy bed,” he said, pulling it partway down to show her. “It’s kind of a dump, but at least it’s short on amenities.”

  He caught a glance back at her, his face alight with that cheeky grin she’d grown to miss. It faltered when his comedy was lost on her.

  Raina knew how difficult it was to find apartments in Manhattan; nearly impossible on short notice. While this studio couldn’t compare to her old loft on the Upper East Side, it was a lot better than the places she’d been hiding.

  Before she knew what she was doing, she threw her arms around Derek. “It’s perfect. Thank you so much.”

  He hugged her back, his easy grin returning to him. “I’m so happy to see you, Raina. Under any circumstances. I would’ve done anything.”

  “It must be hard on you, too, since the portal was destroyed.”

  He spoke into her hair. “I’m not talking about the Light Fae, Raina. I’m talking about you.”

  Raina pulled away. She reached silently in the pouch on her hoodie and produced the little money she had. “Here, for the first month. I can help out in the store, too. Maybe work off some of the rent.”

  Derek gave her an unreadable look. He shook his head. “Pop isn’t going to take any money from you. And he sure isn’t going to put you to work.”

  “My parents would love it if I worked in a human enterprise. Commerce is a bit of a foreign concept to the Fae. I could at least help with the bookkeeping. I’m good with numbers.”

  “I’ve never met your parents.” Derek’s voice went distant. “Oliver and Mariea Raeyelle, king and queen of the Light Fae Court, rulers of the realm Oreálle. Sometimes, it’s just so hard to wrap my head around. Pop always told us stories when we were kids. I always thought they were, you know, fairy tales. No offense.”

  “None taken.” She remembered what it was like back then.

  “But the stories were all real, you are all real. And my boring old Pop, friend of the Fae Court.”

  Raina felt her eyes prickle as she faced the non-view. She hadn’t seen her family in five long years. She missed the realm beyond the portal.

  If there even was one. She hoped beyond anything that there was.

  “I hope they’re all right. Pop says the Fae have magic ways to communicate. Have you—?”

  “No. I haven’t. I don’t know if they’re even alive.”

  Derek’s throat released a groan. “Sorry. I’ve always been a little too caught up with the Fae and the culture and everything. I forget how hard this must be for you.”

  “It’s fine.” It wasn’t fine. Raina repressed a sob. Faces of her family appeared in her mind. The last conversation she’d had with her mother and father—she’d been so short with them, dismissive and rude. Would that be the last time they would ever speak? Things most certainly weren’t fine.

  “I, um. Yeah. You must be tired. I think I’ll go.”

  “I just need some rest.” Her voice sounded shaky in her own ears.

  “Okay. One thing, though. I don’t think it’s a good idea to revisit the… the scene.”

  Raina shrugged a shoulder, her gaze lost to nothing particular through the window. “What choice do I have?”

  She felt his hands on her shoulders. “Maybe you don’t have a choice,” Derek said in her ear. “But you’re not going without me.”

  “Derek—”

  “—And you’re not going anywhere until you change out of that grubby wet hoodie.”

  3

  Gray light filtered through the dirty window, the gloom remaining over the city matching her spirits. Raina rolled over in the Murphy bed, away from the light.

  Raina.

  Half-asleep, she murmured, “Five more minutes, Mom.”

  Mom? Her eyes flashed open, sleep fleeing. “Mom?”

  Raina.

  She hurried to the tiny bathroom, to the mirrored door of the medicine cabinet. Raina had heard the call, always in a dream or on the edge of sleep. Was her mother scrying to her, or was it just wish fulfillment? Her mind offering her a sliver of comfort to draw her from her nightmares?

  “Mother? Mom?” She pressed her palm to the glass, searching beyond her smeared reflection, seeking the other side.

  After a few minutes, she still found only her hopeful expression. It quickly faltered.

  “Damn it,” she breathed. As little as she wanted to visit the scene of horror, of slaughter, of destruction, she had to find the courage to return to the portal. She needed to see it for herself. To find out once and for all whether her realm and her people were gone forever. She still held onto a tiny gimmer of hope, though after seeing the state of the portal too many times to count on the news, she suspected the worst. Still, she couldn’t give up. Not until she had her answers. Not until she knew for sure.

  Raina dressed in yesterday’s clothes, apart from the hoodie Derek had taken away to have washed. She tentatively pulled on the yellow skin-tight zip-up he had left at her door in the morning. She wasn’t sure where it came from, but it at least did a good job of hiding the glyph, despite its restrictive tightness around her arm. While the Light Fae didn’t perspire, wearing the same thing every day got on her nerves after a while. She was grateful for the change. And if nothing else, she could do a small bit of shopping whi
le she was in the Big Apple to replace the rest of her things.

  Raina was startled by a knock on the door. She found Derek, half bent over, leaning against the frame. He panted, holding up his index finger. Finally, he had enough breath. Almost. “Pop. Gave me the day off. I thought. You might want to. Get some lunch. Or something.”

  “Maybe you should come in.”

  Derek nodded, limped inside and sat on the bed. “My legs!” He wore a long, navy pea coat over a T-shirt and gray skinny jeans with worn black boots. “Elevator guy’s coming tomorrow. But he says that every time.”

  “Well, suck it up, buttercup. I’m ready to go.”

  Derek’s expression was a mix of pain and resignation. He groaned to his feet. “Okay, my princess. Brunch awaits.” His eyes scanned the front of her, eyebrow twitching high. “Yellow looks good on you.”

  “Thanks.” Raina gave a twirl and a bow. “Where did you get it, anyway?”

  Scrunching his face, Derek shrugged. “Found it in my brother’s old room.”

  She was wearing clothing that belonged to a Dark Fae? Her back straightened as she began tugging the sleeves, which felt like they were growing tighter by the second. “This is a Dark—I mean, this is his wife’s?” She didn’t try to hide the distaste in her voice.

  “Yes. Looks a bit small for her, though. Might have shrunk in the wash. Doubt she’ll miss it.” Before Raina had a chance to rip the thing off, Derek rolled his eyes and dragged her from the room. “It’s just a sweater. Get over it.”

  Having nothing else to cover her arm with, she did.

  Together, they took the D to 42nd Street-Bryant Park. With every stop, Raina tensed as each stop on the subway brought her closer to central Manhattan. While the sky was overcast, it wasn’t particularly cold. Since they were early, they decided to walk.

  6th Avenue bustled with yellow cabs and pedestrians. It was a nice walk, beneath the skyscrapers and past Radio City Music Hall. Still, the hint of green rising at the end of the street filled Raina with dread. She realized that the White Knight, the nightclub she’d partied at the night of the attack, was only a block away on 7th.