The Arcanum’s living quarters had all the cheer and character of a retirement home for nuclear submariners. From the outside, the Carvers’ apartment was identical in appearance to its neighbors: another gray, windowless door set into a white wall. Someone had placed a floral-print welcome mat over the hallway carpeting, which, thanks to the complete lack of sun in the silo, was still as colorful as the day it was purchased. In other words, the setup was as depressing as a birthday party for a pediatric hospice patient.
“Let me go in first,” said Aiden, holding on to Toula’s arms to steady himself as I lowered him to his feet. He grimaced on landing, but the kid surprised me with his stoicism in the face of injuries warranting an ambulance. As if sensing my bemusement, he shrugged his uninjured shoulder and mumbled, “Nothing Mom hasn’t seen before, but she’ll panic less if she doesn’t have to perform for an audience.”
And so we held back and waited as Aiden limped into his family’s apartment. “Mom?” he called, leaving the door ajar. “Are you home?”
“In here,” a female voice began, followed by a sharp gasp. “Oh, good God, Aiden!”
Toula rolled her eyes and leaned against the wall with her sinewy arms folded. “I could have fixed him,” she whispered.
“I don’t doubt that,” Greg replied in kind, giving me a wider than usual berth as he joined her. “But Rachel’s had some practice at this.” He caught my glare and muttered, “Don’t look at me like I’m some sort of monster, Coileán. His hide isn’t the only one I’ve got to consider.”
“Your own?” I replied, pulling up a patch of wall on the other side of the door.
“I don’t expect you to understand, seeing as you’re new to this game,” he retorted, “but sometimes, the job calls for tough decisions. Sometimes, you get to choose between two bad options. And sometimes, the lesser of two evils is turning a blind eye when a little boy crawls home with fractures in both arms and legs.” I continued to stare, but he didn’t look away. “You think I’m proud of that choice? Shit, you know me better than that.”
“I thought I did.”
He rubbed his face and exhaled softly. “I’m responsible for several hundred souls here,” he said. “Several thousand more worldwide, many of whom would like to see me out of a job. Some of them want to see the Arcanum disbanded. Hell, some of my strongest critics are on the Council. And the only thing that’s going to keep this derelict afloat is a succession plan everyone can get behind.” Greg nodded to the open door and lowered his voice. “Helen Carver is the strongest wizard I’ve seen in three generations, but she ain’t ready for this job yet. I’m keeping the seat warm for her. Got to hold on for a few more years, see? Keep everyone happy long enough to get her in.”
I waited as Aiden failed to stifle a cry in the apartment. “And if the only way to get her in is to sacrifice him?”
“As I said, two bad options. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in this job, it’s that magic can’t fix everything.” Greg flinched while Aiden screamed, then shook his head as if banishing the sound. “The problem with you,” he resumed, watching over his glasses as I glowered, “is that you’ve been Batman too long.”
“Say what?” Toula interjected.
Greg shot her a reproving look, and she fell silent. “Batman,” he said, “only worries about fighting criminals—whom he wants, when he wants. He doesn’t follow rules, doesn’t take orders. Lone vigilante. Now, he’s pretty damn effective, but he’s still working solo.
“Me, I’m the mayor of Gotham. I’ve got to keep the lights on, the water running, the schools open, the trash collected, and the criminals behind bars, and oh yeah, if I fail at any of those, I’ll get voted out. All it takes is a ‘no confidence’ vote from the Council, and I’m retired.” His mouth tightened into a scowl. “And on top of that, I’ve got a loose cannon in black running around my city, doing untold millions in property damage and dropping lunatics on my doorstep. So give me a break,” he said, raising his voice a notch as Aiden yelped. “Batman gets to think about heroics. I’ve got to keep Gotham from eating itself alive.”
“By letting a pack of thugs torture my brother?”
His face was impassive. “You may think I’m a stupid child, but believe me, I know too well what’s hiding behind the curtain. And you will, too, if you don’t already,” he added with a little smirk. “You want to rule, you prepare to make exceptions to every principle you hold dear. Maybe not where your brother is concerned,” he said, pushing himself off the wall, “but you’ll do it to someone else’s. Wait here, I’ll see if he’s back in one piece.”
