by A. R. Kahler
I glance to my handiwork, the intricate web of chalk and symbols laced out like some arcane cosmology. Then I drag one finger from the top right to the bottom left, smudging a handful of lines.
And just like that, fire explodes from the basement windows. So loud, I can’t even hear the bartender scream.
“Bad luck, pal,” I say.
Then I turn and walk down the alley, fondling the handful of chalk in my pocket.
I’m not going to lie to myself and pretend I feel better—it’s going to take more than a few meaningless Fey for that to happen. But I did make a dozen or so people feel worse, right before I killed them.
Tonight, that will just have to do.
Two
I don’t linger on Bourbon Street long. I’d considered going out to a club, but the pleasant thought of getting obliterated and playing tonsil hockey with a group of bro-dudes is quickly replaced by the gnawing need to sleep. A yawn escapes my lips, and suddenly, I want nothing more than to be back in my tub with a bottle of unpoisoned bourbon and maybe . . . yes, maybe some Enya.
Desperate times.
So, after putting enough distance between myself and the burning building (to be fair, it’s only the basement that will burn, leaving everything above it magically unscathed—I’m not a total monster), I grab another piece of chalk and head into an overcrowded bar. The place reeks of sweat and booze, and on any other night, that would be enough to make me want to stay. Not tonight. I head straight to the bathroom and start screaming gibberish as loudly as I can, smashing my fists on the stalls.
Instantly, the handful of girls in the room leave. Works every damn time.
The moment they’re gone I lock the door with a simple chalk charm. I don’t like creating portals home in public, and for as many dark alleys as New Orleans has, there isn’t much secrecy. This is a city that thrives in darkness and shadowed, dangerous streets. Ironic that the only place I can get a little privacy is here. At least until the bouncer comes by.
I start scribbling in all the necessary symbols to get me home on a stall door—equations and coordinates, Vedic chants and Celtic Ogham. The whole process is routine, and my eyes keep drifting over to the mirror before darting back to my work. I don’t want to see myself, not in this fluorescent light. Not when I’m smeared in who-knows-whose blood and the shadows under my eyes could swallow sunlight. I used to think of myself as a bombshell, but tonight, I just feel like a bomb. My platinum hair is singed and coated with ash, my coat ripped, and my skin covered in fresh—albeit healed—scars. Definitely more like a bomb. One with a lot of shrapnel.
Someone is pounding on the bathroom door. I don’t even look over. Unless the bouncer’s a witch, there’s no getting in, not so long as I’m here. I sigh. I’ve gotten quite good at locking people out.
Then, with a mental slap to the face, I pull myself together before I can get all self-deprecating. There’s nothing more unattractive. I push open the stall door, but it’s not some gross toilet staring back at me. Instead, it’s a door to a dim room filled with bookshelves and hurricane lamps and perpetually lit candles. Something in me cracks at the sight, and I actually whimper as the weight of the day makes itself known. I step through, into my study, and let the magic holding the bathroom door shut wink out. I hear the bouncer burst in just as the stall door begins to close. I look to him and grin, then flip him off right as the door slams shut and the link between the worlds of Mortal and Faerie is severed. Back in the bathroom, I know, my chalk work dissolves into vague, inflammatory graffiti—just for kicks.
It takes all my self-control not to collapse right there in my study, fully clothed and filthy. But I don’t. The promise of a full tub and a full bottle spurs me on. I shuffle toward the bathroom, peeling off my clothes as I go and tossing them into the open fireplaces dotting the walls. Being in the heart of the Winter Kingdom—which is exactly as warm and welcoming as it sounds—the fireplaces are always burning. I give my jacket one last lovelorn look before tossing it into the flames, which instantly turn purple with flaring magic as the room fills with the scent of charred leather. My shirt and bra are next, tossed into the fireplace in my living room. I kick my shoes into the fireplace opposite, then peel off my jeans and trudge into the bathroom, where I throw both denim and underwear under the large golden lintel and into the waiting flames.
