“I thought you’d never ask.”
The music swept them along, and she hardly felt her feet touch the floor. A gown like this should have been heavy, but it was a whisper around her. His hand on her back felt real, though, as did the hand that gripped her right hand. “Have you had a chance to talk to Nana?” she asked, remembering her ostensible excuse for this adventure.
“I have seen her only in passing.”
“Well, Sophie needs you to get a message to her. Y’all have really got to dial back the activity in our world for a while because the enchantresses have noticed, and it’s triggering some kind of power struggle that could be bad for everyone. Sophie can’t do anything because they may be watching her, and it probably wouldn’t go over well if they knew she was part fae. That’s kind of why I did this tonight, to see you and pass on the message.”
“I will endeavor to relay it. Was that all you wanted to do here tonight?” His smile was teasing.
She couldn’t help but smile in response. “Well, I’m here, so I may as well dance. I have tomorrow off, so as long as I don’t break anything, I’m good.”
She was still trying to wrap her head around the idea that she really was physically here, present enough that if she got injured, she’d still be injured in the real world in the morning, but that also all of this was taking place in her head, and she might be in another place entirely where nothing looked like what she was seeing.
“Where are we, really?”
“I don’t have the words for it. You are in the Realm, but in a different kind of space. If you were in a different state of mind or if you’d come here more directly, you would see something different, and not nearly as nice. Your friend was here when you saw him at the revel.”
“So I’m at a revel now, physically?”
“No. You are in a fairyland. There is no revel tonight.”
“This makes no sense.”
“It isn’t supposed to.”
She decided that trying to parse it would only ruin the fun, so she gave in to the moment and let herself get carried away with the dance and the sensation of being in Eamon’s arms. The music slowed, and he pulled her closer so they could move as one in a sensuous step that reminded her of a tango. “You mentioned that there were other kinds of dreams that could become real like this,” she whispered into his ear. “Would that be the same way of being here and there at the same time—meeting halfway between your world and my world?”
“I have no experience with that,” he said. “It’s a different kind of fae who indulges in that kind of behavior.”
“But could you do it?”
“Perhaps if the occasion required it. Is this something that has happened to one of your friends?”
Was he really that dense or was he playing dense to avoid embarrassment? Surely he could tell that she was practically inviting him to ravish her in this dreamlike space between worlds. She knew he’d read enough romance novels. “No, I was just curious about it. I mean, I’ve read some stuff that sounds like it, and if the barriers really are weakening, then it’s the kind of thing that might happen. You’ve got to wonder how many relationships have happened between humans and fae like that over the years.”
“They seldom end happily. Someone has to give up everything, and that is not easy, no matter how much love there is.”
“But wouldn’t something like this be a kind of compromise, not really in either world?”
“Would that be enough if you really loved someone?”
That sounded an awful lot like what Athena had said. Emily wasn’t sure why she was pushing this so hard. She wasn’t even sure she was in love with him. She liked being with him and liked kissing him, but was that merely the excitement and novelty, or was it something more? Maybe this was just something she needed to get out of her system.
“Does it have to be love?” she asked.
“It seldom is,” he said, quite somberly, and she didn’t know how to take that. She decided that this was a good time to be patient and not push. That would give both of them the chance to figure out whatever it was that had developed between them.
She couldn’t help but hope that some new crisis would arise and force them off on an adventure together. That would probably settle everything, one way or another.
A new sound intruded on the scene, clashing with the music being played for the dancers. No one else seemed to hear it. “What is it?” Eamon asked when Emily stopped dancing to listen to it.
“I think it’s my ringtone,” she said, finally recognizing the tune. Suddenly, she knew she had to leave. It was a compulsion, and she felt helpless to resist. The next thing she knew, she’d pulled away from Eamon and was running toward the tree-lined lane. In her haste, she brushed by a rose vine, scratching the back of her hand, but she kept going without breaking stride and ran down the lane. Now she knew how Cinderella felt, forced to flee the ball as the clock struck. It would have been appropriate to kick off one of her shoes, but she couldn’t make herself slow down enough to do so.
She saw the end of the passage growing nearer, a dark spot on the horizon. She leaped into the darkness.
And woke with a gasp, sitting straight up in bed, the covers sliding down to her waist. The mirror over her bed was just a mirror, reflecting the room. Her phone was still ringing. She reached for it groggily and saw Olivia’s name on the display. “What is it?” she growled.
“A group of us were going out, and I thought I’d give you a shout,” Olivia said. “Were you asleep?”
“I must have drifted off while reading.”
“Then get up, put on your glad rags, and I’ll swing by.”
Emily thought it highly unlikely that she’d be able to make a return trip to the dream Realm, if she really had been there and it wasn’t all just a dream. She might as well go out dancing for real. “Okay, sure. See you in a bit.”
As she put her phone down and swung her legs around to get out of bed, she noticed a fresh, raw scratch on the back of her hand.
That hadn’t happened while she was lying in bed.
Twenty-one
The Precinct
Monday, 9:00 a.m.
