Not Your Ordinary Faerie Tale

by Christine Warren

  “Seoc,” he growled.

  Mab sent him a frosty look. “We dislike such hasty assumptions, Lucifer, son of Annwn. It becomes you ill to think so poorly of others.”

  He murmured an apology but noticed that her scolding offered nothing like a denial of the charge. He also noticed he’d annoyed her enough that she reverted to her royal we.His hands clenched at his sides.

  Fergus warned him with a glance and shifted forward to draw the Queen’s attention. “Youth often is accompanied by a certain rashness, Your Majesty. It’s not surprising that a young Fae looking for adventure might decide to visit Ithiron a whim, but I’m certain there would be no danger. The Others know it would be folly to cause any harm or distress to a member of your court.”

  What the Others knew and what they would feel justified in doing, Luc reflected, might be two very different things. While the Fae had abandoned the mortal realm centuries ago, some supernatural races had stayed behind to live secretly among the humans, calling themselves the Others. Immortals such as the vampires and non-humans like the werefolk still roamed throughout the human world, keeping their identities carefully guarded secrets. Their ruling body, the Council of Others, still kept in contact with the Fae court and would have every right to dislike the thought of an unauthorized Fae visitor wandering about and causing trouble.

  “Of course they know it is folly,” Mab snapped. “Not even a demon would be so foolish. But there are other reasons to desire my nephew’s swift return home. In our position, we must think of more than life and death at times. There is diplomacy to consider, both between our court and the Others’ Council and within the court itself.”

  It was the use of my nephewthat sealed it for Luc. Despite the dozens of such relatives Mab could claim, the implication of troublemaking and possible diplomatic incidents pointed at only one of the many suspects—Seoc nic Saoirse, son of the Queen’s deceased youngest sister. Even though his gut had told Luc that Seoc was the source of whatever trouble the Queen had detected in Ithir, there had remained the slim possibility that the other budding troublemaker at court could have been responsible. Fiona might be young, a veritable teenager in Fae terms, but she was showing a gift for mischief even Seoc could not outdo. Thankfully, she seemed to have a brighter head on her shoulders than her cousin, so Luc had moved her down the list in terms of likely culprits. The list of two. Which left him with only one name.

  Seoc.

  Some days he hated being right.

  “What has Seoc done?”

  Mab pursed her lips, but she could hardly dress him down for drawing the correct conclusion. “As we said, we have reason to believe he has chosen to take himself into Ithirwithout our knowledge or approval. While boys will be boys and all young men deserve the chance to sow some wild oats, as the mortals term it, we fear Seoc might have stepped a hair over the line. We think he may have been…indiscreet.”

  Since he could think of no response that would not sink him even lower in the Queen’s favor, Luc kept his mouth shut. Of course Seoc had been indiscreet. Indiscreet was his middle name. One of his middle names. Along with reckless, foolish, idiotic, and generally irritating.

  “I am sure any small ripples in the Other community can be smoothed over, my Queen,” Fergus said, his tone deliberately even and reasonable. All the things Luc couldn’t quite manage at that point. “It is hardly the first time one of our people has had a run-in with one of theirs.”

  “If only my concern was for something so inconsequential, Fergus. But I fear there is more to it.” The Queen paused, her stormy green eyes locking on a point somewhere just to the left of Luc’s temple, as if he were unworthy of her gaze. “Unfortunately, it seems that our dear Seoc has not confined his associations to the Other-folk in Ithir, but has allowed his presence to be noted by the mortals as well.”

  Concealing his intense un-surprise, Luc acknowledged the disclosure with an impassive stare and an internal oath. Part of him had still held out some hope that Seoc might have used what little brainpower he possessed to keep himself confined in the Other society of Ithir. He’d known it was an unfounded hope—he’d never seen any evidence that Seoc possessed a functioning brain to begin with—but it had been deep and instinctive. The man should have known the risks of being seen by humans while the Others remained hidden among them. Whether or not to reveal their presence to humans had been a subject of intense debate among the Others for decades now, intense enough to threaten to erupt into serious political infighting from time to time; but it ultimately belonged to their Council to decide. And the Council would not like the threat of having their hand forced by sightings of a “fairy” in central Manhattan.

