by Smith, HD
I returned to my body. “Could you feel that?” I asked Sage. “When I pulled the power?”
“Yes.”
“Before the vines became visible?”
“I felt something, but I ignored it at first. Then, Cinnamon pissed you off.”
I nodded. “Okay, maybe next time a heads up before I start to show?”
A smirk of a smile formed on his lips. “Don’t want Harry—”
I held up my hand to stop him. I didn’t want to go there. “Just let me know, okay?”
He shrugged. “Why not?”
Turning back to Cinnamon, who was still in disappointed professor mode, I said, “Will you do it? Will you pretend to be Mab long enough for us to get the locket from Sage? I don’t think it will be as dangerous as you think. Faith already thinks we did something and she hasn’t gone running to Mab. If she knew it was you, she’d have already told. And if you truly sensed yourself, then we’ve already decided to do this.”
She pressed her lips together.
“If something comes of this, I’ll claim you were with me. There’s no way the big three will do anything without a committee vote and some type of proof you committed the act.”
Sage held up his hand. “It can’t be you, Claire. You’re not allowed.”
Confused, I asked, “What do you mean?”
“You can’t be the alibi or vote when the results affect you,” he said as if it were obvious.
“Affects me how?”
“An alibi from you would be like voting for my innocence,” Cinnamon said. “As my queen, my innocence affects the realm, so you can’t vote.”
“That’s crazy. What if it weren’t a lie?” I asked.
They both shrugged.
I ignored that complication and focused on the task at hand. “I’ll snap a line to Sage, then we’ll slide along it until we find the point he handed off the locket. Don’t bring your bodies forward until we know what our plan is. Sage, you aren’t bringing yours forward at all, just stay in the in-between.”
He pressed his lips into a hard line, but agreed. “Fine.”
Cinnamon nodded.
I closed my eyes and we all jumped fully into the in-between.
Chapter 32
Based on the information Sage had shown us, I knew that Faith had been at the same location with him. Trying something I’d never thought to do before, I also snapped a line to Faith, which was harder, but I managed.
“Interesting approach,” Cinnamon mused, her academic voice still showing.
Finding the point in the past where they collided didn’t take long, but I suspected it was because I knew these two lines did connect at some point. I stopped the rewind just after Faith’s line crossed with Sage.
The other Sage was in Underworld, waiting at the mouth of a darkened alley. His injured hand was tucked behind him as he waited.
“How is this going to work?” Sage asked.
“Cinnamon will step into the alley at the same time Mab arrived in your memory,” I said.
“Okay,” Sage said, “So, Cinnamon as Mab scares off Faith, then what?”
“Cinnamon takes the locket and you’re taken to the fight club.” This was the part I hadn’t wanted to mention, but he was about to find out anyway. “The promoter said Thanos brought you in. I don’t know why or how. Or why you don’t remember, but if Thanos doesn’t show, then—”
“Hell no, we aren’t delivering me to the pit,” Sage said, crossing his arms over his chest and shaking his head.
“Let’s just get the locket first and then figure out what might have happened—if Thanos doesn’t show up.”
Sage started to argue.
I held up my hand to stop him. “One incredibly fucked up problem at a time, please. We can’t change it, so deal.”
Cinnamon looked pensive. “And if Thanos comes while I’m still there?”
“Just tell him to complete his task, then slip back to us.”
Sage’s body tensed, as if he would argue his point one more time.
“We can’t save you from your fate,” I warned. “If Thanos doesn’t come, Cinnamon will deliver you to the fight club as Thanos.”
“Why?” he growled.
I threw up my hands. “Why don’t we just go back and stop you from killing Sorrel? Stop you from gaining his power? Or maybe we go back and stop me from reawakening the fourth realm all together? Or maybe we go back and stop you from killing Junior … oh, wait a minute, I’ve already tried that one,” I yelled. “What has happened must happen. This is why I didn’t tell you guys about slipping through time before. It’s dangerous and can cause all sorts of problems if you fuck with it too much.”
