by H. D. Gordon
THE MASKED MAIDEN
The Aria Fae Series
Book 2
H. D. GORDON
Copyright © 2016 H. D. GORDON BOOKS
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
All rights reserved. Without limiting the copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and publisher of this book.
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For the readers, because I’m not sure where I’d be without you.
CHAPTER 1
The knock on the door came so early that the sun had not yet risen over Grant City. It was the time right between moon fall and sunrise, the shadows holding fast to the edges and corners of the streets and buildings.
I dragged myself out of bed, snatching my staff off my dresser and crossing the measly ten feet from my sleeping place to my studio apartment’s front door. With blurry eyes, I stood on my tiptoes and peered through the peephole.
And my heart stopped dead in my chest. Suddenly, I was wide-awake.
For a moment, I could only stand there, staring at the door, stunned over what lie beyond it. For thirty whole seconds, I scarcely breathed.
The knock came again. With a lump the size of Texas in my throat, I threw the locks and opened the door to the caller.
If it was difficult with the door between us, it was impossible to breathe with only a foot of open air separating us. I could only look at him, my reddish-brown hair a definite mess atop my head and my eyes no doubt puffy with sleep. Feeling vulnerable in a way I hated, I crossed my arms over my chest and raised my eyebrows in question.
But there was nothing I could do to stop the flare that lit my cheeks when his eyes ran the length of me, and I felt very exposed when I realized I was only wearing a long t-shirt and thick, fluffy socks.
“Aria,” he said. “Are you gonna invite me in?”
There was a part of me that railed against this idea, a part of me that said to turn him away, this ghost of my past, but that part was clearly overruled with my next word.
I stepped to the side of the doorway, my breath still a touch stalled in my chest. “Fine,” I said, and let him inside.
CHAPTER 2
His face betrayed nothing, but I was an aura-reader—most often referred to as an Empath—and I could see the judgment and disappointment that flared in his air when he ran his eyes over my living quarters.
Feeling both angry and hurt, but only willing to own one of those, I folded my storable bed into the wall to make more space, forcing the thing up with a little more vigor than was necessary.
I grabbed some sweatpants off a chair, and teeth gritted, I pulled them on and turned to face him. “Why are you here?”
He gave no show of it, but this cold address hurt him, and against my better nature, I was glad to have done so. It didn’t even touch the amount of hurt he’d given me.
“How have you been?” Nick asked, his strong jaw clenching the way it always did when he was uncomfortable. It was his only tell. I should know.
I gave a short laugh. “Alive,” I answered. “As you can see.”
Nick nodded and grew silent. He was having a hard time looking at me, as I used to have with him. Right now, I was too angry to be bashful.
“I’m here on assignment, of course,” he said at last, his dark eyes meeting mine.
Another short laugh from me. I chastised myself. I was showing too much of my hand, my emotions gaining the better of me. I wanted desperately to appear indifferent.
“Of course,” I said, my voice even.
“I’m here on behalf of the Brokers,” he added.
“And why else would you be?”
Nick swallowed, but his handsome face gave no indication of perturb. “The Peace Broker superiors want me to request your assistance on an assignment.” He looked around the small apartment. “You’ve become quite familiar with Grant City in the past few months, haven’t you?”
Now my anger hit a new high, but I bit down on it like a dog on a bone. “You’ve been keeping tabs on me?”
Nick gave me a look like I should already know the answer to this, and I begrudgingly supposed he was right.
“Do you remember the Scarecrow?” he asked.
A chill ran down my spine, but I did my best to keep its effects from my face. “Of course I remember him,” I said, and my voice came out a bit too soft for my liking.
Nick’s face was grim now. I had always thought him most handsome when he looked this way, and wished that I didn’t still. His Scottish accent was always more pronounced when he was worried. It was one of his few tells.
“He’s escaped The Pen, Aria. We were only just made aware of it. We figured he might be coming this way.” A pause. “Your way.”
I wandered over to the small window, staring out at the brick view that had become familiar in the past four months. Turning back to face Nick, I said, “Then it falls on the Brokers to catch him—to fix it. This has nothing to do with me.” I couldn’t help my next words, whether they revealed my hand or not. “Why the hell would I help you, anyway?” I asked. “Why the hell would I help them?”
Nick Ramhart smiled, and I remembered that it was not when he was grave that I found him most handsome, but the rare moments when he was not.
“Because if you help us catch the Scarecrow,” he said, “the superiors have agreed to consider a reinstatement for you. They’ve agreed to consider revoking your banishment.”
“What?” I mumbled. It was all I could manage.
Nick came forward and took my hands into his. The feel of them was so familiar that it made my heart ache. “Aria,” he said. “If you do this, you could have a chance at being a Peace Broker again, a chance at coming home.”