The bathroom is my architectural coup de grâce, all polished gold and smoked glass and mirrored candlelight. I snap my fingers, and a stream of water pours from a dragon’s maw on the stucco ceiling into a tub the size of a small pool inset into the tiled floor. Instantly, the room is filled with steam and the scent of lavender and sandalwood. Another snap of my fingers, and music floods the room, a string quartet I reserve for nights my nerves are a millimeter away from snapping. Enya can wait.
I walk over to a vanity in the corner and open the mirrored medicine cabinet. Bottles of high-end alcohol glint in the light like jewels, amber and quartz and aquamarine. I grab a bottle of Scotch and pull out the cork. Tonight’s not a night for glasses. I’m pretty certain this bottle cost a few hundred dollars. I’m also pretty certain half of it will be gone before I leave this room.
When I turn back to the tub, it’s already filled and brimming with bubbles.
I take a swig of the Scotch and sink into the hot water, let it lap up to my neck. Perfect temperature. Perfect ambience. Perfect booze. Honestly, it feels like the first thing to have gone right in weeks. I take another long drink and settle back, rest my head on the cool tile, and close my eyes.
Then I see her again. Roxie. Smiling and poised while she admitted to leading me on, to working for the Pale Queen. Roxie, when my blade buried itself in her chest. And then, for some reason, I see the girl I’d been shown in my visions—the blonde with the bloody jeans. The girl Mab took in to the Immortal Circus. The girl who was to become my true mother. Before Mab stole me away and forced me to a life of murder.
A dozen emotions war within me. I want to cry, a realization that startles me with its foreignness. I want to scream. I want to make the whole world burn.
I decide I will only do one of those things. So, in silence, and with dry eyes, I take another drink and let the heat melt my weaknesses away.
It takes more time than it should to realize I’m dreaming.
I’m walking down the halls of Mab’s castle, and for the first time since I was a little girl, I feel afraid. Something is behind me. Chasing me. Shadows slip up from the floor like hands as I walk. As I force myself not to run. Never run from danger. Never be the victim.
I take another step, and a great shudder runs through the hall. Not like an earthquake. Like the whole castle is shifting over—like a beast, rising from its haunches. I slam against a wall, and when my hand comes away, it’s covered in blood. Black blood, like glittering oil. Faerie blood.
And I realize, in that moment, I am dreaming. I have to be dreaming. Because I know, somehow, that this is Mab’s blood. Splattered over the walls of the castle like a Pollock painting. Mab, who can’t bleed. Who can’t be dead.
That’s when I start to run.
The hall twists and turns in front of me, a labyrinth shifting with my terror as shadows ooze blood and light inks out. Panic grips my chest, and I can’t force the tears from my eyes. My fragmented heartbeat is a mantra: Mab is dead. Mab is dead. Mab is dead.
Behind me, always two steps behind me, running through the shadows, is Roxie. Her laughter and lips always right behind my ear. And it’s not just my heart whispering those words, but her. The traitor who broke my heart and broke apart the barriers between worlds to summon . . . something. A Pale Queen. A new matriarch.
The moment the name crosses my mind, the hall bursts open. Walls crumble around me, and I am no longer in a hall, but in a room swept with rubble and snow. Mab’s towering throne of ice and shadow stretches up from the center, but the Winter Queen doesn’t sit there. No. Mab’s small body lies broken at the foot. And sitting atop, nearly two stories
up, is a different figure. A woman robed in the palest white, her shining crown blinding so I cannot see her face.
I run to Mab. To the unstoppable Winter Queen, the fiercest force of nature. She looks small now. Her usual seductive dress is smeared with black, a crown of black ice shattered around her head in a halo. Her lips are pallid, her white skin hollow. She looks like a doll—so small I could cradle her, so broken the merest touch would shatter her. I want her to be a doll, an illusion. But I place a hand on her forehead and I know. This is the feared Winter Queen, the woman who ruled over nature and shadow, who inspired the greatest minds with fear and desire.
And she is dead.
“This is a dream,” I whisper repeatedly.
