“Jiro? But he’s our friend. He’s a student.”
“Monica was a student too. So were Sheldon and Edmund.” He checked his pockets for his phone then twisted back toward the car. “Did you already call this in?”
“I tried. No answer from Simon and Sebastian, and apparently every battlemage in the state is on some job. The campus office is supposed to send someone out, but it’ll take forever. That’s why I went to the church alone. You… you didn’t look good.”
He waited a moment before he replied, still looking shaken and upset. “It was risky, but you did the right thing,” he said slowly, words measured. “If backup can’t provide assistance, you do what you gotta do. Now, how far away is Sharon?”
“Not far. Maybe down the block. She’s terrified, Gabe. I know we’re supposed to wait, but I don’t think we have that luxury. I—”
“No, I agree. This isn’t like what went down with Sai and Anji. Backup can’t come, because there is no backup. Try checking the Destiny Lines.”
Moistening my wind-chapped lips, I raised one hand and skimmed my fingertips over the Veil. Channeling my concentration into the bond linking Sharon to me, I brought her fate to the surface and anchored the web in place. It was like the branching veins of a butterfly’s wing, thousands of roads splitting into infinite space at the edges.
Wherever I touched the thin barrier separating the mortal realm from the Twilight, it glowed in subtle shades of green and blue, each Destiny Line as radiant as a sunbeam. Some sang harmonious notes, and others were the dead silent, dull, and bleak futures that awaited mediocre mortals.
I searched for Sharon’s current path, clenching my jaw until it ached.
Beside me, Gabriel ejected the magazine from his handgun and reloaded it with a box of bullets in his jacket. “What do you see?”
Flashes of colors, shapes, and shadows assaulted my vision, accompanied by thousands of murmuring voices blending together as one.
“Can’t focus. There’s too much going on. It’s...” My heart rattled against my ribcage, pulse thundering inside my skull. Nothing about it made sense, but her apprehension continued to ebb and flow down the probability line. Fae didn’t take official classes on reading them until our junior year, but some of us like Pilar and Liadan had a natural knack for peering at them.
Gabriel placed his hand against my hip and squeezed. “Take a deep breath and focus. Loosen your shoulders, Sky.”
His other arm circled my waist, palm flattening to my stomach. I focused on the slow rhythm of his breaths, his chest expanding against my back, the warmth of him there after narrowly saving him from a living nightmare.
I traced the Destiny Lines from my initial meeting of Sharon until my finger came to a huge snarl, the cords of fate all tangled with another web. Fear. Terror. Obsession. Darkness overtook my vision, blended with intermittent glimpses of Sharon huddled on a concrete floor in a dank place in the fetal position.
Touching the adjacent Destiny Line presented the scream of emergency sirens on a dark Chicago night.
Jerking my hand away, I twisted in Gabriel’s arms to look up at him. “We need to get to her.”
“Lead the way.”
After our drowning nightmare, I was in no rush to get back in the car. Walking on foot and letting my senses guide me to Sharon, we stopped about five houses down in front of a two-story home with a wide, covered patio. Snow-crusted ivy crawled over the gray bricks.
“She’s here.”
Gabe rubbed his chin. “House looks pretty normal. I don’t smell any bad magic.”
“Yeah, but Sharon’s still terrified. Maybe I can take a peek through the Twilight.”
“Let’s try the old-fashioned way first. The more you peek over there, the more power you use. Conserve that shit until you need to kick ass.”
While he knocked on the door, I hung back a step behind him and to the side, wearing my most authoritative, no-nonsense expression. A middle-aged man opened the door and peered out through a crack.
“I don’t want to buy anything.”
“We’re not selling anything,” Gabriel said. “We’re from the sentinel field office investigating a disturbance in the area. You haven’t heard anything strange, have you?”
“That’s like… magic cops, right?”
“Right. Had a run in with a darkling not so far from here, and we’re just making sure all y’all in the area are okay. Any problems?”