CHAPTER 3
Nick left shortly thereafter, giving me time to ‘think things over’, along with a magical medallion that would shield me from the power of the Scarecrow’s magic. I slid the necklace holding the medallion over my head, but could hardly find sleep after this, and didn’t even bother trying. In twenty more minutes or so, the world would wake up anyway, and I would need to get ready for school.
I paced my small apartment for a moment before impulsively going over to the window and throwing it open. The cool early morning air rushed in to greet me, along with the smells of the city that I had somehow grown used to over the past few months. Grabbing my jacket and shoes, I pulled them on and returned to the window.
My apartment was on the top floor of a four-story building, and I climbed out onto my fire escape and up onto the metal railing. Balancing on the railing, I leapt up and gripped the ledge of the rooftop, pulling myself up and over.
I landed lithely on the roof, making my neighbor, Thomas Reid, shake his head in amazement. “I’ll never get used to you doing that,” he said. “But good morning.”
I took a seat on a wooden crate beside Thomas, eyeing a brown paper bag he had between his shoes. “I’m not sure if it’s a good morning,” I said, “but here we are.”
Thomas sigh
ed, staring out at the city beyond. His voice was deep and soft when he spoke, the way I’d come to know it to be. “Every morning we wake is a good morning,” he said. He reached down beside the crate he was sitting on and handed me a pink thermos.
“What’s this?” I asked, the smell of coffee making me close my eyes and inhale deeply.
Thomas smirked, his hazel gaze flicking over to me. “It’s your very own coffee cup.”
I threw a dramatic hand over my heart after taking a long sip of the blessed dark liquid. He even knew I liked it black. “Thomas,” I said, my voice rising slightly in pitch. “You didn’t have to do that!”
He didn’t laugh. He was not the laughing type, but a bit of golden-yellow touched his aura, which revealed to me his amusement. “If I didn’t,” he said, “you’d just keep drinking all mine.”
My jaw hung open. “You said you didn’t mind sharing.”
“And I don’t. I just thought you’d want your own cup.” He reached for the thermos. “I’ll take it back if you don’t want it.”
My hands jerked out of his reach. “If you value your digits, you most certainly will not.”
Thomas dropped his hand and almost smiled.
I clutched at the pink cup, more taken with this small gift than most people would be. I was not accustomed to receiving gifts. There were no holiday or birthday celebrations within the Peace Brokers. Such things were considered frivolous and wasteful.
“Thank you,” I said, my mood plummeting again as I thought of what Nick had told me this morning.
Thomas seemed to sense the change and pulled a breakfast sandwich out of the bag between his shoes, handing it over to me. This was not unusual of him. Though I hadn’t known him long, Thomas Reid had become a frequent in my life in the past four months. He was my neighbor, but also my friend, and the rooftop of our building was the place he came when he wanted to get away from the world. It had become mine as well, and since he never asked me to leave, I kept coming. The food he always had was a good motivator, too.
As I bit into my ham, egg, and cheese croissant like a wild dog, I said, “You don’t always have to feed me, you know?”
More of that gold on the edges of his aura, which was always dark and disturbed in the way that only a war-torn veteran’s can be.
“I know,” he said.
What I liked most about Thomas, besides him being devastatingly handsome, ever stocked with food, and his forbidden fruit status as a twenty-six year old and I only seventeen, was that he didn’t pass judgment. This was a rare quality among humans.
For this reason, and maybe for another I had yet to pin down, I often found myself spilling my soul to him. I’d arrived in Grant City at the beginning of September, and it was nearing the end of December now, but I felt as though I’d known him much longer. Thomas Reid was a good listener, another quality rare to most people.
Also, he’d seen too much strangeness for me not to enlighten him. He’d taken all my revelations remarkably well, too.
“So… remember when I told you about the Peace Brokers?” I asked.
His aura was edged with gold again, and he gave his head a small shake. “Aria, you told me you’re only half human and an excommunicated operative of a secret supernatural organization… and you think I forgot? Yes, I remember the Peace Brokers. What about them?”
I grinned sheepishly, but it vanished quickly. “They’ve reached out, asked for my help with something.”
Thomas said nothing, only pulled his hazel eyes away from the scene of the sun rising over Grant City, and looked at me. It was rare, the moments when he looked directly at me, and it never failed to snatch my breath away.
When it was silent for too long, Thomas said, “Why would you help them after what they’ve done to you?”
I bit my lip. This was the exact question I’d posed to Nick.
“Because the man they want me to help catch is dangerous, and he’s got a particular fascination with me. We’ve got uh… a history.” I swallowed. “And if I help catch him, they might let me come back. I could… I might be able to get my old life back. Go back to the way things were. Be a Peace Broker again. Be with my own kind.”
“Is that what you want?”
“Yes... I don’t know. Maybe?” I sighed.
Thomas took a moment to absorb this. “What do you mean the man they want you to help catch has a ‘particular interest in you’? What kind of history do you have with him?”