“Of course it is a dream, little girl,” comes a voice. I look up to the peak of the throne, where the Pale Queen’s dress drips like blood. “It is my dream. And thanks to you, it shall soon become a reality.”
She descends from the throne then. Gliding down like a snowflake. No. Mab is the queen of snow. This woman floats down like a spiderweb spun from the rafters. A curse.
I back away. My hands reach for weapons that are not there. “I’m not helping you.” My words sound like coins in a bucket. Am I voicing them aloud, in the waking world? And if so, why am I not waking up?
“But you have, and you will continue to do so.” The woman reaches out and strokes my cheek, sending flame across my skin. Still, I lean into that touch. In the land of eternal cold, it feels seductively inviting.
Then I am reminded of the body at my feet. Mab’s body. My queen. And, for all intents, my mother.
I step back.
“Who are you?”
The woman moves her head, causing more light to shine off her crown, and I still can’t see her face through the glare. Somehow, though, I know she is smiling.
“That is the trouble with names,” she says. Her voice is smooth, oceanic. Mab’s words might have dripped shadow, but this woman is a melody of sea breezes and undertows. “If you were to know me, you would have power over me. And I prefer we keep it the other way around. Do you not agree, Claire Melody Warfield? Or should I say . . .”
I don’t hear her next words. Because the moment she utters my true name, I am struck to my knees, the breath knocked out of me and a great ringing in my ears. When the haze clears, I find I can’t move. I can only kneel before her like a servant, staring at the overlapping folds of her dress.
“How?” I manage to ask. How can you control me so completely?
“You learn much, when you live where I have.” Then she kneels before me and places her hand under my chin. Once more, I’m filled with that warm fire. Once more, I can’t see her face through the glare of her crown. “Hell teaches us so much about ourselves, and about those around us. As you well know.”
I expect her grip to tighten, for her nails to dig into my skin and pull forth blood. Or for her to slap me. If she were Mab, either of those would be the case. Instead, she pats my cheek gently.
“Do not worry,” she says. “Unlike your Winter Queen, I do not wish to rule through coercion.”
I feel the bonds around me relax as she speaks. I actually gasp in relief, and immediately hate myself for it.
“You will serve me because you wish it,” she says, standing. “You will see. When the chains of Winter and Summer are broken, you will be free to live and serve as you desire. And I think you will find, Claire, that I am a much kinder mistress than the Winter Queen. Especially to you, whom I owe for bringing me back. You have helped me rise to power. I will never forget that, Claire. And, unlike your old queen, I reward those who serve me well. Remember that, when the time comes. Remember my promise when you see how Mab treats those who lose everything so she may rise in power.”
The castle shudders again, large chunks of ice and stone crashing to the floor. Like waves. Like muffled howls.
“A new age beckons,” the Pale Queen says. “And you, my dear. You will be its harbinger.”
Stones collapse. The throne topples. The last thing I see before the dream winks out is Mab’s face—her green eyes wide and dull. But not terrified. Demanding.
As though even in death, she expects my full devotion.
Morning dawns as it always does in the land of eternal winter darkness—to the illusion of sunrise behind my drawn curtains and the promise of blood.
Today, however, it’s not alcohol poisoning keeping me in bed. I roll over on my side and pull my covers tight and try to convince myself that what I know to be true is an illusion.
I dreamed last night.
I never dream. Not in Winter, especially, where my nighttime musings are immediately siphoned for Mab’s personal gain. I don’t want to know what this means, to remember my dreams. I just know it can’t be good.
I don’t remember much. Every time I squeeze my eyes shut and try to grasp an image, it filters through my fingers like opium smoke. All I know is the feeling lodged in my chest. Fear. Fear, and the Pale Queen’s hazy image.
“It’s just stress,” I say aloud, trying to convince myself. Probably not a dream at all. Just some hallucination brought on by deep anxiety and mental trauma. Funny, that that’s what I have to make myself feel better.
When I do finally force myself from bed, I push the fear down. Down to where I lock everything else that doesn’t serve me. I’m not saying I feel immediately better. But at least I feel a little less awful.
