“How can I help?” Mike asked.
She smiled, hoping her gratefulness showed in her eyes. “You’re already helping.”
Mike bit his lip, gestured at the book in her hands. “That’s not enough. Come on, Ella. You can’t keep me in the dark forever.”
“I just don’t want you getting in more danger than you already are.”
“Nonsense. You can’t protect me.” He gave a strained little smile. “I know you want to protect everyone around you, but you can’t. Hell, my neighbor is an elf.”
Ella looked away. “Sorry for messing up your life,” she said.
Reaching over, he squeezed her shoulder. He looked so young. Then again, so did Finn, and when had age ever mattered in these things? A war was coming.
“Listen in,” she said, “as you always do. Listen for anything about Guardians, Duergar or dwarves, Dark elves, the Gates and John Grey.”
“Sure.” He seemed pleased.
“Be extra careful. The Shades broke through the wards, disregarded the charms. This is getting out of hand.”
“I’ve got a gun. Scott bought it for me. Even taught me how to use it.”
She blinked. “I thought you said—”
“I’m against violence. But I’m against dying out of stupidity, too. After the dragon... Let’s just say it put a new perspective on things.”
She laughed outright. “Glad to hear it. And remember your promise.”
“Not telling anyone about Finn. Got it. One last thing,” Mike said. “Why don’t you leave the book with me for a few hours? I’ll go through it, see if there’s anything that rings a bell from all the Shade babble I hear all day. What do you say?”
She hesitated. “I think whoever broke into the apartment today might have been looking for it. You could be putting yourself into more danger. And we can’t let anyone take it before we know what’s so important about it.”
“And what are you going to do? Stay home and guard it all day or carry it around with you as you fight Shades and whatever else comes through the Gates?”
Again he was right. And on cue, a beep came from her phone, signaling an emergency call. Dave. “All right. Thanks. And be careful!”
Parting with the book was strangely hard. It was her last link to Simon, the Simon she’d thought she knew, and it had become a talisman of sorts. With a sigh, she gave it back to Mike and turned to go, phone in hand.
“Hey, Ella.” Mike cleared his throat. “What is it like?”
She turned. “What?”
“Being with an elf, of course.” Mike winked. “Is he well... endowed?”
She gaped at him.
“Is the ear shape any indication for any other attributes? An extra tail?” He waggled his brows.
Her face was on fire. She patted a cheek to put out the flames. “I don’t know, okay? We don’t... We’re just partners.”
“Keep telling yourself that, girl. You just might believe it.”
She did her best not to run from Mike’s apartment, forcing her gait to be slow and steady, his laughter echoing in her ears, and her damn phone still ringing.
***
Shades had been sighted in a warehouse near the docks. At least, that’s what Ella understood from the terse message Dave had left on her voicemail. A sighting, he said. Helpful and informative as ever.
The wipers swished, clearing the snow from the windscreen. Finn sat shotgun, checking his gun, while she drove through the midday traffic. Armed military trucks rolled by, their passage sending vibrations through the car windows and chills through her.
It was happening. Her world was preparing for an invasion.
Finn holstered his gun, the labels in the seam of his t-shirt catching the light. She’d insisted he wear his clothes inside out, like herself, for protection from the Shades. Not that she had any proof this method worked anymore, but it didn’t hurt to try.
Finn reached into the duffel bag at his feet, drawing out a throwing knife. They had brought half the weaponry with them — shuriken, knives, guns, even a sort of short bullwhip. She had to wonder where Finn had found it, if he’d nicked it from the weaponry when Jeff hadn’t been looking. Finn coiled it around his arm, tucking the handle in his sleeve.
“Mike knows what you are,” she said, forcing her eyes back to the road and the changing traffic lights.
Silence greeted her words. She chanced a look and found him staring straight ahead, brows knit. “Mike likes you.” She swallowed. “Promise me you won’t hurt him. He’ll keep the secret, I vouch for him.”
