Iron (The Warding Book 1)

by Robin L. Cole

  Instead, I pulled the check from her hand and started counting out bills, trying for all the world to act like that phone call was the most normal thing ever. “I get out of work at 5. Is that okay?”

  “Sure. Kaine wants us to start rotating through some of his more likely haunts. Tonight will be a good trial run, so we can get a method down.”

  “That sounds… Fun.”

  “Great. Are you ready to take down an address?” I didn’t know what to say. How could I respond to that without sounding like a nut-job in front of Jenni? Mairi must have noticed my pause because after a moment she asked, “You’re somewhere where you can’t speak about this, aren’t you?”

  This time my burst of laughter was real, though it had a hysterical edge. “Yeah, you got that right!”

  I thought I heard a muffled chuckle echo through the earpiece. At least it was muffled; that proved she had some tact. Maybe not every faery got a thrill out of playing Embarrass The Human. There was still a hint of amusement in her words. “Sorry. Next time I’ll just shoot you a text. I’ll send you the address in a minute. See you tonight.”

  The phone went silent as the call ended. Thank god Jenni didn’t know that. I pushed out another laugh. “Sounds good, Em. See you later.”

  I shoved the phone into my purse. Jenni had sat back in her seat, eyebrows raised but her curiosity visibly dimmed. She had bought it; she thought the call had been from my sister. Thank god she didn’t question the coincidence of us both hearing from our younger siblings in under an hour. I threw in a roll of the eyes and a huffy sigh to seal the deal. “Like I don’t have better things to do than help her look through stupid graduate school stuff.”

  “Why doesn’t your mom help her?” Jenni asked, slupring up the last of her soda. “I mean, doesn’t she realize your advice about higher education is probably the advice she should run screaming in the opposite direction from?”

  I stuck my tongue out at her but shared in the laugh. “I know, right?”

  Hopefully the thick layer of foundation was hiding the flush I felt in my cheeks. There were no words to describe the level of terrible I felt when lying to my bestie. We hugged goodbye and made promises to get together for drinks over the weekend. I wasn’t sure where exactly we would do that, as I was quickly ruling out all the decent bars in Riverview with my weird encounters, but I agreed nonetheless. I shoved my hands in my jacket pockets as I made my way back to the office. I had left it only an hour ago with so much pep in my step. That was gone. The energy had been drained right out of me.

  All I had wanted was to enjoy a casual, normal lunch with a friend and I hadn’t even been able to do that.

  Chapter Eleven

  It turned out that I was meeting Mairi at the big Barnes and Noble downtown, only a stone’s throw from my office. It wasn’t a place I frequented; I preferred to spend my last buck at the dying mom n’ pop shops rather than the massive two-story corporate edifice that was choking the life out of those shops. Still, it was close and had the added bonus of a coffee shop inside. Both facts were much appreciated once I realized I’d be spending my usual dinnertime hunting for a ghost.

  Mairi met me there and waited patiently by my side in the long line so I could grab an overpriced latte and a blueberry muffin. She declined my offer to get her a beverage, which I was secretly glad for. Payday seemed eons away to my nearly empty wallet.

  Bookstores have always been a happy place for me. Something about the smell of ink and paper was soothing; comforting yet filled to bursting with so many possibilities. I could still remember how exciting such stores had seemed to me when I was a child. My father and I had often made early morning trips out to them when I was younger. I would inevitably come back to him with a stack of books when it was time to leave, and he would bluster over how I couldn’t possibly need all of them. That was just dad being dad. He’d buy them despite his grumbling and we’d find ourselves back there in a week or two. I had always been a big reader and it was something my parents had encouraged.

  The adult in me didn’t approve of the corporate greed of the big box stores but I guess there was a remnant of my inner child frolicking around somewhere in there. I couldn’t help but feel that familiar old serenity descend upon me the minute my feet crossed the threshold. Even standing on a line ten deep for overpriced snacks didn’t seem to faze me. The reminiscing felt good. It made me feel grounded, and that was something I hadn’t much felt lately.