  Luc knew better than to express disbelief or condemnation for the royal nephew’s actions. Only the Queen was allowed to speak ill of the worthless dung beetle, even though it had become a larger and larger part of Luc’s job recently to drag the fool back home with his tail between his legs. Such was life at court and service in the Queen’s Guard.

  “Seoc means no harm, I am certain,” Mab proclaimed, lifting her chin and firming her lips the way she always did when she said something she knew to be not entirely accurate. “But our nephew must learn that his antics reflect on more than himself. Even our indulgence cannot shield him forever from the consequences of his actions. Especially not as we must begin to think of the matter of our succession.”

  Luc felt his eyebrows climb toward his hairline, but he kept his mouth shut. If Mab had any intention of naming Seoc the heir to her throne, he’d eat his own sword. Sure, as her nephew he had as great a claim to the title as any number of other relatives, but Luc doubted the Queen intended to turn her throne over to a complete imbecile.

  Actually, Luc doubted she planned to turn her throne over to anyone short of her own death, and given the immortal life span of the Fae, that should occur sometime after the Fifth of Never. Unless, of course, she were to be killed, but it was Luc’s job to ensure that that didn’t happen. He took his job very seriously.

  Even if sometimes he wanted to kill her himself.

  Like now.

  “In Faerie we can keep his mischief contained,” the Queen continued, “but we have no such control in Ithir. The human world chooses not to bow to our authority, and therefore is a place too treacherous to allow him free rein. And so we must ask our Guard to go after our nephew and return him to court. His presence begins to disturb the flow of human reality, and the Others have sent word they are anxious to have him gone.”

  Too bad no one but the Queen is anxious to have him back,Luc thought.

  “Can they not return him themselves?” Fergus suggested. “The Others may not have our powers, but they are not without resources.”

  “The Others may be superior to the mortals they live among, but they can hardly be considered our equals, my Fergus.” The Queen shook her head. “Seoc could elude them forever if he so chose. While they know of his presence in their realm, we do not think they have learned the extent of his indiscretion, which is fortunate for us. The Others still harbor a great fear of their secret being revealed to the mortal world. They believe the humans are not ready to acknowledge the truth of their existence, and we must agree on that point. The inability of mortals to accept the magic before them is the reason we abandoned their realm so many years ago. It is doubtful they have progressed so far in the time since. No, it must be a Fae to catch a Fae.”

  Luc fought the urge to roll his shoulders against the growing tension, caused almost entirely by irritation. “I understand, Your Majesty. I will find Seoc and return him to you with all speed, and the mortals will be none the wiser.”

  “I’ll go,” Fergus said, turning to Luc. “It’s a simple enough task. There’s no reason for you to do it yourself. You’ve duties here. You keep the Guard running, and I’ll go fetch Seoc.”

  “Believe me, I’d like nothing more,” Luc said with regret, “but it will be faster if I go. I’ve gone after him before. I know more of his habits
. And the quicker he returns, the better for everyone. I’ll leave immediately.” He nodded to the Queen. “With your permission.”

  “You have it.” The Queen shifted to smile at Fergus, lifting a bejeweled hand to his face. “I could not spare you, my Fergus. Someone must stay and see to us here at court.

  “This task I have set you to is important for many reasons.” She addressed Luc more seriously. “More than my nephew’s safety is at stake here. If the existence of the Others becomes common knowledge to the mortals, it will not be long before they find their way to even our realm. You must not allow this to happen.”

  Luc set his jaw and nodded once, curtly. “I understand,” he repeated. “I will do all in my power and use all resources at hand, my lady.”

  Mab reached up, her cool, pale fingers cupping his stubble-roughened face, and the smile she gave him reminded him why human and Fae alike still wrote odes to her beauty, even after so many endless centuries.