He gestured at the road, and she swerved right to avoid hitting a parked car. Heart pounding, she pressed her lips together and focused on driving to the warehouse without trashing the car.
No promise from Finn not to harm Mike. Damn.
The door to the warehouse stood ajar and a cold breeze whistled through. Snow swirled in the air, thin, dainty flakes, and she shivered, zipping up her jacket.
“I know this place,” Finn muttered.
“Oh? Been around here before?” Raising her gun, she prepared to enter, but Finn was faster and shoved past her.
Presumptuous. She growled, pushing after him. She didn’t need a man — or an elf — to fight her battles for her and—
She froze a few steps behind Finn, gun still raised. What the fucking hell? Striding past Finn, she approached the things, for lack of better word, that lay in a heap in the middle of the warehouse. Her feet kept moving, bringing her closer to what looked like creatures from a nightmare. Dead? The black liquid pooling around the scaled body probably meant yes, but one could never be too careful.
She circled it, trying to control her panicked breathing, taking in curved horns, fish-like scales and heads — many heads. “What the hell are these things?” A huge snake-like trunk, thick as a sewage pipe and as long, was cut clean through, leaving a bloody stump.
Finn clicked the safety on his gun and holstered it. He seemed to think the things were dead. “Snake,” he said, turning in a circle, as if expecting someone to walk inside.
Her skin crawling, Ella did the same. But the warehouse was empty, only a baseball cap and a duffel bag abandoned on the floor indicating the workers must have fled. And she couldn’t blame them. No disturbance in the air to warn of a Gate opening. Quiet. “One snake? Many heads?”
Finn nodded, stepping around the, well, snake, studying the cut. “No wings,” he noted, as if that made any sense.
Or did it? Hadn’t he mentioned flying snakes once? “These things fly across the sky?” All her hairs stood on end. “Remind me never to visit your world.”
Finn glanced over at her, looking uncertain, but then a smile twitched a corner of his mouth.
Heh. A Finn smile. Score.
“Okay, so this thing,” she refused to think of it as a snake, “came through a Gate. But a part is missing.”
“Half.”
“Half of it is missing. This is why the Boreals sent first the animals through, you said. To test. But...” She holstered her gun and rubbed her hands up and down her arms. “The wolves passed. The dragon passed. Hell, you passed. Why does the Gate sometimes work fine and sometimes doesn’t?”
He glared at her until she sighed.
“Right, you don’t know. Well, at least we know the Gates aren’t stable yet, which means the elves won’t be crossing today. Hopefully.” She flipped her phone open, called Dave. “Hey, it’s Ella. False alarm, no Shades. We do have half a flying snake, though, apparently.”
“What?” Dave said, not sounding amused.
Well, neither was she. “What I said. Gate seems to have malfunctioned, cutting it in half. Better call the technicians to set up a quarantine zone and examine it.”
“I know my job,” Dave snapped. “We need to talk. Did you see the printout?”
“I did.” Briefly, and in the mess that followed she’d forgotten all about it. She patted it in her pocket. Lots of reading waiting for her: the printout, the book... “Can’t
say it rings any bells.”
Something clattered in the background, and Dave cursed. “No matter. We could do a hypnosis session, see if it digs up any memories.”
“Why so interested in my supposed abilities?” Finn was frowning at her, and she shrugged. “So I was seeing things as a kid. Probably Shades and—”
“You were seeing more than Shades.”
“I was a kid, Dave. I was probably making most of that up.”
“Ella, we think... I think.” He coughed. “You may be able to find John Grey.”
“Come again?” She scuffed her shoe on the concrete and looked at Finn who had folded his arms across his chest and waited, obviously listening in the conversation. Lurker.
“It’s possible you can See more than a voyant can; more than the Shades and the creatures of the Veil. That you can See behind the Veil, into Aelfheim.”
Ella drew the phone away from her ear and gave it a suspicious look. Was it malfunctioning? Her heart started to pound. She brought it to her ear again. “I don’t think the notes say anything like that.”
“Just read the damn printout,” Dave said. “We’ll talk.”
