Prince Charming Doesn’t Live Here

by Christine Warren

She cut off the call in the middle of his grumble and shoved her phone into her briefcase with a completely inappropriate feeling of happy anticipation. Inappropriate, because a woman in her situation—hanging on to her job by a thread and contemplating a transdimensional trip to the home of people who didn’t sound very nice—had neither the reason nor the right to feel happy. And anticipation because that seemed to be what she felt all the time around Mac Callahan, as if she was just waiting for something spectacular to happen. Like another kiss.

  Lord, she was an idiot.

  Crossing her arms over her chest, Danice fixed her gaze on the empty train corridor and struggled to wipe the smile off her face. This was no time to moon over any man, let alone one she’d met less than a week ago under far-from-romantic circumstances.

  In general, she tried to avoid men who attacked her at first sight, as well as ones who thought public sidewalks to be the appropriate setting for passionate, male-dominant kisses. But something about Mac Callahan just got to her. She couldn’t understand it, and she sure as heck couldn’t describe it, but when she saw him, her heartbeat sped up and her blood pressure skyrocketed, and her stomach became a stopping point on the annual monarch butterfly migration route. She didn’t think she could attribute it solely to his looks (although he looked fine) or to his charm (which could melt women at fifty paces). Frankly, although she’d gotten a taste of his seductive powers for a few brief moments at the Addisons’ summer house, he’d been too concerned over their mutual problems to spend much time charming her. There had been very little charm in his devouring kiss outside the Court house.

  But the truth was, when she was with Mac, things felt…right. The world was more interesting. She felt just like herself, and yet she felt like she’d become part of something else, something bigger and better. She felt more alive.

  Which would prove itself really ironic if these Fae of the Unseelie Court wanted to kill her as much as Mac seemed to want her to believe they did. Having never met anyone of that particular persuasion, she admitted to having a little trouble wrapping her mind around the image of a homicidal fairy.

  Fae, she corrected herself with a grin. No need to antagonize the little winged buggers.

  A glance at her watch told her that the train was running late. No big surprise there, but Danice had been looking forward to soaking in the tub for five or six hours before she tackled her paperwork. It looked like forty-five minutes would be all she’d get, and that would be if she read while she soaked.

  For once, the other passengers waiting for the train hadn’t begun the ceremonial griping that accompanied all delayed trains. In fact, the drone of their conversations even seemed to have died down, almost grown muffled in the large, concrete tunnel. Or maybe Danice was coming down with a cold and her ears were getting stuffed up. The timing would suck, but that just figured.

  Tilting her head to the side, she flexed her jaw to elicit a pop in her ears. Nothing happened. In fact, the noise seemed to fade even more, and the hair on the back of her neck stood up as a shiver of unease crept down her spine. Another gust of cold air blew past her, and Danice suddenly knew that something was wrong.

  Very, very wrong.

  Newly alert, she looked around her, searching for the source of her unease, but she saw nothing. The platform remained crowded with strangers. Hundreds of people gathered in the space waiting for the train to emerge from the tunnel and carry them away. None of them looked as if they had sensed anything to fear. In fact, none of them looked as if they sensed anything.

  The entire crowd faced forward and stood at frozen attention. The sound of their conversation had died completely, and all Danice could hear was the odd buzzing sound that hummed inside her head. She turned to her right and looked toward the stairs she’d walked down earlier, but all she could see was an impenetrable blackness filling the opening. People stood frozen there as well, feet halted in midstep as if time had stopped while they jogged down toward the subway platform.

  What in the name of God was going on?

  Panic began to well up, leaving a bitter taste on the back of her tongue. This couldn’t be happening. None of this could be happening, because it just didn’t make sense. Danice might not be a physicist, but she knew that time couldn’t stop, that entire crowds of people couldn’t freeze in place, and that she was not about to die some horrible death at the damned 59th Street subway station.

