by Simone Pond
They laughed with a low rumble that vibrated in my bones. I knew if I let down my guard they’d use their fear magic on me, so I remained in control. One of them reached out to grab my wrist, but I pulled up the shield, knocking him back against the wall.
“Sorry, but I told you, I’ve gotta run. Consider this a warning.”
The warlock pulled himself off the floor in a flash of light and charged at me. “You little bitch!”
I lifted my right hand and pulled up my sword, but his warlock buddy yanked his sleeve before he careened into the tip.
“Why don’t you settle down,” the even-tempered warlock said.
“I’m warning you,” I replied.
“We’re going to need you to come with us,” he said, still holding back his quick-tempered buddy.
I waved him off. “I don’t think so.”
The spazzy warlock sprang at me again, and I leapt out of the way, then swung around and brought the sword down across his neck. He exploded into a swarm of black onyx, then nothing.
“That was unnecessary,” the casual warlock said.
“He attacked me,” I argued.
“Eh, he was a pain in the ass anyway. Short-tempered prick.” The warlock grinned at me coquettishly. I wasn’t sure, but it seemed like the bastard was flirting with me.
The front door opened, and Asher walked inside. “You okay, Fiona?” he called out.
The warlock gave me a flirty wink, then blinked out of the room two seconds before Asher entered.
“Can you help me with one of these bags?” I asked, hoping he thought the sweat dripping from my forehead was from trying to carry my bags.
“Of course!” He smiled and picked up everything like a true gentleman. I could’ve easily carried them myself; the Armor had given me extraordinary strength, but it was a good save.
On the way back to his house, I pondered why warlocks were in my house and what they wanted with me. Clearly, they didn’t want to kill me, otherwise they would’ve ambushed me before I had a chance to use the Armor.
So they wanted me alive, but for what?
twenty
Thursday morning, I woke up in Asher’s guest house feeling like a new woman. Something about a full night of sleep does that for a person. I was feeling good about the day, mostly because the night before, I had shoved every worry from the forefront of my mind and focused on my fluff piece for Lifting the Fog. The story was in a good place, and I had the rest of the day to tighten it up. My brief optimistic moment was crushed when I rolled out of bed to see Ezra sitting on the couch.
“Seriously?” I covered my mouth to hold back the words, but it was too late, I had invited Ezra into my head.
“What do you think you’re doing?” His brows were lifted and his arms folded across his chest like a teacher scolding a student.
“Getting ready to take a shower, then head off to work.”
“Why are you here and not at your house?”
“My place is unsuitable for living, so my contractor is letting me crash here.”
He rolled his glimmering violet eyes.
“Did you just roll your eyes at me?”
“About Asher—”
“Look, you might have a say in this Protector business, but not my personal life. Leave him out of it.”
Ezra sighed, completely over me. And it hadn’t even been a week. He was about to say something, but was distracted by my feet.
“What?” I asked.
“Day one and you already lost a boot?”
I glanced down at my feet; the left foot didn’t have the same iridescent glow as the right one. “I got attacked in the library. Some smart-ass faerie flew off with it. Why didn’t you tell me about faeries?”
“Why didn’t you tell me supernatural beings can detect you? That’s a pretty big deal. Not just for you, but for all Protectors.”
“I was going to tell you. I wanted to find my boot first to avoid this lecture.”
He stood up. “If they can see your Armor that means Cagliostro decoded one of the Sacred Scrolls—or at least some of it.”
“That doesn’t sound good. But can we talk about this later? I don’t want to be late for my real job.”
“Fiona, how many times do I have to tell you—this is your real job. You have a greater responsibility now.”
“I know. And that’s why I want to finish this stupid fluff piece so I can go after Emmett Stone.”
“Not before you do what needs to be done. You need to locate Cagliostro’s headquarters. You’ll be assigned a partner, and the two of you will retrieve the Scrolls. We can’t lose any more time on this; who knows how much he’s already decoded.”
