by Elle Lincoln
“Oh.” It’s all I can muster as we step into the brisk night air. “Now what?”
“We look for my father,” Flynn reminds my tired brain. “Come, I want to check the few places he’d go if he was behind his disappearance.”
“I thought we decided he didn’t kidnap himself.” I can’t even form a proper sentence. I push all my feeling into a little box, a box I place on a shelf in my mental library. A shelf that’s getting fuller by the day.
“I want to make sure.” Flynn groans as his hand slips into mine. “You’re right, he could be, and I just want to make sure even though it doesn’t make sense.”
“Nothing makes sense right now,” I grumble.
The roar of an engine breaks through the haze in my mind. I didn’t even think about needing to get out of town to look for him.
“Come on.” The door to his cherry red mustang pops open and out steps Rocco.
“Mae, I’ll take care of him.” His misty eyes indicate he’s referring to Argos and my emotions surge all over again at the genuine kindness of this unusual djinn. “We will find something, but remember that library is a damn time warp, you won’t have access to us. So, if you don’t hear from us in a week, come find us.”
I break from Flynn to hug my smoky friend. His body oddly solid as he hugs me back. “Thank you.”
“Despite what you may think, I care for you and yours.” His words break just slightly. “You are my family now, Mae. Be careful.” Rocco pulls away, leaving me gaping as him and Flynn briefly hug.
I wipe the tears from my eyes and hop into the passenger seat. Flynn smiles as he slams his door. “Rest, we have a few hours to get where we need to.”
I lean back in the leather seat as the wolves part in the street. “How would your father travel to where we’re going?”
“Train.” He laughs, shaking his head. “I didn’t think of it before, but train. There’s an old steam train not far from here, he’d been visiting up there and I didn’t think anything of it. Until now.”
“Train?” How did I not think of that? There are railroad tracks all over the state and beyond, old access lines reminding me of the old west. Now it’s a reality. “When?”
“Mae, they’ve always worked without tech, it’s just hard to remember everything that works without it.”
“Do you think we’ll ever go back to being able to use electricity or technology?” I close my eyes, the rumble of the engine purring beneath me.
“I hope not.”
“Why?”
“Because life wasn’t amazing, Mae, people kept their noses in their phones. They missed the world passing them by as the spied on others, devoting their time to frivolous, material things. Just things, Mae. When I was in the Realm, we didn’t have any of that, and though most of those who lived there were immortal, there was one distinct difference.” His voice is like a lullaby to my sleepy and weary body.
“What’s that?” I feel the weight of a blanket being draped over my body.
“Their lives might have been shit, depending on the fae courts or the gods’ meddling, but they were happy, Mae. They spent time together. They loved more, they spoke often. It’s why I’m trying to eliminate the electricity and tech.”
I frown and pout. “But hot water.”
“Where there is a will, there is a way, Mae, there are other ways to have that hot bath.” I can feel his eyes on me as I drift off. “Rest, Mae.”
I allow the burden of this world to fall onto his shoulders as I realize right then that I can even take a break from being a goddess with a sneaky god on my side.
Chapter 18
Mae
The slam of a car door jostles me awake, the lull of the engine forgotten as confusion swarms my mind. My heart rate picks up, the organ fluttering in my chest.
“Hey, we are almost there, I just need gas.” Flynn’s soothing voice calms me as he peeks in through the window. The night, blacker than any I’ve ever witnessed, closes in on us.
“How the hell are you going to get gas?” I grumble, as I stretch my body, rolling to face him. “Magic?”
He laughs. “No, science.”
I groan, realizing he’s probably been studying far longer than me. I peek out the widow to see the siphon he has rigged with a battery. “Huh. That won’t catch on fire?” He just gives me a droll look before shrugging and walking away.
Right. Fire god. He can probably keep it from doing anything volatile. I look out the window again, or at least I hope so.
I climb out to stretch, my legs stiff from being curled up in the car for so long. The headlights shine into a tree line ahead. Every now and again, eyes peer back at me with glowing intensity before the shrubs rattle and the eyes disappear.
“Where are we?” I’d love to pee, but that shrub looks suspicious.
“Lycoming County.” He shuffles his syphon before pouring gas into a few gallon jugs.
“I don’t think a train runs up here.” I get back in the car as multiple eyes glitter in the headlights.
“Not directly, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they do now.” Finished, he climbs back in, starting the engine. “My father can be crafty when he wants to be. All he needs is motivation.”
“You think he’s out here?” I jerk my head at the tree line.
“I have no idea.” He pulls out, driving by the eyes and the bodies I can’t truly make out.
“I hate how dark it is.” The engine purrs as I stare out the window. The road looms ahead like a tunnel of darkness. The lights casting shadows that move in opposition of our headlights. Creatures follow us through the overgrown canopy of trees above. Stalking us.
“I find it peaceful.” I glance at him and his roguish smile.
“You would, but the rest of us can’t see a whole lot. What the hell is even out here?” I lean forward as something large and furry darts across the street. “Bigfoot?”
“That’s possible.” My eyes round in surprise as I glare at him. “Hell if I know. Sheltered, remember? But to answer your question, hunting.”
