“Yep. So your friends need to take a stand and stop this. We don’t want enchantresses ruling the world.”
“Where do people like us stand in all this? Whose side are we on?”
“We’re about balance—negotiating the best of both worlds in harmony. This isn’t a war between fae and humans or even fae and enchantresses. It’s a few bad apples against everyone. Time for the good people to stand up. If it comes down to a battle, we get the fae to fight on our side. Shouldn’t be a problem with you, since you’re tight with the queen. But watch your back, Detective, and watch your little princess. My guess is she’s gonna have a big old target on her back.” She fished a couple of aluminum cans out of the trash bin, squashed them, and crammed them in the pockets of her ill-fitting uniform. “Now, you and I both have work to do. Run along, son.”
She might not have had magical powers, but she did have a talent for making herself seem to vanish. He blinked and shook his head, trying to see where she’d gone, with no success. Shrugging, he got out his phone and called Mari. “Anything urgent going on?” he asked.
“Depends on how you define urgent. Those Internet quizzes won’t do themselves. Why?”
“There’s something I want to follow up on.”
“What? Don’t tell me you caught a case while you were at lunch.”
“It’s one of my mission projects.” It wasn’t entirely a lie, even though he doubted that averting a fairy invasion would be included in what Mari considered a mission project, but it did the trick in keeping her from wanting to join in, no matter how bored she got.
“Take all the time you need. I know how to reach you if the crime rate skyrockets in the next half hour or so.”
With any luck, he’d find a way to prevent that.
Twenty-two
Central Park
5:00 p.m.
Emily couldn’t believe she’d spent her day off hanging around in the park. It might not have been as cold as in the past few days, but it wasn’t a balmy day for spending outdoors, especially once it started getting dark. It was particularly uncomfortable to sit for hours on a bench near a spot she recalled being a gateway, but that was the best place she could think of for possibly finding Eamon.
Beau, not a big fan of long outings even in ideal conditions unless he was with Michael or Sophie, butted her ankle with his head and grunted at her. “Yeah, I know, you’re ready to go home,” she said, bending to scratch the wrinkles on his neck. “Soon, maybe, okay?” With an annoyed snort, he lay down under the bench, behind her feet.
To be honest, she wasn’t sure what she was doing. She tried to tell herself she was making another attempt to pass on Sophie’s message to Nana, in case the night before really had been a dream, but there was that scratch on her hand.
If it had been a dream, it had been a wonderful one. She hated to admit that the fanciful ball had been a lot more fun than the nightclub she’d gone to afterward in the real world. “You’re being a bad influence on me, Sophie,” she muttered. Only someone as old-fashioned as her sister would think that waltzing in a ballroom was a great night out.
Thinking of Sophie brought her back to her most common decision-making tactic: What would Sophie do? She wouldn’t sit around waiting for Eamon to show up for her. She’d make her own way into the Realm. But if she didn’t have the power to do that, then what? She’d probably summon him with the force of her will.
Emily might not be the fairy queen, but she had to have some magic in her veins, so she closed her eyes and imagined Eamon coming to her. He’d step out of that gateway and say something uncanny about her having called for him. When she opened her eyes, she halfway expected to see him standing there, smiling at her, his eyes twinkling like starlight.
But he wasn’t there.
Someone else was, though. A tall, broad-shouldered, imposing man stood in front of her. “The queen has requested your presence,” he said.
Emily did a double take when she looked more closely at the man. He looked human, but he had the glow about him she’d come to associate with the fae. He looked vaguely familiar, like someone she was seeing so far out of context that she couldn’t quite make the connection. And then she realized where she’d seen him before: he was the leader of the Hunt, who used to look like something straight out of hell (or a heavy-metal album cover) before he’d run into Sophie. Now he was the commander of the queen’s guards. “Hey,” she said, raising her hand in a vague wave. “I almost didn’t recognize you without the horns and fiery eyes. What does Nana want?”
“Your presence,” the Huntsman said, his booming voice not changed by his human appearance. If he got stuck in this world, he had a bright future as a stadium announcer, Emily thought. He wouldn’t even need loudspeakers.
“But do you know why?” she asked.
“The queen has need of your services.”
That was surprising. Usually Sophie was the one everyone wanted. She was the one who got magical powers, the one who’d won the crown in the first place. Emily had inherited other things, like height and a great singing voice, but in magical matters, she was just the patsy whose kidnapping had set the whole thing off. She couldn’t help but feel a little flattered and rather proud to be the one who was summoned. “Okay, then,” she said, rising and tugging on Beau’s leash to roust the bulldog from his spot under the bench. She was a little surprised that the dog hadn’t reacted to the Huntsman’s presence, but she was sure that if he saw him as a threat, she’d have known about it.
The Huntsman held his hand out to her, and she reluctantly took it, knowing there had to be direct contact for him to conduct her into the Realm. He might be kind of hot now, but she remembered him looking like something from a horror movie. Passing through the gateway came as a huge relief. Instantly, they were out of the cold and had gone from darkness into a summer’s twilight, right outside the palace gates. The Huntsman released her hand, and she followed as he led the way to the palace.