“A partner?”
“Yes, another Protector. His name is Julian. He’s the son of the Protectors who were guarding the other missing Scroll. His parents were ambushed like yours, and now Julian’s responsible for retrieving the Scroll.”
“Are they also missing like my parents?”
“Yes.”
Ezra was so casual about the situation, I wanted to pummel him. Protectors had gone missing and their clueless unexperienced children were supposed to pick up where they had left off? The Monarchy expected rookies to go after the stolen Sacred Scrolls? And they had no clue where Cagliostro was operating from? It was entirely infuriating.
“This sucks. You know that, right?”
“Nobody said it’d be easy.”
I could’ve punched his smug face. “What about Emmett Stone and my story?”
“Priorities, Fiona. The Sacred Scrolls come first.”
“If you expect me to interrogate demons about where Cags is hiding out, can you at least get me a new boot? I can’t go up against these assholes half-cocked.”
“I can’t.”
“What do you mean you can’t? There were hundreds up at Glimmer City.”
“If my boss finds out you lost a boot, I’ll be in big trouble.”
Something about that made me laugh. “That’s ridiculous!”
Ezra didn’t crack a smile. He just sat on the couch, rubbing his chin. “You said a faerie took it?”
“Yeah. She was getting chased by a panther in the library yesterday, and when I interfered, he yanked the boot off my foot. The little blue twit flew away with it.”
“We’ll have to figure out what she was doing at the library. See where that leads.”
“We?”
“No more arguing. The sooner we find that boot, the sooner you can start looking for Cagliostro.”
“And finish my story,” I added, although he ignored me.
Ezra glimmered us straight to the library. I got a few glances from people because I was still wearing my pajamas.
I turned around and whispered to Ezra, “Any chance you can cloak me? I look nuts.”
He touched the top of my helmet, and a wave of light strobed over me.
“See how easy that was? Why can’t you come with me to look for Cagliostro? It’ll probably go faster.”
“I don’t have authorization.”
“You have me.” I patted his shoulder like we were old chums.
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but that’s not at all reassuring,” he said.
We walked down the same hallway where I was attacked by the panther shifter until we reached the Children’s Creative Center. It was the only place the two could’ve come from. Inside, a group of kids were seated on the floor around a woman reading a story.
“What do you think they were doing here?” I whispered.
“You’re the investigative journalist,” Ezra said.
“Do I detect sarcasm?”
We strolled around the Children’s area looking down the aisles of books. I didn’t see anything unusual until I got to the back of the room. My helmet started glowing and instinctively guided me to a corner where there was a slew of demonic activity. I manifested my shield and sword as I approached the slithery creatures crawling on the floor by stacks of children’s books—they looked like puddle
s of grease. One of the puddles rolled over to a book and entered the pages.
“What are they doing?” I asked.
“You’re witnessing the larva phase,” Ezra said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“These demons transport through books seeking to influence the children who read them.”
I was rendered speechless. I was about to walk over and stomp out every last one of the bastards. Ezra must’ve sensed this because he grabbed my wrist. “There’s an order to things,” he said sullenly.
“Well, the order sucks. We have to stop them before they infiltrate innocent children!”
“They can’t just enter a mind. The kid has to invite them in. Like I said— everyone has a choice. They can choose to follow the Light or the Dark.”
That information was only slightly reassuring, but it triggered a thought. As far as I knew, faeries weren’t demonic beings. They were apparently magical pains in the ass, yes, but they weren’t Dark. Wasn’t Tinkerbell a glittering beacon of light? Maybe the faerie was trying to get into one of the books so she could be another choice for the child? I felt insane pondering such lunacy. But I walked down another aisle and grabbed a stack of books about faeries. I sat on the floor, opening their pages and looking for anything out of the ordinary. By the tenth book, I was starting to think I had lost my mind. Until a flicker of lime-green light twinkled from the page. I reached down and pinched the little creature between my fingers, pulling her up out of the book.
