“I heard a yelp.” Vincent repeated, breaking into my dizzying thoughts.
“I stepped on his tail.” I watched his eyes for any signs of alarm.
There were none.
He grunted and went back to his room.
He didn't look alarmed by Frizz's presence.
“What are you doing here?” I asked Frizz.
“Massster,” it said again.
I shook my head. “I freed you of your duties to me. Why did you follow? And I thought you couldn't travel the worlds.”
“I am bound to you. I give you loyalty. Massster.”
Master?
I stared at it, wondering if it had called me master before in the Low Lands. I was pretty sure it had not. But, most importantly, how could I get rid of it?
“Very well,” I began, “if I free you from your bondage, will you leave?”
“I bound myself to my massster. I will go with my massster. Massster.”
I raked my mind for a solution. And then I had it. “If I order you to do something, you obey?”
“Yesss, massster.”
“Then I order you to become free and return to the Low Lands, back to your flock.” He stood—or crouched—there, patiently waiting. “I am ordering you to be free, to go back to the Low Lands and not owe me loyalty.”
Nothing happened.
“So what,” I threw my hands up in frustration, “you'll follow me around for eternity?”
“Yessss, massster,” it hissed annoyingly.
I stared at it for a long time. “If I make a wish you can fulfill, will you leave after?”
It didn't answer.
I looked out the window, at all the people, and thought about all the havoc and carnage Frizz could cause.
“If I touch you by mistake, are you going to attack me?” I asked just to be clear on that matter.
“No. I give you loyalty, Massster.”
“How about someone else touches you by mistake or steps on your tail? Will you attack?”
“With your permisssion. Massster.”
I closed my eyes. “No. You don't have my permission. You do not attack anyone. No one, not even if they step on you.” I hesitated a second then added, “You stay invisible until I say otherwise. You understand?”
“Yesss, Massster,” it said and disappeared.
“We'll get you some food tomorrow,” I told the empty air. If he'd been with me ever since we left the Low Lands, that meant he had gone without ever since. He might be under my command and not attack anyone, but what would happen if he became too hungry to care? When would too hungry be too much? I didn't want to find out.
I'd buy raw meat first thing in the morning.
After I took a long hot shower, I fell face down on the bed and stayed like that until morning when Vincent knocked on the connecting door.
* * *
As soon as I signed the contract, Roland and Vincent took me to my new apartment, just a few blocks away from the Hunter's base in upper-east Manhattan.
It was a two-bedroom, ground floor apartment in a ten-story residential building near the East River. I got my own separate side entrance and a backdoor, painted pale yellow with light brown shutters on the windows. The front door opened into an adequate-sized kitchen, separated from a furnished living room by a half wall. Then came a short hallway that opened to two bedrooms across from each other and a cream-tiled bathroom at the end. There was a laundry room off the kitchen, which in turn led to the outside. The apartment was clean, the furniture new, and the appliances still held their tags.
And it was all mine.
I loved it.
Before leaving, Roland presented me with an envelope containing legal papers, a copy of the contract and an advanced paycheck in case I needed to buy things. I jolted with shock when I saw a brooding photo of mine on my new ID—an NSA credential.
Holy shit, I was an NSA agent!
Still, it was the fact that Vincent had left with Roland that surprised me. I had expected he would be some sort of guard until they were sure I wouldn't run away. Then again, they didn't just call themselves Hunters for nothing.
Chapter Sixty-Three
A few hours later, I boarded a flight to Sacramento. Being in an enclosed space with Frizz and all those people made me nervous, but he had fed well that morning and thankfully he behaved as I had commanded him to. Still, I let out a sigh of relief once we landed with no accidents and breathed easier after I left the crowded airport altogether. While I waited for a cab I placed a phone call to Tommy, using my newly-acquired cell phone.
As I got in the cab and gave the driver directions, I closed my eyes and began pondering the logistics of keeping Frizz as a pet. At least until I found a way to get rid of him. I'd have to buy him some doggy shampoo and make him take showers.
