Court the Fire (Son of Rain #3)

by Michelle Irwin

  Ready to raise the issue of Hell—of Bayview—again now that we were away from Fiona, I took a deep breath. Despite the regard Fiona had shown Evie, I had little doubt she’d happily send Evie into danger if it saved Mackenzie’s life. “Ethan said something that made me think,” I said

  “Uh-oh, that’s dangerous.” She laughed.

  “There are only a few places they would have taken a fae prisoner within New York, and all of them are going to be swarming with Rain operatives—”

  “Don’t,” she warned, obviously seeing where my argument was leading. “I’m coming.”

  “What if they recognize what you are?”

  “What if they don’t? I might be able to help.”

  “But—”

  She cut me off before I could argue. “What if there was some way of knowing that whatever costume Fiona has in mind will work before I was anywhere near the danger?”

  “That’s impossible.”

  “Is it?” She had a plan that much was clear.

  I leaned against the wall while I waited to hear it. “What have you got in mind?”

  “Would you say Ethan has a better than average chance of guessing it was me if a costume wasn’t working?”

  I shrugged. “Probably.”

  “Well, what if we did a trial run for the meeting with him? If he picks me out of a crowd, then maybe you’re right, and it’s too much of a risk for me.”

  “And?”

  She threaded her fingers with mine. “And I promise I won’t go with you when it comes time to rescue Mackenzie.”

  I raised my eyebrow at her. It was going to be too easy to win this.

  “But,” she said before I could get too excited, “if he doesn’t guess, you have to stop trying to convince me to stay away.”

  I wasn’t sure I could do it, but I had to admit her plan did have merit. And I had confidence in my brother. “I have to warn you; Eth never forgets a face.”

  She smiled almost serenely. “Then you have nothing to worry about, do you?”

  INSTEAD OF finding a room and trying to get some rest like we should have, Evie dragged me to Aiden’s room to tell him of our plan. He’d already been instructed by Fiona to give us anything we needed, so he was only too willing to find two creative fairies to help Evie organize her outfit.

  While Evie was lead off on her camouflage mission, Aiden led me down to a guest room a little down the hall from him. While I was as polite as I could be, I didn’t have a conversation with him. He was the one who’d offered Evie a life in this place—the safety and freedom I could never give her—and I was too far out of my depth to be friendly.

  A LITTLE over an hour later, I was just drifting off to sleep when the door opened. At first, I’d thought the blonde who’d opened it must have been lost, but after just a few seconds I saw that she didn’t have the wings that everyone else in the place did. Then I recognized the aura of lazy flames that surrounded her. She smiled shyly at me, and the curve of her lip was way too familiar. “Evie?”

  “Surprise?” she said uncertainly.

  I looked her over carefully. “Well, it’s certainly different from your usual look.”

  “Rose and Isa put together the outfit and the makeup. We talked about glamouring, but it’s more permanent, and there're no guarantees it will work or that they’ll be able to reverse it.”

  “No way in hell,” I said. “I’m not going to have you changing everything about you just so that you can risk your life. I like you just as you are.”

  “Does that mean you won’t like me when I’m older and get wrinkles?”

  “Wrinkles, I can deal with. Gray hairs, no worries. I still want you to be you though.”

  “So you don’t like it?” she asked as she spun in a slow circle.

  Now that I was aware it was her under the getup, I took a little longer to appreciate the outfit. And the clothing was worth appreciating. Everything she wore hugged, well, everything she had. I was reminded of the little trick I’d played to get her through customs.

  At the time, I’d told her to never underestimate the power of boobs.

  Maybe I should listen to my own advice.

  Truthfully, she didn’t look anything like her normal self. Even I’d had to look twice, but I couldn’t admit that to her. What continued to concern me though was that even if her disguise could fool the Assessors and the elite who were bound to be roaming the halls of the Bayview, it would be harder to hide the heat that radiated from her, especially if she became stressed.

  I stood and closed the distance between us, wrapping my arm around her waist and running my hand over her ass. The material was like nothing I’d felt before and almost compelled me to rub my palms against the length of her legs, repeatedly. “Oh, I like it. You’re keeping these regardless of what happens, right?”

  She chuckled. “Clearly you approve of the pants?”

  “I do, although I approve of no pants too.”

  A small sigh slipped from her. It was filled with significantly more sorrow than the moment called for.

  “What’s up?” I asked, shifting my hands back to her waist and trying to behave.

  “You can’t imagine how many times I’d wished for exactly this last time I was here. I just never thought it’d happen. This room . . . it just brings back so many memories.”

  “This is your old room?”

  She nodded.

  Aiden had probably set it up deliberately. That fucker!

  It didn’t matter whether it was a setup or not though, because suddenly the ghosts of the past seemed to share the space with us and spending time naked was much less enticing.

  “Sorry, that’s probably a bit of a mood killer.”

  “It’s okay. We should probably sleep anyway. After all, Eth will be here early tomorrow.”

  Evie drew herself out of my arms. “Okay, just let me get this gunk off my face first.”

  As she disappeared from view, I hoped like hell my brother would recognize her so she could stay safe in the court when it all went down.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  EVEN THOUGH I’D put so much faith in him, Eth had let me down. In the end, Evie had won our bet fair and square.