“I’m looking for one of your friends. Sparkly blue hair. Real pain in the ass,” I said.
The tiny fairy just giggled annoyingly.
“She took my boot, and I need it back. Otherwise the Shadow Order will take over and evil will rule. And it will be all your fault.”
The faerie stopped giggling and flapped her wings as she pointed to the windows. I let her go and followed the sparkling light.
At the windows, she pointed to the dome of San Francisco City Hall. I squinted to see what she was alluding to, but couldn’t see a thing except the majestic building where Emmett Stone had set up shop.
Ezra motioned to the very tall pole jutting from the top of the dome. “Look at the point,” he said.
And there it was—my magical boot flapping in the wind like a damn flag.
twenty-one
Ezra and I left the library and stood in front of city hall, staring at the dome. He patted my back and nudged me forward.
“Good luck,” he said, chuckling.
“You’re not going to help me?”
“Your mess, your clean up. Besides, they need me back at headquarters. I’ll be back with information on Julian.”
“Who’s Julian again?” I asked, since I was having trouble keeping track of the details.
Ezra looked to the sky and released a heavy sigh. “The other Protector you’ll be partnering with. You’ll need Julian to go up against Cagliostro.”
“Can’t wait,” I muttered, watching him glimmer away into a burst of violet light.
Fortunately, before Ezra left, he had shown me how to activate the cloaking mechanism in my helmet. Just a simple pat on top of the head. That was going to come in very handy for sleuthing since it would mask me from humans. Since I was already at city hall, why not check up on Stone? I wasn’t sure if I could mask myself from demonic entities, but I’d give it a try. The boot retrieval mission had put a giant wrench in my plans, but as soon as that was taken care of, I would get the drop on Stone, then put the finishing touches on my fluff piece—all before Ezra returned with this Julian character. Simple.
Walking into the building fully cloaked was the most logical thing to do, but I wasn’t sure how to get to the top of that dome from inside the building. Besides, I had a magical fucking suit of Armor. Might as well use it. Backing all the way to the curb, I took a deep breath and went for it, running full-steam ahead. As soon as I was close to the building, I sprang upwards in an attempt to fly, but failed utterly as I crashed against the white concrete and slid down into some bushes. Once I recovered from the bone-jolting pain, I stood up and tried scaling the wall like a rock climber. The flat surface made it difficult to get a secure grip, and I slid back down. What good was the Armor if I couldn’t do any amazing Mission Impossible type shit? I thought about getting a rope and scaling the building that way, but that wasn’t my style. I’d go the boring route—through the front doors.
The cloaking mechanism worked great, allowing me to slip right by security. I just needed to find a way to the roof. No problem. As I was going up the second flight of stairs, I tripped and knocked my helmet off—only having one boot had been messing with my gait. Grabbing the helmet, I continued up the stairs. I stopped by the doors and looked down the hall toward Emmett Stone’s office. Part of me wanted to slink in and do some fly-on-the-wall spying, but I needed to get that boot.
My phone started buzzing; it was Charlotte. I couldn’t let her go to voicemail—we needed to talk.
“Charlotte!” I said, standing in the alcove.
“Hey. I got your texts. All sixty-three of them.” Her voice had a stiff, unwavering tonality.
“We need to talk.”
“About what?”
“Oh, come on, Char. I know what you think you saw, but let me assure you, it’s probably worse.” I laughed, hoping to break up some of the glacier wedged between us.
A security guard strolled down the hall straight toward me, almost like she could see me, which was impossible since I had my cloak activated.
“Excuse me, miss. You can’t stand in the hallway talking on your phone. In your pajamas.”
Yep. She could see me. When I tripped and knocked off my helmet, I must’ve deactivated the cloaking mechanism. The stout woman used her billy club to encourage me to move along. But Charlotte and I needed to talk.
“Can I call you right back?” I asked Charlotte.