Hadn't Remo Drammen said those creatures were valuable once they owed a person a favor? Well, I had his loyalty and gratitude. How valuable could he be to me?
“We're here, Missy,” the cabby said.
I opened my eyes and looked at the big house. I paid my fare generously and got out.
“Would you like me to wait?” the cabby asked, leaning to look at me through the passenger window.
“No. That's alright,” I told him and marched to the iron gate. I buzzed the intercom and looked straight at the camera. A moment later, the iron gates parted smoothly, soundlessly aside, permitting me entry.
Elizabeth Whitmore Longlan met me at the door.
“I thought you'd be back,” she said by way of greeting.
I studied her silently. The blonde hair, the thin face, high cheek bones, her slender athletic body. The only thing we had in common was the long almond-shaped black, depthless eyes. People say that the eyes were gateways to the soul. I believe it's more than just that in my case—the rejected's case—it specified the nature within. Elizabeth stood there, waiting for my assessment to be over. She was poised, her demeanor somewhat conveying elegance and arrogance as she waited and watched me.
“Would you like to come in?” she asked formally.
“I would like you to cut the crap. Let go of the glamor.”
If I hadn't been looking for it, I would have missed the brief flicker of surprise. There once, then quickly gone.
“I don't know what you mean,” she said, composed.
“I mean the human aura. You don't need a disguise. I know the truth.”
Her eyes shifted behind me in an undisguised, nervous gesture.
Well, well, look at this. The same person who bared me to the world prized her privacy.
Wasn't that interesting?
“Come in,” she snapped, her composure cracking as she opened the door wide.
I stepped inside, turning to face her as she closed the heavy door behind me. I folded my arms under my breasts and waited.
“So?” I prompted.
Her blue aura shimmered for a brief instance, then began to shine, that silvery glow above the sky blue.
Son of a bitch. I knew it! When our eyes again connected, her eyes flashed yellow, gaining that feral, alien look for a moment before they returned to black. It gave me a jolt even though I had been expecting it.
“Satisfied?”
I inclined my head and said, “Partly.” Up to that moment, I wasn't a hundred percent sure. It had been Lee's words—the part when she had told me I had been raised by one of my own kind—combined with Vincent being able to disguise his aura and the fact that every rejected I had met shared one thing in common: black eyes. Plus, hadn't she known who Logan was? “Your mixed-breed companion” she had called him. And he had known who she was all along…
“Come on back. I'll prepare some tea,” she said and made her way to the back of the house. I followed, watching the way her aura shone.
Did my aura do that? Or did the fact that I was a mixed breed give me a different type of aura?
“How did you know?” she asked, glancing back at me over her shoulder. “Did Vincent tell yo
u? I heard he's been trying to help you.” The hint of disapproval in her voice told me she was against it. Tough.
“No, not really. I've been gathering pieces here and there, but the biggest clue was something a woman told me a few days ago.”
She began preparing the tea in her spacious white kitchen and motioned me to sit. I took off the beige coat I had bought in the airport to replace my lost black one and draped it over the back of the chair.
“Where's the child?” I asked. Even the daughter had black eyes, I remembered as I coaxed her image back to mind.
“School,” she replied stiffly.
Touchy subject.
“The husband?” Or boyfriend—black eyes.
“Work. We're alone.”
I nodded. She prepared the tea in silence while I watched her. Her fastidious movements—so familiar and yet so alien after all these years—reminded me of when I was a child, eating at a different table, in a different house, while she cleaned and talked about her day at work.
I watched as she dropped two herbal bags inside each cup, placed the cups on saucers, poured boiling water in the cups, and assembled cookies on a plate, along with a bowl of sugar cubes, spoons, and a pitcher of cream. She brought them over to the table on an ornate, silver and gold tray.
“So, what'd this woman tell you to tip the scales?”
“That one of my kind took me in after my father was punished for refusing to fulfill his end of the bargain.”