Sage wasn’t happy, but he shrugged as if he finally saw my point. He had to be at the fight club where Mace and I found him or the ramifications could be catastrophic.
“There’s Faith,” Cinnamon said.
Faith was in her signature look from Mab’s castle, lean legs sheathed in fitted black leather pants with a tight body-hugging white t-shirt, leather jacket, and kick-ass riding boots. Or as Sage described her, the smokin’ hot babe with small boobs.
“Okay, you—” I said, but Cinnamon was already gone. “She’s really way too good at all this.”
Sage nodded. “Yeah, try being measured by that every time we got a new tutor.”
Faith stepped forward just as Cinnamon as Mab stepped from the shadows. Faith fled.
Mab and alternate-Sage spoke. We watched as she took the locket, then slammed Sage into the wall to knock him unconscious.
“What the hell did she do that for?” he asked, rubbing the back of his head as if there might still be a phantom knot.
Thanos stepped out of the shadows a moment later. Mab said something and then disappeared. I jumped when Cinnamon reappeared in the in-between with us still looking like Mab.
“Turn it off,” I said.
She snapped her fingers and returned to her normal look. “I’m never doing that again. I’m not convinced he believed me.”
“He’s taking my body away,” Sage muttered.
Thanos threw Sage over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry, then walked back into the shadows.
I slipped us back to the apartment.
Sage was still ill-tempered about the events in the alley. “Did you have to hit me?” he asked.
“Yes,” Cinnamon said. “I sensed Thanos almost immediately and something about your expression made me think you didn’t believe I was Mab, which is when you sensed me, and that’s exactly how it happened before.”
“We didn’t see Mab hit me,” he argued.
“Right, because you were unconscious.”
“Look, we have the locket now,” I said. “It’s over. Let’s move on.”
Cinnamon studied the locket before tossing it to me. “It looks like a pendant, not a locket, and there’s no obvious way to open it.”
“What did you say to Thanos?” I asked as I turned the necklace over in my hand to check it from all sides.
“He said, ‘Mother, you look well.’ I said to him, ‘Be a dear and take out the trash.’”
Sage muttered something under his breath that sounded like a whiney, high-pitched, mocking, “Take out the trash.”
Looking up from the locket, I lowered my brows. “Was he surprised that you were there?”
“I don’t know. He didn’t show it if he was,” Cinnamon said.
Sage plucked the pendant from my hand. “Let me.”
I considered the angles. “Could Gizelle have sent Thanos there? Or maybe he was following Faith?”
Cinnamon shrugged.
“I’ve got it,” Sage said. “You have to hold the black filigree and give it a quarter-turn while pushing down. But it’s empty.”
“How did you open it?” I asked.
“Locks are my thing,” he said. “That and the legal system.”
“Your thing?”
Cinnamon laughed. “Really, Claire, I don’t know why you’r
e so surprised. You hardly know us.”
I wanted to correct her and say I hardly knew the normal, everyday, behind-closed-doors Cinnamon. I was very familiar with the public, high-profile bitchy Cinnamon, but I let it go.
I held out my hand for the locket. “Let me see it. There’s no way it’s empty.” Sage handed it back to me. I closed the pendant and attempted to reopen it.
“That’s the wrong way,” Sage said, reaching for it.
At the same time, I heard a click and the chamber slid open the other way—and this one wasn’t empty.
Chapter 33
The empty locket was no longer empty. A single drop of the Silver Sea rolled around in its cavity like liquid mercury.
Cinnamon and Sage both stepped away from it.
“Close it, please,” Cinnamon pleaded. “That shouldn’t be possible.”
“No one can touch the Silver Sea,” Sage added. “That’s not natural. That’s a binding oath, the proverbial pound of flesh. Put it away.”
I studied the tiny ball of silver as it danced along the bottom of the mini-well. It looked innocent enough, but could it really be as dangerous as they thought?
