by A. E. Lowan
“Hey, adult people!” Jessie’s voice rang out into the silence. It sounded as if she was calling up the stairwell.
Winter did not realize she was running until she pushed her way through Erik’s door.
Her legs buckled as she sprinted down the stairs, reminding her that she was still weak, and with the painkiller in her system she could seriously hurt herself without knowing. She clutched at the railing – but a strong arm caught her about the waist. She looked up and found herself with a face full of Etienne’s hair as he kept racing down the stairs with her. He smelled like the herbal shampoo she made for the store and something else that she could not define. Something male. It smelled good, though.
But then they were at the bottom of the stairs and there were Jessie and Cian. Cian? Her knees nearly buckled again, this time with the intensity of her relief, and she pulled away from Etienne to run to Jessie, who stood grinning. Winter wrapped her arms around the younger girl and held her. She didn’t care if Jessie tried to push her away; she needed to hold her, to know she was safe and whole. But Jessie suffered her mauling in silence.
Winter looked over to see Etienne embracing Cian, an arm tight around the boy’s body while his other hand rested on the back of his head. He was saying something in Faerie Gaelic, and even though he bore several long lacerations, Cian blushed and beamed with pleasure. Winter smiled to see them, and then turned back to Jessie. “You worried me,” she said, giving the girl’s shoulders a small shake.
“I’m sorry,” Jessie replied, sounding not at all contrite.
Winter pressed her lips tight and pulled back, preparing to scold her apprentice. She was safe, and Winter was profoundly grateful – but that did not excuse the fact that she had put herself in danger.
Jessie’s eyes widened. “Why is there blood on your mouth?”
Winter wiped at her lips with her sweater sleeve. Cian was looking at her, now, too. “It’s nothing.” Her cheeks burned, but she refused to be derailed. She examined first one teen and then the other and her brows drew in. “Cian, please remove that glamour. Erik, I’ve left my bag upstairs and I need to attend to Cian’s cuts. And you,” she fixed Jessie with narrowed eyes. “You’re drained. How did you get back?”
Jessie crossed her arms. “I had it covered. I took out the communications system and the elevators, and I even creamed the sidhe that cut up Cian with this huge tree planter.”
Winter raised one eyebrow. Etienne made an angry noise and she turned to see him brushing his fingers over the lurid purple swelling that covered half of Cian’s face.
Jessie finally had the grace to look embarrassed. Her voice lowered nearly to a mumble. “And then I went down on my face in the lobby and Brian had to drive us back here.”
Winter looked up past Jessie’s shoulder to search the wide hallway in alarm. “You took Brian with you? Is he here?” The crowd from earlier had dispersed, but there was no sign of the strapping young man.
She rolled her eyes. “No and no. He followed me out there and then Erik’s guys wouldn’t let him in.” She looked with irritation at the Vampire King. “He’s not happy and he doesn’t see why The Seahaven Opera House needs muscle, by the way.”
Erik gave her a negligent wave of his hand in a manner closely resembling an obscene gesture and passed Winter’s bag to her. “When I start to worry about the opinions of human teenage males, especially when it comes to the running of my Theatre, I’ll make sure you’re the first to know.”
Jessie stuck her tongue out at him and turned back to Winter. “And here’s another thing. The sidhe dude cast a glamour and Brian could see through it. How could he do that?”
Winter ignored the question. She knew the reason, but she didn’t want to go into it with anyone. Not yet. Not ever, really. Instead she took Cian by his hand and led him to a chair. “Take off your shirts,” she instructed quietly. As Cian’s hands moved to his buttons she addressed her apprentice again. “We’ve talked about this, Jessie. You know better than to try to include him in our world.” She helped Cian peel the blood-stiff fabric away from his wounds. “It only puts him in danger.”
Jessie made a noise of frustration. “He’s not stupid. How much longer do you really think it’s going to be until he figures it out for himself?” She crouched down next to Cian’s chair to better put herself near the center of Winter’s attention. “Besides, you know just as well as the rest of us do that being ignorant is no protection in Seahaven. If it weren’t for the fact that the monsters focus so much attention on the homeless who nobody tracks, the missing persons’ rate would be astronomical.”
