Into the Rain

by Fleur Smith

  Taking a few deep breaths to calm my racing heart and reduce the heat that emanated from me, I wrapped the fingers of both of my hands around the cup. I shifted my legs, crossing left over right instead.

  “Hi, Evie,” Ethan said, and my heart leaped into my throat even as it pounded faster.

  My pulse raced as I considered Ethan might have picked me out so fast. I didn’t want Clay to go to find Mackenzie without me. If he left me behind, I’d have nothing to do but wait anxiously at the court for any information. I wouldn’t even have any way to find out if he was safe or not. If he was captured and subjected to retraining, I could lose him. I wouldn’t let that happen.

  An instant later, I saw Eth was talking to a woman seated at a table near the window perpendicular to my table. I twisted slightly to watch the exchange in my periphery.

  After seeing her confused expression, he apologized. “I thought you were someone else.”

  He swung around, and I caught his gaze. Instead of turning away, I tried to keep my eyes leveled on him but ensured there was no sign of recognition on my face. I watched him with the same casual disinterest of everyone around me. Pretending he was nothing more than a passing amusement, someone making a fool of himself in the busy coffee shop. After a second, his gaze slipped away from me. Only after I knew he wasn’t watching me anymore, did I shift back toward the window.

  Over the rest of the babble in the store, I heard Clay’s raucous laughter as Ethan approached again.

  “Not even close,” Clay laughed. “You know I’ll never hear the end of this though don’t you? I thought you’d pick her out in a heartbeat, and insisted as much. She said you wouldn’t have a clue.”

  “In my defense, I haven’t really spent that much time with her,” Ethan said. “Not as much as you or . . .” He trailed off, and I knew the name he was going to give—Louise.

  “Does she know Evie survived?” Clay’s voice was little more than a whisper. It was only that I was listening so intently for it that I could hear what he’d said.

  I tried to watch their conversation in the window, but the sun outside was too bright to give me a decent reflection, so all I could see was their outlines. Ethan shook his head and it made me want to join them. I needed to be more involved in the conversation if they were going to be discussing me.

  “I’ll tell you about it later,” Ethan hissed in response.

  “There’s a lot that needs to be said. Maybe it’s time we should go, especially considering Evie’s disguise is obviously good enough for our purposes. Unless . . . are Dad or Lou here?”

  “No, I left them in Boston.”

  Even though Clay had suggested Ethan avoiding his family was more dangerous than being at their side, the fact that Ethan had been with the rest of Clay’s family when we’d called concerned me. Had he let slip some of our secrets? Had he told them he was meeting us? As my heat started to rise and my heart started to race, I reminded myself of the promise I’d made to Clay. I would trust him, and he trusted Ethan.

  Taking that as my cue to join them, I stood and walked over to the pair of them. Ethan’s eyes burned me with every step. His jaw fell open.

  “Hi, Ethan,” I murmured, uncertain about how he would react. Thinking of Louise and of the last time I’d seen her with Ethan left me feeling a little sick. It had been easy to forget all the terrible deeds done less than a year earlier, especially when I’d been so happy since then.

  During all of our planning, it had slipped my mind that despite the things Ethan had done for us, in helping us get to Europe, the sight of him might still make my heart pound a little too fast. It was enough to take me back to the chase in Charlotte and to him holding a gun to my head as we stood at the edge of a cliff face in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

  Ethan gave a low whistle as his eyes trailed a path over me, no doubt to assess my disguise. “Never would have picked it.” He smiled slightly and I was certain he sensed my nerves. “You actually look quite pretty as a blonde.”

  Clay growled slightly. “I prefer her au naturel.”

  “Each to their own.” Ethan shrugged, dragging his eyes over me once more.

  Catching the path of his brother’s eyes, Clay’s arm shot out quickly and punched Ethan’s shoulder.

  “I’m merely appreciating the artwork, bro,” Ethan teased.

  I rolled my eyes at both of them, my fear shifting to frustration as they stood around chatting about the merits of my costume. “If we’re done discussing my appearance,” I said, perhaps a little too sharply. “Shall we go somewhere quiet so that we can talk in private?”

  Ethan laughed a little. “I can definitely see why you like her: she’s spunky.”

  I shook my head before heading out the door of the Starbucks. Walking back toward Central Park, I glanced over my shoulder occasionally to ensure the boys were following me. With a concerned expression, Clay dashed ahead of Ethan to grab my hand and fall in step beside me.

  “Are you okay?” he whispered as he threaded his fingers into mine. “It’s not like you to snap like that.”

  I sighed and nodded. “I’m just worried. Seeing Ethan brought back the times he threatened my life, and it’s hard to push that out of my mind right now.”

  “You don’t have to come with me tomorrow if you don’t want to.”

  I heard the, “In fact I’d prefer if you didn’t,” that he hadn’t actually added.

  “I’m not worried about that.”

  The glare he gave me was a clear “yeah right.”

  “Okay, not only that. It’s everything else. How’s Ethan going to react to the news? What’s happening with Louise? How are we going to find out where Mackenzie even is? Is the shadow back? Did he follow us to New York? There’s just so much going on, and I’m afraid of what could go wrong before we can even get to the planning stage.”

