She smiled in quiet triumph. “Anyway, this is official,” she continued, primly picking her way across the hardened mud. “Greg wants to see you if you’re available. Little issue’s come up, and I think you’ll be interested.”
I pointed to my discarded coffee. “Will there be Irish?”
“If you ask nicely, I’m sure. And what’s with the sheep?”
Georgie screeched again, and Toula cringed in surprise as she looked around for the source of the noise. “Joey adopted a baby dragon,” I explained, heading for the open rift.
“He did what?”
“Tell you later. Your boss is waiting,” I reminded her, and Toula, with a little salute to Valerius, closed the gate behind us.
CHAPTER 2
* * *
It always struck me as odd that the most powerful wizard in the world kept his office in a windowless room deep within a repurposed missile silo buried in the middle of nowhere, Montana. Oh, Greg had decorated the place—or more likely, Missy, his long-suffering wife, had decorated the place—with warm paneling, two decently plush green leather sofas, and a well-stocked wet bar (all surveyed by Missy’s large bridal portrait, a deterrent should her husband get a peculiar thirst), but still, I couldn’t shake the feeling that the grand magus could have at least made an attempt at posh.
Then again, I had largely based my office on Greg’s, so I had no room to complain.
“Afternoon,” he said, turning from the bar with a bottle of bourbon in his hand as I stepped through the gate. “A little something for your trouble?”
“Morning, actually,” I replied, momentarily thrown at hearing English again after ten days straight in Faerie. “And sure, why not?”
He passed over the bottle and a highball glass, and I poured more than would be considered wise in most social situations. “Toula said you had something interesting on your hands,” I continued, glancing at her as she flopped onto a sofa and propped her heels on the coffee table.
Greg slipped his thick glasses off and slowly wiped the lenses on his wash-faded blue polo. “That I do. Drink up, old timer. You may need it.”
I knocked back half the full glass and winced at the burn. “Sounds reassuring. Care for one yourself?” I added, tilting my drink.
He shook his head and cut his eyes to Missy’s portrait, and I nodded. Greg Harrison might have been grand magus, seventy-eight, and perfectly able to regulate his own alcohol intake, but Missy took no chances. Or, for that matter, prisoners.
“There’s someone I’d like you to meet,” said Greg, waving toward the sofas. I accepted a seat beside Toula, warming the rest of my breakfast libation between my palms, and he walked off toward the door. “Nothing to worry about, no tricks,” he assured me over his shoulder. “I only wanted to get everyone situated first.” He touched the knob, then paused, looked back, and peered at my glass. “Might want to finish that.”
My stomach began to clench. “Just what do you have living down here, anyway?” I said, trying and failing at levity.
Greg’s mouth tightened. “You’ll see momentarily. Chug.”
If anyone else had been that insistent, I would have suspected a trap, but Greg had grown up into a halfway decent fellow, and I tasted nothing odd about the bourbon. And so I did as he suggested, then put the empty glass on the coffee table, creating a coaster as I did to avoid incurring the wrath of Missy. “Edge is off,” I announced. “Hit me.”
He opened the door and stuck his head into the hallway. “Mr. Carver? You can come in now, son.”
Given Greg’s behavior to that point, I had braced myself for something gruesome, perhaps something with tentacles, but the boy who walked through the door nearly knocked me out of my seat.
He seemed ordinary enough. Perhaps an inch above five and a half feet, skinny in the manner of growing boys whose bones and bulk failed to plan ahead and coordinate. His light blond hair was slightly golden even under Greg’s artificial lights, and his face was pale—not sickly, but the color of a creature long accustomed to shaded places. But his eyes, dark as polished oak…
Mother’s had never held that look of warring distress and terror, but in all other respects, his eyes were hers.
Or Áedán’s. Or Doran’s.
I thought I might be gawking at a ghost until he shuffled his feet and hugged his scrawny chest, casting his gaze on the carpet to dodge my stare.
Shaking my head and closing my eyes, I undid the bourbon’s pleasant effect and looked up again to find him still slinking against the wall, miserable but not a mirage. “What—”
“Lord Coileán,” Greg interrupted before I could begin to babble, “allow me to present Aiden Carver.”