She hoped that while she was here doing whatever Nana needed her to do, she’d get a chance to see Eamon. He’d said he was working as a scribe again, so he might be there. She brushed her thumb across the scratch on the back of her other hand and thought that if she saw him, she could figure out what her nighttime trip really meant, how much had been a dream and how much had been real.
Or was that what this was about, her grandmother summoning her to read her the riot act about mingling with the fae or visiting the dream world? Did she know about that? Would she mind? It would be just like Nana to make it sound like she needed help and then slip in a little lecture along the way.
Instead of taking her to the palace doors, the Huntsman led her around to the side, to the gardens. There she found Nana, wearing a wide-brimmed straw hat and an apron over her suit. “Your majesty, I have brought the princess, as you requested,” the Huntsman said with a bow.
“Good work.”
He bowed again and retreated.
Nana kissed Emily on the cheek and said, “Thank you for coming on such short notice, but it’s rather difficult to send engraved invitations from the Realm.”
“It’s my day off,” Emily said with a shrug. “And besides, you can send me to the time I left, so it’s not like it disrupts my schedule. Mr. Tall, Dark, and Spooky said you needed my help. What’s up?”
Nana snipped a couple of roses and placed them in the basket she carried. “I need help with a little covert espionage. There’s no one here I can fully trust who isn’t known to be my ally. I’m afraid I didn’t handle it well before and missed an opportunity, but I’m sure Sophie’s told you all about it.”
“Sophie hasn’t told me anything,” Emily said, fighting the urge to whine like a left-out little sister. More graciously, she added, “Her ballet opens this week, so she’s busy.”
“Well, then, in short, your power-hungry enchantress is working with at least one fairy in my court. I want to find out who else might be working with them, and you’re not nearly as widely known
here as Sophie is. Do you think you can go mingle and see what you can pick up?”
Emily gave a mock salute. “I’m on the case and at your service.”
“Good. Head in through the side door. It’s less noticeable than making a grand entrance through the front doors. If you need me, I’ll be out here.”
Emily felt a little silly about how eager she was to carry out this mission. She knew she wasn’t in competition with her sister, but it was still nice to get an assignment that Sophie couldn’t carry out, even if it was because Sophie was more famous.
She scanned the crowd as she entered the throne room, but didn’t see the familiar silvery head she was looking for. Eamon was the queen’s scribe, so he should be at court. Or had he made himself scarce when she arrived? She had kind of thrown herself at him last night, and he hadn’t been too keen about that. Or maybe he’d been more keen than he was comfortable with. Emily had to admit that ruining the queen’s granddaughter for mortal men might count as a career-limiting move for a royal scribe. Both of them had a lot to lose from a relationship.
She noticed the Hunt members standing around the room. Their new forms were less fearsome, but they were still intimidating. Their presence probably kept a lid on any palace insurrections, but it also suggested that there might have been some fear of that.
The one familiar face in the crowd was Jen Murray, Michael’s former wife. She stood on the far side of the throne room, snuggled against the dark-haired fae man she’d become attached to in the Realm. Emily was glad Michael wasn’t here to see that. He hadn’t talked much about how he felt, but it couldn’t have been easy to lose her after all he’d done to save her. Jen surprised her by catching her eye and raising an eyebrow. Had Nana recruited her to the spy team, as well?
Emily took another look at the room. Although any gathering of the fae quickly turned into a party, this crowd wasn’t as festive as she’d initially thought. They looked nervous—sitting on the edges of their seats, pacing, gripping their drink glasses a little too tightly. There was music but no dancing. This wasn’t a crowd of sycophants hanging out at court with the new queen. It looked more like people taking refuge in a castle during a siege. They clearly knew something was up. Then again, Sophie had apparently been there recently, and that was bound to have left some lingering tension.
Emily recognized some of the courtiers from her previous adventures, but she doubted they recognized her. Amelia and Athena had tinkered with her aura, and when it came to physical appearance, all humans looked alike to the fae. No one gave her more than a second glance. Beau seemed to be getting more notice than she was. Under other circumstances, she might have been miffed, but it was what she needed right now.
A woman in an old-fashioned maid’s uniform made her way around the room with a tray, delivering drinks to the courtiers. On Emily’s first trip to the Realm, human captives had done that sort of thing, and she hoped Nana wasn’t continuing the practice. On second glance, Emily realized that the servant was Maeve, the fairy who’d captured her in the first place.
Maeve would normally be suspect number one in any scheme to take the throne, make the queen look bad, or otherwise seize power, but since she was physically incapable of leaving the palace, her options had to be pretty limited. Did she still have enough sway to get others to do her bidding and run around carrying out her plots?
Emily took up a position behind a pillar and watched Maeve as she went about her duties. She didn’t pause to talk to anyone, and they all treated her as though she was invisible, not even acknowledging her as she handed them drinks and took their empty glasses.
But as Emily observed, she realized the others weren’t quite as oblivious to Maeve’s presence as they initially seemed. One of the women in the group Maeve was serving was talking just a little too loud, in the manner of someone who wants to make sure she’s overheard. “Have any of you managed to leave the Realm lately? It’s so much easier with the barriers falling, as long as you can find one of the holes.” She gave Maeve just enough of a glance to make it clear that she knew Maeve wouldn’t be leaving the Realm.