Chapter Four
Silence
Mike intercepted them before they reached the apartment door. He’d been lounging in the corridor, dressed in jogging pants and a t-shirt. He’d gone running, and sweat stuck the cloth to his chest. He looked good, short dark hair slicked back.
Not as good as Finn, though.
And yeah, time to throttle this sort of thoughts and concentrate on what was important. Like why Dave thought she had any clue where to find John Grey, and why Mike was waiting for them.
“Hey.” Mike’s grin was strained, showing too many teeth. “Hey, Finn, my man.” He waved.
Finn glowered.
“He won’t bite you,” Ella told Mike and that seemed to make him even more jumpy. “For heaven’s sake, nothing has changed since we last talked. He’s still Finn.”
That seemed to do the trick. Mike lost the scary grin and nodded. “You said to tell you if I heard anything interesting.”
“Spill.”
“I heard...” He glanced at Finn, then down. “Nothing.”
Ella blinked. “Mike, you can tell us, we won’t—”
“You don’t understand.” The fear intensified, widening his eyes. “I hear nothing. After months of endless blabbing. Since the Shade attack, it’s been silent as a grave.”
Ella shared a look with Finn. Worry darkened his eyes. Any change at this point should be taken as a bad sign.
She turned toward her apartment door.
“Oh, and there’s someone here to see you.” Sheepish, Mike gestured at his own half-open door, and a woman stepped out, as if she’d been listening there all along.
Of course she had.
“Mom.” Ella huffed, her mind still on the unexpected silence of the Shades. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“Well, nice to see you too, Ella.” Her mother sidled out into the corridor, her high heels clacking on the linoleum. With her hair blond and permed, curling around her made-up face, and her tight skirt and shirt, she looked like a parody of a fifties movie star, a Marilyn wannabe.
Sometimes Ella couldn’t believe she was related to Linda Harris-Benson. “What do you want?”
“Now I need to file a request to see my own daughter?”
“A phone call from time to time might have been nice. You know, to check if I’m alive or dead.”
She caught Finn’s wide eyes and snapped her mouth shut. After the horror story he’d told her about his childhood, she’d half expected him to draw his gun and tell her mother, all mothers for that matter, to fuck off. But he only looked curious and kind of...wistful?
“Excuse me for a moment,” Ella muttered. “Need to call my boss.”
It wasn’t a trick to avoid her mother for another five minutes. Honestly. She was a tough secret agent battling Shades; she could handle this.
She walked a ways down the corridor, sighing in relief, and called Dave. Waiting for the tone, she observed her mother stalking toward Finn with a predatory light in her eyes. Finn took a step back, then leaned against the wall and put his hand on his holstered gun. Ella grinned.
“What is it?” Dave sounded out of breath. “Where are you?”
“I’m okay,” Ella said. “Just wanted to tell you that Mike reported total silence from beyond the Veil, ever since the attack.”
“Attack? What attack?” Dave grunted something else that might have been a curse.
“Shades in our apartment, about an hour before you called us to the scene of the bloody snake.”
“In your apartment?” Dave’s voice rose. “What did I tell you about protection—”
“Protection was on, but didn’t help.” Her mother didn’t seem to notice Finn’s wariness and went to lean next to him, a hand on hip. She was asking him about himself. Finn’s curious look was giving way to his usual glare. “Any ideas?”
“Working on it.” Dave made a soft sound like a rattle. Was he cracking his knuckles? “We may have another situation downtown. I’ll call you later.”
Before she had a chance to reply, the line went flat. Biting back a curse, she shoved the phone in her pants pocket, fished her keys from the other and unlocked her door. “Mom, look, this is a really bad time for—”
“I won’t stay long.” She tried to grab hold of Finn’s arm to pull him inside, but he jerked out of her reach and gave her a look that could bore through steel. “I heard your apartment burned down and I wanted to make sure my little girl was okay.”
Making a face, Ella threw her door open and entered. As a matter of fact, she wanted to ask her mother a couple of things about the past.