The guy shook his head. He looked average, medium-length brown hair, brown eyes, a hint of stubble on a square jaw. Everything about him screamed mediocre, down to his plain gray T-shirt and jeans. “No. Nothing.”
He started to shut the door, but I caught a tickle of magic. Just a hint, a whisper of a Compulsion glamour. I placed a hand on Gabriel’s back.
“Are you the only one in the house, sir? Maybe someone else saw or heard something.”
“No, man, it’s just me. No one else here.” He licked his lips and glanced around.
Big. Fat. Lie.
“Thanks for your time.” Gabriel stepped back and nudged me down the steps. He kept walking until we were near the next house.
“What are we doing?” I hissed. “He’s lying.”
“I know, but if he’s watching, Sharon’s safer if he doesn’t think we’re on to him. I’m going to call the school and find out where the sentinels are. You go take a look through the Twilight, see if you can find out what’s going on. In and out, Skylar. This is surveillance only. Find what you need and get your ass back here to tell me what’s happening.”
“All right.”
Through the Twilight, it didn’t take long to get to the house. Whoever this guy was, he wasn’t magical. I didn’t see a single ward in any of the doors or windows. A quick search downstairs revealed nothing looked odd, just a bachelor haven with a lonely dude. An old black-and-white romance played on the television, empty beer bottles littered the coffee table next to a closed pizza box, and the kitchen was spotless.
But no sign of Sharon.
I headed upstairs, and that’s when I heard him, the guy’s voice low, the way someone would talk to a scared or wounded animal. Following the voice led me to the bedroom at the end of the hall.
Blackout curtains covered the three windows, but an overhead light lit the cluttered space. The entire room was made of bad decisions, from the shrine dedicated to Sharon on the wall to the assorted bottles scattered on every stable surface, some on the computer desk in the corner, others on the floor and nightstand.
And like the twisted centerpiece of a morbid presentation, there was Sharon bound and gagged in a chair. Twin rivers of drying mascara streamed down her cheeks, and empathetic tears snuck under my lashes.
This wasn’t the future Sharon had been designated, but I’d worry about how it came to be later. For now, I put my feelings aside and focused on my surroundings and committing everything to memory.
I stared at the mosaic of photographs taped to the wall, a blend of professional magazine spreads, images from her Facebook, and blurry photographs of her performing at the restaurant he’d probably taken while at dinner.
Photographs of her in the music room at the school. Photographs of her on a street corner waiting for a bus. More images of her at a store shopping for cereal. Queasy, I dragged in a few deep breaths through my nose and kept it together, because the worst of it all was right in front of me.
Sharon’s stalker stared down at her, unblinking and fixated. He had the cold, black eyes of a great white shark, a predator on two legs instead of a fish cruising the ocean depths. He stroked her hair like she was a kitten then raised a curl to his nose. The euphoric expression he made belonged on screen during the money shot of a cheap porn video.
“I love it when you use this shampoo.”
She trembled.
“We’re going to be real happy together here, Sharon. Soon as I finish getting everything perfect, I’ll show you to your new home. I’m gonna go down and make your favorite, n
ow. Spaghetti, right? I don’t know how you choke down that garbage served at the college cafeteria, but I promise, you’re going to love mine.”
When she didn’t answer, he grabbed her chin and forced her gaze to his. Sharon flinched then nodded, and the guy released her.
“Good. I’ll be back soon. Everything will be better after dinner, you’ll see.”
Heart in my throat, because no faerie godmother enjoyed leaving her charge in a shit situation, I completed my surveillance of the house. Although navigating certain areas of the house sent chills trickling down my spine, I took note of every shadowed corner and doorway. It didn’t matter that the guy was human, because we’d been taught to never underestimate mortals. They could be unpredictable and dangerous in their own way.
Downstairs, I discovered a door with three locks, and apprehension raised the hairs on my arms. I stepped through and down the stairs to find a finished basement furnished with a toilet area, shower, and sink without a door, though the makeshift bathroom had all of Sharon’s preferred toiletries. On the other side, a king-sized bed had already been made with comforters sporting her favorite colors.