Erik cleared his throat with a scowl. “Speaking as a ‘Monster King,’ I take offense to that. My people don’t kill the sheep. It’s too dangerous.”
Winter wiped the dried blood from Cian’s golden skin. His cuts were already showing signs of healing. “The two of you can argue about this after we figure out what to do about Midir’s invasion of Faerie.” Neither of them were wrong, but this was not the time…
“But he’s not,” said Cian. His green eyes kept flinching with pain under her ministrations, but he was looking at her intently. What was he seeing?
“Wait, what?” Etienne went down on one knee in front of Cian’s chair. Winter felt the heat of his body radiating against her. It was getting a little crowded, but she kept working.
“He’s not going to invade. That’s what he said.” Cian pulled his eyes from her to look to Etienne. “He said he would be foresworn if he did.”
“Then what the hell is he up to?”
“That doesn’t make any sense.” It was the fae woman, Lana, emerging from the dining hall. “He’s got the rift, the army, he destabilized the courts, he wants his own kingdom – what else could he be doing?”
“He said he wasn’t trying to destabilize the courts,” Cian said, his voice clear if a bit fearful. “He said he… did what he did out of revenge, because his brothers wouldn’t foster their sons to him. And he said he did it to every brother who refused to foster a son, not just the two we knew about.”
Winter opened a jar of pungent white cream and rubbed two fingers full into his bruised cheek with a gentle touch. Her mind worked furiously. “Cian, can you tell us exactly everything he said and did?”
Etienne frowned and gripped her arm. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
Winter looked at Etienne’s hand, and then raised her eyes until they met his. He did not release her.
“Hey!” Jessie’s voice rose from beside Winter. “Let her go, Conan!”
Both Winter and Etienne ignored the teen. “Cian’s stronger than you give him credit for,” Winter said, her voice level. It was not the first time she had faced down someone who could crush her bones, and it would not be the last. Besides, he wasn’t hurting her. “And even if he weren’t, we need to know.”
Etienne frowned harder.
“I’m fine.” Cian drew Etienne’s attention from her. “I’m really fine. I got away before he could hurt me.”
The faerie knight still did not look happy but he nodded and let go of Winter’s arm.
Cian’s eyes darted to the side as he gathered his thoughts and then he began talking. He started from when he was taken, the memory of fear seeming to make him stumble over his English words. Etienne or sometimes Winter would help get him over the bumps. But as he continued his story his confidence grew, and he began to gesture more with his hands as he spoke. It made it a little more challenging for Winter to see to his cuts, but she wanted him to focus on his storytelling more than she wanted him to hold still. Her hands moved of their own volition – she could treat minor injuries like this in her sleep, and had come very close to doing just that in the past – while she listened intently to his every word, picking over each one for clues to Midir’s intentions. When Cian said, “Then he said, ‘The time of hiding is over,’” she heard Erik’s shocked intake of breath behind her. Winter drew away and began to pace as she wiped her hands clean.
Her mind
was whirling.
The others were talking around her, but she filtered them out. “The time of hiding is over.” The phrase played over in her head. It was insane. Preternaturals kept their existence a secret from the mass of humanity for a very good, very simple reason: humans dramatically outnumbered them. Of course, for centuries there had been debate among various factions who argued that the preternatural races should rule over the seemingly weaker humans, but those factions were always crushed by The Eldest. And even though preternaturals routinely preyed on humans when they were alone or in small groups, everyone sane understood that humans in large numbers were both paranoid and extremely dangerous. Even a single lucky human could slay a mighty dragon. As time passed into the modern era their weapons and technology made them even more deadly.
The annihilation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had silenced even the insane.
