His eyes had begun to fill. “I can’t do anything. I can’t go to college because I’m too young, and I can’t do one damn thing with magic. I mean, come on, I failed at card tricks. Card tricks.”
“That’s sleight of hand, not magic.”
“Same result.” He sniffed and rubbed at his eyes, flushing again. “Dad ignores me, Hel’s on the other side of the country, I don’t have any friends here—”
“Want to live with me?”
His mouth opened and closed a few times, and I hastened on. “I can’t guarantee it’s perfectly safe, but anyone who touched you would answer to me, and I, uh…I can do some rather unpleasant things. Let’s leave it at that.” I tried to puzzle out his enigmatic expression. “The reason I offer—it’s not just because of your…problems…down here. There’s, well…Faerie has this effect on people. Some of the, um…” Aiden’s face remained a mask, and I bit the bullet. “All right, it’s no secret that changelings have been taken in the past. I don’t agree with it, but I can’t change history. Yes?”
He nodded.
“Some of them…many of them…when they’d been around long enough, they started showing rudimentary magical talent. I can’t guarantee anything,” I cautioned, “but if you came over and stuck around for a while, something latent might be triggered. I’m not saying it would be magus-level ability, but…well, maybe you could throw away your trick deck.”
Aiden’s face practically glowed as a wide smile broke across it. “Really? I could do magic?”
“Again, I can’t make any promises,” I said, reluctant to dampen his sudden joy, “but it’s entirely possible. Probably likely, too, since you’re predisposed toward it. And I’ve got plenty of space,” I went on. “Wouldn’t be breathing down your neck or anything. As I said, it’s not completely safe, but then again—”
He grabbed my forearms and stared at me with a fervor bordering on manic. “I’ll do anything. Anything. If there’s any chance it’ll work…anything. Really. Name it.”
I carefully freed myself, taking caution to avoid Aiden’s steel wristwatch, and picked up my drink. “Okay, first ground rule: get that word out of your vocabulary.”
“Huh?”
“Anything. Tempt the wrong person with terms like that, and I won’t be able to save you.” I paused and drank, letting that soak in, and when Aiden was suitably chastised, I patted his shoulder. “This isn’t a bargaining situation, anyway. Faerie’s your birthright, kid—come and go as you please. Well,” I amended, “by which I mean I’ll open gates for you whenever you like. I’m not trying to hold you prisoner, if that thought had crossed your mind.”
His brows knit in confusion. “What do you mean, it’s my birthright?”
“Aiden,” I replied, speaking slowly, “I realize this is all new to you, but you’re Titania’s son and my brother. Why wouldn’t it be your birthright?”
He spread his arms, encompassing Greg’s desk and wet bar. “Arcanum?”
“Hate to break this to you, but you’re never going to be Arcanum. They don’t take witch-bloods, or else Toula would be on the Inner Council by now.”
“Toula Pavli?”
“Point taken,” I muttered. “But you, now—you’re a high lord of Faerie, Aiden. I have no right to keep you out of the realm.”
He exploded in a fit of laughter, but I heard the edge of hysteria in his gasps, and so I waited and drank as he worked it out of his system. A few minutes later, when the worst had subsided into tears, he hiccupped and shook his head. “You’re nuts.”
“You’re tipsy,” I countered. “Parents lock the liquor cabinet, do they?”
“I’m fine,” he said, wiping his face dry. “But there’s no way in hell that I’m a lord of anything.”
I rolled my eyes and leaned back into the soft cushions—surely another of Missy’s ideas. “Some lords earn their titles by being ridiculously talented and doing massive favors for people in power. And then there are the high lords and ladies, Titania and Oberon’s children…and mine, I suppose,” I mumbled. “Look, it doesn’t matter that you can’t enchant your way out of a paper bag—the title is hereditary. Trust me, Greg’s well aware of that,” I added, and finished my whisky.