Half-drawing her gun, Ella crossed the living room and checked the kitchen, bedrooms and bathroom for any sign of human or other life. She turned and found Finn right behind her, which scared the bejesus out of her.
“Dammit. Don’t sneak up on me like that.”
Finn shot her an undecipherable look and began checking everything she’d already checked — locks, charms, carved symbols. Obsessive much? Then again, he’d been the target of the last Shade attack.
“Ella?” Her mother’s voice rang from the living room. She sounded annoyed.
With a heart-felt sigh, Ella holstered her gun. “Coming!”
To her surprise, Finn followed at her heels, instead of taking the opportunity to shut himself in his room or the bathroom with the pretext of cleaning his weapons. “You don’t have to meet with her,” she whispered to him. “Really, it’s cool.”
Finn only shrugged.
“She’s a pain in the ass,” Ella muttered.
“She’s your mother.”
Ella rolled her eyes. “Precisely.”
Finn scowled and of course said nothing more. Together they stepped into the living room where Ella’s mother had made herself comfortable on the old sofa. She smiled widely when she saw them.
“So, when were you going to introduce me to your handsome boyfriend?”
“Not my boyfriend. Want tea?”
“No, sweetling, thank you, just had my espresso downtown before I came here. Alfred dropped me off on his way to a business meeting.”
“Alfred? What happened to George?”
Her mother flapped her hand as if that didn’t matter. Maybe it didn’t, although George had stayed for — what was it? Two years now? A record.
“He’s taking me to the theater later tonight, they have a lovely show. Ionesco’s The Rhinoceros. Deep.”
Ella dropped in an armchair and propped her booted feet on the coffee table. “You don’t say.”
“I know you don’t care for art, honey,” Mom said. “A great pity. You used to like literature.”
“The world is falling apart, Mom. A dragon burned down my apartment, yeah? Maybe Ionesco is not high on my priority list right now.”
“A dragon. You believe whatever flight of fanc
y takes journalists who are trying to make the front page.”
“I saw it, Mom. I was there.”
“Sure, honey.” Her mother wrinkled her nose and waved a manicured hand with red nails at her. “Just take your feet off the table, this isn’t proper behavior. And your fiancé is watching.” She giggled behind her hand. “Oh, god, he’s looking at me. Tell him to stop flirting.”
Flirting? Ella glanced at Finn who stared at her mother as if she had grown horns. Right, flirting. “Ignore her, Finn. That’s her warped sense of humor. Nothing to do with you, she does this with everyone.” It was the sad truth.
“Oh, dear, listen to yourself.” Her mother fanned herself with her hand. “Saying such awful things to your boyfriend, and he’s so charming. So shy.” She beamed at Finn who tilted his head to the side as if trying to figure out some complex equation.
“Finn isn’t shy, Mom. He’s just very busy, because we’re not a couple, we work together — and this is the middle of a working day.” She took a deep breath. “Besides, I said he’s not my boyfriend.”
“Mike, such a nice boy, he said you live together, you and Finn. Surely that—”
“Sharing a rent isn’t the same as sharing a bed, Mom. You should know that better than anyone. You lived with dad for years under the same roof, and didn’t fool anyone, now, did you?”
She hadn’t quite meant to snap the last words, but what the hell. It felt good to have the final word. Ella leaned back in her chair, breathing hard.
Her mother’s face reddened with anger. “That’s no way to talk to your mother. Is this how I taught you to behave?”
All right, that had hardly been the last word. “You never taught me anything good anyway.”
“Ella. I just wanted to know how you’re doing.”
“So why don’t you just ask me instead of insulting me?”
Her mother gaped at her, and Ella turned her sullen gaze aside, only to find Finn gaping at her as well.
What, was she being unreasonable? She didn’t think so.
“Well, I see nothing has changed,” her mother said, rising and smoothing down her skirt. Her tights had a run in them. She lifted her chin and pressed her red lips together. “Look at the time. I think I should be on my way.”
Boreal and John Grey Season 1 Page 18
