by Faith Hunter
The ceiling was way too low for me to fly, so I had to pick my clumsy half-human way through the room. Of course everything was complicated by the fact that I was still invisible, and while I could see other people they could not see me and get out of my way.
By the time I reached the back of the lounge, the faerie, of course, had disappeared. The only exit in sight was a door into the kitchen, so I pushed through it, ignoring the startled look of the busboy, who must have wondered why the door slammed against the wall when no one was entering.
I scanned the kitchen and saw the faerie at the far end, leaning his finger on the call button for the service elevator. The cooks and dishwashers ignored him, which meant he must have put a veil over himself. The only person in the room aware of him was me. He glanced over his shoulder, saw me there, and held up his hand like a policeman stopping traffic.
A wave of pressure hit me square in the chest and knocked me back into some shelves stacked high with dishes and glassware. Just about everything crashed to the floor, and all of the kitchen workers cursed loudly in unison, wondering how the hell that could have happened.
I blasted nightfire at the faerie, hitting him right between the shoulder blades. His face banged against the frame of the elevator as the nightfire burned through his fancy suit. The flame itself didn’t seem to bother him, but he’d definitely had his bell rung when his face crunched into the wall. I saw him shaking his head like a dog.
Unfortunately, my spell did not go unnoticed by the humans. Nightfire looks like blue fire and reeks of sulfur, unlike the faerie’s silent pressure wave. Two of the kitchen workers ran from the room, and the others dropped to the ground as the blue ball of flame just missed their heads.
Beezle poked his head out of my coat pocket. “Broken possessions. Check. Ball of flame. Check. Did I miss the witty banter already?”
“There’s still time,” I said.
Now that everyone in the room had conveniently ducked, I could stop messing about trying to tiptoe around the workers. I raised up on my wings, then gave one great flap and arrowed over the prep counter in the center of the room. Beezle tucked back inside my coat pocket, muttering something about his advanced age and my lack of care about his personal safety.
I had just about reached the faerie when the elevator doors finally opened, revealing a waiter returning to the kitchen with a cart full of dirty room service dishes. My quarry dashed inside the elevator, but I was right behind him. He tried pushing the waiter and cart out to stop me, but I managed to maneuver over the blockade and squeeze into the elevator just as the doors closed.
I ended up in the upper-left corner of the elevator, floating on my wings and holding my sword to the faerie’s neck. His chin was tipped up to me by the point of the blade and his eyes were furious. I blasted nightfire at the control pad and the elevator ground to a halt, the emergency alarm beeping.
“Make it stop,” Beezle said, his voice muffled inside my coat.
Another shot of nightfire made the alarm cease.
“Now,” I said, panting a little from exertion. I needed to lose about thirty pounds. It would make all this scampering after bad guys a lot easier. “Who are you, and why did you run away from me like that?”
“May eternal damnation be upon your house, spawn of Lucifer,” the faerie spat.
“I am not Lucifer’s spawn,” I said. “He’s my grandfather about eight million times removed.”
“A technicality,” the faerie said. “I will not cooperate with one of his bloodline.”
Beezle popped his head out of my pocket and peered over the lapel of my coat. “I’d cooperate with her if I were you. She has this sort of Wicked Witch/Incredible Hulk combo power thing where she smashes everything in sight and then when she gets frustrated she burns it.”
“I know well what Madeline Black is capable of,” the faerie said through his teeth. “I am a member of Queen Amarantha’s court, and I have observed her powers close at hand.”
“You’re one of Amarantha’s bootlickers, huh?” I said, lowering to the ground as I tried to place his face and failed. There were way too many courtiers at Amarantha’s castle.
“I am not a bootlicker,” the faerie said, drawing himself up. It was impressive the way he managed to look haughtily offended even though I held a sword at his throat. “I am Arkan, the Duke of Trium, second cousin to the Queen herself.”
“You’re a toady—that’s what you are,” I said. “You were sitting in the lounge keeping an eye out for me. You’re no better than an errand boy.”
“I think you’re insulting errand boys,” Beezle said.
“I was charged by my queen and by her ambassador with a mission and I will fulfill it,” Arkan said. “You are not to interfere here.”
“Who said anything about interfering?” I said. “Maybe I’ve got my own reasons for being here.”
“Do you think I am a fool, or that my queen is? She knew that once you discovered her aim you would meddle,” Arkan said.
Interesting. Amarantha was up to no good and she didn’t want me to know about it. Which certainly raised the question of why she had decided to do her dirty deeds right under my nose. Beezle asked before I could.
“If Amarantha didn’t want Maddy around, then why is she doing her badness in Chicago?” Beezle asked.
“You know very well that there is a magical convergence of energy here,” Arkan said. “Do not play the fool.”
I did not know very well at all. In fact, I knew nothing about it. Beezle, however, looked thoughtful. My home guardian is like a little gargoyle-shaped encyclopedia of all things supernatural. I could tell that he was putting two and two together and getting four.
“That’s why she needed the witches,” Beezle murmured. “She doesn’t want her fingerprints on it if it works.”
“What are you muttering about?” I asked.
