by WB McKay
The swell of magic alone was enough to make Joanna jump out of her chair. I dodged the wheels before they hit my bare feet. With one hand on the wall and the other on her desk, blocking Joanna's path to the other side of the desk, I crooked my neck forward and met her startled eyes. "Hello again, Joanna."
"Hi." She took a step back, and I matched it, not letting her create any distance between us.
"You would like a redo on the whole, answering-my-questions thing, wouldn't you, Joanna?" I nodded for her. "Let's try this again. What do you know about the elves I'm looking for?"
Owen put my jacket around my shoulders. I shrugged it on and pulled my hair out of the collar, all without letting Joanna break eye contact. I could have asked Owen to stay in the car. With him out of harm's way, I would have been able to use my fear aura on Joanna. Terrifying her wouldn't have been necessary, just a slight shock. If a harpy felt too afraid, they'd come after me; it was a matter of honor. A gentle breeze of anxiety would be enough to shift the balance of dominance, and serve as a nice touch when I towered over her desk. Using the abilities available to me should have been fair play, but I wanted to win against her on her own turf, with her mind clear.
Plus, the perfume of her fear was a little sweeter when it was clean of magic.
"You didn't find them at the apartment?" She must have noticed the weakness in her voice, because she stood up straighter after that and craned her own neck forward. "I can't be to blame if you're unable to catch your own bounty."
"That's one for this conversation. How many times will you avoid answering my direction question? Apparently what they say about the honor of harpies is true."
Her trill was high-pitched and served to call the harpies from the main floor of the bar to her door.
"Do you want them here to witness your disgrace?"
"Your insults cannot stand," she hissed.
"They can if they're true, or do you not know your own laws?"
She studied me, and the act was so clear I could practically hear her thoughts. If she could convince herself I was in the wrong, that my words had harmed her or hers, she'd snatch me away--or try, anyway. The things I'd said demanded a reaction. She had to move forward with either harpy justice or surrender the point to me. If I'd known it would come to this, I wouldn't have asked the harpies for the information in the first place. I'd thought making a deal with her was fair enough. The honor of a deal mattered to many fae. Not the case with harpies. They were more concerned with besting an opponent, and Joanna had determined me to be her opponent long ago. While I'd accomplished something she couldn't by stealing the ogre's mascot, and I'd believed that to have bested her well enough for us to move forward, I should have known it wouldn't confirm anything for Joanna. I had to do more than accomplish something she'd failed at, I had to reveal her own missteps. So be it.
"They've been hiding out from us, which makes us take notice under the circumstances."
She was still studying me, still making up her mind. "They owe you money, so you're tracking them. Where are they?"
"We don't know at the moment," she said.
"That's two."
"I spoke the truth."
"You don't know right this moment. Why don't you take a guess? A good, educated guess."
I betrayed no fear as her eyes widened, though I knew this was the moment. Either she was going to surrender the point and answer me fairly, or she was going to reach out and grab me.
"They've been hiding out in Arizona a lot."
"The entrance near Tucson?" It was one of the less popular Earth locations for the fae city, but some of the desert fae liked it. The elves were not desert fae. "Why Tucson?" Not needing to keep my eyes trained constantly on Joanna any longer, I took my pants from Owen. The nudity had been worth it to catch her off guard in her office, but it wasn't exactly warm in there.
"You'll have to ask them when you meet them."
"Why the fuck didn't you tell me this before, Joanna? Are you protecting something in Tucson?"
She raked a talon through her bangs. "You didn't ask. You were very specific."
She was messing with me. Because she could. I believed that. I was mad at her, but I was more pissed at myself. She was right; I'd been very specific. I'd have time to torture myself with the replay of my mistakes later. The issue in front of me was a haughty harpy who was already slipping back to thinking she had the upper hand. I leaned against her desk, ready to play the relaxed villain if that's what she needed. "No part of the deal said I couldn't help the ogres retaliate against you, Joanna. I want you to think about that the next time you think to fuck with me."