She paused with a cube of sugar mid-motion and looked at me, traces of alarm registering in her dark eyes briefly, before she resumed her motion.
I focused on the plate of homemade chocolate-chip cookies. My favorites.
“Who? Who told you that?” she asked curiously, stirring in the sugar casually, though I could feel the tension building in the room. She passed me one of the cups on a saucer and I thanked her. I missed coffee. I took a sip. It was sweet and tasted like—like—well, herbs.
“Who's this woman? What else did she tell you?”
I took another sip and studied her over the rim of the cup. “About what happened to my father. How he died.” I gave her a meaningful look. “The whole truth—about the broken bargain, the council, the Sidhe royalty and the punishment.”
She was quiet for a long time. When she finally spoke, I detected a defensive tone in her voice. “You could have hardly expected me to tell you the truth under the circumstances. Besides, telling a child her father died protecting her might have a negative effect on her psyche. You were better off in many ways by knowing the story the general public knew.” She frowned at me and it did not subtract from her beauty. “But very few know the truth. Who's this woman?”
“Her name is Leon Ora Maiche.” Her only reaction was the jerk of her hand—which she tried to cover by pulling the spoon from her delicate cup and placing it neatly on the saucer. But then her hand curled into a tight fist, and her eyes narrowed in recognition.
“You made a bargain with a high Sidhe in exchange for information about your father? You foolish child, do you know what you have done?”
Her reprimanding words had my hackles rising. Who did she think she was to think she could scold me like that, as if I was a naughty child? I felt resentment and perhaps even some guilt for bargaining with the same kind that had killed my father, roil and bubble inside me. But if Elizabeth had taught me—also Lee's words—I wouldn't have to have bargained with a Sidhe.
My anger—born from guilt and fueled by her words—spiked a notch.
“Of course I wouldn't know. All people tell me are useless lies. The truth is guarded cautiously—tightly, against your chests. My entire life has been based on lies and deceit. At least Lee didn't pretend or lie or try to evade me. She was straightforward and truthful.” I felt small satisfaction at her guilty expression.
“But liars aside, why presume that I bargained for the information?” I asked after a pause. “Maybe she offered me the information freely.”
She scoffed. “None of the Sidhe offer information freely. They treasure knowledge as much as life, or riches, or even their pure-blooded offspring, and the only way one gets them talking is by bargaining, by offering them something in return. Information and knowledge are power, to them, it is also a weapon.”
I nodded. I had figured as much.
“I did not make a bargain with her in exchange for knowledge.” No need to tell her my bargain was for her assistance in helping me leave the Low Lands. Elizabeth's eyes narrowed on my face, searching for something. Probably a bigger nose.
“You expect me to believe the Sidhe lady just offered to fulfill your curiosity for free? No strings attached?” she scoffed again. I scowled at her.
“No, she granted me a boon. The truth to one question about anything. I asked about my father.”
Unable to resist any longer, I bit into a cookie. It tasted exactly the way I remembered it. It tasted like innocence, like childhood. I had never tasted chocolate-chip cookies as good as these. Perhaps if I asked, she'd give me the recipe. Now that I had a home, I could start cooking my own meals, baking my own goodies.
“Where did you meet her?” she asked, still suspicious.
I chewed on the cookie, prolonging the suspense. “In the Low Lands,” I replied at last.
“Ah.” She nodded. “There's where you picked up the shadow,” she announced, as if it explained everything. I supposed it did.
I looked around me. I couldn't see Frizz. “How come everyone can see Frizz except me?”
“Frizz? You named a shadow?” She asked incredulously.
“What's wrong with that?” It was getting really annoying.
“I guess nothing,” she replied dubiously, after a pause.
“Why the boon?”
“I inadvertently solved a problem for her.”
She raised her perfect arched eyebrows and waited. I could still see the skepticism lurking in her expression.
I shrugged and picked another cookie. God, it tasted even better than the first one.