  With food and drink were finally in hand, we took the escalator up to the second floor and found a relatively secluded spot by the railing that overlooked the ground. We had a clear view of the door, which I guess would have come in handy if I had a clue who we were looking for. Mairi leaned back, resting on her elbows, and watched the flow of the crowd behind us with typical teenage detachment. When the rumbling of my belly was put at bay, I said, “I’m not sure what I had expected when you told me we were going hunting, but hanging around by the cooking section really wasn’t it.”

  “Secret Keepers love knowledge. They’re drawn to it. Bookstores, libraries, museums—they love them all. Not a lot of people know much about the Lynx but from what we’ve heard, he spends a lot of time trolling them.” She twisted around with lithe grace so she too was overlooking the lobby below. “They have a weakness for gossip too, so it’s a good thing you like coffee. We’ll be hitting up every Starbucks in the city limits. On Kaine’s dime, of course.”

  I glanced at her askance. “Seriously?”

  She shrugged. “You’d be surprised what you can overhear while people share a cup of coffee.”

  “Makes sense, I guess.” I swallowed another bite of muffin and washed it down with another swig of cooling, sugar-laden caffeine. My eyes roved the faces below, but they all looked blessedly normal to me. “So what exactly am I looking for? Does this guy have horns or wings or something?”

  “Nope, he’s Aos Sí. He should be pretty normal looking by human standards, like Kaine and Gannon are.”

  “Well that’s a start.” Hearing that name soured my stomach. I swore I felt every bruise on my body twinge at the mere mention of it. I crumpled up the wrapper that had held my snack and jammed it in my jacket pocket. She turned her head and regarded me with those freaky eyes and I thought I saw my reflection in them. The fae penchant for having to have every tiny bit of information pried out of them with a verbal crowbar was exhausting. I mentally counted to three to keep my temper in check. “Then what’s the plan here? Do we have any idea what he looks like beyond ‘pretty normal’? Because that’s not exactly helpful.”

  She pulled out an old picture, which I took with care. It was worn, the corners rounded and the front faintly creased. The finish of the print was smooth and matte, nothing like today’s glossy computer printed photos. It focused on a man sitting at a small outdoor café, much like the one I had eaten my lunch at. He was dressed in a dark brown overcoat with an orange and brown striped scarf wrapped around his neck; looking down at a paperback book resting against the edge of the table. His eyes were shaded by dark, round wire-framed sunglasses.

  There was nothing memorable about his long face and wind-tousled sandy brown hair. He looked like a run-of-the-mill guy catching up on some Steinbeck while drinking a coffee. There were empty tables in the background and leaves on the ground. The whole scene had an autumnal feel to it, which made me wonder what month it had been taken in. For all I knew, it could have been taken on the very same day so many years ago. I felt like I was looking back in time, at something long lost. The thought made me shiver.

  “He may look older now,” she said. “Fae don’t age as quickly as humans, but we do age. His clothing will likely be updated.” Her eyes slid across the photo. “I mean… It might not actually even be him. The naiad who gave it to us swore that it was, and she seemed pretty sincere but we don’t have any real proof. We know the Lynx can be seen if he wants to. Kaine thinks this is him, taken years ago on one of the rare occasions when he had his guard down
. Those were safer days for all of us.”

  I let the naiad comment slide. I had no interest in finding out what that was just yet. I handed her back the photo and watched it disappear into her voluminous purse. “Well, that may or may not be helpful. This is all assuming we ever happen across him in the first place. If he blends in with the crowd like any other suburban soccer dad, what’s the chance I’m even going to notice him?”

  “We discussed that at length last night and I think I came up with a solution.” Her smile was shy, like a child awaiting praise. She jerked her head in the direction of the shelves behind us. I followed her lead, falling into step beside her. We walked at an unhurried pace, stopping before the first shelf we came to. She scanned the rows slowly, like she really was searching down a particular title on pressure cooking. Her voice was so soft I almost had to lean in to hear it. “See that young boy to the right, sitting by the wall with the graphic novel?”

  My eyes darted right. I saw the young man in question and confirmed it. “Yeah, so?”