  After she’d got the fairies to help get her makeup in place again the following morning, we went to meet Eth who had no clue which one of the patrons in the coffee shop was her. During our short conversation, while he tried to spot her, he reminded me that Lou could be a bigger risk, and I realized there was so much information I still needed.

  Almost as soon as Lou’s name was mentioned, when it was already clear that Eth wasn’t going to pick her out, Evie had made herself known. Because I’d already lost the bet and couldn’t stop Evie from coming along with us, I was anxious to get somewhere private where we could tell Eth about the situation and find out more about the last almost ten months back at home.

  We left Starbucks and headed straight back to Central Park. After Eth had caught me up on what he’d hunted, when, and where, we came back around to the topic I’d been most concerned about.

  “I teamed up with Dad and Lou again about six months ago,” Eth said. “And I found out that Lou bought the story of Evie’s death and your disappearance, with one slight problem.”

  “What’s that?” Evie asked with a frown.

  Eth turned to her. “She’s convinced Clay took a baby with him when he left the country—your baby.” He shifted his attention back onto me. “She wanted to track you down, but I persuaded her not to. I convinced her that I had a lead.”

  Sometimes I really hated my sister. Honestly, I hadn’t given a second thought to the fact that Lou might have assumed that I’d have taken Evie’s child away if I was grieving her death. Of course, if she’d been hunting Evie like I had suspected, she would know the Rain files about phoenixes as well as I did—at least the old, abridged version the Rain wanted people to read.

  Eth went on to explain a rouse he’d laid by traveling to the UK for a time before co
nvincing Dad and Lou that he’d lost my trail when I’d fled to Australia.

  “And she’ll be keeping an eye out for my return?” I guessed when he’d finished telling me that Lou still wanted to hunt me to Australia, but Dad had stopped her. “So that she can kill the child?”

  “Let’s just say you’re not at the top of her favorite people list. She thought you’d rush back to the family after Evie’s death. She’s never considered the fact that your feelings could be something more than just a spell.”

  Evie moved away from me, attempting to twist herself out of my arms. Sensing it was out of guilt, I refused to let her go. Instead, I reached for her hand and did my best to assure her that Lou’s hatred stemmed from long-held issues. I tried to convince her that one day things might change.

  Incredibly unhelpfully, Eth snorted. “Sure, and one day pigs might fly.”

  His words provided the perfect segue into the news I had to share about the information I’d received. I just didn’t know how to start. I tried and faltered when I lifted my eyes and saw the fae court looming large in a place I’d always assumed was nothing more than an empty meadow.

  After another false start, where I at least managed to tell him about our visitor, I stalled again. My gaze left the huge structure in front of me, ignored the fae coming and going from its entry, and locked on Evie. I needed to gather strength from her.

  As if she realized how impossible it was for me to find the right words, Evie stepped in. “It was your mother.”

  Hearing the word out loud after having some more time to process it properly solidified the concept in my mind. Fiona was my mother. My mother was fae. My heart lodged firmly in my throat at the thought.

  “Mom? Are you sure it was her?” The full force of Eth’s attention was on me, and I squirmed slightly under the weight of it. “Do you have a picture?”

  I rolled my eyes. “No, I don’t have a picture. Do I look like a fucking photographer? What did you expect me to do? ‘Hey, Mom, glad you’re back and all that, can we have a fucking family portrait done now?’”

  “Well, no, but seriously, it was her?” His face lit up. It was as if I’d told him Santa Clause, the Tooth Fairy, and the Easter Bunny were all real and were having a gang bang not too far away.

  “Yeah, at least, I’m pretty damn sure it was, but . . . well . . .” I trailed off, not knowing how to word my discovery without him losing control.

  “What?”

  “She isn’t what I expected . . .”

  “Why not?”

  An involuntary sigh slipped from me. “She’s different.”

  Eth snorted. “Of course she’s different. You haven’t seen her in twenty-one years. Unless she found the fountain of youth, she’s going to be different.”

  “No, it’s more than that.”

  “Then what is it?” His frustration at my inability to just spit it out was growing clear.

  “It’s just that she . . .” I glanced to Evie, hoping she could somehow rescue me, but she remained quiet and gave an encouraging nod instead.

  “Fuck, this is harder than that time we had to interrogate the manticore,” Eth said with an air of dramatics. “And it didn’t speak English.”

  “Look, it’s not easy—”

  Eth rolled his eyes. “Just spit it out.”

  “She’s fae,” I whispered.

  “Holy shit!” Eth’s hands came into his hair. “No way.”

  His denial felt familiar, even if it didn’t seem to go as absolute as mine. “Yeah.”

  “And it’s really her?”

  “We’ve spoken to her a couple of times in the last few days,” Evie said, closing her fingers around mine to offer me comfort. “But for what it’s worth, I believe her.”

  “Me too,” I added. “At least, I think I do now. Honestly, it took me a bit to get used to the idea.”

  Ethan issued a low whistle. “Wow.” A number of emotions flittered over his face as he processed the information. “Heh. Okay then.”