What could Midir hope to accomplish? Winter ran her thumb over her lower lip. Cian had described him standing in front of his window as he spoke. “I’m after something much better.” She remembered him from the night before, standing before his office window staring out at the city lights as if he was king of all he surveyed. She blew out a breath in derision. King of all he surveyed, her… and then she froze. Her eyes widened. That was it!
“Winter, what is it?”
Winter raised her hand to Erik. She needed another moment to think. The black tower was a faerie building, like Mulcahy House. Mulcahy House was essentially a pocket faerie realm contained within what appeared on the outside to be a normal building. On the inside the House was semi-sentient – at full power it heeded simple requests, did routine housework and maintenance, rearranged the rooms according to perceived need and would even borrow space from within Faerie. The inner space of the House was larger than the external footprint. And it did all that without sitting on a massive rift.
“I know what he’s doing,” she said. Midir could not forge a kingdom within Faerie without becoming foresworn. But he was still building an army, and he still had the power and desire to forge a faerie realm. She looked at her companions. “Midir is planning an invasion, but he’s not invading Faerie. He’s coming here.”
Lana shook her head. “What would he have to gain from that? Our magic doesn’t flow as powerfully in the Mortal Realm because of all the iron. He’d be forever weakened and his fae followers would eventually die off if they couldn’t return to Faerie.”
Winter nodded. “That’s exactly what would happen if he planned to let things stay as they are. But like you said, Samhain is when the veil thins, and that rift will open. That’s what’s been causing the instability, and that’s the key. The wild magic that we’ve seen will only be a fraction of what will come flooding through that rift when it blows open. You said on the way over that it would open like a flower? A closer description would be like a huge firework. It will be very fast and explosive. Midir is essentially making a new faerie realm right here in Seahaven,” she paused, her mind working as she tried to calculate the scale of the damage an explosion of that magnitude would inflict. Fear dried out her mouth when she reached a conclusion. “And he’s going to kill tens of thousands of people when he does it.”
“How big could he make it?” asked Erik.
Winter shook her head. “It would depend on how much of Faerie he could pull through the rift. But judging by what I’ve seen of his tower and Lana’s description of the rift, he could easily engulf the metro area, probably push out into the suburbs. Maybe he could even reach as far north as Seattle and as far south as Portland, I’m not sure.”
“What the hell is with the iron, then?” asked Etienne, rubbing his thumb over the palm of his hand.
Lana rolled her eyes at him. “The building is full of untamed fae. Midir doesn’t want his army getting loose and running around the city prematurely, bringing attention to his activities. Sidhe and half-breeds like you and me can get past it without any problems, but lesser fae can’t.”
“But none of this explains him wanting to end the ‘time of hiding,’” said Erik. “Is he out of his mind? Plopping a faerie realm into the middle of the Pacific Northwest is going to draw a hell of a lot of attention from humans. He owns an investment company, for fuck’s sake. He should know by now what humans are capable of.”
“Unless he’s counting on being able to keep the humans out.” Winter thought back to Mulcahy House. “He may be able to lock his doors, as it were, and only let in or out who he chooses.”
“Like your house,” Erik said, understanding dawning.
Winter nodded, her expression grim. “I need to tell my father.” If anything would compel him to action, this would.
She hoped.
“I’m going with you.” Erik’s tone was uncompromising. “He’ll listen to me about this if I have to twist his arm.”
Before last night Winter would have argued. Before last night she would have had more sympathy for her father. But she still burned with cold rage. So instead she nodded. It was time someone shook sense into him. If he refused to listen to her, maybe he would listen to the Vampire King.
He grinned. “Let me get some people together and we’ll head over.”
She hesitated. “Wait. Can we keep it to just us? You, me, Jessie, and our three sidhe friends?” She paused, and then continued. “I’m angry at my father, but I don’t want to humiliate him. If we could keep it to family and immediate witnesses, I would be grateful.”
Erik stroked her hair. “Then that’s what we’ll do. Let me go get dressed.”
Jessie was talking in low tones to Cian, and turned to Winter as Erik walked away. “Hey, how many banishing potions do you have? If we’re fighting an army, we’re going to need, like, all of them.”