“Oh, glorious daytime, how I’ve missed you!” Mari declared as she fell into her desk chair. “Did you forget we were switching shifts, Rev? Have you been here all night?”
Michael gave his partner an indulgent smile. “No. Just got here early, is all.” He’d wanted a little time to dig into case files before his partner showed up to look over his shoulder.
“Oh yeah, that’s the old Reverend Saint Michael work ethic, arise and shine, the early bird catches the worm, and all that. And I hear you’re a hero.”
“A hero?”
“Finding the lost kids? Geez, Rev, is it so all in a day’s work for you that you don’t even remember saving the day?”
He had actually forgotten, but because so much had happened since then. “I was in the right place at the right time.”
She placed her hand on her heart and gazed piously toward heaven. “Guided by the hand of God.”
“More like guided by Emily’s dog. He thinks of children as treat dispensers, so he homes in on them.”
“But I bet that doesn’t stop the brass from pinning another medal on you. Wasn’t there a reward?”
“I don’t think that stumbling on them qualifies me for any reward. The families have dropped off some dog toys for Beau, though.”
“You’re so modest, Rev. You make the rest of us look bad.” She went to fill her coffee cup, returned, and started going through her paperwork. A few minutes later, she stopped and stared at him across their facing desks. “What were you doing in the park at night, anyway?”
“Walking the dog.”
“Um, no. After dark, in that weather, you walk the dog on the sidewalk in front of your building.” She checked something on her computer, then grinned and shouted in triumph. “Aha! You weren’t just with the dog. You were with your neighbor’s sister. That’
s the ballerina, right? The one Tank’s afraid of?”
“Tank’s not afraid of her.”
“His right eye twitches when anyone mentions her. He breaks out in a cold sweat when he sees a redhead.”
“You’re exaggerating. Sophie can be a bit direct, but that’s it.” That was, as long as magic didn’t come into play.
“I thought she lived in Louisiana.”
“She’s in town for a ballet. She’s the Snow Queen in The Nutcracker.”
Mari tore a memo sheet into tiny pieces and threw them at him so they showered him like confetti. “And now we know why you quit wearing your wedding ring—finally. Yeah, I’m a highly trained detective. I notice these things. It had nothing to do with facing the fact that it was time to move on. It was because you had someone to move on to. Way to go, Rev! Welcome back to the land of the living.”
He decided it was best to let her have her fun and not protest, because he was bound to look like a liar if he did. Sophie really had nothing to do with his decision to move on with his life. That was all about his wife’s choice to remain in the Realm rather than return to him. But he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about that kiss with Sophie. It had been purely meant as a ruse, nothing more, and yet it affected him as though it had been real. He told himself that it was merely because she was the first woman he’d kissed in seven years. At any rate, with the feel of his lips on hers and his arms around her still lingering, he didn’t dare try to deny that anything was happening.
Instead, he raised an eyebrow at Mari and returned his focus to work. Aside from the drowned woman and the nixie incident, he didn’t spot any obvious increase in unusual events in reports from park patrols. He was pretty sure that someone would have said something if they’d seen an odd patch of summer. Or would they? It was the kind of thing that was hard to believe if you didn’t know it was possible, and putting that in a report would be asking for a psych evaluation.
There also didn’t seem to be any crime statistics that could be taken to represent fairy activity. Things got pretty quiet at this time of year because even muggers didn’t enjoy being out in the cold with sparse crowds to prey upon. There’d been a few pickpocketing incidents around the ice rinks, but the only thing that looked remotely suspicious to him was the one report of a streaker over the weekend. That kelpie guy before the incident he’d seen? Since he’d yet to hear from the woman again, he held off on filing a report on that incident. Michael doubted the kelpie would be a problem anymore, thanks to his encounter with Sophie.
He spent the rest of the morning calling the pickpocketing victims to see if they’d noticed anything that would allow him to get a description or find a pattern. At lunchtime, he put on his coat and started to head out.
“Ooh, hot lunch date, Rev?” Mari teased him.
“Something like that.”
He headed into the park and walked the path from Belvedere Castle toward the Shakespeare Garden. This wasn’t the best time of year to be spending his lunch break looking at a garden, but he’d encountered fae activity in this area in the past, and the cold weather—with occasional drifting snowflakes—meant he was alone in this part of the park.
He reached the garden and had to do a double take. If it hadn’t been snowing, he might have thought it was August. The garden was in full bloom, with the flowers bright against the gray sky. New Yorkers were notoriously oblivious to anything that didn’t directly affect them, but he’d have thought the park’s keepers would have noticed this sort of thing.
Or would they? When he looked at the flowers again, they were back to winter dormancy. It was one of those strange corner-of-the-eye experiences, which meant the Realm must be bleeding through here. He made a note on the map he was using to track strange occurrences. So far, he was just finding these odd little summer spots. That didn’t seem to be potentially dangerous, but what it represented was troubling.
He was putting the map back in his pocket when he heard what sounded like a human scream farther down the path. Placing his hand on his weapon, he sprinted toward the sound. A white streak ran toward him down the path, and next thing he knew, he had an armful of white cat.
