A questioning glance at him had Leith confirming that I actually didn’t know better. “Sugar and carbonation. He’ll be too wasted to talk if he drinks all four.”
I stowed the folded cane back into my pack and our goodbyes elicited nothing more than a flicking motion of Faldor’s hand as he tipped up bottle number three. By the time we reached the bottom step, I could hear his voice warbling a semi-incoherent song extolling the pleasure and the pain of drinking too much.
“Interesting company you keep.” I said to Leith.
“Faldor’s all right. He only goes on a bender once or twice a year. His spellcraft is solid, though.”
Faster than I would have expected, we arrived back at the tunnel entrance. From this side, no glass barred our entry; only a shifting curtain of wavering light arced across the mouth.
“Think good thoughts,” Leith warned and then pulled me through before I had time to think any thoughts at all. The curtain briefly fell around us like a waterfall, but I felt no lasting ill effects from it. Leith, on the other hand, spent the next minute bent double and shaking as though from fear.
“Are you okay?”
“Fine. You didn’t feel that?” Envy wove through his tone.
“Feel what?”
“Never mind. A goody two shoes like you wouldn’t have had any wicked deeds in her past to feel guilty over.”
I glanced behind me, but the curtain was gone and the glass had returned. By the time I turned back, Leith had recovered himself and, brushing off my inquiries about what had just happened to him, urged me to follow him back the way we had come. Somehow I got the sense that this mission had cost him more than four bottles of cheap soda.
Chapter Fifteen
The night of the full moon loomed and I was no closer than before to solving Sylvie’s murder or having a concrete plan for saving Julius and Vaeta. Weighing one mission against the other left me in no doubt which I would choose if it came down to it. Vaeta, by all accounts, had chosen to give herself to the darkness, while Julius had not.
What I needed was a devious mind.
Estelle.
To call her to me, I spoke her name aloud. Once. Twice. Three times. No, not because I was relying on the magic in the number three, but because she had been scouring the city for any sign of her partner, and that was how long it took her to return. Come on, she’s not Beetlejuice or the Goblin king or anything.
I held my breath for the space of time it took for her to appear. The first sign that Julius had fallen into trouble was his failure to respond to my calls. What if Estelle had been taken as well?
“You have news.” A sigh of relief.
“I do. Just give me a minute and we’ll talk.”
The unholy beast of a coffeemaker beeped to let me know I was supposed to pull one of the handles or something. Undoubtedly the manufacturers intended the noise to be a helpful alert, but I found it more of an ominous warning sound that bad coffee was about to happen. Since bad coffee was better than no coffee, I braved the hissing behemoth and was rewarded with a cupful of bitter brew. Estelle took a chair at the table and watched with fascination while I poured half a mug, filled the rest with a combination of water and creamer then dumped in twice as much sugar as I really wanted. She declined my offer to turn solid and partake of a cup. I wonder why.
Taking Lamiel’s cue, I dropped my own cone of silence over the tiny house and repeated what little information he’d been able to provide. I saved the bombshell of Malachiel’s ultimate goal for last and kept mum on the notion of whether he was the genius behind the scheme or merely a pawn in a bigger game.
“That’s why they’ve shut me out.” As soon as the words were out, Estelle clapped a hand over her mouth.
I gave her my best teacher-to-student glare. She squirmed, but spilled her guts. “Right after we rescued Craig from Malachiel’s influence,” Estelle referred to Pam’s uncle Craig. Preying on the man’s guilt, Malachiel had used him as a battleground for our first skirmish. It had taken an expedition into Craig’s mind to free him of the fallen angel’s influence. “I went back to report to the Powers. I thought I could get them to see reason—to understand how they’ve tied your hands by saddling you with me. They’re the good guys, right? It’s their job to send the cavalry.”
Estelle had a lot to learn about the inner workings of the power structure she was now part of. The intricacies surrounding free will could be limiting at times, and yet, they were necessary to maintain the delicate daisy chain of balance. The Powers would act against anything that threatened free will, but they took their sweet time deciding what was threat and what was consequence. Their job is a difficult one, and I freely admit there are probably a million things I’m not even aware of that they have to consider in any given situation.
Angel 101. Help. Guide. Protect—and most importantly, allow your charges to make their own choices whether you agree with them or not. A thankless job most of the time, and yet I missed it like I would an amputated arm. My work brought me ultimate sorrow and consummate joy—often at the same time.
“This was during my missing time?” Estelle’s eyes dropped for just a fraction of a second. She knew something about where I went in between missions and had either been ordered—or was choosing—not to tell me. She had a fifty-fifty shot for which option ticked me off the most. I let it go. For now.
“Looks like we are the cavalry.” A bitter twist curled my lips. “Best we get down to it.” I pulled what I needed from the desk drawer and wished I had one of those white boards with the erasable markers. In the old days, I could easily have called one to me, but that was then, and now there were limits. Estelle wouldn’t graduate to that level for a generation or three, so a pen and a pack of rainbow-colored pastel sticky notes would have to do.
