by SM Reine
Shouts followed them as they raced toward the ley line juncture near the archery range. Lights blazed to life all throughout Myrkheimr as the entire castle became alerted to the fight—and the destruction that Marion had wrought.
Sidhe materialized in the path between Marion and Luke and that gazebo.
Marion blasted them with wind and rain and lightning that flowed from her fingertips. She flung them toward the village.
The path was clear.
“Marion!” That was Konig’s voice. He was chasing them too, and he sounded desperate.
“Hold your breath,” Luke said before Marion could figure out where Konig was coming from.
They plunged into the juncture.
Konig and Myrkheimr disappeared.
16
Marion and Luke appeared at the edge of a park on Earth, shrouded in night. The foliage was dull in comparison to the twisted gardens of the Autumn Court. Nothing about the brick buildings, the rusty swing set, or the twisting road looked familiar to Marion—or even similar to the western states where she’d woken up.
“Where are we?” she asked.
“Town in Pennsylvania.” Luke unwrapped his arm from around Marion and stuffed his handgun into the back of his belt. “Somewhere the unseelie won’t think to look for us, I’d hope.”
Her heart plummeted with disappointment. Konig won’t be able to find me. That should have been a good thing, if Luke was right about the Autumn Court trying to kill her. “We took their ley lines to Earth. Doesn’t that mean they know exactly where we came out on this side?”
“Nah.” Luke took out a cell phone. “Let’s get going.” He made a phone call while striding down the street. Marion followed him more slowly, watching the park behind them. It was empty. Nobody wanted to be out when it was drizzly and dark.
There was no sign of Konig.
Marion hugged her body tightly against the cold.
Luke was talking in a low voice, speaking to someone on his cell phone. “I need a car. We’re in Jim Thorpe. Going to the coffee shop downtown.”
Marion sped her pace so that she could hear whom he was calling. It was a female voice on the other end of the line, too quiet for her to distinguish words.
“Thanks,” Luke said, and he hung up. Magic sparked over the back of the phone as he shoved it into his pocket.
“Who were you calling?”
He winced and rubbed his ribs. “Friend.”
“Female friend? Former fiancée?”
“Yes, and no.” He glanced both ways before crossing the street, ever the Boy Scout. “I’m in a mood for coffee.”
They weren’t far from a shop set into the first floor of an old apartment building. The illuminated sign said, “Open 24/7.” It was warm and dry inside and, best of all, there were no sidhe in sight. Luke tucked Marion’s bow in a corner by the front door, concealing her weapon behind the sofa. He tugged his jacket around his guns before going to the counter to order.
Marion tensed when she realized a barista had watched them stash the bow, but he didn’t say anything. Apparently in a world filled with preternaturals, dropping in for midnight coffee while armed wasn’t worthy of note.
Aside from the strange lack of reaction from the staff, the coffee shop was very much the kind of place Marion imagined she should have enjoyed: a location that was tidy, immaculate, and hip, with a chalkboard declaring the daily specials over the cash register and nary a beardless man.
She couldn’t seem to settle into the sagging couch against the wall. There were only a handful of people in the coffee shop this late at night, and it felt like everyone was looking at her.
Luke sat on the opposite end of the sofa, bringing two drinks with him. “Cappuccino for you. Hope that’s fine, ‘cause they didn’t have chocolate milk.”
“It’s fine,” Marion said. She eyed Luke’s gun, which was jutting out from his jacket.
He caught her gaze. “You okay?”
“Iron bullets are illegal,” she said.
She expected—or maybe hoped—for Luke to deny it. If he denied that one thing, then Konig’s other accusations would be more obviously untrue. But Luke said, “Are you surprised? You saw me casting bullets in my bathtub.”
“So you’re in the habit of killing preternaturals. Have you any wooden bullets for the vampires?”
“Wood would shatter in a gun, Marion.”
“So you just stake them,” she said.