The boy flinched at his name, and I realized after a few seconds that my mouth was agape. I snapped it closed, forced myself to blink, and said, “I’m sorry, Greg, what did you call him?”
“Aiden Carver,” he repeated, puzzled by my reaction. “Is that—”
“Nothing. Thinking of someone I used to know.” I pushed myself off the sofa and slowly crossed the room toward the boy, who remained frozen near the door. His expression was even clearer at close range, confusion and misery under a generous layer of fear, and I pushed my own shock aside. “Aiden,” I murmured, and waited in silence until he looked at me. “You’re in no danger. Whatever they’ve said, I’m not going to hurt you.”
He nodded and chewed his lip.
I looked back at Greg and Toula, who had risen and joined him. “You think…”
Greg hesitated. “We’re not a hundred percent certain, but that’s the working hypothesis. Based on what his father said—”
“Come on, he’s the spitting image of Titania,” Toula cut in. “But we needed you here to confirm or deny.”
I shrugged. “Aside from stealing Olive, I have no idea what she was up to in the last…how old are you, Aiden?”
“Fifteen,” he mumbled.
“Sixteen years,” I finished, folding my arms. “Unless you were planning on taking cheek swabs.”
“There’s a quicker route,” she said with a little smirk. “Painless, and much faster than going on Maury. I just need you for comparison.”
The boy looked like he wanted to sink into the wall, and my gut, now bereft of the calming booze, tightened again. “Details.”
Toula rolled her eyes. “I’m not going to hurt you, you big baby. It’s only a little aural comparison. Highly technical spellcraft, you wouldn’t understand.”
I let the jab slide. “What do you mean, aural comparison?”
She sighed and returned to the sofa. “In other words, looking at the signature of the energetic field you’re putting off,” she explained, sounding bored. “We’ve been tweaking it for years, but it’s tightened up nicely. It’s easiest with half-breeds—”
“Skip the lecture. Details,” I said, taking the seat beside her.
“I’m getting there,” she snapped, crossing her long legs. “In brief, an individual’s aural signature is distinctive—it’s the combination of his parents’ signatures, and he shares it with all of his full siblings. Follow me?”
I waved her on, and she closed her eyes and began to mutter under her breath. Twenty seconds later, a glowing orb manifested in front of her face, and she opened her eyes with a satisfied nod. “Right. This is mine,” she said, setting it on a slow revolution. “What do you see?”
I studied the hollow sphere, trying to make sense of its colorful latticework. Red and green swirls roped around the circumference and entangled themselves with each other, but I could find nothing familiar in their twining. “I see a mess, frankly,” I confessed.
“That’s because you’re looking for meaning in the patterns. The patterns are the meaning. Here.”
She whispered something unintelligible, but that was nothing new; most of Toula’s incantations were nonsensical and variable, the mark of a wizard who didn’t need the crutch of mangled Latin to work her will. Or in her case, I suppose, the mark of a master so
comfortable with spellcraft and flush with the power to enchant that the two melded into a hybrid all Toula’s own. In any case, she had no need of a wand, but I knew without doubt that I couldn’t replicate the spell she was obviously weaving.
As Toula continued to whisper, the sphere divided down the center and flattened, and the swirls split themselves by color, red to her left and green to her right. When they had settled, she pointed to the modified lattices. “I color-code for convenience. Red marks fae lines, green marks wizard, and blue marks anything mundane. The division’s pretty clear with my signature, see?” She flipped her finger back and forth between the two unreadable patches of glowing tendrils. “That’s Mab’s signature, and that’s my father’s. Classic witch-blood division.”
I caught Aiden’s questioning look but turned my attention to Toula’s work. The red side burned brighter than the green—her mother was one of the Three, after all—but the Pavli side of the equation wasn’t exactly dim. “So what you’re suggesting,” I said, “is that, were we to have another of Mab’s children here and compare his signature to yours—”
“The red parts would match,” she finished.