I circled around a karaoke machine beside an electric keyboard and glanced into a fridge stocked with all kinds of food. That corner of the basement even had an oven, like he planned to make her his happy homemaker slash personal entertainer.
When I returned outside to the sidewalk where I’d left Gabriel, I spotted him in the snow-covered branches of a nearby tree. He fluttered his wings.
“Psst. Over here. What’d you see?”
“She’s in there upstairs, tied up and stuff. He’s fucking psycho. A total stalker.”
“We’ll call the cops.”
“If he sees a cruiser pull up, there’s no telling what he’ll do to Sharon. He’s obsessed with her.”
“He’s mortal, Sky. We don’t have any jurisdiction over mortal crimes.”
“The handbook for sentinels says in a situation where a charge’s well-being is jeopardized, faerie godmothers are allowed to take corrective action as deemed necessary.”
“Sky—”
“Just hear me out. Please?”
He became a man again, biting his lower lip and glancing at the house. “All right.”
“He’s in the kitchen cooking dinner for her right now. I can get in and sneak her out before he even realizes I’m there. We can call the cops then once she’s in the clear.”
He nodded. “Fine, but I’ll create a distraction by getting him to the door again. I don’t trust him not to wander off and check on her.”
“Deal.”
When I returned to the upstairs bedroom and glimpsed at Sharon’s current predicament through the Veil, Creepster proved Gabriel right by standing there in her personal space again, massaging her shoulders and crooning to her about loosening up and being less tense, promising not to hurt her.
The doorbell rang, sparing Sharon further physical contact with her abductor. I waited, heart pounding, until his steps faded and Gabe’s voice carried upstairs from the landing.
When I stepped from the Twilight, Sharon jerked hard enough to almost spill the chair over onto its side. I grasped it before she toppled sideways. The gag muffled her sharp scream.
“Shh, Sharon, it’s okay.” I glanced over my shoulder toward the door but didn’t hear anyone coming up to investigate. “Look, I’m going to ungag you, okay? I need you to keep quiet.”
A fat tear rolled down her cheek, but she nodded. I untied the knot behind her head and pulled the fabric away.
“W-who are you?”
“A friend. I’ll explain more once you’re safe.”
My Transmutation glamour turned the plastic cables binding her legs and arms into tissue paper and confetti. She rubbed both wrists and twisted around to stare at me. “Are you a mage?”
“No. C’mon, we don’t have much—”
The hairs on my neck and arms raised a split second before a howling, dark shape crashed into me. I landed on one knee in the Twilight with the wind knocked out of me, gasping from the cold shock of involuntarily crossing the Veil.
The Scary Godmother, my former mentor, stood above me. The longer I stared at her, the closer the resemblance grew to the aos sidhe I’d accompanied to Chicago for a semester.
And knowing her identity stripped everything that had been pants-wettingly terrifying about her away, leaving only the raw, naked truth of a spoiled and vindictive little half-fae child who couldn’t cut it in our school.
“Why do you have to ruin everything?” Monica snarled, spittle flying from her thin black lips.
“Because you suck. Suck so much you weren’t even worth a wand,” I said, repeating the words I’d overheard at the Hidden Court meeting.
Growling, she dove at me, but I braced one hand on the floor and swept my leg out. She moved, but I anticipated her evasion and turned my acrobatic tumbling into a move that would have made Antonin proud, scissoring up with both legs and catching her in the face. She stumbled back, her furious scream an eardrum-rupturing wail.
On the other side of the Veil, Sharon scrambled away and moved to the window. She struggled to open it, so I popped the lock with glamour from the Twilight. The window slid open, but Monica made a sharp slicing gesture with her hand. The window came crashing down and narrowly missed smashing Sharon’s fingers. She screamed.
Creepster’s voice echoed from downstairs. “What the hell? Hey, man, get out of my house!”
Monica returned to the real world and advanced on my defenseless charge, hands blazing with Faerie Fire. I followed her.
“Don’t wanna fight me anymore? Too much of a pussy to fight someone with magic, Monica?”