She looked bored, maybe a little annoyed. "Are you done now?"
"Not even close, but you can stay here while I tear the place apart if you want." I stalked out of the office, down the hall, and out of the building. Dusty footprints--not harpy talons--left a heavy trail in and out of the separate storage room.
"You can't go in there. You have no right."
"You invited me in earlier," I reminded her. "And the door was open. You might tell your pals to keep the door locked."
I pulled up the ring on the floor and gestured with flourish to the stairs leading down. "Do we need to go look at the things I found down there, or are we done pretending?"
"This is my business. I want the contact information for your superior."
"Have it your way." I marched down the steps and picked up the first thing I found: a sequined jacket, the design depicting a forest curiously similar to the one famous in Faerie for their large elf population. "Not exactly what I pegged for your taste."
"Shows what you know."
I ripped open a few boxes, spilling their contents on the floor. Once I had a nice pile, I pointed out one item after another. A ruby ear cuff popular with male elves sat on the top. "This will make them appear even prettier than normal. It's legal, but kind of pretentious. A metal crown adorned with leaves. I bent down and gave it a sniff. "If the wrong person puts this on, it can control them. Usually collected for posterity, but still illegal and near the top of MOD's lists." A charmed flask glinted off to the side. "Pretty. Care for a drink, Joanna?" Harpy caught, I mentally tagged the caption under her face. "It'll poison you if you've ever thought an ill thought at its chosen owner, you know. Beautiful magic, and very tricky. Dangerous if you aren't a hundred percent sure who the magic has chosen to belong to, especially since it may change its mind. Illegal, of course, if you weren't clear on that." She said nothing, because she had nothing to say. It was hard to stay on task and lounge in a moment of smug satisfaction. "Being of such moral character, I'm sure you're relieved to have a MOD agent here to bring these items in. You understand that since these objects so clearly belong to you, you'll be coming in with them. Such a large stash, hidden under an establishment like this. Well, I don't know Joanna, I think some of the top brass might get the impression you've been running an illegal business down here. Is The Fuzzy Duck a cover for underground trading of magical objects? I bet with some digging, they'll find some of these trace back to elves. Wouldn't you think? But fine, hoity-toity elves wouldn't want it known they were hanging around The Fuzzy Duck's basement, would they? Why, I bet they're going to tell a story about how they were forced into doing the big, scary harpy's bidding."
"You know that's not what happened."
"Oh? What is it I know? Weren't you saying everything down here belonged to you, Joanna?"
"You're looking for Lyssa and Cedric. They were here an hour ago. They're in Tucson hiding with the pack there."
"You mean a pack of wolves?" asked Owen.
"Yes." She swiped through her phone and showed me an address. I copied it down while she continued talking. "They were staying with the witches before they stole the scepter. I don't know what that's about."
"Seriously?" My back tensed with Owen's disbelief. Unfortunately, he had more to say. "Elves working with harpies, hanging around with witches, and then hiding with werewolves?"
<
br /> "What are you saying, dragon?"
"Enough of this." I walked up the stairs, Joanna right on my heels. When I was on the top step, I spun around and had the last word. "I wasn't kidding about MOD clearing this shit out. You might want to close the bar for the night. This is a crime scene now. I'll make sure they know who this belongs to, and that you were cooperative to our investigation. You're freaking welcome."
I called Hammond on my way to the car, and hung up before mentioning that I was off to track down a pack of werewolves.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Volarus was anchored to a large section of open land in a suburb of Tucson called Vail. We popped through the barrier and landed on Earth in the middle of a short dirt road, partially hidden by a building so petite it was difficult to call it a building. There were humans too tall to stand inside it. The words "Magic Shop" were painted in bold red on the sides.
"Is the magic that anyone can fit inside?" asked Owen.
"Have you been to Tucson before?"
"No."
