Borderline

by Mishell Baker

  “West Hollywood.” I gave him the address of the sushi place. “And tell her to wait for me if she gets there first. I’ll be as fast as I can.”

  • • •

  Most celebrities are not good at going incognito, but Inaya had it down. Her straightened walnut-brown hair was pulled into an unflattering ponytail that stuck out through the back of a baseball cap, and her cheap sunglasses were subtle enough not to scream “starlet in disguise.” Standing there in baggy clothes with her back to the street, she affected a slouching posture that did nothing to advertise her curves. I almost walked by her myself.

  “You must be Millie,” she said, staring at my reflection in the window of the sushi place. To face me would have meant facing the throngs of people driving and walking by at midday.

  I moved between her and the window so she could talk to me without turning around. She didn’t back up to allow for personal space, so we ended up looking like a couple who’d been together long enough to quit dressing up for dates. Wouldn’t that be something? A quick lunch, then back to her place, falling onto Egyptian cotton sheets, digging my heels into that smooth brown back. Except I didn’t have heels, as if that were the least plausible thing about that fantasy.

  “Good to finally meet you,” I said.

  “Who are you?” She lowered her sunglasses just enough to hit me with those smoky eyes. It took me a second to activate the language center of my brain.

  “When we first spoke,” I said, “I was working for the Arcadia Project. Now that they’ve fired me, I’m free to tell you all the stuff I wasn’t allowed to tell you before. But first I need to make sure you’re not recording or transmitting what I’m ­saying. There are very good reasons why the stuff I’m about to show you is secret.”

  “If it’s secret, why are you telling me?” She pushed the sunglasses back up on her nose, looking skeptical.

  “Because you are literally the last person left who can help me save someone I care about. Someone who’s being held captive by people you trust, and might die.”

  “Are you pitching me a script?” she said. “Because I would read this.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind for later, but no. This is real, as you’re about to see. But you have to promise me that I can trust you.”

  “I prayed after Ellis called me,” she said, “and Jesus gave me the green light. Whatever you have to say, I am ready to hear it.”

  I blinked. “Jesus . . . gave you the green light.”

  “You have a problem with Jesus?” She lowered the sunglasses again.

  “Uh—”

  “It’s okay in this town to believe that crystals can heal asthma or vaccines cause autism or an alien overlord is going to give you special brain powers if you pay enough, but I say the J word and suddenly I’m crazy.”

  “I’m not the best person to give an opinion on that,” I said. “But funny you should mention religion, because look where we’re headed next.” I pointed to the supposed Christian bookstore, so obviously out of place on a street dominated by drag couture.

  Inaya looked at the bookstore. A delicate line appeared between her perfectly tweezed brows before she shifted her gaze across the street. “Oh, hey, is that a shoe store? You suppose they have any of those pumps in ladies’ sizes?”

  “Inaya, I need you to trust me, and just follow me into the bookstore, okay? Also, tell me right now, did you forget anything? Phone? Keys? Wallet?”

  “Do I seem like the absentminded type to you?”

  I started walking, and she followed me halfway to the entrance before stopping abruptly and patting herself down. “I— No, wait—I didn’t forget anything. I just said that. Oh my God, are you a mentalist?”

  “Just follow me, please.”

  “Ellis said you’d lost your legs,” she said, eyeing my jeans, which concealed the prosthetics. “How did that happen?”

  “We’ll talk about it later.”

  “Can we go back to the sushi place? I really have to pee.”

  “There are bathrooms inside,” I said. Actually, I had never seen any, but I was also pretty sure Inaya West wouldn’t show up to meet a stranger with a full bladder.

  The ward was doing its tricks on me, too, of course, but once you’ve seen the structure of a spell and know what it’s doing to your brain, you can kind of compensate for it. Just like a glance in the mirror after a dental procedure tells you that your lip isn’t really three feet thick.

  “All right,” said Inaya. “But let me just pop over to that shoe store quickly first.”

