by A. E. Lowan
Winter gasped in alarm and choked on smoke as the small bottle rolled across the concrete floor. So much for television. Jessie owed her a frappe if they made it out of here. She coughed again and heard Etienne cough, as well. The wards! She looked up at the smoke ceiling, now brushing the top of her hair. The wards were becoming overwhelmed. She shook her head and looked for the bottle. The fight had to end quickly and they had to get that rift closed, but first she had to get that blasted bottle back. If one of the redcaps stepped on and shattered it, great; that would be one banished redcap. But if Etienne stepped on it, she had no idea what would happen. And she really did not want to find out in a burning room full of rapacious Unseelie fae.
Etienne was driving back the redcap leader and the unburned one and she spotted the bottle behind them, and behind it was the burning one, limping up behind Etienne with his axe dragging. Winter darted forward into the fray, hoping the burned one’s eyesight had been damaged, and dove down just as she slid in between them, snatching up the bottle and rolling against the redcap’s legs at the same time. Heavy and with a low center of gravity, this did not trip up the fae as she had hoped. It merely made it grunt and notice it had a closer target. It raised its jagged axe, and Winter uncorked the bottle with her sweat slicked hand even as she cried out in fear.
Metal flashed and the redcap’s head toppled off in a fountain of blood, his body collapsing downwards and back as lifeless meat. She looked to Etienne, but he had already turned back to his other two opponents. She coughed and dumped the potion on the new corpse, eliminating the evidence, and scrambled away until she found herself back against her safe spot at the back wall.
The redcap leader evidently decided they needed a change in tactics, because he barked an order to his fellow as he made a mad drive at Etienne. The other redcap broke away and ran at Winter. She grabbed at her bag, scrambling for a banishing-
“Down!” Etienne roared, kicking the leader back, and Winter was belly to the concrete before his echo died, her right elbow jarred numb from impact. She heard several sharp cracks, concrete chips scattered on the floor, and she smelled blood like a fine metallic mist. Momentum carried the redcap forward, and it came crashing to a stop up against her side. There was little left of its face from the chin up, and Winter scrambled back from the blood that poured from the devastating wounds to pool on the floor. Where had its face gone? Winter turned her head to look at the wall behind her, where there were now large chips missing, but then her eyes widened as she felt a spreading warmth down her neck and across her scalp as it soaked into her hair…
She knew where the missing pieces were.
Her gaze moved to Etienne, fighting with the gun in his left hand. The voice of her sister Sorcha, who had been a police detective and died in the line of duty, kept running through her head, “In like a penny, out like a pizza,” over and over. Suddenly the shock and horror of it rose in heat from her belly and Winter threw up the cheap fast-food coffee.
She backed away from the mess she had made and glanced away just in time to see Etienne cut down the redcap leader. She gave a heavy cough and spat out soot. The wards were weakening by the second and they did not have long left, at all. Her eyes wandered back to the one Etienne had shot. She had not thrown up in the face of carnage since she had been sixteen. She had to admit, she was a little embarrassed, especially since as nightmarish as the gunshot wounds were, it was not the worst she had ever seen. Her hand found its way up into her hair, and her fingers brushed up against hard bits. She shuddered, and her stomach threatened to dry heave. That had to be it. She had been at hundreds of aftermaths, and on the fringes of violence, but never before so close as to have brain and bone and gore in her hair.
And then she saw movement, and froze like a rabbit. The shot redcap’s fingers were flexing. Etienne was coming her way, coughing and winded, and she looked up at him, her breath coming too fast.
Etienne simply nodded to her, and reached down, grabbed the redcap by its matted hair, and sliced its throat to the spine with his steel-edged sword. A fine line of smoke rose as the steel, mostly composed of iron, passed through fae flesh. “Bullets are still usually lead,” he said, his voice gruff. “They won’t kill a fae outright.” And in the quiet after Winter had the time to realize that until he had ordered her to drop, he had been utterly silent the entire fight. She was so accustomed to therian fights, which were half call-outs and taunting, or the duels she had seen her Grandfather Dermot and Erik or her many other friends engaged in, with all the banter and carrying on. She realized, watching Etienne clean his blade on the redcap’s rags with a perfectly unexpressive face, that Etienne was not a cheerful duelist. He did not do this for fun or honor. He was a killer.