  She turned and looked deeper into the tunnel, but the blackness had gathered there as well. Both exits had been cut off. Between the blackness and the motionless crowd in front of her, Danice had no place to run. So was she just supposed to stand there and wait for whatever was coming for her? The idea didn’t sit well.

  Fingers grasping for her cell phone, she began to weave her way carefully through the crowd, looking for other avenues of escape. She had no plan in mind, which annoyed her, but moving felt better than just standing still. Standing still felt too much like tempting fate.

  She stepped around a large man in an ill-fitting suit and emerged onto the edge of the platform. In either direction, she saw nothing but stagnant darkness. Until the darkness on the left shifted and moved and began to creep forward.

  Eyes wide, she took a step back and caught her shoulder on the corner of a cement pillar. The impact jolted her, but she didn’t stop. Not until the darkness stopped moving forward and began to swirl and seethe, coalescing into a thing the size and shape of a tall, slender human. It moved forward again, and a figure emerged to face her.

  She backed up another step.

  The figure looked like the character of death from an old silent movie. It stood over six feet tall, cloaked and hooded in a black so dark it seemed to suck away the surrounding light. While Danice watched, gloved hands lifted and pushed back the hood until she could make out the vague outline of features set in skin the color of charcoal.

  She got the impression of the requisite nose and mouth, but the only thing she could focus on was the eyes. They glowed with an eerie blue-gray light, like gunmetal lit from within. The lids, both upper and lower, were rimmed with red, and red like blood appeared inside its mouth when it parted its lips to speak.

  “You will not leave.”

  Its voice should have hissed or growled or rasped unpleasantly. Based on its appearance, that would only have been fair. Instead, it spoke smoothly, the key even and pleasant, the tone melodious, in an androgynous sort of way. She had no idea if it was male or female, only that the animation in its voice conveyed the slightest hint of malice.

  Okay. More than a hint.

  Danice took another step backward. “Um, actually, I believe I will.”

  “You will not leave,” it repeated. “I have sought you out to deliver a message. You will stay and hear it.”

  Oddly enough, the menacing words did indeed make her stop. She frowned. “A message from whom?”

  “You involve yourself in matters that do not concern you. This displeases us.”

  “Us? Is there more than one of you here, or was that the royal we?”

  It ignored her. “The Unseelie Court is not your place, and your presence there is not welcome, your interference there even less so.”

  Danice eyed the figure warily, but for the moment it seemed content to threaten her verbally rather than physically. “Why would you think I’m involved with…well, anything? I have no idea who you are.”

  Or what you are, she thought, but figured it would be healthier to leave that last bit unspoken.

  “But I know you, Danice the Carter, and I know what it is that you are seeking. And I know you will not find it.”

  The shine of those metallic, glowing eyes was beginning to get to her. Or maybe the fact that she was one of only two people conscious and able to move in the 59th Street station during rush hour, and the other one seemed not to like her very much, was making her nervous. Either way, she darted a glance toward the nearest exit, which still didn’t look like a viable escape route. Since the thing talking to
her had come out of the same kind of black fog, it wasn’t something she felt very inclined to venture into.

  “Right now, all I’m trying to find is my train,” Danice said, turning back to meet that uncanny gaze. “Other than that, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  The eyes blazed with eerie gray light. “Do you think you can lie, and I will not know the truth? I am not some mortal creature you can deceive, Danice Carter. I am so much more than that. More than you can ken.”

  It stepped forward, or maybe glided (glid?) or floated or something. Nothing Danice had ever seen before moved with that sort of grace, and the only thing she’d seen move more lethally was her friend Missy’s Lupine husband. Abandoning the process of inching backward step by step, Danice spun around, hung on to the strap of her briefcase, and began to sprint for the door.

  She couldn’t move all that fast because of the crowd in her way, but she gave up all pretense of good manners and shoved them out of the way whenever she had to. Behind her, she heard a low, growling hiss of rage and felt a gust of icy wind sweep toward her. She didn’t bother to look back. Why the hell would she look back? Whenever the girl in the movie looked back, that was when she tripped on a root or a rock or her own damned clumsy feet and fell down in a screaming heap of murder victim. Danice had no intention of becoming a victim of any sort.