“It’s almost the solstice,” Beezle said.
“So?” I said. “Lots of witches do stuff around the solstice. It’s a thing.”
“Lots of good witches perform spells around the solstice, yes,” Beezle said. “And so do lots of bad ones. Because the solstice is a time of life and death and rebirth, and thus has a lot more magical oomph than a regular old day.”
“Did you just say the solstice has ‘oomph’?”
“Yeah, so?”
I decided not to pursue it. “What does that have to do with Chicago?”
“You truly do not know,” Arkan said, looking from Beezle’s face to mine. “I have been a fool. If I had only waited to discover your purpose here . . .”
“You mean, instead of taking off like a maniac the second you saw me? Yeah, you blew it. Now someone tell me what Amarantha’s up to, because at this point I’m going to have to stop her just on principle.”
“Chicago is a special place, magic-wise. You know how all of the old rail lines from the east converged on the city and then went out west, and all the shipping went through here to the canal?” Beezle said.
“Yeah,” I said, vaguely remembering some of this from elementary school history.
He squinted at me like he knew I didn’t really remember, but then continued. “There’s a reason for that besides Chicago’s strategic location. Magical energy converges on this city in a big way. It’s the reason why so many supernatural creatures live here, and why so many witches choose to practice here. That energy amplifies existing powers.”
“Okay, I’m following,” I said. “Chicago makes magic bigger and better, and so does the solstice. And the two combined mean that practitioners will get more out of whatever spells they cast. But this can’t be the only place in the world that does so. There has to be another city with special mojo where Amarantha could have gone, someplace where I wouldn’t get in her way.”
“There is, but the others are a lot farther away from Amarantha’s king
dom. Plus, her son is here, so she’s already got ties to the local supernatural community. The only fly in the ointment is you. Sammy Blue isn’t here just because he’s Amarantha’s ambassador. He’s here because he’s got the Red Shoes,” Beezle said, looking at Arkan for confirmation.
I had to give the faerie credit. I never would have seen the flicker in his eyes if I hadn’t been looking for it.
“The solstice is a time of life and death and rebirth, you said?” I asked Beezle, trying to pull all the threads together in my head. “And Amarantha needs witches and the Red Shoes . . .”
I stopped, because something horrible had just occurred to me. “Whatever spell she’s casting needs a sacrifice. And they’re going to use the shoes to do it.”
Beezle nodded. “It’s got to be something big, because the person wearing the shoes will generate a lot of agony for the spell. The suffering of the wearer will help to power the curse.”
“Extra solstice points, extra Chicago-magical-energy points, and hours-of-torturing-a-sacrifice points,” I said, ticking them off on my fingers. “And when the curse goes, Amarantha doesn’t want her own magic to be on it. So there’s only one person she could possibly be after. Lucifer.”
Beezle patted me on the shoulder. “See? If you exercise your brain enough, this kind of thinking gets easier.”
“Amarantha is trying to cast a spell against Lucifer?” I said to Arkan. “I thought she was smarter than she looked, but I guess I was wrong.”
“Do not insult my queen,” Arkan said. “She is a thousand times the woman you will ever be.”
“That’s probably true,” I said. “But it doesn’t change the fact that she’s making a huge mistake by messing with Lucifer.”
“The Morningstar has insulted Queen Amarantha and the whole of faerie by claiming dominion over her court as repayment for the insult done to you,” Arkan said.
“So you’re acknowledging that there was an insult?” I said. “Because it generally is considered poor form to try to kill an ambassador, but Amarantha didn’t seem to agree with me.”
“Lucifer is not the emperor he imagines himself to be,” Arkan said as if I had never spoken. “He cannot even control the fallen of his own court. Look how Focalor conspires against him.”
“I’m sure that Focalor is suffering in a tiny cage surrounding by electrified bars right now,” I said. “Don’t you worry about Focalor. Worry about Amarantha, because nothing good will come of this, even though she’ll never succeed.”
“You think you can stop Sammy Blue? The ambassador has never yet failed in a mission for his queen,” Arkan said.
“There’s always a first time for everything,” I said. “And I am not going to leave and let some innocent be tortured by those shoes. So take me to your leader and all that.”
“You have broken the elevator,” Arkan said sulkily. “So thoroughly that the humans cannot even pry the doors open.”
I was suddenly aware of the clank of metal on metal and of several voices arguing just outside the elevator. By the sounds of it, they’d been there for many minutes without my noticing. I tend to get tunnel vision—and hearing—when I’m focused on a task.
“Veil yourself,” I told Arkan.
“Why should I?”
“Gods above and below,” I said. “I have never met a faerie that didn’t act like a spoiled child. I can’t believe your race has survived this long. You need to veil yourself because in a second I’m going to blast those doors open. And since I have my wings out I can’t be seen. But you can. So unless you want to be detained by humans and forced to answer a lot of questions about that mess downstairs in the kitchen, you will do as I say. Oh, and don’t try anything,” I said, waving the tip of my sword just under his chin.
“You would not dare kill me,” Arkan said. “I am a close relative of the queen. You would be forced to pay a blood price to answer for my death.”