It made her feel both a little disquiet… and safer.
She gave him banishing potions to dispose of the two bodies while she sealed the massive rift, and they cleared out of the factory just minutes before the fire fighters worked their way back to their storage room. Winter sat on the sidewalk in the morning sunlight and kept her arms wrapped tightly about herself while Etienne picked bone and brains from her hair, but there was only so much he could do short of a shower. With his help they dried as much blood up as they could and she spent the rest of the day wearing a head scarf. Fortunately, most people were accustomed to Winter’s eccentric mode of dress, so it earned her few stares.
Another sixteen rifts later and exhaustion ground through Winter’s bones long after the sun had lowered below the Pacific. But at each site where they had encountered creatures, they had all been fae. Thank little green apples not all those encounters had been violent, though Winter had feared Etienne was going to strike the drunken dwarf who had patted her on the behind. In the end, though, all that one wanted was a little dance with a sidhe woman and he was content to be escorted back through his rift. Winter thought Etienne may have escorted him a little more firmly than was strictly needed.
All the creatures present were fae, and the magic emanating from each rift had an unmistakable flavor of Faerie to it. Winter was beginning to strongly suspect the surge of wild magic from that morning was also of Faerie origin – there was just a taste to it, that after running across it again and again over the course of the day she knew it was the same.
All the rifts finally closed, Winter left Etienne and Cian to Katherine’s capable hospitality and set out for home. Part of her wished she could stay and enjoy an evening with Katherine’s small court, but her night was far from over.
She stood under the pounding heat of her shower back at the House, uncoiling her long, blood-caked hair, and tried to work out her next move even as she worked out the smoke, gore, and chaos from her body. Ordinarily she would turn her suspicion on the newest fae in town, but Etienne was not only not a magician, he had been with her the whole time, and Cian was an untrained adolescent. Granted, the faerie knight had been outside when the initial tsunami had hit, but if the origin had been that close, she would have felt it, no question. That left Jonathan Moore and Himiko’s mysterious sidhe consort, both supposedly powerful magicians, and though neither had given her any trouble before, there was a first time for everything. Her instincts were pulling her toward Jonathan. While she did not like having a sorcerer in the city, that was Himiko, not her consort, and it still left open the question of Jonathan’s son Jeremy being this Prince Senán.
Her sister Sorcha had liked to say a good cop came equipped with what she called a “bullshit detector,” and as much as they had not always gotten along, she had thought that Winter had one of the best she had ever seen. Most of it was her soul reading, but a lot of it had to do with the fact that as wizard of the city she was lied to a lot, so picking up lies in body language was second nature. Conveniently, a full-blooded sidhe, and most fae, could not lie. If they did, they would risk becoming foresworn and would lose not only status and honor but their ability to wield magic. However, they did engage in creative truth telling and could let you believe whatever you liked. L
ies of omission did not count.
Winter scrubbed at a particularly dense clot and shuddered when it turned out to not be a clot at all, letting the mass fall to join the small pile clustered around her pale feet in the swirling pink water. She compartmentalized it with every other horror that battered at her increasingly fragile health and blew out a determined breath. Just one more of so many.
She needed to talk to Jonathan Moore, then, and she needed to do it before the next tsunami. One more powerful than that last could rupture the Gate under Other World Books and she could not conceive of what sort of magical fallout would result from a disaster of that proportion. Since she had no idea when that might be, that meant she had to do it tonight. She ruthlessly stuffed down the small part of herself that whimpered for her bed, which was oh so very close.
Tonight.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Winter was used to a certain degree of deference from the preternatural leaders, not just because she was a wizard but because they knew her well enough to know she would not interfere unless it was important. If she called, they took her calls because there was an emergency. If she showed up, they cleared space in their schedules for her. They might fight with each other over pittances, but they gave her respect – by habit so far, though she knew habits could be broken.