“I’m a little busy. You know, trying to figure out what the hell is going on,” she snapped.
“Let’s meet. I can explain—”
The short, power-hungry security guard snatched my phone and ended the call. I wanted to take her by the scruff of her neck and fling her up against the wall just because I could.
“Miss Farrow?” a familiar voice echoed in the stairwell.
I looked over my shoulder to find none other than Emmett Stone holding a cup of coffee. Did demons drink coffee? Was he a demon? Either way, it was a bit embarrassing getting caught in my pajamas with a security guard escorting me away. Any credibility I might’ve had vanished. Did it matter? He was working with disembodied demons, snatching up homeless bodies all over the city. If anyone should’ve been embarrassed, it was him!
“Oh, hello, Mr. Stone. Just came to do some follow up questions.” I realized how insane this looked.
“Do you have an appointment?”
“No,” I muttered.
The security guard stepped closer in; her eyebrows furrowed with extreme seriousness like she was dealing with some sort of terrorist. “Is this lady bothering you, Mr. Stone?”
“No,” he told her, then looked at me. “But I am concerned why you’ve shown up at my office two days in a row without an appointment. And I must say, your attire is a bit questionable.”
I couldn’t argue, but I was curious why he was acting so normal for a supernatural being. And couldn’t he see my Armor? Maybe he was a human? My mind began to feel scrambled, like some dark magic was infiltrating it. I couldn’t remember why I was even at city hall. A shadow clouded my thoughts. Everything became hazy and wobbly, like someone had slipped me a roofie. Stone’s dark eyes pierced into me like sharp knives. His presence began to permeate my cells. Definitely supernatural.
“What are you doing?” I screamed.
He remained perfectly calm, which only made me look more insane. “Are you okay, Miss Farrow?” he asked in a gentle voice.
The stairwell closed in on me, and the weight of the shadow pulled me down. I dropp
ed to the floor. Why couldn’t I activate my shield? What was happening? Stone was taking over my mind and body, and I could do nothing. I finally collapsed to the ground.
“Clearly, she’s on drugs,” he told the security guard.
She bent down and cuffed me. “I’ll take care of this nasty business, Mr. Stone. You can get back to work. Miss Farrow won’t be a bother.”
I gazed up at the woman as she dragged me down the stairs; my feet felt like they were immersed in buckets of wet cement. Her smile widened across her dark skin, revealing sharp jagged teeth. In the middle of her forehead, a third eye blinked. Was she the one controlling me? Or was it Stone? The curtains closed across the stage of my mind, and I fell into darkness.
***
When I came to, I was in some sort of office being used for a storage room. Stacks of boxes of unused brochures and pamphlets filled the space. It was dark with the shades drawn, no computer or phone. My cell phone was missing, and my hands were cuffed behind me to the leg of the desk. The situation didn’t look promising. What was worse, I didn’t know if Security She-Devil was up to something demonic, or if Stone was responsible. Without the use of my hands, I couldn’t activate my sword or my shield, and I didn’t know enough about what the helmet could do. It definitely amplified the annoying ticking clock on the wall; each click reverberated in my body. If I didn’t find a way out of that room, things would get exponentially worse. Almost noon, and I still hadn’t stepped foot into the office.
“Ezra!” I shouted into the darkness.
Nothing. Just the sound of the ticking clock grating on every last nerve. I rolled to my side and tried jacking up the desk with the strength of my remaining boot, but there was no way to get the cuffs around the bar. I couldn’t kick the bar without breaking my wrist. It was a hopeless mess. Giving up, I put my head on the dirty carpet and cried. Tears flowed from my eyes—four years’ worth of pent up grief came pouring out. I missed my parents. I missed that feeling of safety and security when I was with them, even with the random supernatural occurrences. They seemed to have had everything under control, for the most part. But not me. My house was a mess, I was probably going to lose my job, my best friend hated me, and I had been captured by demons. It was a low moment.