I slip on a bathrobe and pad out into the kitchen, flicking my hands at the fireplaces as I go, their embers bursting into fresh flames. The curtains over the windows in the living room and study slide back, revealing a sunrise over snowcapped mountains that I think are the Himalayas. Not sure. I’m also not sure what time it actually is. Time is a tricky thing in Faerie, and that enchanted sunrise could be some stock footage for all I know—after all, it’s always sunrise somewhere in the mortal world.
I stand in my tiny kitchen and turn on the stove to boil water for coffee (all of these things being complete anachronisms in the world of Faerie, where the denizens live almost entirely off of Dream). As I go through the routine, I can’t shake the ghost of Roxie’s presence—she’d been there, standing in the doorway to my kitchen, looking all innocent, barely a week ago.
“Snap out of it, Claire,” I mutter as I grab some eggs from the icebox (no, not a fridge, a legit metal box with a chunk of enchanted ice) and start making breakfast. “Roxie betrayed you. Roxie is dead. Focus on the present.”
Ah, yes, because the present is so much better than my past. Just the thought of what I’m prepping to do makes my stomach roll over. Breakfast is no longer appealing, but damn it, I’m going to eat anyway.
“Today’s the day you meet your mother,” I say as I scramble the eggs. “The day you’ve been waiting for.”
Only now that the day is here, I dread it more than I desire it. This is the day I meet the woman I’ve been denied seeing my entire life. And if I’ve learned one thing about being an assassin, it’s that meeting your role models is never a good thing. Mainly because I usually have to kill them.
You’re not killing your own mother, I hiss, not willing to voice the words aloud.
Well then, another internal voice whispers, why is Mab having you meet her after all this time? And only after you signed your own contract, binding your life to her whims?
Mab had said my mother was the Oracle, and that the Oracle’s powers had vanished after the war that nearly brought Faerie and Mortal to their knees. But apparently there is still a spark, albeit a small one, that Mab needs me to coax out of her.
Of course she wouldn’t say how. I refuse to believe she couldn’t say, because I refuse to believe there is anything she doesn’t know. I wouldn’t go so far as to call her omnipotent, but she is pretty damn close.
“What am I going to say to her?” I whisper, putting thoughts of work and destiny aside. I’m not exactly “heartfelt reunion” material. I kill for a living—who besides Mab would be proud of that? Th
ere is literally a lifetime to make up for, and I . . . am burning my eggs.
I focus on cooking and try to salvage the food before it becomes charcoal. I mostly manage, and after breakfast and some really shitty coffee (it’s something in the water or maybe the fabric of Faerie itself—this place refuses to let me enjoy a satisfying espresso), I change into my normal attire: tight black jeans and a leather bomber. Then I head to my living room for the most important accessory a girl can own.
The weapons rack is impressive at first glance. It’s even more impressive when you realize that what you see isn’t even close to what you actually get. The wood and glass cabinet is about twelve feet high and stocked with weapons mostly from the Dark Ages—halberds and bastard swords and pikes—but that’s just what’s on display. I run my finger down a metal plate on the cabinet door, and a line of violet runes flare into light. There’s a whir of clockwork and click of latches, and then the cabinet doors swing outward to reveal not the weapons on display but nearly two dozen obsidian shelves, a faint purple light peeking between the cracks. I slide one out and am greeted with a sight that makes me smile.
An array of daggers is fanned out on the black silk, in all different shapes and sizes. There are leaf-shaped throwing knives and austere dirks, wavelike kriss blades and an array of folded butterfly knives. My fingers hover over them as I select which ones to pack. It’s not just an act of reverence. All of these blades are enchanted in some way—to kill Fey, to poison mortals, et cetera—and some days, in the strange way of magic, some blades just don’t want to be used.
I select a few butterfly knives and shove them in the various pockets of my coat, then grab a kriss blade and slide it into my boot. I skip the Tarot cards and grenades and magicked whips waiting in the other drawers; this should be a fairly low-bloodshed mission, but I’m not about to take any chances. Then, before I can stop myself, I head into the bathroom and look at myself in the mirror.