The Keepers accused me of touching the Silver Sea. Maybe that was why the liquid didn’t appear to affect me: it felt inert to me. Sage and Cinnamon relaxed when I clicked the locket shut.
Sage had called the locket the Heart of Fallen, but where had he heard that? I asked, looking at Cinnamon. She shrugged, but Sage answered.
“X mentioned it. He acted as though it was some key to the realm or his true power. I don’t know. I wasn’t myself. His spell was taking hold and why he wanted it didn’t matter to me.”
Faith could have wanted the locket because her inside man told her what X said or she may have just wanted to keep it from him. If what Cinnamon said about X was true, perhaps the locket would help him reconnect to his true self. But how did the frozen room fit in to all of this?
“Are you expecting us to know the answers?” Sage asked. “And what frozen room are you talking about?”
I closed my eyes and pinched the bridge of my nose. I was so tired I’d stopped shielding myself. “There’s a door in the in-between room that leads to a frozen party.”
“There was a party in the Tardis?” Cinnamon asked. I opened my mouth to protest, but Cinnamon continued. “Who was at the party?”
“I can tell you who wasn’t there: Ronin and his father.”
Cinnamon’s brow furrowed. “How is that connected to the locket?”
Deciding it was best to lay all the cards on the table, I thought of Kane, Tarik, and the Prince of Time. I mentally filled them in on my theories and what I knew.
“No way,” Sage said. “Mab’s ex-bounty hunter is the Prince of Time?”
“Perhaps X is the lost son?” Cinnamon mused.
“Stop! I don’t know. I’m just speculating. You know, thinking things through in my head. I hadn’t planned to share and you shouldn’t have been listening.” Cinnamon didn’t look ashamed. Of course, she was ruthless and any source of information was probably fair game. Sighing, I said, “If Tarik is the one that flies and controls time and X is the one that walks the Earth, Callum could be the one that sees through all mirrors. The drop of Silver Sea in the locket could be a portable way to connect all the parts. I don’t know. It was just a thought.”
“Which one is Tarik again?” Sage asked.
“The dragon, fire-breathing kind, and the Time King.”
“Right, so what do we do now?” Sage asked.
“I’m going to go talk to Ronin. I need him to convince X that the meeting needs to happen at the Lux hotel. Especially since that’s where we told Faith to meet us.”
“Why the Lux?” Sage asked.
“Because that’s where Gizelle thinks I’ll try to kill Thanos.” Sage continued to stare as if he expected more of an explanation. “It’s as good a place as any.”
“How will you contact Ronin?” Cinnamon asked.
“He can sense my presence.”
“And?”
“Then he can step into the in-between,” I said, mentally showing her the other times Ronin had done that.
“Does he know about the frozen party?” she asked.
“No, I don’t think he realizes how it works. I don’t think he knows it’s a pocket of time that he’s stepping into.”
“Indeed.”
“Just wait here,” I said. “I won’t be long.”
I closed my eyes and snapped a line to Ronin’s location. He was in the room with Sydney, Mace, and Sorrel. Mace’s face was a bloody and bruised mess. Sorrel didn’t look much better, but he’d only been knocked around, not beaten. Mace was barely conscious.
Sydney was awake and no worse for wear. She was still in the cage, but I thought that was overkill at this point.
Ronin’s eyes looked my way as my presence materialized in the room.
“Sorrel,” I called, but he couldn’t hear me.
Ronin disappeared and reappeared in the in-between. He pointed at Mace. “What the hell did he do to me?”
“What the hell did you do to him?” I shot back.
“When he tackled me before. He did something to me.”
“Yeah, he removed X’s compulsion on you to tell the truth—you’re welcome.”
Ronin blew out a long breath. “How was he able to do it?”
“It’s complicated. In case you haven’t noticed, the five of us, me and the quads, are now linked. When X touched me he tried to spell me into telling the truth. My magic reversed it, so now I can give the cure and so can the quads.” I glanced at Mace. “Why was he beaten?”