“You seem angry at me,” Luke said.
Marion certainly felt angry. She wasn’t sure if it was toward Luke or Konig or the world at large, though. She’d finally found somewhere that felt like it could have been home—a court where she fit in as royalty—and they were behind the attacks on her life.
“I just have so many questions, and it feels like every answer I’ve gotten in the last few days turns into more questions. I don’t know who I am, I don’t know whom to trust…” She tried to take a drink of her cappuccino but it was too hot. She set it down hard enough that frothed milk slopped over the side. “I thought I had you figured out, and now I’m not sure.”
“I work with preternaturals,” Luke said. “I’m ready to defend myself against anything that could threaten my patients. But until this week, I hadn’t fired my gun in over ten years. There’s a difference between preparedness and murderous intent. I’ve only got one of them.”
Marion let her face drop into her hands. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize.” He sipped his coffee, sat back with a sigh. “Nothing to apologize for.”
“Konig told me that you asked for a reward for returning me to the Autumn Court.”
“He was lying,” Luke said, but he looked so unsurprised by the claim that Marion couldn’t help but feel a little suspicious.
“Why would he do that?”
“Jealousy. Possessiveness. And because he wanted you undefended. That’s my guess. He practically drop-kicked me back to Earth after offering to do a duel at dawn over you, so I’m not shocked that he’d be manipulative in other ways.”
Marion almost laughed. A duel at dawn. Luke and Konig fighting a duel over her.
She didn’t laugh because that wasn’t funny at all. In fact, she liked the sound of it a little bit too much.
“I don’t believe Konig knows what the rest of the court is doing. He gave me the bow, he showed me things.” Like the garden, and his very fine body. “No. No. Not Konig. He was utterly honest with me. He cares about me.”
“How do you know?” Luke asked.
“I know for the same reason that you can be sure I’m being honest with you now.” Marion twisted the enchanted bracelet off her wrist. “I made these for the people participating in the summit. They’re mage artifacts that compel the wearer to honesty. When Konig wore it, he told me that…um.” He said he loves me and wants to marry me.
If Marion had still been wearing the bracelet, she wouldn’t have been able to keep herself from sharing that information with Luke.
But she wasn’t.
“I believe that he has no ill intent for me,” Marion finished, somewhat pathetically.
Luke was so interested in the bracelet that he seemed to miss the hole in her story. “You made those for the summit? And, what, you left that one in your room?”
“It was given to me by a visiting angel. They asked me to be their speaker.”
Luke’s gaze dropped to the cuff again. “You said yes. Seems like a conflict of interest, Marion.”
She lifted her chin, staring down her nose at him. “I’ll let you know when I want your opinion on my decisions. I’m capable of making them on my own.”
“Suit yourself,” he said. “I don’t care about politics anyway.”
“You care enough to accuse the Autumn Court of trying to destroy the summit by killing the Voice of God.”
“I care enough to save your life,” Luke said. Her heart gave a pathetic flop in her chest. He plucked the bracelet out of her hand. It barely fit her del
icately boned wrist, yet it still managed to fit over his hand. The magic expanded the metal so that it went on him just as easily. “With the evidence I’ve seen, I believe the Autumn Court is behind your bounty, and there’s no way in hell I’m letting them hurt you. Your boyfriend threatened me, so I don’t trust him. And I didn’t ask for money.” Luke ripped the bracelet off again. “Happy?”
Happy didn’t exactly describe the feelings she was battling with.
Marion had shared dinner and wine with the people who wanted her dead. If she were this powerful creature, this Voice of God that everyone feared, shouldn’t she have seen it coming?
But Konig says he wants to marry me.
She stuck the bracelet in her pocket. Marion was done with honesty for the night. “You said that you have a lot of evidence, so I take it you were busy after you returned to Earth.”
“I was.” He withdrew photos from inside his jacket, spreading them across the coffee table in front of her. They were pictures of Marion. She stood in a dark clearing, wearing those pajamas she’d woken up in. Her eyes were closed.