I didn’t need to ask whether she had actually made the comparison. Even if we had known where to find Mab’s people, Toula had no interest in seeking out her siblings. “And how would that meeting go?” she had asked when I broached the subject for the first and only time. “Assuming that I run into a half-breed who isn’t entirely psychotic and doesn’t try to kill me on sight. ‘Yeah, I met Mom once, just a few minutes before I let my good buddy Colin kill her. She seemed bitchy. Oh, and I should probably mention that my father was a mass murderer. So, where are we doing Thanksgiving this year?’”
I wasn’t sure whether I would consider Toula my good buddy, but there wasn’t a more apt term to describe our relationship, especially in light of our matricidal tit for tat. And so, not wanting to push her, I had let the matter of her potential family drop. I had enough familial mess to deal with myself, anyway: five younger, fully fae brothers and sisters I barely knew, none of whom was happy to have me around. I couldn’t exactly recommend connecting with one’s siblings to Toula when all I wanted to do most days was banish my family to the mortal realm and make them Oberon’s problem.
But the boy…
While Toula had been demonstrating, Greg had led Aiden to the sofa facing us, and now the boy sat stiffly on the edge of the cushion, hands locked in his lap, eyes unsettled. As he stared at Toula’s dissected signature, she waved it into the empty space to the left of her head and leaned toward him. “I promise you, dude, it doesn’t hurt. Here, we’ll make Colin go next, eh?”
With that, she turned to me and resumed her mumbling. Before I could protest, I felt a warm tingle above my skin—a unique sensation akin to comfortable pins and needles—and within seconds, a red and blue sphere appeared before me. “Huh,” I muttered, watching it turn. “All right, I’ll give you that, it’s painless.”
“Told you,” she replied, and with a flick of her fingers, my sphere began to unravel and split. “Okay, here were go,” she said, pointing to the bright red lattice. “Titania. This other bit,” she continued, gesturing toward the faint blue lattice beyond it, “is from your father, who was definitely normal.”
“That’s debatable,” I muttered, but quieted as she stacked Mab and my mother’s signatures together. “Not a match,” I said. “Not even close.”
“I’m the control, then,” said Toula, and grinned across the table at Aiden. “Your turn!”
He remained stoically frozen as she worked the spell, then blinked as his signature appeared. “Okay,” Toula continued, rotating the orb, “you’re definitely a witch-blood.” He flinched, but she continued as if she’d not seen it. “And when we pull this apart, like so…”
The red and green split as before, and Aiden’s linked fingers whitened.
Toula gave him her best reassuring smile, then pulled Aiden’s signature and mine together for comparison.
The fae lattices overlapped perfectly.
“Well, that’s pretty clear,” said Toula, and patted my shoulder. “Meet your kid brother.”
Aiden looked sick, and Greg cut his eyes between the two of us, waiting for a reaction while Toula broke the spell. After a long moment of awkward silence, I cleared my throat. “Could we have a moment alone, please?”
Greg nodded and stood, and Toula gave me a warning look as she followed him into the hallway. When the door latched behind them, I sighed and regarded the boy—my little brother, apparently—across the coffee table. “So.”
“So,” he whispered.
I rose and headed for the bar. “I don’t know about you, but I could do with another drink. What’s your poison?”
When I looked back at the sofa, Aiden’s brow was furrowed. “I’m fifteen.”
“It won’t kill you. Come on, surely you’ve sneaked something before.”
He hesitated, then slinked toward the bar and scanned the bottles on display. “I had a Mike’s once. That was okay.”
“I think Greg’s more of a whisky man. No matter.” A cold bottle appeared at Aiden’s elbow, and he cautiously picked it up. “Should be close, at least. I’m not one for lemonade, to be honest.”
He popped the cap off, sniffed the clear liquid, and took a tentative sip. “Little sweeter than I remember. It’s not bad,” he rushed to add, then drank again.
“We won’t tell your parents.” I poured myself a fresh triple and headed back to the sofa. Aiden lingered by the bar, clutching his bottle, and I pointed to his vacated seat. “Come on, sit down. I won’t bite.”