  “What?” I couldn’t believe how easily he’d accepted the truth.

  “Just, there’s a lot of things that make sense if that’s true.”

  “What?” There were no other words in my head as he spoke. What the fuck did he know that I didn’t?

  “It’s understandable you wouldn’t see it. You don’t really remember Mom.” Eth smiled. “She was so beautiful.”

  I clenched my jaw as my fingers broke free of Evie’s and curled into fists. “Of course I don’t remember her! We were taken from her before I got to know her!”

  One of Evie’s hands traced a path on my bicep, no doubt trying to calm me.

  “Taken?” Eth repeated the word back to me. “No. I mean . . . surely not. Although, Dad—well, huh . . .” His brow dipped. “He always said she left. Do you think . . . maybe he left when he found out the truth?”

  “How can you be so goddamned blasé about this?” I couldn’t contain the words as they burst from me in a loud rush. When I drew the gaze of some passersby, I dropped my eyes and closed my mouth.

  “I’m not blasé, but I guess it’s not completely out of the blue either.”

  “What?” The question about what he knew ran through me again. “What haven’t you told me?”

  “Nothing solid really. Only rumors. Let’s just say that since you showed me that information, I’ve kept my eyes open and ears to the ground.”

  “Information?” Evie’s gaze cut to mine.

  “It was nothing.” I shot Eth a deadly glare as he spoke about the information I’d gathered after Oxford. Although I’d told Evie most of it, I still hadn’t explained the fact that the Rain had information that would have exonerated her from being a monster, but they’d kept it covered up.

  “Yeah, just some stuff about a case,” Eth added to back up my claim.

  “So you’re totally fine with this?” It was hard to believe that I’d had to fight so damned hard for him to accept Evie as anything other than a deadly monster, and yet he was willing to accept Fiona’s information without question. “You don’t have any questions? Nothing?”

  “Oh, I have questions—plenty, in fact, and I plan to get answers for them all—but I’m not going to freak out about it until I get more information.”

  Surprisingly, Eth seemed to come to terms with the concept faster and with more surety than I had. Before long, we reached the part of the discussion where we had to consider the reasons Dad might have kept the secret as well as examine the evidence of the truth in our everyday life. Every hunt we’d been on had been made easier because of our propensity for stumbling onto the creatures we hunted. I wondered whether Dad had considered the possibility that our natural draw to others was a bleed through of possible fae traits.

  During the discussion, Eth’s acceptance turned to anger, which was directed solely at me. “How long have you known about this anyway? I mean, you’ve had enough time to get back to the States. You couldn’t have called me sooner?”

  “We only found out last night,” I bit back.

  “When did you come back to the States then? And why?”

  The way he asked the question, it was like we’d planned our trip and deliberately kept him out of the loop. “We only got back last night.”

  “Well, how’d you get here so damn quickly?”

  “We’ll explain that later,” Evie said, stepping between us. “Your mother came to us for a reason.”

  I turned to Evie, wondering whether she was going to tell Eth of the task ahead.

  “She needs our help. Well, yours and Clay’s specifically. She has a daughter who was recently taken by the Rain.”

  “I have another sister?” Eth was taken aback, but only momentarily.

  How can he be so fucking calm about all of this?

  “She’s not our sister,” I said. The word didn’t fit. Lou was our sister—despite all the shit she’d caused. She was family. This Mackenzie . . . she was a stranger.

  Eth looked at me as if I was a
simpleton. “If she’s our mother’s daughter, then she’s our half-sister at least.”

  I didn’t want to acknowledge the truth in his words, but I couldn’t deny it either.

  “Would you like to see your mother?” Evie asked quietly. We’d come to the part of the conversation we’d agreed on before heading out that morning. If Eth wanted to meet Fiona, we’d offer him some enchanted food. If not, we’d arrange what we needed to do without his assistance.

  When he agreed, Evie gave him the small item we’d brought with us, warning him that there could be some pain. I couldn’t help feeling a little annoyed that he got far more warning than I ever had. I’d been promised nothing more than a little discomfort, and instead, I’d endured one of the most painful experiences I’d ever been through—and considering my life to that point, that was saying something.

  As the enchantment took hold of him, I expected something to happen. I expected him to scream or cry in agony.

  “Are you okay?” Evie asked.

  “I feel a little sick,” Eth whined.

  Even though it made me feel like a pussy in comparison to him, I tried not to let it irritate me that he hadn’t doubled over in agony. It didn’t necessarily mean that he was stronger than me, just that there was something different between his experience and mine.

  If only I knew what. I tried to help him instead.

  “Concentrate on the building,” I said. “It’ll make it easier if you focus on the fae world.”

  Once he had recovered from his initial nausea, we led the way toward the court. As we walked, I couldn’t help but ask for Evie’s opinion about why Eth hadn’t been affected the same way I had. In response, she told me that my eyes had changed since I’d taken the enchantment. I was surprised that she hadn’t mentioned it sooner, but I supposed it wasn’t exactly something that naturally came up in conversation.

  Before long, we’d forged reintroductions, and everyone was deep in a planning meeting about where Mackenzie might have been taken and how to extract her.