"It's too bad we missed the sunset; they're gorgeous here. This is the Magic Shop, owned by a quirky human. This is one of the newest Volarus locations, you know. They picked this spot because a brownie was particularly fond of the owner and a council member owed the brownie a favor."
"That's not true."
I shrugged. "That's what I heard. The brownie thought the human would have found it funny, if they were able to tell him."
"Interesting," said Owen.
"It's a convenient location, you have to admit." I gestured to the stores on the other side of the broken up road. "You can gas up, enjoy some Dairy Queen, and get some guns." The store was hard to miss, with "guns" written in bright red across three of the surfaces visible from the Magic Shop.
"Everything you could ever need," he said. I'd expected him to laugh, but he looked a little put off. "Which way?"
"Left, and a left again." I'd spent the five minutes it had taken us to get there doing some necessary internet stalking. Wolves didn't mingle with the rest of fae, as a rule. Many of them were human born. For the rest of fae, this marked them as separate in a more profound way than my status as a unique fae and daughter of The Morrigan. They weren't human anymore, but most of them weren't keen on adopting fae society, either. Still, most packs had at least some presence on FaerieRing, the premiere fae social media site. Two of the wolves in Tucson were particularly active, and often posted photos tagged at a cluster of locations around the address Joanna had provided. A search of the address in FAB databases confirmed the address as the home of the alpha for the Tucson Pack. I had a phone number as well. I'd chosen not to make any decisions about using it until I got a look at the place. With the winding roads and the nighttime speed limits, we had about a ten minute drive ahead of us. It was enough time to at least start the uncomfortable conversation we needed to have.
I gave some thought to how best to word things, taking the time to undo my bootlaces since I still hadn't gotten my socks on after my earlier shift. Both of my socks were on before I found the right words. "You wouldn't exactly expect a dragon to hang around with harpies, you know."
"What?"
"You wouldn't expect to see an elf doing business with harpies. You also wouldn't expect to see a dragon at a harpy bar." I paused, only to let that sink in. "Or hanging around with some banshee-wannabe. A lot of them call me that, you know? The strange daughter of The Morrigan, as uninterested in the fae court as her mother, raised by the likes of banshees--strange creatures, but at least they are of a people, right? Not a loner--loudmouthed and working as some type of civil servant, annoying many well-to-do folks by stealing their favorite toys." I gave my bootlaces a tight pull. "I know how people talk about me."
"I'm sure that's true," he said. "And I'm the rebellious, naughty dragon. They expect me to fulfill the second half of my role as a classic, prodigal son any day now. What's your point?"
"You're awfully shocked a couple elves would lower themselves enough to hang around with some wolves, you know. I'd be friends with a wolf if they were friends with me."
"I am friends with a wolf." He paused. "Oh, yeah, now look who's shocked."
I got control of my face. "That's news to me."
"Now look who is making assumptions." He smirked, but it soon gave way to a sigh. "It's not that I think elves shouldn't hang out with anybody. I… I guess because of all my parent's friends, I have a few ideas about the snottiness of elves. It's not fair. My parents were friends with a lot of elves, but they're only friends with snotty people. That doesn't mean all elves are snotty, I've dated nice elves, but my parents' friends are awful. They're who I think of first. I'm a bit of an ass. I know it."
"Oh." I recalled all the things I'd thought about my elf neighbors. Or dragons. Or… "Well, we all have things to work on, don't we?"
"I agree."
"It's probably not the best that the only folks I know working to bridge those divides are doing so for criminal gain."
"Not the best." He sighed. "You haven't told me the plan yet."
"It's a loose plan," I said. "I don't think the wolves are involved in the thieving. They're harboring the elves, but they might not even know what the elves have been up to. I don't want to create an incident." Relations between the wolves and the rest of fae were delicate at the best of times. A few choice words from a MOD agent could ignite troubles I wanted nothing to do with. It would take a lot less than what I'd said to Joanna to have me answering to the fae council. "I have to be careful. This would probably be a better job for someone else, but I'm the one who's here. I don't think it would be wise to call anyone else in."