Jotting furiously, I created a timeline for everything that had happened since I landed here.
“Sylvie’s murder is our first priority.” Not least because the chatty spirit had taken to popping in frequently to get updates on the case. I jotted down what meager information Zack had given me. Sylvie’s boyfriend, Dante, had alibied out with an ironclad story. Officially, he was off the hook, but Zack still considered him a person of interest—and so did I.
We went over everything piece by piece for the next hour or so.
“How do you feel about doing a little undercover work?”
“Just tell me what to do, boss.”
The undercover work I had in mind skirted the gray area of the rules—something I knew I had done more than I should lately. Technically, asking her to spy on Dante went over the line since he was not her assignment. One of us would probably receive a reprimand. Probably not me. This fell into throwing someone under the bus territory.
“Before you agree, you should know you could get into trouble with the Powers for what I am about to suggest.” Warn first, throw second.
“Just tell me what to do.” I did, and sent her off with Sylvie the minute the young woman’s spirit made an appearance, then returned to my makeshift evidence board to look for clarity. Until I felt the cooling wetness on my cheeks, I wasn’t aware of the frustration fueled tears spilled across them. Infinite—well, until lately—experience as a tool for the Almighty left me unprepared for becoming a finite creature with dreams, desires, and fears. Right now, it was the latter that weighed on me. Scrubbing at the wetness with the back of my hand, I added several more hastily scribbled flutters of yellow to the wall. Extending the timeline back to when Cassandra had her first experience with soul-stealing darkness, I chose green notes for all the information she had provided, which added another dimension to the whole, and a pattern began to emerge. One that turned my guts to ice and had me scrambling for the purple and then the blue.
By the time orange and pink filled in the blank spaces, my motions had turned robotic. Write, turn, stick without hesitation. I could have stopped long before finishing because there was no need for the rainbow of color to show me the way anymore. I knew
exactly what I was looking at.
All of it. Or almost all of it. There was one wild card still in play that could change everything.
Leith.
Shock buckled my knees so hard I barely made it to the sofa where I sank down to wrap my mind around this new set of truths and steel myself for what was to come.
Chapter Sixteen
Estelle’s return with Sylvie brought news that confirmed my earlier conclusions. Surprisingly, no enforcement of the angel code for lie-telling forced me to explain anything to Estelle while Sylvie remained in the area. Maybe I should have seen that one coming. After exchanging a telling glance with my trainee, I sent Sylvie off to visit Cassandra. The second I was sure she was gone, I turned to Estelle and said, “We need to talk.”
I no more than got the words out of my mouth when an unearthly shrieking noise filled the room.
“What the…” It was coming from my pocket—given the force of my emotions, it was probably the death knell of the little phone—and just when I had started to trust that my energy field had settled enough to stop interacting poorly with those little chips inside it. The phone caught in my pocket when I went to yank it out and spun out of my hand before hitting the floor hard enough to send the battery in one direction and the back panel skittering under the table.
The noise continued unabated.
Estelle put on her physical form and scrambled for the phone parts while I searched my pockets for the source of the racket and came up holding the little seashell Evian had given me. Apparently this was her way of reaching out and touching someone. As soon as I lifted it to my ear, the din subsided to be replaced by her voice. Something akin to panic turned her normally dulcet tones strident.
“You are needed.” The shell shook hard in my hand, and I pulled it away from my ear just in time to avoid being drenched. Water flowed from the shell as though through a hose and formed itself into an undulating globe that hung in the air before us like a mirror or a window. An image quickly formed that showed Evian and Terra kneeling next to the prone form of Soleil as she lay on the floor. Evian turned, her gaze taking in Estelle’s presence and noting her solid form. “Hold tight to the shell, take Estelle’s hand, and walk into the water. Hurry.”
I traded a look with Estelle, who gave me a shrug, but we did as Evian asked. I think we both expected to walk through the bubble as though it were a door. That didn’t happen at all. As we stepped into it, there was the sensation of being enveloped by the water which was quickly replaced by a maelstrom of motion. Think of it like a genie flowing back into her bottle and you’ll get the idea. We were sucked into the shell, which returned to Evian’s hand and then spewed us out again in a liquid rush. A most unsettling sensation quickly forgotten in the somber atmosphere in which we now found ourselves.
Instead of landing in Evian’s underwater grotto, I found myself standing in a well-appointed foyer. A crystal confection of a chandelier hung overhead and cast gentle light over the grim scene below.
Worry hung over the room like a dense cloud, getting heavier each time Soleil took another labored breath. I fell to my knees beside Evian while Estelle circled around to kneel next to Terra, who held both hands over her sister’s heart. “What happened to her?”
“I came back from a work thing and found her like this.” Tears ran unheeded down the young woman’s face. “She’s barely breathing. Somebody do something.”
The stories you’ve heard about faeries being the next best thing to immortal are mostly true. They age about a million times slower than mortals and aren’t especially easy to kill. It can be done, though. Soleil was about to become proof of that if we didn’t do something, and fast. Her face was already turning gray.