  Her smile grew bolder. “And that big blond lady across the way, on the left? And the older gentleman in glasses who just came around the corner and is giving her dirty looks for blocking the shelf?”

  Again, I confirmed. She had picked a rather empty section of the store, so it wasn’t all that hard to see who she was talking about. “Of course, but how is this supposed to help—”

  She shushed me with a wave of her hand. Her voice was still so low that I could barely hear her. “Is there anyone else around us?”

  “No, just those three. But why…” I trailed off as the light-bulb went on.

  The astonishment must have shown on my face. She grinned. I had never seen such an open and genuine look of joy overtake her. “It was my idea. Granted, it’s not exactly high techy-tech but I think it should work. It might take us some time to get the rhythm down, especially to where we’re in sync and quiet enough not to sound like crazy people, but I think we can do it.”

  I nodded slowly. It was a good plan. Simple, but good. My handler could point out the people around us and I would keep my eyes open for someone they missed. Even the most powerful glamour wouldn’t keep the Lynx safe from my eyes—and if I saw someone my companion did not, whether he looked like the lone picture we had or no, we would finally have a lead.

  When Mairi bumped my hip and steered me down the aisle toward the next section of the store, I followed. It was hard to keep up with her skipping pace when my own was still the limp of the walking wounded, but I did an admirable job. Even as we fell into a unhurried rhythm of quietly identifying each passersby, I couldn’t escape that nagging feeling that everything wouldn’t be peaches and roses forever. For the moment, however, it felt good to be doing something useful. Bat crap crazy, but useful.

  After all, the quicker I helped these people find their quarry, the quicker I could be rid of them. And I, for one, would have jumped for joy never to see Gannon’s smug face ever again.

  ~*~

  An hour later, we had done two passes through the store and found ourselves back at the second floor railing. Our search yielded nothing, but we had gotten into a good rhythm quicker than either of us expected. I wasn’t sure I’d have quite the ease with my other hunting companions the first time out, but Mairi and I had found a way to seamlessly blend our queues into banal chit-chat. I regretted my snap decision of her character upon our first meeting. Appearance aside, she was a funny, quirky little spitfire of a girl. Had our outward ages not been so disparate, I probably would have befriended her immediately.

  “—and I knew Kaine would need me. So, I left and here I am,” she said. She heaved a heavy sigh that appeared too large for her tiny frame.

  The story of her involvement in the exile that had trapped her here in my world boggled me. How one who looked so young and flippant could have such an unexpected depth to her truly took me aback. She was dressed in an ankle-length, layered black skirt and a long-sleeved fishnet shirt over a pale pink tank-top. Her shit-kicker boots were old and scuffed, their laces half tied. She looked so young—so much like me, trying to rebel at sixteen—that it was hard not to treat her like a child.

  My jaw had damn near hit the floor when she had told me she was about to turn forty. She had laughed long and hard at my cold coffee snorting shock, until tears had streamed down her face. Little brat. After she had composed herself, she had kindly taken the time to explain how the full-blooded fae aged differently from humans. For all intents and purposes, she was little more than a teen by their standards.

  That didn’t change how brave her actions had been. She had walked away from everything she knew, everything she had ever been taught, to help a stranger all on the strength of a single vision. That was more conviction than I had ever showed anything in my life. The thought humbled me. I mirrored her sigh. “Won’t they miss you? And what happens when you go back?”

  She shrugged again. Her eyes were far away, looking at something beyond the physical. “They’ll get over it.” She smiled at my burst of laughter. She had a wicked sense of humor, which I appreciated. “Besides, I’m hardly the prodigy they were hoping I would be.”

  “How so?”

  “I have a lot of premonitions; little visions about inconsequential things. Helpful from time to time, sure, but not exactly what they expected from an Oracle of my family line. Some of them blamed it on my father being a shape shifter. Muddied the bloodline or some crap like that.” She rolled her eyes. “Whatever. Either way I’ve only ever had two of the real big ‘grand mal’ type visions in my life: the one that landed me in the cloisters and the one that got me back out.”