  But she still reserved the right to scream.

  The stairway up to street level was still crowded and still filled with black fog, but it seemed the best of her options, so she headed toward it with grim determination. She drew the line at knocking down a twelve-year-old kid who looked like he was heading home from school, but she drove her shoulder into a huge, doughy mountain of a man in a poorly tailored suit. She expected to feel him sway away from her the way all the others had, but instead the man offered about as much give as one of the cement pillars. He stood fast.

  Instinctively, Danice turned her head to look at the man’s face. And, oh, how she wished she hadn’t. Unlike all the other people in the subway station, this man’s face lacked the blank, vacant look and unfocused stare of frozen unconsciousness. The stranger looked right at her, his eyes hazed over and glowing with a sickening gray light. Before she could so much as curse, he reached out and grabbed her by the wrists.

  A chill struck the back of her neck, and she knew without looking that the cloaked figure was getting closer. Apparently, it had decided to possess the stranger next to her and ordered him to hold on just to ensure that Danice didn’t escape. Well, Danice Carter hadn’t grown up in Brooklyn or taken those self-defense courses for nothing. She had no intention of being held.

  In a single quick movement, she thrust her hands down and out to dislodge her captor’s grip and stomped the tall, chunky heel of her shoe down on his instep. The man bellowed, and his hold on her loosened but didn’t release completely. With a frustrated growl, she brought her knee up between his legs and yanked her hands back so that he rocked toward her, his nose lining up with the swift forward thrust of her forehead.

  She could feel his nose break on impact and the shock of the pain finally forced him to release her, one hand flying to his crotch, the other to cover his bleeding face. A trickle of moisture down her skin told Danice that not all the blood had stayed on the stranger. Hoping to God the man didn’t have any communicable diseases, she swiped at the wetness even as she stumbled forward toward the stairs.

  A hand grasped the back of her summer-weight silk sweater, and even without feeling the slightest brush against her skin Danice knew from the intense cold that raced through her exactly who had dragged her to a stop. The thing was strong, stronger than anything had a right to be, and it gave a satisfied hiss as it lifted her off her feet.

  Just as Danice was about to say to hell with public nudity laws and wriggle out of the sweater in order to escape, a rumbling sound caught her attention. A train was nearing the station.

  Behind her, the thing with the freaky eyes shrieked along with the high-pitched scream of the train’s brakes beginning to slow it down for its stop. Thinking the sound indicated her imminent death, Danice said a hasty prayer, even as she drew breath for one last, vicious fight.

  As it turned out, she needn’t have bothered.

  She felt the rush of hot air and heard the cacophony of sound that indicated the train’s arrival. Immediately she also felt the hard slap of concrete against her knees and palms, since the creature attacking her had opened its hand and released her without warning. Instinctively she reached out to brace herself against the fall and wound up on her hands and knees in the middle of the subway platform just as the spell that had frozen the world around her dissolved. All at once the crowd surged and Danice found herself kicked twice and tripped over once before two sets of hands reached down to help her to her feet.

  “Hey, lady, are you all right?”

  Danice looked around in confusion, but the cloaked figure had vanished, along with the thick black fog that had filled the exits just a minute ago. Everything looked just the way it should at rush hour on a Monday evening. Everything looked completely normal.

  “I’m fine,” she mumbled, brushing her hands together and wincing at the sting of scraped skin. “I just—I—I tripped.”

  The brawny-looking man to her right frowned down at her. “Are you sure? You look like you hit your head or something. You’re bleeding.”

  “No, I’m fine. It’s just a bump.”

  “Hey, maybe you should get someone to take a look at that,” the figure on the left suggested. He was an older man with thick gray hair and a concerned frown. “There’s a clinic a couple of blocks from here. You want I should walk with you?”