Ronin shrugged. “X ordered it and your boy attacked me. He was taught a lesson. Do you have the Dragon?”
I was pissed that they’d hurt Mace—the irony wasn’t lost on me—but I couldn’t worry about that now. “I’ll have the Dragon soon, but I need the meeting to be at the Lux, not here. Can you convince X to meet me there?”
Ronin thought for a minute, then nodded. “I’ll think of something.”
“Okay, just make sure he brings the boys and Sydney. I don’t want to do this all again piecemeal. Come tomorrow at 2:30 PM.”
Ronin nodded.
I opened my eyes and returned to the apartment. Sage was leaned against the back of the couch, but Cinnamon wasn’t in the living room. I reached out with my senses, but didn’t find her.
“Where’s Cinnamon?” I asked.
“She had some errands to run. She said to call her when you need her.”
“What? She should have waited until I returned?”
Sage shrugged. “Can I go, too?”
“If you wanted to go so badly, then why are you still here?”
He closed his mouth, tightening his jaw. I sensed that he was embarrassed.
“You couldn’t get past the wards around the apartment?”
“In my defense, Cinnamon created them,” he said.
“Right,” I drawled, dropping the wards. “You must both return by noon tomorrow. Tell Cinnamon.”
He was about to argue, but changed his demeanor when I raised an eyebrow at him. I could reactivate the wards and he knew it. “Yes, my queen,” he said. Then, he disappeared.
I went to my office and pulled out my phone. I probably shouldn’t have let Sage leave, but I was too tired to fight with him and I wanted a break. I had had too much time lately with the quads, first all four and then just Cinnamon and Sage. Some alone time was just what I needed. I dialed Ronin’s number. It was time to set up my date with X. He answered on the third ring.
“I need to speak to your boss,” I said as if talking to a lackey.
He grunted and passed the phone to X.
“X here.”
“I’ve arranged for the Dragon to meet me at the Lux tomorrow at 2:30 PM. If you want her, then I need you to meet us there with the girl and my boys. Are these terms acceptable?”
I heard muffled static and decided that he must h
ave pulled the phone away from his ear. Was he asking Ronin now? The rustling sounded again and he came back. “Why can’t you bring her here?”
“I’m setting a trap for her at the Lux. We can conclude our business there. You’ll get the Dragon and I’ll get Sydney and the boys.”
I heard him pull the phone away from his ear again. This time, the muffled voices were louder. Was he arguing with Ronin? Would he suspect that Ronin was no longer under his influence? After a minute, he returned to the line.
“I’ll accept the change of venue, but I request that all the players be in attendance.”
What the hell was he talking about? Did he mean Cinnamon and Sage? “Who else do you mean?”
“The Dragon—and she better have that locket,” he warned. “Cinnamon, Sage, you, of course, and Mab.”
“Mab?” I barked. “Are you crazy? Do you know what she’ll do if I summon her?”
He laughed. “Those are my terms. You’ll agree to bring the Winter Queen or I’ll kill one of your boys before we conclude this call.”
“Are you trying to die? Mab doesn’t exactly play fair. She’ll—”
“I’m sure you can make it worth her while. Do you accept my terms?”
“Only fools would willingly seek an audience with Mab, but I’ll let her know you request her presence,” I said.
“If you can’t get Mab, you’ll have to bring the Dragon to me. You have your options. If you aren’t at the warehouse by 2:00 PM, I’ll assume you have arranged for everyone to attend the party at the Lux.” He paused. In a cold voice that reminded me of The Boss when he was angry, X said, “And if you double-cross me, I’ll kill the girl.” He hung up without giving me a chance to respond.
“Shit,” I yelled at the room. “How the hell am I going to get Mab to the party?”
“You could just invite her, my queen.”
I whipped my head around. The blacksmith was standing in the doorway to my office. I’d forgotten to reactivate the wards after Sage left. “What the hell are you doing here?”
She smiled. “I only do what is necessary to preserve the Fallen realm, my queen.”