He was still processing when I put my empty glass down. “So…let me get this straight,” he said. “I’m—”
“Lord Aiden. Assumedly Mother’s youngest, but I’ll ask around,” I replied, watching his face work. “And I also assume that, at least nominally, you’re affiliated with my court, but if you’d rather hang around Oberon, I can’t stop you. He’s down in Florida, pretending he’s Jimmy Buffett or something. I can only hope that’s a phase.”
My brother stared at me then as if seeing me clearly for the first time. “You’re really Lord Coileán?” he murmured.
“I am.”
“The Lord Coileán? The Ironhand?”
I shrugged to hide my discomfort. “I also answer to ‘Colin,’ ‘Hey, You,’ and, just for Toula, ‘Gramps.’ She’s a real charmer, that one.”
But Aiden wasn’t to be deterred. “There’s a file on you here. It’s massive. I…may or may not have hacked into the restricted materials when the archivists started digitizing the library.” He bit his lip. “Do me a favor and don’t tell, okay? Dad would kill me if he knew.”
“Secret’s safe,” I replied, and crossed my arms. “As for that file, the Arcanum and I go way back. Half of what you saw is probably wrong, and the rest is surely littered with exaggerations. And whatever they’ve said about me, remember that the Arcanum isn’t filled with angels. They hunted me first.”
His eyes fixed on mine. “And…you’re my big brother?”
“Half brother, if you want to be technical about it, but yeah.”
He said nothing, and I listened to the fluorescents buzz for a few minutes until Aiden finally whispered, “Cool.”
CHAPTER 3
* * *
Greg stepped to the wall just in time to avoid being bowled over as Aiden ran toward the elevators. “Scared him off that quickly, did you?” he asked, catching his breath. “Fleeing in terror after, what, ten minutes?”
“He’s going home to pack,” I replied, lingering at his side as Toula strolled over. “I’m getting him out of here, Greg.”
I had expected a bit of blow-back, maybe a halfhearted protest, or possibly exhortations to the effect that he was the grand magus, damn it, and I couldn’t just waltz in and do as I pleased, but Greg merely nodded. “That’s probably for the best.” He glanced at me over his glasses, rubbed his chin, and cocked his finger as he wandered off in the direction Aiden had run. “Walk with me. You need the full story before you thrust yourself into this.”
Toula caught my querying look and shrugged, then followed her boss. “This a private meeting, guys?”
He stopped and turned, then considered her for a moment before muttering, “I suppose you’d hear this soon enough.”
“No doubt,” she said cheerily. “So save us all the time, eh? What’s up with the kid?”
Greg walked in silence down the long hallway of closed doors, wincing each time he put his weight on his left leg. The thick beige carpeting muffled the tell-tale syncopation of his limp, but it was obvious that he was in pain. I touched his shoulder and concentrated for a beat, and Greg looked back, startled. “What—”
“Temporary. I can fix the symptoms, but the underlying arthritis…”
He shook his head as I let the thought end unspoken. “Best not tempt me. And let me know in advance the next time you do that, huh?” he said, but tested his bad leg and grunted. “Thanks, though.”
“So what do I need to know about Aiden?”
We continued past the twin elevators, and Greg sighed to himself as we turned the corner toward the stairwell. “I just told him, you know. Did he mention that?”
I slowed to keep pace with him, and Toula stayed a step behind us, soundless even in her pumps. “Why the hell did you wait so long?” I asked, not both
ering to hide my indignation. “That’s unfair—”
“It wasn’t about fairness. First”—he depressed the steel bar to unlatch the stairwell door and held it open—“I didn’t think he was safe while Titania lived. And before you protest, I was down the hall when Rick Matherson’s father came to kill him,” he murmured. “Popped in here like our defenses didn’t exist. We’ve since beefed them up,” he added, giving me a steady look as we trooped downstairs, “but I really didn’t want to test them against her.”
“Understood, but—”
“You didn’t let me finish,” he interrupted, leaning on the handrail despite the enchantment on his joints. “Secondly, it’s tough for witch-bloods down here, especially when their conception was, to be delicate, non-consensual. The Council has always known about Aiden—just as they knew about you, Toula,” he said over his shoulder. “Necessity and all. But there was no need to let Aiden’s peers know where he came from.”