  “You’re trying to avoid following me. It’s something the place does to you, a mind trick. My partner had to physically push me in the door.”

  “Don’t even think about doing that.”

  “I have no intention of it. But that’s why I need you to walk in under your own power, all right? By the time I count to ten, I need you to walk into that bookstore. If you do not, I am going to cause a public relations nightmare for you by pretending you pushed an amputee into the street.”

  “You wouldn’t!”

  “One . . . two . . .”

  “I’ve always trusted my intuition,” she said, sounding deeply unnerved. “But I honestly don’t know what to do right now.”

  “Three . . . four . . .”

  “Part of me is just screaming that this is some kind of trap, but another part of me feels like my whole life has been leading up to it.”

  “Five . . .”

  She started to look panicky. “Do I sound crazy? I feel crazy.”

  I shook my head reassuringly but kept counting. “Six . . .”

  “I’m not crazy.” She straightened her spine and walked into the dizzying technicolor splendor of the Seelie bar with me close on her heels.

  Immediately she backed into me, hard, and her “Sweet Jesus!” was so loud that the patrons swiveled to look at us. One or two of them recognized me and looked wary; the rest just went back to their drinking. A glowering giant of a man with carrot-red hair approached the two of us, blocking our way to the bar and folding his bulky arms.

  “You are not authorized,” he said.

  He used the word “authorized” with the same sort of childish glee that the Queen’s messenger had. His facade had been designed with intimidation in mind; he looked as though he could reach out and snap our necks with one beefy hand apiece.

  “I’m with the Arcadia Project,” I lied. “Ask Baroness Fox­feather. And this is my guest.”

  Beefcake stepped aside just enough to let Foxfeather see us. She tossed her golden mane over her shoulder and gave the two of us a brilliant smile. “I know Ironbones,” she said. “And her friend is familiar too.”

  “Seen any hit films these last three decades?” I joked.

  “No.”

  “Oh.”

  “But I go to a lot of parties,” Foxfeather explained. “It’s a great way to meet humans.”

  “Would you excuse me for just a minute?” said Inaya shakily, and stepped out the door. I was about to hobble after her, but she stepped immediately back inside. “How is this even pos­sible? How are you doing this?”

  “Let’s sit you down for a minute,” I said. “You look woozy.”

  “She can’t stay here,” said the beefy guy.

  “Let her stay, Craghorn,” said Foxfeather. “Look how pretty she is. And she’s with an Authority.”

  Craghorn grumbled to himself and sat down in a booth alone, continuing to glare at the three of us as I led Inaya to the bar and eased her onto a stool. Foxfeather stared raptly at her.

  “So,” I said to Inaya. “I am in no way supposed to be telling you this, but the reason this place looks like a bookstore on the outside is that it’s magic.”

  Inaya shook her head firmly. Oh great, one of those, I thought. Admittedly she didn’t have the advantage of gla
sses to see the spell directly, and for most people paradigm shifts are pretty rough regardless.

  “It’s not magic,” she said. “There has to be some explanation.”

  “That is the explanation.”

  “If magic is real, then I am pretty sure it’s the work of the devil, and I should be getting the hell out of here.”

  “Inaya, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but the world doesn’t work exactly the way your preacher tells you it does.”

  “An atheist in Los Angeles,” she said dryly. “I am so shocked.”

  “Look, I am not an expert on Jesus, or the devil, or any of that. I am not trying to tell you there’s no God; how the hell would I know?”

  “Then what are you saying?”

  “I’m saying that magic is real. It’s not native to this world, so maybe that world was made by a different God, or maybe your God made both worlds by different rules. I don’t know. That’s for people who care about God to figure out. All I know is that there really is a world where magic is common as dirt, and they’ve brought some of it here.”

  “Aliens?” One brow shot up toward her hairline.

  “More like fairies. Though I think we’re supposed to call them fey.”