So when she had called to let Jonathan Moore know she needed to speak with him and his secretary replied in her cool, beautifully professional voice, “Mr. Moore is quite busy until after the first. Would you like me to pencil you in for a date in November?” Winter had stood there in her towel, unsure of how to respond. She had never met the sidhe lord personally. He had not been one of her problem children, not until yesterday. Like the principal of a troubled school, she had not needed to. Finally, she had told the woman, firmly, that he could expect her within the hour.
So there she was. The chairs outside of Jonathan Moore’s office were quite comfortable, which was a good thing, because Winter had been sitting in one for verging on an hour and a half. Apparently her firmness had been less than impressive. The secretary in her smart suit was clicking away at her keyboard, her eyes occasionally flicking over in Winter’s direction. She had tried three times to get her to schedule an appointment, but Winter could feel what must be him just beyond those double doors to her left. She told the woman she would wait.
Besides the clicking, the office was quiet enough for Winter to hear the roar of her own exhaustion in her ears. She sat up straighter in the chair, trying to not look too much like she was stretching her stiff muscles. Her eyes burned, her blinks becoming longer as the warmth and stillness sank further into her bones. She twisted, re-crossing her ankles and tucking her feet beneath her, and she caught her reflection in the night-black window behind her. It had to be an effect of the glass, because surely she didn’t actually look that ghastly? She had showered away the gore and the reek of smoke and chaos that the day had left behind, but soap and water could do nothing for her hollow cheeks and the rings under her eyes like domestic abuse bruises. She looked undead – fitting, this close to Halloween, but not appropriate for a meeting with a corporate CEO. Of course, neither was her choice of apparel – she did not own any little suits – but she cared much less for that. She looked back to the doors, willing them to open.
They didn’t.
Her big canvas bag shifted when she repositioned, pressing the cool, hard weight within against her ankle. Sitting on the side of her bed at home, she had grabbed an energy potion out of the basket on impulse and shoved it into the depths. Why had she done that? Four of them in one day was insane. She had never had three in one day before today. It sat with a tangible presence at her feet and she wanted it. With every quiver of exhaustion, with every click of the secretary’s keyboard, her fingers twitched to reach into the bag and wrap around the cool green glass. She swallowed convulsively. Maybe… just to get through this meeting…
The door to her right swung open and she snatched her guilty hand away from her bag strap. A tall man stepped into the outer office casually but neatly dressed for the weekend in a button down shirt and jeans. His wavy black hair was pulled back into a long ponytail, and as he passed he looked her up and down with curiosity in his cornflower blue eyes, beautifully flecked with gold. Winter could see the softening about the edges of her perception of him that told her he was glamoured, mostly about his lower body suggesting he was hiding a weapon. Shifting to her magical sight for a moment she could see the matrix of the spell itself floating about him like a crystalline wireframe of deceptive simplicity. This was how wizards saw spell-work. She thought perhaps that it was how all magicians saw it, but she had only known wizards so she did not want to assume. She raised her chin slightly and returned his regard with a small nod as she tasted his power. He was a sidhe, full blooded, but younger than Etienne by her estimation. For a race that rarely crossed into the Mortal Realm, Seahaven was getting crowded with them.
Interesting.
Aodhán pulled his eyes away from the thin young woman and made his way past the secretary into Midir’s office. He pulled the door closed behind him and turned to face the great prince, who sat at his mahogany desk, ice blue eyes riveted to his monitor. “Do you know you have a wizard in your antechamber, my lord?” he asked, crossing the large office.
Midir shifted his mouse and clicked, then made a noise of displeasure. “I am aware.”
Aodhán moved so he could see the monitor, and paused a moment to study the display. “Your Knave of Hearts is free.”
“Ah! Thank you.”