“No injuries,” Marion said.
Luke frowned. “What?”
“I woke up with bruises all over. I don’t see them in this picture.” She pushed the photos away from herself, feeling queasy. “What’s that mean?”
It looked like Luke had a few ideas, and none of them made him happy. “It means that I feel even less guilty about Oliver Machado’s death, since he’s the only person who saw you between these pictures and your arrival at the hospital, as far as I know.”
Marion choked on her cappuccino, and not because it was hot. “He’s dead?”
“He abducted Nurse Ballard.”
“So you killed him.”
“Nurse Ballard did,” Luke said. “I would have done it, though.”
She nodded. She trusted him—she did. “So you found evidence that Oliver Machado was after me because of the Autumn Court, and now he’s dead. What’s our next move?”
“The unseelie want to kill you because of the summit tomorrow,” Luke said, “so we keep you in hiding until your speech. That’s what we do.” His phone rang and he answered it. “Yeah?” A pause. “Yeah, I am. Thanks.” He turned the phone off and stood up. “We’ve got a car.”
Marion stood more slowly, gathering the photos of herself off the table. She left the cappuccino. Hot chocolate really was superior. “What connections does a doctor from California have in Pennsylvania?”
“I’ve got friends all over,” he said.
His friends were either rich or powerful, because there was a new car parked outside the coffee shop, right at the curb. It was stopped illegally in front of a fire hydrant with the keys on the hood. Luke opened the trunk and loaded Marion’s bow and quiver inside.
He grimaced when he slammed it shut.
“You keep moving like that,” Marion said. “What’s wrong? Did you get injured fighting the assassin?”
“You might say that,” Luke said. For the first time, he spread his jacket open, and Marion realized his shirt was wet. It wasn’t from the rain. She touched his warm, sticky side and her fingertips came away glistening with blood. “Big sword, bad aim. I don’t think he hit anything important.”
“You’re not important?”
“Nothing critical,” Luke amended. He limped back onto the sidewalk and opened the passenger’s side door for her. “Get in.”
“You’re driving in this condition?” Marion asked.
“Do you remember how to drive?”
She wouldn’t know until she got behind the wheel. “We should go to the nearest hospital.”
Luke propped his elbow atop the open door. The rain misted his skin, making him shine orange in the light from the coffee shop. He almost looked sidhe himself. “I’ve been seen by multiple assassins and now everyone knows you’re with me. I’m not going to risk bringing them to another hospital.”
“But you’re bleeding.”
“Not the first time, not the last.”
“It will be if you die!” She took the door from him. “You get into the passenger’s seat and I will do the driving. I’ve watched you do it. It can’t be harder than driving a boat.”
“Marion…”
“Don’t argue with me, Dr. Flynn. I’m the Voice of God, dammit.”
“You can’t whip that out in arguments like that,” Luke said. “That’s not how this works.”
“Shut up and get in,” she said. He rolled his eyes, but surrendered the keys to Marion. She climbed into the driver’s seat and turned the engine on. “See? Easy.”
“Turn on the windshield wipers,” Luke said, reclining his chair to relieve pressure on the wound.
She poked a button. The radio hummed to life.
He laughed and then grimaced.
“I’m going to drive around until I find a hospital and drop you off,” Marion said decisively. She kept pushing buttons and flipping levers until the wipers began whisking over the windshield. Easy.
“Is that what you want me to do? Go away?”
No. Never. She swallowed hard. “You need to be treated, that’s all.” She lifted a hand to touch his where it was pressed to his injured side.
He leaned out of her reach. “No hospitals, Voice of God. And I’m not leaving you until you’re at the summit,” Luke said. “Let’s get to New York City. We’ll talk about what to do after that.”