I lurked outside the door and listened as Greg stepped into the apartment. “Rachel?” he called. “Where are you?”
“Grand Magus?” came the female voice I’d heard before, but its tone had shifted toward wary—and, if I wasn’t mistaken, angry. “Den. Watch your step, I’m reshelving.”
“How is he?”
“Did you see them do this?”
Definitely angry. I cut my eyes to Toula, who made a face.
Greg hesitated. “I…saw something, yes.”
“Something?”
“Mom,” Aiden began, but she cut him off almost immediately.
“Go lie down, sweetie. Let that arm harden. Mom needs to have a little talk with the grand magus, okay?”
“But Mom, I—”
“Now. And as for you, Grand Magus—”
“Dang it, Mom, listen to me!”
Greg and Rachel fell silent for a long moment. Facing me across the door, Toula whistled softly. “He’s in for it now.”
As if on cue, Rachel asked in a voice far too low to bode anything pleasant, “Yes, Aiden?”
“Mom, I…I’m leaving. I just came by to get my stuff. They jumped me on the way.”
“What are you…” she started to say, then paused. “No. No, Greg, you didn’t…”
“Rachel,” he soothed, “let’s talk about this—”
“What did you tell him?” she yelled. “What have you done, you son of a bitch?”
“And that’s my cue,” I muttered, nudging the door open with my loafer.
The tableau inside the apartment suggested imminent violence: the pale boy standing in the hallway, whole again but sweating; the white-haired old man, his thin hands raised in protection; and the furious blue-eyed blonde standing between them in the midst of haphazard towers of books, her right fist curled around a well-worn oak wand, her left thrust back as if to push Aiden from danger. All three turned my way when I cleared my throat, and I stuffed my hands into my pockets. “Sorry to interrupt. Aiden, do you need help?”
Rachel bared her teeth, then executed a maneuver I had, to that point, seen only in cats: a snarling leap at my face. I threw up a shield an instant before her wand began to spark, and the thin jet of fire shooting out the end split and rebounded toward her oriental rug, burning twin oblongs on impact. She screeched and waved harder, but my shield held, and I waited in safety as she tried to kick, claw, and incinerate her way through the invisible wall.
“Can we talk about this?” I asked over her war cries.
Rachel shouted nearly unintelligibly, though I thought I recognized a few choice terms in her response. As I held my ground, she advanced on my shield, transitioning from ineffective fire attacks to pure force. She was trying to push me backward, I realized as my neck began to tingle. A quick glance over my shoulder confirmed what I suspected: I had angled myself in the kitchen doorway—and directly behind me was the Carvers’ stainless-steel refrigerator.
“Rachel,” I tried again, attempting to project calmness, “I don’t want to disarm you, but I will if you don’t drop the damn stick.”
She flashed her clenched teeth and shoved against my shield with renewed strength. “You’re not taking my son!”
“I’m not taking him. I invited him, and he accepted. This is an agreement, not an abduction.” I stepped away from the fridge, slowly driving Rachel back toward her books. “Forty-eight hour
s. Give us two days, and let’s see how he gets along. If he doesn’t like it, he comes back here. If he likes it, he still comes back to check in. Sound fair?”
“Rot in hell!” she panted.
I sighed. “I’m offering Aiden the possibility of unlocking magical talent. You’re offering him an isolated bedroom and a good chance of a beating if he steps outside, am I right?” Something flickered across her face, and I pressed harder. “How many times has he come home with a broken arm? Broken leg?”
“Burns,” Aiden supplied. “Fire burns, acid burns. Grit embedded in my skin from a sandstorm. I’ve almost drowned six times. Peed blood for a week before Mom realized that my kidney was busted. I’ve lost track of my nose jobs, and let’s not even start counting my teeth.”
“I’m not the enemy,” I told her. “I only want to help him.”
“You’re a monster,” she spat, then stepped backward into a tower of books and began to tumble.
I remotely broke her fall before she slammed into the coffee table, and she shrieked until she realized that she was no longer about to make impact with something harder than her head. Another little tug pulled her upright, and I released the enchantment before she had time to fully comprehend the situation. “Watch your step.”