Aodhán took one of the comfortable chairs in front of Midir’s desk and stretched his long legs out in front of him. He watched the other man play his game, his mind working. His employer was a puzzle box he had yet to solve and he was running out of time to tease him out. But, the question was, how much did he really need to unravel? He did not want to completely undo Midir – no, that would not suit his purposes at all. But he did need to find out more about the players in this game and Midir had been tight-lipped about that since this “Summer’s Get” had shown up. Aodhán had to step carefully. Midir was no stranger to the game and due to long history was cautious to the point of paranoia about being screwed over.
Considering that was exactly what Aodhán was going to do to him, he had every reason to be paranoid.
“So,” he said, deciding to prod at this new angle, “is there a particular reason we’re keeping a wizard waiting?” He thought there was a saying about doing that that involved ketchup… or maybe that was dragons…
Midir did not look up from his card game. “To start, I think calling her a ‘wizard’ is a bit of a stretch. She’s little more than a child. But, to answer your question, she invited herself here and won’t leave or make an appointment. I see no reason to reward her ill manners.”
Aodhán turned this answer over in his mind. Midir, like himself, could not outright lie, but that did not mean he had to be completely truthful, either. And the great prince had millennia of experience at dancing around the truth. “How long has she been out there?”
The other man sighed and sat back, turning his attention to Aodhán. “Long enough for me to become bored watching cat videos. This is the third computer game I’ve played.” He tapped his elegant fingers lightly across his keys and glanced at the office door with a small look of longing. “And I’m getting hungry.”
A candid answer? He must have been holed up in here for quite a while. The obvious question, of course, was, “Why don’t you just leave?” but Aodhán held it back behind his teeth. For one, he did not want to hint to Midir that he was being so transparent – it would encourage him to fog the glass, and it was too important to Aodhán to be able to catch these few clear glimpses. Plus, as interesting as his potential range of waffling answers might be, the fact that Midir had let the presence of a wizard child tie him up in his office was itself the telling piece. Talk her down all he liked, the prince far preferred to evade her than confront her. Samh
ain was nearly upon them and Midir wanted to avoid anything that might even resemble a complication. So he put on his most helpful smile and said, “Well, let’s figure this out…”
Midir straightened in his seat, blond brows furrowing. “What is she doing out there?”
In the outer office, Winter struggled in a losing battle between the opposing tidal pulls of sleep and the energy potion. Exhaustion grinding in her bones, her eyes closing in ever-lengthening blinks, she kept sensing flickers of movement at the corners of her sight that proved to be nothing when she turned. And there was… there was a smell. Winter did not want to say it reminded her of her mother, but… she would have thought that Etienne or Cian would have smelled of Faerie, but they did not. She supposed they had been too long in the Mortal Realm. This, though… her mother had had this scent about her, her mother who had been half-wild and who her grandparents had needed to bind to the Mortal Realm with conditions so she could not spirit away their son.
Her mother who had fled the moment those conditions were broken. Winter felt the edge of her old anger and pushed it aside. Now was not the time. It was never the time.
The secretary had now taken to giving her strange looks. Winter refused to pull out the green bottle and drink it down while the human woman looked at her like that. Her pride would not stand for it, no matter what the cravings begged… demanded… screamed for her to do. She tried pulling out her e-reader again. Katherine’s newest vampire romance from her Love Bites series was on there and had been for months. Winter really wanted to read it, but so rarely got a chance to just sit still – now that she was being forced to, she couldn’t concentrate on the words in front of her. She scanned the same paragraph six times without registering anything before she put the reader back in her bag.
Desperate to focus on anything else, Winter shifted to her magical sight again. Etienne was right. The glamour on the outside of the building was amazing, the structure like nothing she had ever seen before. She had not been able to spend much time outside studying it, remembering Etienne’s story about Cian and the security guards and not wanting to repeat the experience for herself. But, if Jonathan Moore, or whatever he wanted to be called, was going to be rude enough to leave her out here, she would take advantage of his breach of the usual protocol in Seahaven as well as plain bad manners and take a good look at his glamour from the inside.