  “You can call me Vicki Plume,” the bartender interjected helpfully. “But at home they call me Foxfeather.”

  Inaya turned her poleaxed expression toward Foxfeather. “You believe you’re a fairy?”

  “I am a baroness of the Seelie Court,” she said with solemn dignity. “I am the lowest rank of what some humans call the sidhe, or high elves, or ‘fair folk,’ or whatever.”

  “Vicki, honey,” said Inaya with real concern. “If this is some kind of role-play thing that’s fine, to each her own, but please tell me you don’t really believe in this at your age?”

  “Show her,” said Foxfeather, bouncing on the balls of her feet. “Oh pretty please, show her, Lady Ironbones.”

  Since I couldn’t think of a better idea, I reached out and grabbed Foxfeather by the wrist.

  40

  Gasps sounded all over the room, and Craghorn leaped up from his seat to come and beat me to a pulp or something.

  “Craghorn, sit!” cried Foxfeather, all ablaze with rainbow glory, unfolding a pair of diaphanous wings.

  Inaya sat rigid on her bar stool, and her wide, dark eyes suddenly overflowed with tears. Her lips moved a few times before words came out of them, and when I finally understood what she kept repeating, I went a bit numb from shock myself.

  “It’s you,” Inaya was whispering. “The angel. It’s you.”

  “Is it you?” Foxfeather asked in an equally awestruck tone. I let go of her wrist, and her human facade reached across the bar for Inaya’s hands. When their fingers touched, both of them gasped and pulled back, and then they just stared into each other’s eyes for a moment.

  I had the sudden intense urge to disintegrate. “Third wheel” doesn’t begin to cover it.

  “How is this possible?” Inaya said, her voice raw as she continued staring at Foxfeather. “I stopped telling people about those dreams years ago, but I still have them. You’re a fairy? I thought you were an angel.”

  “Maybe I am,” said Foxfeather.

  So this was what it was supposed to be like to meet your Echo. I was acidly jealous, of course. Jealousy is as hardwired into a Borderline as worry is into a mother. Inaya got dreams of angels and an A-list career; I got a phone number scrawled on a coffee-shop napkin.

  I tried to focus on what I had come here to do, because this could really only help me. “Foxfeather is your Echo—kind of your fey soul mate,” I said to Inaya. “Your muse. And if you want to think of it that way, a kind of guardian angel. Even without knowing her, you’ve felt her influence all your life. The two of you must have a very strong connection if she was able to reach you through your dreams.”

  “There are rules about this,” Foxfeather said. “We are supposed to report this to the Authorities immediately.”

  “I’ll take care of that for you,” I said. And I would. Eventually. Once I was finished getting what I needed out of them.

  “Obviously you can’t tell anyone human about this,” I said to Inaya, who was weeping and holding Foxfeather’s hands. “Inaya, are you listening to me?”

  “Yes,” she said without looking at me.

  “John Riven is also fey.”

  That got her attention. “I knew there was something weird about him.”

  “His real name is Viscount Rivenholt.”

  “He outranks me,” said Foxfeather. “By a lot.”

  “He’s used several different names and faces,” I went on, “but he is David Berenbaum’s Echo, just as Foxfeather is yours. David’s been working with him for forty-odd years.”

  “Does Vivian know about this?” asked Inaya.

  “She does,” I said. I decided Inaya was coping with enough right now; the truth about Vivian could wait.

  “She’s one too, isn’t she?” Inaya said. “Some kind of nasty one.”

  I sighed. “Let’s not get into that right now. The point is, you need to know all this because this is the reason you’ve been feeling out of the loop lately.”

  “They’ve been doing . . . magic fairy stuff,” she said, “and I’m the only one who doesn’t know.”

  “They weren’t allowed to tell you.”

  “Are they allowed now?”

  I wasn’t honestly sure. “I think we should keep your knowledge under our hats for a bit,” I said. “Something odd is going on, and I need you to help me get to the bottom of it. If they don’t know that you know, they might not be as much on their guard.”