That hadn’t been a cat’s yowl, and he recognized this cat, so he suspected this wasn’t an ordinary animal cruelty case. He moved his hand from his weapon to his pocket, where he kept a packet of iron filings and some iron nails. The cat burrowed under his coat as he kept moving toward whatever might have scared her, and he tried to make himself forget that she could also appear as a beautiful white-haired woman, because it would be really weird if a woman acted this way.
He’d run into bad elements of the fae before, and there were plenty who’d been exiled from the Realm and learned to adapt. A few even spilled in from the dangerous Borderlands. He hated to think of what might show up if anyone could just pop in from the Realm.
What he found wasn’t what he’d expected. These weren’t wild, feral fae like those who’d worshipped the Hunt. They were stately and regal, and if he wasn’t mistaken, they were from Fiontan and Niamh’s court. But that court specifically rejected human influence in the Realm, so what were they doing here, and what had they done to the cat?
“Can I help you gentlemen?” he said, using the tone he usually took with people who looked like potential troublemakers when he wanted to make sure they knew there was a cop present.
“You can return the cat to us,” one of the men said, with a slight bow. “She is ours.”
Michael got the impression they didn’t know who he was or that he could see them for what they were, so he decided to play along for now. He made a show of looking for a collar and tags. “I don’t see any ID here. But we can find a vet to check for a microchip to prove ownership. I’ll have to cite you, though, for not complying with leash laws or licensing requirements.”
The fae looked at him with complete bafflement. The cat burrowed deeper under his coat until she was practically in his sleeve. “She seems to be afraid of you,” he remarked. “That’s not usually how cats respond to their rightful owners, unless you’ve been cruel to her. I should probably have the vet look into that, too.”
“She belongs to us!” one of the fae men snapped.
“What does she have to say about that?” Michael asked. “She was running from you and asked for my help.”
“She is a cat! Cats do not speak.”
“They do if you know how to listen.” Michael was tempted to scratch the cat under her chin, but it would have been weird to do that if she were in her human form, so he didn’t think it quite right for her animal form. “Now, if you gentlemen want to give me your contact information, I can let you know the outcome of my investigation. In the meantime, I’m taking this cat into protective custody.”
“You do not know what you’re dealing with!” The fae threw up their hands, ready to work magic.
“Actually, I do,” Michael said, bringing his free hand out of his pocket and flinging a handful of iron filings in their faces. They cried out and flinched away. While they were distracted, the cat leaped down from her hiding place under Michael’s coat, turning into a human-like woman in mid leap so that she landed on her feet. After a quick kiss on Michael’s cheek, she ran past him, away from the men.
“Now I suggest you go back to your own world,” Michael said, staring them down. “Or do I need to report you to the queen?”
“We do not answer to that human imposter.”
“That human imposter who won the throne rightfully by passing the tests that no fae has managed? And if you don’t hold with humans, then what are you doing in our world? This is no place for you. Now go back to your Realm, and next time I’m visiting, maybe I should tell Fiontan and Niamh that you’re working with a human enchantress.” It was a wild guess, but their reactions were strong enough to validate it. They turned and fled. He was tempted to follow them, but there really wasn’t much he could do to them, so instead he headed back the way the cat/woman had gone. He wondered if she kne
w what they wanted with her.
But the cat wasn’t the first person he encountered. “Nicely done,” the woman in a park maintenance staff uniform said when he passed the trash can she was emptying. It was only because of her voice that he recognized Mrs. Smith. “I can’t believe the number of recyclables people just throw away,” she continued, returning her attention to the trash. “But I would have taken care of it if you hadn’t. This is my territory, you know.”
“I thought I was your apprentice. Think of it as a training exercise. And is it even our job to mediate issues among the fae?”
“When it involves fae residents of our world, we can step in.” She raised her voice while also making it gentler. “You can come out now, dear. They’re gone.”
The woman in white emerged shyly from behind a nearby tree. “You have come to my aid again, good sir,” she said in her husky, slightly sibilant voice.
“Glad to be of help,” Michael said. “Now, can you tell me what that was all about?”
“They didn’t want me to warn you.”
“Warn me about what?” He thought he knew all the various plans and schemes on both sides of the Realm.
“They’re coming. They’ve been invited. They will change our world.”
“Our world, as in this one?”
“Yes. It is my world, as well.” She leaned against him, rubbing her shoulder across his arm as she looked up at him with beseeching eyes. “You will protect us, won’t you?”
“I’ll do what I can. All of us already are.”
She ran one hand lightly down his arm before melting into her cat form and slipping into the nearby wooded area.
“Well, whattaya make of that?” Mrs. Smith said in the ensuing silence.
“We kind of already knew that. Both sides are playing each other against the middle. There’s an enchantress trying to make herself more relevant by stirring up the fae activity in our world, and there are fae trying to use this as a chance to take over. Both sides seem to think they’ll use the other side to get what they want and then lock the door again.”
A Kind of Magic Page 13