“I’ve got news for you, pal,” Beezle said. “Whatever rules you think apply do not apply to Maddy. She’s got this thing about authority.”
Arkan looked uncertainly from me to Beezle.
“Perhaps you’ve heard that I killed two of Lucifer’s sons?” I asked. “Don’t think I’ll hesitate to take you out if I have to.”
“You are Lucifer’s spawn,” Arkan said. “You have his pride, his arrogance . . . One day someone will put you in your place.”
“Like I’ve never heard that before,” I said. “Beezle, watch him.”
I kept the sword under Arkan’s chin with my right hand and held up my left toward the elevator doors. The last two fingers of that hand were missing, the result of a battle that hadn’t needed to be fought. Lucifer claimed the missing digits would grow back, but that hadn’t happened yet.
I took a deep breath and drew upon the source of my magic, the wellspring inside me where all my power swirled. There were hidden depths there, depths I hadn’t yet begun to explore, depths where the strength of Lucifer’s bloodline would finally be revealed. I was frightened to use that power, afraid that it would bring me closer to the Morningstar’s circle. My great-grandfather had made no bones about the fact that he wanted me as his heir. My wants and Lucifer’s were two very different things.
But I’d drawn on some of that magic when I’d survived the Maze, and now that I carried Lucifer’s sword it seemed the power was closer to the surface than it used to be. I pulled on my magic, infused it with my will, pushed it out through the palm of my hand. The snake tattoo on my right palm twitched.
The elevator doors flew open in a shower of sparks. Three hotel employees stood there looking surprised. The one in the middle held a crowbar. He stared at the bar, and then at the doors, then back at the bar.
“Good job, Ed,” one of the guys said.
The other two men shouldered past him and into the elevator. I maneuvered Arkan out by gesturing for him to turn around so I could put the sword to his back. Then I poked him in the spine and pushed past the bewildered Ed and into the hallway. One of the men inside the elevator cursed loudly when he saw the charred control pad.
When we reached the bank of guest elevators in the center of the hallway I gave Arkan a nudge.
“Where’s Sammy staying?” I whispered.
Arkan did not answer.
“You know, I can just kill you now and find Sammy on my own,” I said. “It will take longer, but I’ll still get what I want.”
“Getting a little dark, aren’t we?” Beezle murmured.
I would do anything possible to protect the innocent, and despite my tough talk I would rather not kill anyone. But if it was necessary, I didn’t mind ridding the world of another selfish, useless faerie who was perfectly willing to participate in the torture of a human being just because his queen said so.
I waited. Finally, Arkan said, “The penthouse.”
I pressed the button for the up elevator and waited. When the car opened there was no one inside. That was good. It lessened the likelihood that Arkan might decide to take a human hostage to get away from me.
This simple mission was already a lot more complicated than I’d bargained for. It wasn’t just about Amarantha going up against Lucifer because her pride was hurt. It wasn’t even just about saving some innocent soul from a horrible death in the Red Shoes. If Amarantha succeeded in cursing Lucifer, then the contents of the curse itself wouldn’t even matter. She would be, for all intents and purposes, declaring war on the kingdom of the fallen.
The courts of the various races were carefully held apart by a series of accords and agreements and laws. This was to keep some very powerful and ancient creatures from tearing the planet apart while they squabbled over territory. If a court of faerie made aggressive overtures toward the highest court of the fallen, you could guarantee that a whole lot of people were going to get caught in the cross fire. That wasn’t acceptable to me, so I would
do whatever I needed to do to stop this curse from happening in the first place. If I managed to snag the Red Shoes, as Lucifer had requested, then so much the better.
Of course, Lucifer probably had nefarious plans for the shoes himself. But I couldn’t worry about that right now. I needed to deal with the crisis at hand and then worry about the next crisis when it occurred.
A key was needed to access the penthouse via the elevator, and Arkan produced it after much grumbling on his part and threatening on mine. Beezle fell asleep again in my pocket, snoring away like a baby piglet. Pretty much all he does is eat, sleep, make smart comments about my poor decisions, and watch bad television.
The elevator doors opened on the penthouse. It was curiously quiet. I’d expected an entourage, maybe a bunch of witches hanging around preparing a spell. But there was nothing except a room empty of people but full of expensive furniture. A row of windows faced Michigan Avenue. I pushed the sword into Arkan’s back. “Move.”
We stepped into the room, my anxiety growing with each passing moment. This wasn’t right. At the very least Sammy Blue should have been waiting for Arkan to return. That is, unless . . .
“You’re Sammy Blue,” I said.
He turned to face me, those crazy violet eyes agleam with triumph.
Ah. There’s the trap, then.
I had only half a second to turn before the blow fell. I had an impression of something large and scary bringing its fist down on my head. My sword clattered to the ground, and everything went black.
I woke to the sound of murmuring chatter, people moving around the room like bees in a hive. The back of my head ached, and so did my ribs and stomach. I suspected that Sammy Blue had either stepped on me or kicked me a few times while I was out cold. I also felt vaguely like a blanket had been thrown over me, even though there wasn’t one.