“Don’t you ever do—”
“The alternative was stitches, and that’s messy.” I waited until she had checked herself for broken bits, then destroyed my shield, letting her watch the haze between us disappear. “Now, I’m the monster? Your child is abused, and all you do is stand by and clean up the blood?”
Her face flushed, though with anger or shame, I couldn’t tell. “I’ve told the grand magus for years—”
“And he did nothing. Why didn’t you run? Get your kids and drive? Hell, woman,” I said, folding my arms, “there are wizards all over this damn country. No one’s going to come for you in the night if you leave the silo.”
“It’s not that simple,” she mumbled.
I let her stew for a moment in silence. “No, it isn’t,” I said, “because you’ve got your daughter’s future to think of. She needed to be here, and you couldn’t leave her for Aiden.” She wasn’t squirming yet, but her tight shoulders betrayed her unease. “And you couldn’t pack a—what, a five-year-old? Six?—off to boarding school, could you? Send him to relatives elsewhere? No,” I murmured, watching Rachel’s face flame, “I’m guessing you’re both old Arcanum, wizards up and down those family trees. No one wants to deal with a dud, right? A mongrel even less—”
“Stop it.”
“So you let Big Sis watch out for him, maybe give her a little kiddie combat practice, but if she fails, eh, it doesn’t matter, these things happen,” I continued, ignoring her growing distress. “And when she leaves and little Aiden’s all alone against a pack of sadistic teenage wizards, well, you lock him in his room until he’s old enough to run away and never look back. Is that right?”
By the look on her face, I guessed that if not for Greg’s presence, Rachel would have renewed her efforts to kill me.
“Mom,” Aiden said quietly, “I haven’t seen the sun since April.”
She turned to him and grabbed his uninjured hand. “Sweetheart, you listen to me. Go pick a school. Anywhere. Dad and I will sign the papers, put you on a plane…if you want to transfer to MIT next year, we’ll take care of it—”
“Mom…”
“But you can’t go with him,” she continued in a desperate rush. “They’re dangerous, and they lie, and…and it’ll break your father’s heart,” she begged, squeezing him until he flinched. “You can’t do that to him, Aiden. Whatever they told you, you can’t hurt your dad like that.”
He took a deep breath, but he didn’t drop her stare. “And what about me?”
“You can go study your computers!” she cried. “Robotics! What you’ve always wanted—”
“I’ve always wanted to be a fucking wizard!”
“Aiden Theodore Carver!” she cried, recoiling. “Language!”
He pulled free of her grip and shook his head. “Coileán says there’s a chance. I’m going to try.”
“And I’ll vouch for his safety.”
We turned to find Toula standing in the foyer behind me, looking almost professional in her suit. “I promise, Rachel,” she continued, stepping out of the shadows, “nothing’s going to happen to him. I can get to him. Trust me—”
The crazed sparkle had returned to her eye. “Trust you?” she laughed. “I’m supposed to trust you, Pavli?”
Toula waited until Rachel’s laughter died, then pushed me aside, strode through the book stalagmites, and grabbed her by the blouse. “Yeah,” she growled, “you trust me. Because I’ve been where that poor bastard’s been, and I know what a hellhole this place can be for those of us who don’t quite measure up.” She shoved Rachel back and brushed her hands off. “He’ll be safe. I’ll keep an eye on him.”
Her tirade had done nothing to lessen Rachel’s scorn. “And what’s a little witch going to do against a faerie, hmm? Tell him who your daddy was and hope he runs in terror?”
Toula glanced at me, then back at Rachel’s mocking smirk. “I’m not a witch,” she said in a voice that was equal parts soft and dangerous. “I’m witch-blooded fae.” A white corona burst into flame around her body, and Rachel fell backward in alarm. “Emphasis, it appears, on fae,” Toula added, smirking in turn. “And believe me, Voss, I remember my childhood here very clearly.”
Rachel’s pale eyes nearly bulged. “You…” she began, floundering, and then her slipped gear righted itself. “We were kids. Our parents said—”
“Your parents told you to lock a child half your age in a storage closet overnight?”
“We thought the Grahams would find you!”