I felt my throat close up and tried to swallow past it. I’d never spoken to anyone about what had really happened between the Scarecrow and me. I’d never wanted to.
But I didn’t end up having a chance to answer, because just then the apartment building adjacent to ours exploded into a burst of flames, and Thomas and I sat stunned in our seats for a moment, watching as fire poured out of the windows and smoke billowed up into the still-dark sky.
It was so close that my hair lifted off my shoulders, my eyes squinting at the explosion. The sound it made seemed to shake the rooftop on which we sat, a blast that scraped across my ultra sensitive ears. My heartbeat jolted into overdrive, and I jumped to my feet.
Closing my eyes and focusing on my ears, I could hear screams coming from the inside of the burning structure, and the wave of fear that hit me from those trapped inside had me swaying back on my feet.
I went to leap over the edge of the rooftop, but a large hand caught mine, jerking me back on my heels, making me stumble.
“Aria,” Thomas said, knowing what I was going to do. “Don’t.” His hazel eyes stared up at me from where he sat, his usually blank and handsome face almost pleading. “Let the fire department come. It’s too dangerous.”
I swallowed, his concern over me touching my heart. “I have to go,” I told him, pulling my hand gently from his grasp. I looked back to the burning building. “Thomas, there are children inside.”
CHAPTER 4
I may be stronger, faster, and have better senses than a human, but I’m not fireproof, and the raging flames filled me with as much fear as they would any person. The only terror stronger, in fact, was that coming from the occupants inside the burning building. Their rush of emotions was so potent that it made my stomach flip to sense their auras, made my jaw clench against burning eyes.
The fire had erupted from the second story of a three-story apartment building, the people on the top floor in a terrible panic. I scaled the building right beside the one on fire, the heat of the flames making sweat bead instantly across my forehead, the billowing smoke forcing me to turn my face away and cough harshly. I pulled the hood of my jacket over my head and squinted my eyes against the irritant.
The training I’d received from the Peace Brokers before they’d banished me allowed me to clear my mind, to regulate my pulse, and to concentrate when most would want to panic.
Belatedly, the smoke alarms in the building began to blare, scraping across my sensitive ears and making my teeth grit in concentration. To my relief, I could sense the auras of those on the third floor, and all of them seemed to be making their way down to safety, not trapped after all.
Perhaps I wouldn’t have to go in.
Then, I heard it. The voice of what could only be a small child, a little cough wracking little lungs. My throat tightened, but I maintained my concentration, pinpointing the terrified and trapped pint-sized soul on the third floor of the burning building.
Taking one last deep breath of smokeless air, I sent up a silent prayer, and leapt onto the rooftop of the enflamed structure. I rolled when I landed, ending up in a crouched position, steady on my feet. It was instantly harder to breathe, the heat ten times more intense. The strengthening flames were lighting up the fading night, the smell of char filling the sky.
I shielded my eyes with my arm and moved toward where I sensed the girl’s aura, standing on the roof above where she must be. Leaning over the edge of the building, I saw a window only ten feet below, the sill of which was maybe six inches in width.
Swallowing, but not hesitating, I swung myself over the edge of the building, gripping the ledge and dropping lithely down to the thin windowsill below, crouching immediately to maintain my balance. Having accomplished this without falling to my death, I breathed a small sigh of relief, but reminded myself that had been the easy part.
The glass of the third-story window I was leaning against was already growing warm, the flames spreading the way flames do; with wild abandon. Knowing I had zero time to waste, I tried to push open the window, only to find it was locked. Because of course it was locked. A touch of panic swirled in me, but I bit down on the sensation, made a fist, and punched through the glass instead.
This shattered the window, making me curse at the torn and bleeding skin over my knuckles. I hardly felt the pain, though, for all the adrenaline running through me, and as I swung into the burning building, the heat became nearly suffocating.
Now, it was admittedly difficult to focus, and suddenly my respect for firemen grew immeasurably. Sam and I could joke about how I was a hero all we wanted, but the true heroes were the ordinary people who put their lives on the line on a daily basis to save strangers in these situations. I was scared out of my wits, and I’m not ashamed to admit it.
But there was a child’s life on the line, a child of no more than six or seven years old, judging by her aura, and scared or not, I couldn’t just leave her. I had to try.
My ears told me the fire trucks were only a couple of blocks away. My heart told me this was not close enough.
The floor was hot, the walls swelling, the room I’d swung into clouded with deadly smoke. The girl was in the room beside this one, crouched against the wall and too afraid to move.
I pulled my shirtfront up over my mouth and nose, got down and crossed the bedroom I’d entered crawling on my hands and knees. When I got to the door, I put a hand against it and found it hot. I took a breath, stood up, stepped back, and kicked the door open with all my might. It flew off its hinges and skidded out into the hall. With its removal, intense heat rushed into the room, the flames working their way up through the ceiling just below.