He shuffled back to his cushion and perched on the edge once more, as if poised to run.
I produced another coaster and put my drink on the table beside my empty glass, then folded my arms and leaned back into the sofa. “Witch-blood, huh?”
His head bobbed a micrometer in either direction.
“They just told you, didn’t they?”
Aiden nodded again, this time with emphasis.
“Shit.” His eyes widened, and I shook my head. “You’re fifteen, and you’re only now learning this? What did they do, say you were a foundling?”
He drank slowly, collecting his thoughts, then stared at the table. “They told me I was a dud,” he mumbled. “It happens. And my sister’s really strong, so I…” The color rose in his face. “You know, I guess I thought we balanced each other out. Hel got all the power, and I got…this.” The bottle stayed upraised for a long swig. “She’s probably going to be grand magus someday. Hel, I mean. My older sister. Well, I mean, she’s my only sister, but she’s older, and—”
“Moon and stars,” I sighed, “big sis is on track for Greg’s job, and you’re the witch-blood in the middle of the silo. That’s…fucking awful, kid. I’m sorry.”
Aiden seemed shocked but collected himself quickly. “It’s not so bad…”
I waited until his voice trailed off into silence. “Did they even teach you the first thing about magic?”
“No point in teaching me.” He shrugged. “Can’t do anything with it.”
“Can you sense it?”
“I see it. Doesn’t change anything.”
“Well, you’ve got one on me,” I replied. “I smell it. Far less precise, from what I’ve heard. Of course, I take it that your reality looks rather like a light show, so maybe I got the better deal after all.”
“I’m used to it,” said Aiden, lifting his drink again. “But like I said, it doesn’t matter—I can’t do anything. I’m a dud.” He paused, then amended, “Witch-blood, I guess.”
“And how’s that working out for you? Dud among wizards, how does that work?”
He stared at the coffee table so long that I started to apologize for the unintended offense, but he cut me off before I could begin. “This place is a nightmare,” he said softly, finally meeting my eyes. “Some of the guys my age…they’re real assholes. Chase me, beat me up…I don’t
know how many times they’ve broken something. Mom keeps putting me back together.” His jaw clenched until he fought down the tears. “Mom and Dad pulled me out of school last year when Hel went off to college. No one there to protect me anymore, see?” He drank long and deeply. “So I’ve been teaching myself. Passed all the exit tests in April. I graduated, so I’ve been looking at college courses online. Mom says I’m too young to go away, and there isn’t a good community college near here…”
While he finished his drink, I said, “Your mom’s good to you?”
“Can’t complain,” he agreed. “Dad…he’s disappointed, you know, that I’m…that I’m the way I am. But Mom doesn’t care.” Aiden frowned at the table as a second bottle appeared beside his empty first, but he picked it up and started over without protest. “But she’s not really my mom, I guess. Not if…if I’m—”
“She’s the best mother you’ll ever have,” I interrupted, “and just because she isn’t your blood doesn’t make her any less your mother. Understand?” He nodded slowly, and I leaned toward him and lowered my voice. “Aiden, our mother…well, she didn’t raise me, either. If there’s anything redeeming about me, the thanks go to my surrogate.” My hand sought and closed around my glass, and I made up for lost time. “She was one of the most wonderful people I’ve ever known. Mother, on the other hand, was cruel and cold, and she never, ever forgot a slight.”
He drank again, matching me. “I heard you killed her.”
“That was mostly Toula. And then I killed her mother, so we’re even.” I paused, trying to judge his mood. “If you wanted to meet Mother, I’m sorry. I can tell you about her—”
“The grand magus said she dumped me upstairs when I was a few days old,” he murmured. “I don’t think she really missed me, do you?”
“Could have been worse.” His eyebrows rose in challenge, and I shrugged. “I know a witch-blood whose father tried to kill him.”
Aiden sat silently for a few seconds, then mumbled, “Might have been better that way.”
“Hey, now. Hey.” I rose and stepped around the table to join Aiden on his sofa. “Don’t say that, kid. There’s no reason that—”
The Faerie King Page 3