“Like they ever looked for me!” Toula clenched her fists, but the flames subsided. “Now, here’s how this is going to go. Aiden’s going to pack whatever he wants—and we’re going to help with the schlepping,” she told him, indicating herself and me, “because you don’t need to put any stress on that arm until it’s solidified. Seriously, man, no heavy lifting. And when he’s packed,” she said to Rachel, “he’s out of here, at least for the next two days. Got it?”
Rachel looked up at Greg from the rug. “Do something.”
“What would you like me to do?” he replied, showing his empty palms.
“You’re the grand magus!”
“And he’s a faerie king,” he said, cocking his thumb toward me, “who did me a favor by not blasting six magi’s children into ash. My hands are tied, Rachel. I’m sorry.”
As if finally realizing that she was outgunned, Rachel’s shoulders sagged, and she dropped her wand. “Monsters,” she whispered, glaring at Toula and me in turn. “Thugs and monsters. That’s all you are. Stealing a child…”
I glanced at Aiden, who still lingered in the hall, and nodded.
“I, uh…” he said, looking away from his fallen mother, “I’ll be in my room, then.”
CHAPTER 4
* * *
An hour later in Aiden’s bedroom, surrounded by hastily taped boxes of electronic components and one small duffel bag of clothing, Toula and I said our farewells. “Let me know if there’s a problem,” she insisted for the fifth time. “If Faerie doesn’t work out, I’ve still got my place in Butlerville…”
I followed her offer with our shared thought. “Or Meggy.”
“Hey, what’s one more teenager, huh?” she said, trying to laugh it off. “Maybe Olive needs a friend.”
Aiden looked up from tallying his boxes and frowned. “Who’s Meggy?”
Toula arched a neat eyebrow, but I brushed her off. “My girlfriend,” I told Aiden, adding, “who is also the mother of my daughter,” before Toula could jump in.
“Got it,” he replied, bending back to his work. “Baby mama.”
“I truly loathe that term,” I muttered, glaring at Toula’s grin. “Anyway, Meggy and Olive live in Virginia. If we need
a third option, I could ask if she wouldn’t mind letting you stay. The apartment would be cramped, but I suppose I could modify the attic without attracting too much attention…”
“Or ask your neighbor to take him in,” said Toula.
“Mrs. Cooper is a lovely lady, but you’re out of your mind.”
Again, Aiden paused in his packing. “Wait, you have a daughter?”
“Long story,” I sighed. “Though, given how long I’ve been hanging around, it’s surprising that I’ve only the one. She’s about your age,” I added. “Sixteen last March.”
Aiden shook his head and picked up his discarded roll of tape. “Okay, so I’ve got a niece, too. And she’s older than me. Fantastic.”
“Join the club,” I said, perching on the sliver of his bed not covered in debris. “I’m not Mother’s eldest, you know—not even close. I was just the eldest left standing when she dropped. I mean, I’ve heard of maybe eighty-odd older siblings, and that’s not to say there weren’t more.”
He dropped his tape and gaped. “Eighty?”
“Shit happens. Feuds start. Fights get out of hand. Someone gets in the way of the wrong wizard. And Mother had a penchant for disposing of the ones who particularly annoyed her.”
“Tink,” Toula muttered, flipping and catching a dried Sharpie.
“The last she killed was Robin,” I told him, “and you’ll hear about him if you stick around. But to go back to the main point, I’ve got plenty of nieces and nephews who predate me—most in Faerie, some still in this realm. Look,” I said, shrugging, “you’re not going to see the sort of neat generational divides you’re used to here in a family like ours. Not when you’ve got centuries between children. Hell,” I muttered, “the next one down from me is Doran, and he’s a bit over five hundred, if I’m remembering correctly. I only really met most of my surviving five siblings in the last few months,” I told him, watching his eyes widen, “and some of the details blend. But there’s Doran at five and change, and Syral’s about thirty years younger—they’re at each other’s throat at the moment—Huc’s a little over four hundred, Ji’s maybe three and a half, and Nanine’s…not quite three hundred yet, but I’m not sure how far away she is, to be frank. And then there’s you.” Aiden looked back at me mutely, and I rubbed my arm. “Too much at once?”
The Faerie King Page 5