"It would be an awful idea," said Owen.
"Yeah? What makes you say that?"
"My mom's on the fae council. The scepter being on the wolves' property isn't something I'm going to tell my her about if I don't have to."
"That's probably for the best."
"What else should I know before we head in there?"
"Well," I said, "I can't see any circumstances where using my fear magic will be a smart choice, so I don't think you have to worry about that, though I should warn you that if the elves have the scepter on them, and they run for it, I'm going to scream." He'd experienced the pain of my wail before, he knew what that meant.
"That possibility had occurred to me. I thank you for the warning."
It was an awfully polite response for someone who knew I could make his ears bleed. "I can't have you pulling on beats headphones and giving them any tips on what might help them thwart my magic," I warned.
"I'm not going to do anything like that. I understand." He slowed down and I checked the GPS on his phone; we were there. Dim lights revealed a metal gate. Instead of bars, the metal depicted a forest scene, nothing like the desert landscape it sat in, but a climate I'd expect wolves to appreciate. There was an intercom to contact someone inside the house. I got out of the idling SUV and walked up to it. Owen stepped out, but stayed back. The distance was helpful; it kept him from clouding my perception of the magic signatures there. Most of them were old and subtle, not something I would have been able to pick up in Volarus. The wolves didn't have many other fae over. The wolves didn't perform much magic, except their shifts. Their shifts smelled like freshly cut grass, overlaid with the clean linen of their glamours. The combination always reminded me of summer days with laundry on the line. It was a pleasant scent for what amounted to a lot of pain in their lives.
My shifts between human and crow form were brief. Black smoke appeared, trailed over my form, and when it cleared, I came out different. Owen's shifts existed in a ball of flame. Both of us avoided shifting where a human might see. If it happened, the fae council would track down the source and take care of it however they had to in order to keep the secret. The offending fae would be barred from Earth, having proven they couldn't be trusted to keep their shifts to themselves. It didn't happen often. Most shifters on Earth didn't have to think about keeping the
secret, it was second nature.
Everything was different with werewolves, and to my mind, that centered around their shifts. Werewolf shifts were protected by glamour. Their shifts were slow and painful. Between the time it took them to shift, and being human born and thus prone to spending their whole lives on Earth, the glamour was a necessary adaptation for survival. While it happened, both human and fae alike would see the physical shifting of bones, muscle, and hair; however, a human witness would have no recollection of it. The shift would blink out of their memory. They remembered seeing a human, and then a wolf, but their minds were incapable of putting the two together as the same being. Even if they knew that werewolves existed, and the occasional human witch did, the glamour covering the shift made it impossible for them to identify a werewolf. If Joe the werewolf told Cindy the human what he was, she wouldn't be able to identify his wolf form unless someone else stood by and explained "the brown one is Joe". With Cindy unable to remember witnessing this transformation herself, it took an extraordinary amount of faith for a human to believe werewolves truly existed at all.
This barrier strongly discouraged werewolves from attempting to tell a human their secret, which protected all of fae. If it weren't for this barrier, I had no doubt that wolves would have been in grave peril. From humans, possibly, but the bigger threat would have been the council. If the fae couldn't trust the wolves to keep the secret, the wolves would need to live in Faerie; the odds of them being allowed in even Volarus would have been small. The wolves would fight the fae council's ruling on the matter, likely to their demise.
Some wolves appreciated the glamour. It allowed them to shift without fear of exposure. Some wolves wanted to tell their secret to the humans from their former life. All wolves, as far as I knew, believed they should have had a choice. They believed the fae council could remove their glamours. It was a long told rumor that there was a way to give the wolves a choice; the ability to use their glamours when they wanted to. I didn't know if that was true, but it sounded realistic to me. The fae council shrugged off the rumor. The wolves swore they knew it was a lie. The wolves resented the fae for this. The fae looked down on the wolves, for their lack of magic and their lack of respect for those with more magic than them.