  “If you do all in your power, my Lucifer, then I know well you cannot fail me.” Leaning up, she brushed a kiss against his cheek and stepped back, raising her hands before her and waving them in an intricate pattern that dripped trails of light from her fingertips. As the guardsmen watched, the light wove itself together into a shimmering doorway, expanding until it was large enough to accommodate even Luc’s height.

  Blowing out a deep breath, Luc stepped forward into the Faerie door and felt the warmth of the Queen’s magic surround him. As reality bent and reshaped itself, her voice reached him on a silver whisper. “Go safely, my Lucifer, and may what you find to please you, ever be yours.”

  TWO

  A woman could only take so much, Corinne D’Alessandro decided as she looked down at the assignment sheet her editor had just handed to her. In the past year or so, she’d taken a lot: learning about the existence of vampires, watching her best friend become a vampire; learning about the existence of werewolves, watching her other best friend marry a werewolf. All in all, an eventful few months had just passed. Corinne figured it was a testament to her inner strength and resilience that she’d taken all this news without ending up in a padded room at Bellevue, contemplating her navel and holding conversations with her big toes.

  But this, she thought, staring at the black print on the page before her, this just might be the last straw.

  “Elves,” she said with admirable calm.

  “Well, maybe pixies. Reports vary.”

  Corinne couldn’t decide if she wanted to run screaming from the office, past her curious colleagues and out onto the streets of Manhattan, or if she wanted to bang her head against the wall a few times before she buried it in her hands and whimpered. What in God’s name had she done to deserve this? What sin could she possibly have committed that would justify this sort of vengeance from an angry deity? Was it the premarital-sex thing? Because a lifetime of Catholicism aside, she’d long ago come to the conclusion that Jesus had better things to worry about than her active social life. So how in the name of all that was holy had hell found a way to drag her into the fiery pit of fucktardedness that was the only way to describe being caught between her job’s rock and the hard place of her unspoken promise to keep the Others’ secret?

  To say nothing of her very firm desire to keep herself from looking like a flaming lunatic to everyday outside observers.

  A bluff. Maybe she could bluff. After all, no one knew that she knew what she knew, so maybe she could just pretend not to know.

  Struggling to appear the way she would have just six months earlier, Corinne pushed her chair back from her paper-strewn desk and summoned up a baleful stare for her editor’s benefit. “Elf or pixie, it doesn’t matter, Hank. I can tell you right now that I don’t need to do an investigation. Because mythical creatures don’t exist,” she lied, practically biting her own tongue. “That’s why they call them myths.”

  Hank Buckley shifted the toothpick he was chewing from one side of his mouth to the other and shrugged. “People say UFOs are a myth, too, and I got a whole file cabinet full of statements from people who’ve seen ’em.”

  Corinne felt herself blanch and hoped like hell that Hank, with the typical male’s lack of perception, wouldn’t notice. Christ on a cracker, she’d barely gotten over finding out about the Others; if she had to start believing aliens were real, too, she was finished. She’d stab herself in the heart with a blue pencil, just see if she didn’t.

  “The difference between UFOs and elves is that we don’t know what’s out there in the rest of the universe. We know what’s here on earth,” she argued, thinking at least that much was true. She, for instance, knew more about what was on earth than she’d ever wanted to. “I think if there were elves running around the globe, someone would have stumbled over one before now. The only file you should put this in is the circular file. The one the janitors empty out every evening.”

  Hank shook his head. “No can do, toots. This one’s hot. Even the TV stations are starting to pick it up. Don’t want us to get left in the dust.”

  Creamed Christ on toast. The TV stations? The Others whom Corinne had gotten to know recently weren’t going to like that one bit. Her friends’ husbands, Dmitri Vidâme and Graham Winters, had impressed upon her from the very beginning the importance of keeping the existence of the Others a secret. Given the many pitchfork-, wooden-stake-, funeral-pyre-, and silver-bullet-wielding examples dotting human history when it came to supernatural creatures, Corinne couldn’t say she blamed them. If she were a werewolf, she doubted she’d want anyone to know, either. Misha and Graham had told her the Others worked pretty damned hard to stay under the radar of their human neighbors, but if the TV stations started reporting on a story about elf sightings in Manhattan, secrecy would go right out a thirty-story window.