“Difficult to hide a baby,” I said, stepping carefully to avoid an unbalanced grasp at the railing. The gray paint would do nothing to shield me from the metal beneath, and I had left my gloves at home. “How did you explain that one?”
Greg paused on the landing to rest. “Rachel and Howard had been trying for years to give their daughter a sibling. They claimed it was a surprise labor, and no one asked too many questions.”
“Indigestion gone wrong?” said Toula with a smirk.
“A home birth, what a shock, bullshit and nonsense,” Greg replied. “At least Aiden looks enough like them to pass for Rachel’s. I don’t think his sister knows the truth yet, to be honest. No reason to upset her.” He pulled a floral handkerchief out of his pocket and coughed phlegm, then folded it away and resumed our downward march. “Someone left him in the gravel when he wasn’t more than a day or two old. Little guy might have died of exposure if one of the watchmen hadn’t gone up to check on a tripped ward. Stray cow,” he explained offhand. “Cold spring night, as I recall. Poor bastard almost had a heart attack when Aiden cried.”
The air in the stairwell began to grow musty as we descended. “How did you determine his father?” I asked.
Greg waited until we reached another landing, then leaned against the wall as his mouth tightened. “Howard suspected it, and that little spell you saw upstairs confirmed it. Aiden’s his, no question about that.”
“So…this Howard—”
“Carver. Howard Carver.”
“So Howard…what? Had a fling with Mother? And his wife…Rebecca, was it?”
“Rachel,” said Greg.
“Rachel Voss,” Toula muttered behind me.
Greg flicked her a look of impatience. “The former Ms. Voss, yes. And no, it wasn’t a fling.” He stuffed his hands into his khakis and looked me in the eye. “Howard had a younger sister, Ella. Pretty little thing. They were orphaned young, and he just about raised her. She didn’t have any great gift for magic, and she eventually moved out to Seattle to find herself.” He shrugged. “Someone found her first.”
It didn’t take a genius to know where this story was going. “Changeling?”
He nodded curtly. “The Carvers didn’t know she was missing until she’d been gone two weeks, and then Howard tracked her movements and figured out what had happened. And then he managed to open a gate into Faerie so he could go after her.”
“He did what?”
“Believe me, I know.” Greg shook his head and sighed. “Stupid, stupid move, but that boy loved his sister, and nothing in heaven or hell was going to stop him from bringing her home.” He blinked slowly. “Of course, by the time he got into Faerie, Ella was already dead.”
I tasted bile at the back of my throat. “What happened?”
“Don’t know. She did something to set Titania off, I guess, but long story short, the queen didn’t take too kindly to Howard barging in. Probably his saving grace was that she thought he was handsome.”
Greg paused, waiting for my reaction, but all I could do was nod. “That…doesn’t surprise me at all.”
He glanced around, and, satisfied that we were the only three on the stairs, continued in a near-whisper. “He claims she pinned him down and…well, had her way, then threw him out with Ella’s body. And since he was happily married with a three-year-old at that time, I tend to believe him.”
I rubbed my face, if only to relieve the pressure of Greg’s eyes on me. “And he’s been living with a daily reminder of that for the last fifteen years.”
“Exactly. It took Rachel threatening to leave him before he agreed to raise Aiden. Heck,” Greg muttered, “Rachel’s the one who named him. She was so thrilled to have another baby, she didn’t give a damn where he’d come from.”
So that answered that—Mother hadn’t begun recycling names. Still, the coincidence bothered me, especially given Áedán and Aiden’s physical likeness. “That’s why you lied to him?”
“For his safety and Howard’s dignity,” said Greg. “And I’ll ask you not to repeat any of this to Aiden—I gave him the simplified version of the truth.” My expression shifted, and he held up his hands. “Someday, someday. But not now. The boy’s just fifteen, and I think he’s had quite enough for one day, don’t you?”
We climbed down another flight of stairs, and Greg patted the thick steel door. “The Carvers are right down this hall. We should have given Aiden a decent head start by now…”
He opened the door on a brawl.