  Danice flashed the men a nervous smile, already moving. “Thanks, but I’m fine. I’ve got to go. Thanks.”

  She didn’t wait for their protests, just broke into the fastest jog she could manage and fought her way through the crowd to follow the exiting passengers back up the stairs to the street level.

  What the hell had just happened? Had some monster she’d never seen before really just tried to kill her? Had she just been warned away from searching for Rosemary Addison and from the Unseelie Court? By whom? By what?

  And what would Mac Callahan say when he found out?

  Eleven

  “Shit.”

  Danice sighed. “Now you’re repeating yourself.”

  He was, too. Mac had said exactly the same thing thirty minutes ago when he’d spotted the disheveled and slightly bloody attorney hurrying toward the entrance of his office just as he exited the building. He thought he might have repeated it a couple of times in the cab he hustled her into seconds later, and it was quite possible he’d said it again in the elevator on the way up to his apartment a few minutes after that. So really, she shouldn’t have been surprised to hear it again while she sat on the edge of his bathtub and watched him clean the small cut on her forehead where the skin had apparently caught a tooth on its way back from its nose-bashing adventure.

  “Sorry,” he muttered, dabbing the alcohol pad against the stubbornly dried blood. “This isn’t coming off easily, and I’m afraid I’ll hurt you if I really rub.”

  “Here, just give it to me.” She snatched the pad away from him and scrubbed it roughly over the wound, wincing at the burn of alcohol on torn flesh.

  He watched and winced in sympathy.

  “Well?” she demanded. “Aren’t you going to say anything? I mean, anything other than ‘shit,’ because I think we’ve covered that part.”

  “What do you want me to say?”

  She tossed the swab in the trash and scowled at him. “You might start with telling me what the hell it was that attacked me. Then maybe we could move on to discussing exactly why it did so.”

  “I think why is the easier part.” His hands shook as he reached for a tube of antibiotic ointment. He frowned at them until they steadied enough so he could dab some of the gel onto Danice’s cut. “It told you it wanted you to stay away fro
m Faerie, right?”

  “Yes, but I want to know why it wants that. Along with how the hell it knew that I even know Faerie exists.”

  “You’re the one who insisted I had to get Quigley to agree to take you with me.”

  “Are you saying the guy you’ve hired to guide us into Faerie has already sold us out to the people there? Before we’ve even set a date to go, let alone set foot in the damned place?”

  “I’m saying he wouldn’t have had to.” He looked at her. “I don’t suppose you’re going to want me to put a bandage on your forehead.”

  She glared.

  “I didn’t think so,” he muttered, tossing the paper packet aside. “Look, I did not run around Manhattan shouting at the top of my lungs that I needed someone to volunteer to take me and Danice L. Carter, attorney-at-law, from the firm of Parish, Hampton, Uxbridge, and Yorke, to Faerie; form a line on the right. But Quigley is a hard one to pin down, and the place where we usually meet is a bar. A public place. You know, the kind with people in it.”

  Her expression failed to sweeten. “Then someone could have overheard.”

  “Of course they could have. In fact, they probably did. And it’s not like I didn’t already explain to you that travel between Faerie and here—from either side—is strongly discouraged.”

  Danice rose and turned to the sink. He stepped out of her way, but lingered in the door while she scrubbed the dirt and grit from her raw hands.

  “You never told me why that is,” she pointed out.

  “It’s always been that way. Or at least, it has been for all recorded history. The stories say that the Fae used to live here rather than in Faerie, but when humans began to spread across the continents and started to shape the earth to suit their own needs, the Fae decided to retreat. They moved across the veil into Faerie and left this world to the humans.”

  “Great. Another group to view us as the despoilers of Mother Earth. They must get along great with the Lupines.”

  Mac shrugged and handed her the antibiotic cream. “They stopped paying attention to what happens on this side of the veil a long time ago. They keep in touch with the Council of Others, I think, but mainly just to make sure that the existence of Faerie remains a myth to humans.”