Winter thought about her stores. “A few dozen in bottles, but I have several large jars of potion and a few cases of empty bottles waiting for idle hands.” Winter gave her apprentice a wry look. “Speaking of which, you owe me a frappe from that bet you made based on your silly TV show. Throwing potion bottles can be added to the list of things which do not work in real life.”
Jessie blinked. “No! Really?”
“The glass didn’t break when it hit fabric and flesh.”
She pushed her glasses higher up the bridge of her nose. “Maybe something like a water balloon, then?”
“No, those are too big. It would be wasteful, and we’re facing an army. Banishing potion really only needs a very small amount to work. I would think something like a slingshot, but I worry about the strength of the glass, and there is still the question about it breaking on contact with a soft target.”
Jessie gasped and jumped up and down. “I’ve got it!” She stuck out her hand. “Gimme your card and let me borrow the Bug. I’ll meet you guys out at the Point.”
Winter reached into her bag, and then paused. “Wait… where is your car?”
“It’s still at Moore Investments, but we can get it back after we save the world. Besides, you can’t drive Cian around in yours, anyway. It’s too old and has too much steel in the body. Brian’s van made him sick.” She wiggled her fingers. “Trust me, you’re gonna love this.”
Winter handed her the card and her keys. “Stay safe. Actually, talk to Jason about taking one or two of Erik’s people with you. Midir probably knows what my car looks like and I don’t want you out all by yourself.”
Jessie sobered, but only a little. She saluted with the card and scampered off.
Winter met Etienne’s eyes over Cian’s head. He looked so serious, but so confident.
She wished she felt the same.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
“There’s no need to be nervous. Colin will see reason.”
Winter stilled her fidgeting fingers and kept her face turned to the Pacific. The private lane down the length of the Point was roughly a mile long, but this morning it seemed too short. After last night she had no desire to see her father. “You didn’t hear him. I just don’t know what-”
; “Shit!” Erik slammed on the breaks of his big SUV, throwing Winter forward against her seatbelt and making Lana exclaim in Faerie Gaelic from the backseat. Behind them Etienne swerved on his Harley to avoid a collision. Winter heard Cian’s sharp cry of alarm. They had decided that it would be best for him to ride the bike, rather than take another trip in a vehicle with a large amount of steel in its construction. And Erik driving a plastic compact car was a punchline.
“What happened?” Winter asked, trying to see where Erik was looking, but her seatbelt had constricted just shy of strangulation.
“It was one of your damn cats.”
“What? They know better than to run out in front of cars.” Winter pushed back into the seat to relax the belt and reset the lock. She noted that they had stopped within a hundred yards of the circle drive. Her stomach clenched, from nerves or bleeding or both, she wasn’t sure.
Erik hit the button to roll down his window and Winter could hear the approach of Etienne’s Harley. “Maybe it was chasing something. Who knows? I’ve known the hairballs for over a hundred and fifty years and I couldn’t tell you.” He turned to assure Etienne that everything was all right.
Winter stared at the city side of Mulcahy House, covered in rose trellises. She didn’t want to be here. She didn’t want to argue with her father again. His betrayal of everything their family had lived for, that they had died for – that she was dying for even now – ate at her even more than the lethal deterioration of her organs. How could he throw it all away? But then Erik set the SUV rolling forward and they swung into the drive and into full view of the front of the house.
On the bench beside the ornately carved doors, sitting in the morning sunshine, was Colin.
Winter’s brows shot up in shock. “Papa?” He was outside? Hope fluttered in her chest. Had he actually listened to her last night?
Her father stared down at his hands and ignored the vehicles as they pulled up to a stop.
Winter was first out, opening her door before Erik had shut off the engine. She hitched her bag up higher on her shoulder and made her swift way up the little stone footpath. She heard the others following at a slower pace behind her. “Papa, what are you doing out here?” He still wore only his brown robe. Even in the sunshine the October air was chill.