Well, that’s not entirely accurate. Calling something a brawl suggests that all participants are engaged in the melee. What we found on the other side of the door was a knot of half a dozen teenage boys beating Aiden as if they had no dearer desire than to reduce him to his component atoms. I couldn’t make out much—Aiden had partly covered his face and crouched into a groaning ball—but I recognized the unnatural bend of his arm and the copious bleeding that could only signal a broken nose.
“Don’t kill them,” Greg rushed as we realized what we were seeing. “If you kill them—”
I was too furious to answer, and the force building inside of me needed an outlet or six. Before Greg could get another word out, I flung the boys into the walls with a satisfying shower of plaster and pinned them above the ground. Toula ran to where Aiden crouched and began assessing the damage, but I had eyes only for the boys, who ceased fighting their unseen binds as soon as they spotted Greg—all, that is, but their leader, a dark-haired kid with an angelic face and blood on his fingers.
“Want to tell me what’s going on?” I asked, reaching up to grab his throat. “Or do I have to squeeze it out of you?”
With a little pressure, the kid went limp, and a dark spot began to spread on his trousers. I watched his eyes until the sullenness turned to terror, then stepped away and slowly, deliberately, cracked my knuckles. “How is he, Toula?” I asked, not taking my eyes off my target.
“Nose is a goner,” she replied. “Compound fracture in his right arm, if I had to guess, and plenty of bruising. Wouldn’t be surprised if he has internal damage. Hang on, bud,” she murmured, “I’m going to dull the pain, just bear with me.”
I kept my face still, but the tremor in my fists belied my mask of controlled calm. “Six on one? Was he carrying a rocket launcher that I missed?” I asked, scanning the boys’ colorless faces. “Someone, please explain this to me.”
Greg’s hand landed on my shoulder, and he cleared his throat. “These young men are all sons and grandsons of Council magi,” he said quietly. “And they’ve been warned about this sort of behavior.”
I pulled away and stared at him, aghast. “This has happened before?”
“First time in a few months,” said Aiden, letting Toula pull him to his feet. He held a corner of his ripped shirt to his nose with his good hand, slowing the flow that had already stained the carpet. “I don’t go out much these days,” he mumbled, his words distorted by his battered nose.
I had heard Aiden earlier, but I hadn’t appreciated the extent of the beating
s he had described, and now I dearly wanted to hurt the boys I was holding in place. Every instinct screamed at me to kill them painfully, but I fought down the rage and, with a final glower at Greg, dropped them to the floor. The boys scrambled up into a defensive knot, and I pointed at their leader. “Touch Aiden again, and he won’t be able to save you,” I told him, cocking my head toward Greg. “And if you think I give a damn about your families, you’re bigger idiots than you seem.”
“Go home, all of you,” Greg barked. “I’ll deal with you later.”
The boys sprinted off, followed quickly by the sound of slamming doors. When the last footsteps had died away, Greg contemplated the bloodstained floor. “My hands are tied,” he muttered. “They’re little shits, but they’re well-connected little shits. I can’t just beat sense into them.”
“Look what they did!” Toula shouted, keeping Aiden upright as he groaned. “If we hadn’t gotten here—”
His eyes flicked up and down again. “He’s had it worse. But as I was saying, their folks are Council. If I were to punish them, especially for something done to Aiden—”
“He’s had it worse?” Toula echoed.
I waited in silence until Greg looked up. “You let them beat him until he pulled out of school,” I said through gritted teeth. “He’s defenseless, and you let them—”
“They didn’t use wands this time,” Aiden mumbled, then hissed as he shifted his weight. “I’m okay. Mom knows how everything fits back together.”
I looked from my little brother, whose eyes were turning black, to the grand magus, whose dark skin hid any embarrassment he might have felt. “You disappoint me.”
“You don’t understand the situation,” Greg countered.
“I understand well enough. And I thought you were better than this.”
With that, I turned to Aiden and Toula, then carefully pulled him from her shoulder and into the air. “Less stress on you,” I said before he could panic. “Point the way home, and I’ll float you in the right direction.”
The Faerie King Page 4