Sharon dashed for the bedroom door. It slammed shut in her face, and the doorknob vanished, leaving her to claw at the empty space where it belonged. When I tried to undo the glamour, my magic fizzled against Monica’s brute force. Too much hatred fueled her for my power to compete.
“You know what’s really sad? Nobody at the school even remembers you. You did Trevor a favor when you got yourself Bound. Now no one has to pretend to like you anymore. Not even your dad misses you, not that I can blame him, since you lost the only thing that made you special.”
Her scream was raw and primal, fury condensed into a single inhuman vocalization that triggered my fight-or-flight response. But running wasn’t an option while my vulnerable godchild counted on me to save her. I pushed through the terror, reminding myself again of Scary’s identity.
Monica Cunningham. A bratty, narcissistic girl. A girl who had thrown away everything and taken her blessings for granted.
I was not to blame for her expulsion.
And she was not scary.
A narrow jet of Faerie Fire surged toward me from Monica. Knowing better than to meet it with magical force, I darted toward her—at the flames like a lunatic, because I had to be crazy to think this plan would work—and slid beneath them, another glamour turning the floor slippery as a waterslide.
Screw her fire. My feet connected with one of her knobby knees, destabilizing her position. I jumped up, slamming the top of my head into her chin. Rage fueled me.
“Skylar!” Gabriel’s bellow could have shaken the house if it was any louder.
“Sharon, get away from the door!” I called out.
One split second of distraction cost me a ton of skin, Monica’s claws rending my winter coat and slicing through to the flesh beneath. Without it, she’d have probably disemboweled me. The cut spread like fire through my gut and brought tears to my eyes. As soon as Sharon backed away into the corner, Gabriel kicked the door open.
It’s only a flesh wound, girl. Just a flesh wound. I told myself that over and over until I believed it was true.
“Sky!”
“Just get Sharon out!”
Monica snapped her fingers, recreating a door out of fucking steel in place of the one Gabriel had busted down. At the same time, he whipped his gun from his jacket and
pegged her in the neck with an iron round. She reared back, hissing and screaming, her magic temporarily disrupted as smoke rose from the bloody hole and black ichor dripped to the floor. Two more shots followed. One only nicked her arm, and the other hit the bureau.
“Yes!” I screamed loud enough to go hoarse. Sweeping my wand at the door, I morphed the steel into plywood. The moment my partner gathered Sharon in his arms and burst through it with her, Monica launched herself after them.
“Oh no, you fucking don’t!” My wings flashed out, one sweep of them throwing me forward. I crashed into Monica’s back and dragged her with me into the Twilight.
Due to the iron and rust flooding her bloodstream, her ability to shadowstride had been hampered. She flashed across the Veil and back, carrying us down instead of forward after my escaping boyfriend and charge. It didn’t help that I was tagging along for the ride.
We tumbled through space and Twilight, falling through the floor together and placing her at my mercy.
As we transitioned back into the mortal plane, I managed to get the upper hand and she cushioned my fall. We landed in the living room a few feet away from the glass coffee table.
If Gabriel hadn’t disrupted her reality-altering powers, the glass probably would have been my death. Sai had learned that lesson the hard way, and that sobering thought guided my hands into action. I punched her in the face.
One after another, I pounded Monica with hard rights and lefts while straddling her chest, desperate to keep her beneath me and distracted as Gabriel rushed Sharon down the stairs and out the open door past the unconscious kidnapper.
My lungs starved for oxygen, burning because I couldn’t breathe fast enough to fuel them. The knuckles on my left hand bruised and split. I punched her again anyway until she wriggled free and threw me back, a glamour tilting the floor beneath my feet like we were in a weird funhouse.
Monica came at me like an animal, taking advantage of my uneven footing. Her nails raked against my shoulder, and then she managed a lucky strike past my guard, her bony fist catching me beneath my jaw. My teeth snapped together, and blood filled my mouth. I stumbled back as the room spun around me in a disorienting blur. Monica’s indistinct shape lunged at me.
The Scary Godmother Page 30