“What can I do to help her?” I had no idea—this was my first time having more than casual contact with any of her kind. Healing had been one of my duties as a guardian, but it was more complicated than just laying on hands and saying poof, you’re all better. The healing had to be sanctioned from higher up. Plus, the person had to believe, had to want to be healed—and not just with their heads, but with their entire being. There had to be a bigger lesson in the healing than could be learned from the affliction. Even then, I could only give them a push; they had to do the work on their own. Just another facet of free will. Like I said, it was complicated.
Face pale enough to make her eyes look like sunken stones, Terra spared me a glance. “She’s fading.”
“How long?” I had an idea.
“An hour, maybe a little more.”
Not much time, but it might be enough. “Can you send one of those portal things to someone who doesn’t have one of your tokens in their possession?”
“Not really, but if they’re near a large enough body of water, I can cast a scrying onto it. I just need to know the location.” Maybe a visual link would be enough. It was worth a try.
I pulled out my phone. Tension slowed my fingers, fumbled them over the keys and I felt my heart sink when the screen flashed from red to blue to green. Apparently it was a mood phone from the eighties. When I got nervous, upset, or anxious, that’s when it turned unreliable—and at the moment, I was all three of those things. There wasn’t time to explore the ramifications, but I made an effort to calm myself and the screen returned to normal.
Amethyst answered on the third ring. I didn’t have time for formalities.
“Are you home? Alone?”
“I am, but if you ask me what I’m wearing, I’ll freak out and hang up.” Humor lightened her unnaturally deep voice.
“Funny. Go down to the lake, please. I’ll stay on the line.”
“Good for you, but I won’t. There’s no service down there.” Because that would be too easy.
“Just go, then. And don’t be scared.”
“Why, what’s going to happen?” I could hear the door slamming behind her. Amethyst trusted me that much.
“I promise, you’ll know it when you see it.” My phone beeped to signal the lost call and the line went dead. I gave Evian the coordinates and it took a moment before a pane of water-made glass shimmered into view. Another frantic series of motions, and there stood Amethyst. Close enough to touch, but not really.
In as few words as possible, I explained the situation to the wide-eyed aura reader.
I gestured toward Soleil. “Can you see her? Her aura? Something happened to her and we’re hoping you can give us some clue by reading her energy field. She’s dying.” That last statement was unnecessary, Amethyst had already figured out that much based on nothing more than her initial glance at the situation.
“Can you all step away from her so I can see more clearly?”
We did as she asked and I heard, rather than saw, Amethyst’s quick intake of breath as the image before her became more clear.
“Oh, my. That’s…I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“We’re running out of time here. If there’s something you can do, then get on with it.” The room shook from the force of Terra’s booming growl.
“Adriel, come around to where I can see you.” I moved into view.
“There’s nothing around her body, but at about here…” Amethyst held her hands less than a foot from her own shape. I see light in shifting reds and oranges that seems to be seeking her, but when the energy gets close it disappears completely. Not like it is fading out, but like it is being cut off. Like a force field.” Her attention focused on something behind me and I turned to see Evian looking thoughtful.
Amethyst continued, “You, there.” She pointed at Evian. “She’s like you, right? Your aura flows toward you, not away like ours do. Can you explain that?”
Evian’s mouth rounded in surprise right before her eyes narrowed, “Aren’t we perceptive?”
“Getting snippy with me after you’ve asked for my help is counterproductive. If you want my help to save her, you’ll tell me what I need to know.”
Shoving at her sister, Terra fixed steady brown eyes on Amethyst. “We are
elementals, which means we pull our life force—what you would call a soul—from the elements that form our nature. My life comes from the earth, Evian’s from water, and Soleil’s the sun.”
Taking that explanation in stride, Amethyst and Evian came to the same conclusion.
“Something is blocking her from her element.”
“She’s starving to death.”
The two spoke at the same time, their voices triggering a memory of my wings becoming a physical shield and shredding the darkness as it closed in on a helpless, newly-formed spirit. A similar action might work here. The only questions were whether I could consciously call them into being—that time it had happened during a moment of pure adrenaline-filled terror—and if my wings would work the same way in this situation as they had in that one.
There was nothing to be lost from trying. Sooner rather than later, judging by the lengthening space between Soleil’s fluttering breaths.
Taking a moment to center myself, I pulled the sense memory of that moment back to the surface. The stretch and burn in my shoulders as the feathery weight tugged at muscles unused to their burden. The lightness in my soul when the slightest downsweep battled gravity for a split second. The white light of them. The smell of purity. The clear notes of air whistling across their surface at each movement. The ache in my soul at the thought I might once again test their strength on the wind’s current and soar.
So real was the memory I could have sworn they’d sprouted from my back. When I opened my eyes, it was to know the crushing disappointment of failure.
“Don’t just stand there, do something,” Evian ordered.
“I’m trying.” Another thought, this one not remotely pleasant. What if Leith’s presence had been a factor? Given Evian’s temper, I was less than sanguine about her willingness to expose her family to him. But if it was the only way, she’d have to come around.
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