“Hunting. What the hell are you hunting?” Oh, wait, apparently that is bigfoot.
“How do you think you get that jerky you eat?” he asks, rumbling with silent laughter.
“I actually never once thought about it. You supplied it, so I ate it.” But now I’m wondering if I’ve been eating a woodland creature all along.
“My father’s train runs close to here where we have always had a hunting cabin. At one point in time, the cabin held a portal to the Realm. I haven’t been out here in months, so I have no idea what’s Earth and what’s the Realm. I’ve passed multiple dirt roads that were never there before.” He begins tapping on the steering wheel.
“You don’t know where we are, do you?” I can’t even fault him, because there is literally no one we can stop and ask for directions and maps are currently useless.
“I have a general idea,” he hedges.
“You have no idea. Just admit it.” I sure as hell hope he knows how to go back.
“I knew how to get there, but I swear the woods are alive.” He leans forward, peeking up at the looming trees.
“I’ve been hunting up here with my grandfather and it has never looked like this.” We pass a sign for Jordan and then another for Brown—towns that were on the opposite side of the county, which are now somehow within miles of each other. “Yeah, I see your issue.”
“Dammit. I had hope you would be able to clear this up.” His knuckles turn white as he grips the steering wheel.
“I can’t help you there. Don’t you have some kind of supernatural sense to find this cabin?” That’s a thing, I’m sure of it.
“Do you?” he replies snarkily.
“I’m saying I can sense souls near death, your dad, well, he isn’t looking so good, and since you stole some of my mojo and are closer to him than I will ever be. You should, in theory, be able to sense him and find him.” I pause. “If he was out here.”
“I don
’t sense anything, do you?”
I close my eyes against the rising tide of input, sending out a pulse to the dying. Hundreds light up in a mental map, but not a single one of those is Neit. “Odd, I don’t sense him. So, either he isn’t dying any longer or he’s hidden.” I frown, not liking the outcome at all.
“These roads are all off,” he growls in frustration.
I rub my temples, trying to think through this. “Stop the car.” I have an idea. As the rumble dies down, I hop out, the cool night air chilling my skin. I close my eyes and bring up that mental map once more, looking at all the dots of those dying within our little state. From there, I think of the map of Pennsylvania as it was before and overlay the two. I focus on where we are supposed to be.
“Address?” I question, still focusing on the mental map. Flynn rattles off an address and I do my best to remember that general area. “It looks nothing like it did before, but I think we are close.”
“Just direct me.” I climb back into the car then close my eyes once more.
“Anywhere you can, turn right up here.”
“There’s a dirt road.”
“Take it.”
“You’re like a GPS goddess.”
I ignore that dig and direct him to where I think the address should be then open my eyes.
“Stay here.” Flynn puts the car in park, climbing out to open the trunk. The headlights illuminate an old wooden cabin. The windows are dark with no life inside, not even a flicker of a flame. But it is the middle of the night, so that doesn’t exactly bother me.
What does bother me is how much northern Pennsylvania has changed. Usually, it’s lush and green with mountains to the north, cities to the east and west, and valleys in between. Now, it’s thicker, denser than I’ve ever witnessed. Gone are many of the developments, though some skeletons remain. I never once questioned where they all went, with fear keeping me from desiring that answer.
Now? Ahead, I can tell where the Realm and Earth merged. Trees puncture the cabin, leaving rubble at their base, and branches break through a window here and there, while an outhouse’s walls surround the base of another tree—the door hanging on for dear life as it slaps the bark in the wind.
An owl hoots in the distance, deeper and more menacing than I’ve heard before. I’m beginning to accept this foreign land as home, but her secrets run deeper than the ocean’s trenches. If those are even there, and if they are, they are probably full of some odd sea creature that was once thought a myth.
The trunk slams, startling me. Unable to sit any longer, I climb out and join Flynn as he throws witch’s orbs into the air to give the dark an even more haunting feeling.
“Those things need to be remade.”
He laughs a deep rumble. “I won’t argue there, perhaps Argos will find something useful in the library after finding a tracking spell.”
“Shit, should we contact them?”
“Why?”
“If I can’t find Neit, what are the odds anyone else can?” He grabs my hand, leading me across the stone drive toward the looming cabin.
“Different magic, Mae, has different uses, even for the same desired outcome.”
“So, what you are really saying is magic has no rules.” My boot hits the first step and immediately sinks through. “How long has this been abandoned?”
“It hasn’t, I don’t know why it looks like this.” He runs a hand along the chipping railing. “It’s peculiar.”
“Ya think?” I take another step, clinging to Flynn and hoping like hell I don’t fall through the floor into a dungeon. Again.
He opens the creaky wooden door, stepping across the threshold with a frown. “I’m trying, thought that perhaps it was just glamour, but it isn’t. Not an ounce of magic. Just a cabin we used not four months ago suddenly decrepit.”
“You sure it’s this one?” I let go of him, taking a chance on the unsteady floor, reminding myself I can ghost through it if need be.
“Look at the pictures,” Flynn murmurs, his finger running across a dusty portrait of him and his father, Neit’s hand resting on Flynn’s shoulder like an anvil.