  I was intrigued. “The one that told you Kaine would need you during his exile.”

  She nodded. “Yeah. So, I’m sure they’ll punish me for leaving without permission, but I don’t think anyone was all that sorry to see me go. It’s not even like I’d be the first to run off to follow a vision. Happens more often than you’d think, actually. My granddame was one of the most reputed Oracles in her generation and they still tell stories about all the rules she broke. A lot of Oracles have come from my family.”

  “You must be proud.”

  She shrugged. “I guess. I never met her. She passed away before I was born. People used to tell me I looked a lot like her though.”

  “Do you miss your family, being stuck here?”

  “Yes and no. I was young when I was sent to the cloisters. Sometimes I hardly remember them.”

  I rifled through my purse for some gum as I asked, “They’re not allowed to visit you?”

  She took the piece I offered her, folding up the silver wrapper into a tiny square. “They are. My parents came a few times at first. I think I embarrassed mother, crying and asking to be taken home each time. Father came once or twice without her, but the last time was years before the exile.” She was still focused on the crowd below us, though neither of us had taken back up the game of calling out faces since we had returned to the banister. Something told me she was seeing a whole different gathering in her mind. “It hurt when they stopped coming, but only at first. Mother and I were never close. I think she was jealous that the Gift skipped over her.” Her laugh was hollow. “I think my resemblance to granddame upset her. With me cloistered away, she didn’t have to look at me anymore. Sometimes, I think she’s forgotten I exist.”

  Well, that hit uncomfortably close to home. Mommy issues were something I could completely relate to. Without thinking, I reached an arm out and slung it across her shoulders, squeezing her tight. She stiffened at first and I questioned whether I had overstepped a boundary. After the initial surprise faded, however, she leaned against my side. I wondered when the last time someone had hugged her was.

  Hell, if not for Jenni, the last time someone had hugged me would have been a distant memory. Maybe I was projecting, desperate to feel some sort of kinship with someone in a world gone crazy, but I felt a connection to the strange little fae girl at my side, occasion
al whiskers aside. We just stood there for a few minutes, listening to the dwindling bustle of the shoppers around us, breathing in the paper-and-ink smell that permeated the air.

  “I’m glad you turned out to be the Warder,” she said, so softly that I almost missed it. “You’re a good person. I like you.”

  I’ll be damned if my eyes didn’t well up when she said that. I knew she couldn’t read my mind, but she had an uncanny knack for knowing just what I was thinking. Maybe her heightened intuition could still brush against my psyche just a bit. I didn’t care how she did it. At that moment, it just felt nice to be complimented; to feel wanted. I hadn’t been feeling that much since the night Goliath crashed into my life. A tiny piece of my heart twinged at the thought, as if I were betraying Jenni by making a new friend—one I wouldn’t have to keep secrets from. One I wouldn’t have to lie to. I firmly told that part of my heart where it could shove that guilt.

  I squeezed her again, before I let my arm drop. “Thanks. I like you too.”

  She fixed me with a sly sidelong glance. “All of us?”

  “Hardly,” I snorted. A scowl jumped to my lips like a diva who had been waiting in the wings, ready to take stage. Mairi cracked up at my expression, laughing harder the narrower my eyes got. I stuck my tongue out at her. “Ha, ha; laugh it up there, chuckles. You wouldn’t find it so funny if your body was the one aching like an arthritic granny’s.”

  “Oh come on, lighten up.” She wiped her eyes and nudged me in the ribs until I cracked a sheepish smile of my own.

  “I like you and Seana. Kaine is…”

  “Kaine.”

  I chuckled. “Exactly. I can’t quite get a handle on him, but that doesn’t bother me so much as I thought it would. It’s like work: you don’t need to like your boss, you just need to respect that he is the boss.” Although the overwhelming urge to drop my pants every time my “boss” walked into the room was a problem I had never had before. Budding friendship or no, that was certainly not something I intended to reveal to Mairi. That left me with only one more; the one I was trying my best not to think about. I fought to keep the scowl from reemerging. “Let’s just say that Gannon is far, far from my list of favorites.”