  Provided, of course, that the thing being sighted was actually an elf, and Corinne had no idea if elves existed in the Others community. At the moment, she’d have preferred it if she didn’t know about the Other community, period.

  Her head began to pound and she wished for once that she was the sort of hard-bitten, steely-eyed reporter from an old film noir. She could use a bottle of bourbon in her bottom desk drawer right about now.

  “C’mon, D,” Hank cajoled, taking her silence for continued protest, which she supposed it sort of was. “You’ll want to get on this before some other print outlet beats you to it. You want this going under someone else’s byline?”

  Corinne wished, she really wished, she could just tell Hank to go to hell and take his damned story lead with him, but there were two obstacles standing in her way. First, she needed her job. The New York Chroniclemight not have been a Pulitzer-winning operation, but it paid steadily and it had hired Corinne when all the more respectable papers in town had told her she lacked experience, didn’t have the right connections, and wrote with a shade too much dramatic flair. Even the Daily Newshad suggested she ought to go into fiction. The Chroniclehad told her to use spell-check and to start in the morning. She had. Seven years ago.

  The second obstacle had to do with the most misguided sense of loyalty a woman could possibly experience. A part of her wished—a really, really big part with a very fervent wish—that she could just turn her back on the Others and let them cover their own damned asses. After all, it was no skin off her butt if the Others made the front page. She was human. No one would be coming after her with a sharpened stick or a silver bullet. She could go on her merry little way with no interference and the added bonus of not having to keep a secret bigger than anything the CIA might have tucked up in the attic. She’d be footloose and fancy free.

  But three of her closest friends would not.

  That was where her rebellious little fantasy hit a brick wall. Corinne might not be bothered by the world discovering the existence of the Others, but Reggie certainly would. Not only had Regina McNeill, one of Corinne’s closest friends, married a vampire earlier that year, she’d let him turn her into one herself. Somehow Corinne didn’t
think the folks with the crucifixes and stakes would make much of a distinction between Misha, who’d been a vampire for around a thousand years, and Reggie, who hadn’t even been one for that many days. Bloodsuckers, Corinne was guessing, would be bloodsuckers as far as they were concerned.

  And would Missy or Danice really fare any better? They might both still be human, but each of them had married a man who wasn’t. Missy Roper Winters, kindergarten teacher, had married a frickin’ werewolf, for God’s sake. The chief werewolf in the city. She had a little baby werewolf bun in her oven right this minute. And as for Danice…hell, Danice was still off somewhere on her honeymoon with a half-human, half-Faerie private investigator. Would anyone care that the two woman had stayed human, or would they be tarred and feathered like Union sympathizers in 1863 Atlanta? Either way, was Corinne willing to take that risk?

  Of course, if she wasn’t, what the hell was she supposed to do about it?

  “I’d like it under someone else’s zip code,” Corinne said as she reached up to rub her temple in ineffectively soothing circles. “Besides, what does it matter if someone else gets it? It’s a non-story. It’s fiction. And it’s not like we’re scooping the Timeson a regular basis here.”

  “Maybe not, but we gotta give it a shot, right? Prove we’re not some sort of fly-by-night tabloid operation.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “And doing a story the worst rag in print would think twice about running is supposed to boost our credibility factor? What’d they put in your coffee this morning? ’Cause you’re seriously high.”

  “Only on the excitement of actually talking to you, instead of sending yet another email for you to ignore, sweetie. It’s the kind of thing that goes to my head.”

  “Your sarcasm fails to make me laugh. As does this stupid-ass story. What are you thinking?” Reason didn’t appear to be swaying her boss, so maybe it was time to pull out a little righteous indignation. She waved the note he’d handed her under his bulbous nose and upped her stare to a glare. “I’m a reporter, not a sci-fi novelist, and I’m supposed to do a story on elf sightings in Manhattan? For a Christmas season spoof, I might just down enough rum-spiked eggnog to play along, but it’s August, Hank! You don’t even have the Macy’s parade and Salvation Army Santas on every corner to tie in to. You’re a freak.”