* * *
Rain turned to snow in the mountains, thick and pillowy. The roads were salted, so they reached higher elevations before encountering slick conditions Marion wasn’t sure how to navigate. They slid dangerously around a few corners before Luke spoke up. “We need somewhere to spend the night.”
“Such as a hospital?” Marion suggested.
“Such as a house. Turn left up here, double back.”
Luke directed Marion back down into a valley, where the snow wasn’t quite as dense. There was a small farming town hidden within the trees. It wasn’t too unlike Ransom Falls, sort of like its East Coast twin covered under a solid six inches of snow. The other significant difference was that it looked a lot more tired. The post office was dingier. There was an OPA benefits office tucked behind a bargain grocery store. The agricultural supply company had trash piled in its back yard.
The house he told Marion to stop at was beside something the sign called an auto shop, though it looked more like a junk yard. She parked against the curb crookedly, wincing when she bumped the front wheel into the sidewalk.
They had arrived without dying or crashing. That was a victory in Marion’s book.
“There,” she said, forcing a big smile. “I told you I could drive.”
Luke didn’t smile back. He’d gone ashen during the drive, which Marion had attributed to fear that she’d launch them straight off the side of the mountain. But now he didn’t fight with her when she peeled the side of his jacket back. The bloodstain had spread across his side, dripping onto the seat underneath.
She should have gone to a hospital.
“What are we doing here?” Marion asked, slipping out of the car to carve a path through the snow to Luke’s door.
“Hiding.” Luke was already trying to climb out of the car on his own, but it was taking a lot longer than it should have, even if he managed not to make any pain faces. “This is an old house of mine.”
“You have an old house in Pennsylvania? One that happens to be within hours of the unseelie sidhe’s ley lines?”
“The ley line dumps out near New York City for probably the same reason I used to live here. It’s rural, but close enough to get into town for business with a long morning’s drive.” He slipped and sank to his knees with a grunt. Crimson droplets spattered the snow.
Marion pulled his arm over her shoulder. She practically heard budding arguments skimming over the surface of his mind, so she snapped, “Quiet.” They shuffled up the front path together. “Does anyone live here?”
“Not for over a decade, b
ut I left a lot of belongings behind.”
“Also very convenient. Were you planning to come back?”
“Not really,” Luke said. “I just didn’t care about the stuff I left here.” He leaned against the wall. Marion ripped the yellow warning tape off of the front door and pushed it open.
Despite being a house that hadn’t been inhabited in a long time, it was still in better condition than Oliver Machado’s home had been. It was really was cozy on the inside. Old wood floors in good condition, some mismatched but high quality furniture, a tidy kitchen.
Best of all, the living room was filled with books.
“You didn’t care about your books? You heathen,” she said, pulling Luke’s arm over her shoulders again.
He gave a short laugh. “Books are heavy.”
She settled him atop a dusty couch as he began to tremble. The inside of the house was very cold, but not that cold—he was still losing too much blood.
Marion pressed her lips into a disapproving line. For his sake, she wouldn’t talk about hospitals again. She yanked a plaid blanket off of the back of the couch and covered him with it. After one more trip to bring her bow and quiver inside, she shut the front door and locked it.
“I’m going to remember how to do healing magic now,” Marion declared. “I remembered magic to care for Elena Eiderman, and I can do the same for you.”
“Hopefully not the exact same,” Luke said. “I’m not in a dying mood.” She thought that was meant to be a joke, but he sounded so faint that she couldn’t laugh.
She spread her hands in front of her and looked at them expectantly.
Come on, magic.
She’d blasted the sidhe through walls, for goodness’s sake. She should have been able to summon some magic.
Her skin remained dull.
“I’ll need to touch you to get the spells,” Marion said.
This time, Luke’s grimace had nothing to do with pain. “No way. We’ve done enough of that for a lifetime.”
The immediacy of his reaction stung. “Don’t be ridiculous. I’m sure I could repair you within seconds if you’d just let me take your hand.”