  Inaya took a deep breath. “Okay, tell me what’s going on and what I need to do.”

  I wanted to kiss her. Having something actually go better than planned was not a feeling I was used to.

  “First, I need your promise that this stays between you, me, and Foxfeather. Not even the rest of the Arcadia Project needs to hear about this right now.” At her blank look, I clarified. “The Project is an organization that regulates all the stuff that goes on between humans and fey. I will set you both up with them properly once this is all settled. But right now I don’t know exactly who we can trust and who we can’t.”

  Inaya nodded, her eyes glazing a bit. “Okay.”

  “Are you all right? Are you with me? The story gets kind of complicated.”

  “I’m kind of . . .” She flapped her hands vaguely. “Can you maybe give me a little while here to talk with Vicki? I can meet you later today to hear you out once I’ve had a chance to . . .” She looked at Foxfeather and crumpled. Somehow she ­managed to look beautiful while crying, which made me want to throw a drink in her face.

  Foxfeather hurried around the bar to sit next to Inaya, taking the other woman into her arms as though she were a child. Perhaps she was a child, to Foxfeather; there was no telling how old the fey really was.

  “We can meet at my place,” Foxfeather said to me, lifting wet blue eyes to meet mine. “We can all talk there later.”

  “Inaya has my number,” I said. “Have her call me when you’re both ready.” Awkwardly I turned for the door, leaving the two of them in each other’s arms.

  • • •

  I’d kept the worst of my self-pity at bay up to this point, but seeing Inaya and Foxfeather’s joyous reunion was sort of the last straw. I didn’t have anywhere private to cry, so I settled for leaning against the wall in an alley between a game shop and a strip club and boo-hooing for a solid half hour.

  Luckily, I had some useful distress tolerance skills at hand, and I used them as soon as I’d spent the worst of the storm. Distract, self-soothe. I visualized walking down a red carpet with Inaya. She was probably my friend for life now, and would be even more grateful to me when she knew what I had risked to
take her to that bar. I wasn’t sure what the penalty was for breaking the Code of Silence, but I had a feeling it wasn’t a slap on the wrist.

  It had paid off, though. I’d gone from a dim hope of Inaya’s cooperation to a pair of grateful allies on either side of the border. I wondered if Vivian felt warm fuzzies at bringing her clients to their Echoes. Somehow I doubted it.

  I thought of the man who might be my own Echo and almost certainly the sixth anomaly on the census. Ever since my conversation with Vivian, an unpleasant possibility had been nagging at the back of my mind. I needed an informed ­second opinion, so I swallowed a jagged lump of pride and dialed Caryl’s number.

  If she’d known who it was, maybe she wouldn’t have answered, but she had no way of associating the new number with me, and so on the second ring I heard a husky hello. I surprised myself with a sudden flood of contrition that left me speechless.

  “Hello?” she said again.

  “Don’t hang up; I have some very important information.”

  I heard a faint swell of baroque harpsichord in the background; clearly she hadn’t disconnected.

  “I’m fairly sure Claybriar’s my Echo,” I said, “and I think Vivian may have imprisoned him and some other fey to harvest their blood.”

  At last Caryl spoke. “Why do you think that?” she said.

  “If you want to know the why, you’re going to have to hire me back.”

  “I’m afraid that isn’t possible. The Project can’t afford to lose Berenbaum’s cooperation.”

  The sound of his name was a punch to the stomach, but I soldiered on. “I think you’re losing him either way. He’s involved too.”

  “I have no particular reason to trust you, Millie.”

  Another stomach-punch. “Fine, then. Just answer this for me. If a fey bled out all his essence, he’d have to go back to Arcadia to recover, right?”

  “That is correct.”

  “What if he were somehow caught between here and Arcadia, in both places at once? Would his essence still replenish?”

  “In that hypothetical situation, yes, but we have yet to establish the feasibility of such a scenario.”