“Have you gone?” One of the other fae women in the group challenged the speaker.
The first woman gestured airily with her cocktail. “I’m thinking about it, though I’m not sure what the point would be, other than curiosity. If humans are anything like the new queen, that world must be a very boring place. I don’t see the appeal.”
“Oh, but there’s the power over humans,” another woman said, leaning forward and resting her elbows on her knees. “Just imagine, a world where we’d be like gods. We once were, to those people.” She shot a little glance at Maeve as she said, “Wasn’t that the plan before, to leave the Realm and demand tribute the way we once did?”
Emily was impressed at Maeve’s self-control. She hadn’t thought the would-be queen had enough restraint not to jump into this conversation. One of the other women—one of the few still dressed in the mid-century style of Maeve’s former court—spoke up instead. “Yes, that was the plan. But the human descendants of the last queen took the throne instead. Obviously, they’re not going to go against their own kind.”
“I’d rather just forget about that world,” one of the other women said. “Why should we care? We have what we want here.” She was dressed closer to the style of the free fae, in wispy clothes drawn from nature without mimicking any particular human era.
The one dressed like one of Maeve’s minions said, “I’ve been outside.” The others all leaned toward her, looking at her like girls at a high-school slumber party whose friend had just announced that she’d gone all the way with her boyfriend.
“What’s it like?” the first speaker asked, most of her sophisticated air gone in her eager curiosity.
“Cold, mostly. I just stepped out and came back. There was nothing to it. But it’s the humans that hold the real value, not the world itself. And they know nothing of us anymore.” She gestured to Maeve with her glass. “Another one.” Maeve hurried away without even acknowledging her, but her eyes were full of icy hatred.
The one most like the free fae said, “But don’t we lose some power over them if they don’t know anything about us? We’re weaker without their belief.”
“Then we give them a reason to believe, and that will make us even more powerful.”
Emily couldn’t tell if this was open plotting or just talk. She had a hard time believing that anyone actually conspiring with enchantresses to stir up a war between the fae and the human world would be so open about it, whether or not the queen was present. Some of the courtiers had to be loyal. At least, as loyal as fairies got.
She noticed a silvery head across the throne room and suddenly lost interest in the fae version of mean girls. Eamon would probably be able to clear up a lot of things for her, including whether to take these women at all seriously. She left Beau snoring on the floor behind the pillar and moved to intercept Eamon as he made his way across the throne room.
He was so focused on the book he held that she had to jump out of his way so he didn’t run into her, and even then he kept going without acknowledging her. She cleared her throat and said, “Hey, fancy meeting you here.” It took him a second or two to notice she was there. She was used to him being a bit absentminded, but this was getting ridiculous. “Remember me?” she prodded.
He blinked, returning to this plane of existence from wherever he’d been. “Emily Drake!” he said. “Of course I remember you.” Maybe she was just being paranoid, but he didn’t seem that pleased to see her. It was like running into someone the morning after an encounter in the supply closet at an office party when he wanted to pretend it didn’t mean anything. He narrowed his eyes at her. “What are you doing here? How did you get here?”
“Nana summoned me. I’m helping her with something. But I’m glad I ran into you. I have some questions about last night.”
He took a big step away from her. “Last night?”
“Yeah. Like
, did it really happen? Was there a last night?” She held up her hand so he could see the scratch on the back of it. “I remember scratching this on a rose bush as I left. Is that what happened? Because I also woke up in my bed, all wrapped up in the covers like I’d never left. So was it all in my head, or was it real?”
“Yes.”
“Yes which?”
“Both.”
“So it was real, and things happened to my body, but it was also all inside my head?”
“Who says that the things that happen in your head aren’t real?”
“Uh, most people.”
“They are not fae.”
“So is this like that thing where if you dream you’re falling and you hit the ground, you die in real life?”
“I am not aware of that rule. And this is hardly the place to have this discussion.”
She noticed then that many eyes were focused on them. “Okay, then, where do you want to go to talk?”
“This is not a good time.”
“Then name a time.” She realized that was a dumb thing to say to a fairy, but Eamon had to have at least some sense of time to make it to see shows as often as he did—or was that merely about the time of day it was easiest to pass between worlds and he happened to be lucky?
“Later,” he said, already moving away. She wanted to call after him, asking what his deal was, but that was really something that shouldn’t be done in public, in this world or the human one. If he were human, she’d say he was acting like a man who’d gotten what he wanted from a woman and immediately lost interest, but he hadn’t actually gotten anything out of her unless all he was looking for was a kiss and a dance. With him being fae, she had no idea what was up. Had she said or done something to insult him during her dream excursion? Maybe he was annoyed that she’d left so soon. Next time she’d have to turn off the ringer on her phone.
It didn’t seem like she was going to get any answers now, so she went back to where she’d left Beau. He was still asleep, sprawled on the cool marble floor. The women she’d been eavesdropping on earlier had eyed her progress around the room, and now she felt their attention on her even as she pointedly ignored them to kneel beside her dog.
A Kind of Magic Page 14