I managed to keep my eyes from crossing. Barely.
“I took care of someone without realizing he had broken a rule and was earmarked for punishment. She granted me one question to be answered truthfully.”
She grunted, satisfied with my answer. “She wouldn't have been pleased to be indebted to anyone. How did you get the shadow?”
I stopped chewing, looked straight into her eyes and said, “I fed him that someone.”
That caught her attention. “Who?” she asked curiously.
I eyed her carefully for some sign of disgust or revulsion. I found none. She looked genuinely curious.
“Dr. Michael Dean and Remo Drammen.”
Because she was in the process of sipping her tea, she choked violently at my answer. I got up, filled a glass of water and brought it for her. She stared at me, stupefied. I shifted uncomfortably from side to side. I had to remind myself that I was no longer a child and that this woman was not my mother before I was able to lift my eyes off the ground and face her squarely.
“They deserved it,” I told her, but I was sounding defensive.
“I guess that explains why there aren't any of his watchdogs sniffing around the house.”
I paused. So, she didn't know about the botched break-in operation and my contract with The Hunters. Logan was right about that then. They were an anti-social group who didn't interact much.
“But how? I mean, Drammen?”
“I guess I took them by surprise.”
After the shock wore off, she asked the important question, “Why were Michael Dean and Drammen together in the Low Lands? And you?”
“Dr. Dean sold me to Remo Drammen, and the Low Lands was their rendezvous point.”
Elizabeth's black eyes darkened—if possible—with anger. I wondered if my eyes looked like that when I was angry too.
“What did he give Michael Dean?”
“Archer.”
Her face jerked back—as if an invis
ible hand had just bitch-slapped her—and her eyes grew as wide as saucers, showing the whites all around. I don't think she's had as many surprising revelations in her lifetime as she'd had in that past half hour.
“That boy was telling the truth. The PSS really has Archer,” she murmured distantly.
I gathered that “that boy” was Logan.
“We thought he was exaggerating. We thought Archer had just gone somewhere and didn't want anyone to know.” Then she visibly gathered herself and got up. “I have to make a phone call.”
“He's alright. He's not there anymore. He's out.”
She paused with her hand on the phone and looked at me. “You?”
I shrugged. “Not for him.”
Apparently my word wasn't enough, because she took the phone and walked out the kitchen hurriedly. I heard the name “Ruben” before some faraway door banged shut.
When she returned five minutes later, only two cookies remained on the previously-full plate.
“I called an urgent meeting for next week,” she said briskly. “The message will be passed on to Archer. Let's hope you're right.”
They thought next week urgent? I shrugged. Not my problem.
“So tell me… What am I?” I asked after she settled down again to finish her cold tea.
“And don't tell me I'm the offspring of a human and a rejected,” I snapped when she opened her mouth to give me a ready reply. “I want to know what the rejected are and everything you can tell me about myself.”
She stared into her cup for a moment. “I suppose you deserve to know. Where do you want me to start?”
“From the beginning. Why rejected?”
She nodded once. “Very well. We'll start from our origin. Ever heard about the Seelie and the Unseelie?”
“Suppose I haven't.”
“The Seelie and Unseelie are a nation of fee originally from the Sidhe land, a world that is parallel and in sync with this one.”
“Hmmm,” I murmured.
“The Sidhe land is divided horizontally, with the Seelie owning the entire middle, the Unseelie the topmost. No one owns the bottom half, and once the Dhiultadh—the rejected, tried to claim it,” she waved a hand dismissively, “but that is an entirely different story… The Seelie live together in harmony and peace. They—the Seelie, are good looking, often human-like, dress very well, and usually mind their own. Mostly, they are civilized—in comparison to the other creatures from other worlds. They occasionally find entertainment by deceiving and manipulating humans to owe them a favor, often demanding their first offspring, or something equally as valuable to the mortal's life. They are powerful, deceptive and self-serving but, mostly, they are benign.
Heir of Ashes Page 37