“Are you sure you have been in here recently?” No way did a house age that quickly. Unless... “Can magic be stolen from a place?”
Flynn’s head jerks toward mine. “I… don’t know.”
My heart speeds up as I look around. “Think about it. If magic can be stolen from a person, why not a home? What makes a home?”
“Is that a trick question, Mae?” His brows pull low in confusion.
“What if to keep another place alive, the life of one is sucked dry?”
“You aren’t making any sense, Mae. It’s just brick and mortar and wood.”
“It’s a home. No matter the positive or negative, it was a home. Your home, Flynn. Tell me how much you loved this place,” I insist, speaking quickly as my theory grows.
“It was the one place where my father and I actually did something together. We were also close to a portal, which meant access to my mother. So sure, I have good memories here.” He cocks his head to the side. “I wonder…”
“What?”
“That odd encounter in Ireland. The bar was there and then it wasn’t. I wonder if this is the same?” He brushes his hands along the walls, watching as some wither away into nothing more than dust.
“Is there a heart of a home?” I muse, wondering how this would even be possible. Then again, magic can make the impossible, possible. Turning a dream or a nightmare into reality.
“The kitchen?” Flynn laughs. “I admit I’m at a loss on this one, Mae.”
“Let me ghost and see if your dad is here at all.” I go to grab Flynn’s hand. “Try to keep up.” I laugh, ghosting to fall through the floor as the veil overlaps with reality. “Ugh, it is like a dungeon down here.”
All around us is a basement made of river rock—or what looks like river rock and cement—with a small stone window. But it’s the iron cage and chains that makes this look wrong.
“This is new.” Flynn steps into reality, and I follow behind as he runs his hand along the bars.
“Doesn’t that hurt you?” Fae and iron don’t mix.
“God first, fae second. I don’t have their weaknesses.” He sets the bar on fire. “Enforced iron as well.”
“So, this is all new?” I hum to myself, walking around the torture chamber. “I don’t think your dad is here, but I think he may have been. Flynn, I think he truly has been kidnapped.”
“I agree.”
A thump echoes all around us, coming from upstairs, before footsteps run across floorboards. My eyes widen as I try to process whether that was a real person or a ghost, but the crash of the front door answers the question.
Without waiting for Flynn, I ghost back upstairs and out into the dead of the night. A small figure runs across the tiny open space. Instead of sticking to reality, I float through the veil, keeping up with the small creature as we near the tree line.
My stomach drops when I realize the creature I’m chasing is a child. Flynn grips my arm, pulling me from the tree line. I slam into him and then fall back into reality.
“What the hell, Flynn?” He rolls me over before popping up and holding out a hand. “I almost had him!”
“It isn’t necessary.” He pulls me up just as dawn breaks on the horizon.
“Why the hell not?” I fling my arms out. “I want to know who was spying on me.”
“I already know.” He turns, heading back to the car before thinking better of it. In fact, he growls just a bit at his own vehicle. “What are the odds you can come back to this very space?”
“High, no one is dying or dead, but I’ll remember the location.” I squint my eyes. “Why?”
“How fast can you get us home?”
Now, I cross my arms. “Why, Flynn?”
“Because, Mae, I know that child.” He reaches for me and my hand slips easily into his. “In that bar, in a picture… I don’t think that was
any chance meeting, Mae.”
Chapter 19
Mae
Heart pounding, I whisk Flynn and I back to headquarters. I no longer believe in coincidences. I believe in patterns and that everything is connected someway, somehow. I don’t question Flynn. His calm demeanor says enough.
We materialize on the steps of headquarters. Dawn light streams down upon smoke and dust, as people rush around us with panic in their eyes. Screams sound in the distance, their cries can be heard for miles. No one stands still, as many grab the wounded and rush them into the safety of the building.
“What’s going on?” Flynn stops someone with blood oozing down their face, and dirt speckled across their clothing.
“Flynn! We are under attack!” Then he runs off, shaking Flynn away from him.
My eyes turn to Neit’s building, but it’s as though a haze settles thickly over everything. The sky is soon filtered out, the top of buildings hidden from view. The doors to Neit’s house and our own lost become to the sea of white.
“Where’s Rocco?” I look around the mass of people, searching for his tall form, knowing he would understand what’s happening. He’d probably be at the forefront of whatever this is.
“They were in the library.” Flynn turns to me as the ground shakes. “This is more than likely my father’s followers.” He gives me that knowing stare that I don’t bothering arguing with, because he’s probably correct. We knew that unless Neit was found, his loyal fans would come after us. Even if I swore I had nothing to do with it, even if Rocco stole a soul for the same reasons, a fanatic is a fanatic. Loyal unto death. “Go find them, I’ll handle this.”
He pushes past me, running up the stairs to go inside. I chase after him, grip his shirt, and spin him to face me. “I can help here.” I pull my scythe from the veil.
“What we need is a way to find my father and end this. No one dies today, Mae.” He looks pointedly at my scythe.
“You’re right.” I send my scythe back, worried I’m becoming more and more like Morrigan every damn day as pieces of me fall away into the cool, cruel world of immortality.