  “Those are all things that worry me too, as well as your safety, but all we can do is tackle them one at a time. First things first, we need to find out what Eth knows and tell him about Fiona.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  AFTER LEADING ETHAN back to Central Park, we found a quiet corner of the East Meadow and huddled together under a tree so that we could discuss the things we needed to talk about in private. Clay leaned against the tree trunk and held me in his arms, in what was no doubt a possessive show after his brother’s earlier teasing.

  From our vantage point, both Clay and I were able to see the fairy court resting in situ, but Ethan was oblivious to it. In front of my enchanted eyes, fae went about their business, entering and leaving the court, but if I focused solely on the human world, they became invisible.

  At one end of the court, a vision danced into view. A tall man in a black suit with what appeared to be wings of black shadow stood beneath a tree. When I glanced back at the same spot, he was gone.

  “Clay,” I whispered in a deathly cold tone.

  He squeezed me tighter, clearly thinking I was still worrying about the things we’d discussed during the walk to Central Park. The fact that I might have seen the shadow probably didn’t even cross his mind.

  I can’t tell him now. If I told Clay, it would overshadow Ethan learning the truth. More than anything, we needed Ethan to know the truth about his mom.

  If it was the shadow, surely he won’t attack now. There are too many people around. Besides, the shadow doesn’t look exactly like that. He never had wings.

  The attempts to calm myself didn’t still the panic in my mind.

  Even if it were him, the fae would help us. I breathed a little easier with that knowledge.

  Forcing the vision out of my mind, I turned my back on the spot where I’d seen the sight and listened to the conversation between Ethan and Clay. Now that we were all alone, things had shifted quickly into serious discussions. Ethan seemed desperate to tell Clay everything that he’d missed while we’d been in Sweden. He spent a few minutes talking about where he’d been and what he’d hunted. From the wistful glint
in Clay’s eyes as he listened raptly to Ethan’s every word, I recognized that he’d missed some aspects of that life.

  I thought back to the wendigo and the way Clay had fallen straight back into his old habits and realized that maybe he’d given up more than I’d really considered by choosing to live a life of seclusion with me.

  Eventually, Ethan moved on, touching on the topic that I’d been waiting for and dreading at the same time. “I teamed up with Dad and Lou again about six months ago, and I found out that Lou bought the story of Evie’s death and your disappearance, with one slight problem.”

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “She’s convinced Clay had a baby with him when he left the country—your baby.”

  My heart stopped. Of course. The baby that would have been born from the fire of my death. I couldn’t believe we hadn’t considered it. We’d been so busy trying to run for our lives, we hadn’t stopped to think of the details.

  He glanced back at Clay. “She wanted to track you down, but I persuaded her not to. I convinced her that I had a lead. She wanted to come too, but Dad wouldn’t let her out of his sight. Told me to check into it and report back, so I went back to the UK for a couple of weeks.”

  Even though the daughter they were talking about was imaginary, a very real fire roared inside me at the mere idea that Louise would kill an infant simply because of the potential of a future so-called threat.

  “And?” Clay asked.

  “And with the help of a team in Oxford, we came so close to catching you. Right before you fled to Australia.” He chuckled. “Lou still wants to hunt you there, but Dad’s forbidden it for the moment. I’m sure it won’t keep her satisfied forever, but you might have another year or two.”

  “And she’ll be keeping an eye out for my return?” Clay guessed. “So that she can kill the child?”

  “Yeah. Let’s just say you’re not at the top of her favorite people list. She thought you’d rush back to the family after Evie’s death. She’s never considered the fact that your feelings could be something more than a spell.”

  Unease settled into my stomach, the spell comment was a reminder of Clay’s initial intention when he’d traveled Europe during our separation, and what he’d discovered. Added with the knowledge that the distance between Clay and his sister was my doing, the stab of guilt was almost impossible to ignore. I moved forward, twisting slightly to force Clay to relinquish his hold on my waist.

  “I don’t think I’ve topped that list for a very long time,” he said, mostly to reassure me as he grabbed hold of my hands to stop me from putting further distance between us. “But given the way she can be, I’m not upset by that. I know that she sees the world the way she wants to see it. Maybe, one day, things can be different.”

  Ethan snorted loudly. “Sure, and one day pigs might fly.”

  “Well, it depends on how she reacts to some information I’ve only recently discovered,” Clay said, releasing my hand only to wring his together tightly. He sighed before shifting awkwardly, kicking away from the trunk. His palm found the back of his neck as he paced tiny circles around the space in front of the tree. “See . . .” he trailed off and sighed.

  “What’s up, bro? You’re pacing like a damn chicken in a coop. What’s got you so damned stressed?”

  “I had an interesting visitor while we were overseas.” Clay stopped pacing for a moment and stared at me imploringly as he scrubbed hard at the back of his neck. It was as if he was begging me to help him with his delivery of the news.

  “It was your mother,” I said quietly, knowing that the “M” word was the one causing Clay to struggle—he might have begun to accept the fact that his mother was a fae, but that didn’t make it any easier for him to talk about her.

  Ethan’s head whipped between Clay and me. “Mom?” He focused on Clay. “Are you sure it was her? Do you have a picture?”

  “No I don’t have a picture. Do I look like a fucking photographer? What did you expect me to do? ‘Hey, Mom, glad you’re back and all that . . . Can we have a fucking family portrait done now?’”

  “Well, no, but seriously, it was her?” Ethan’s face lit up like a Christmas tree.

  “Yeah, at least, I’m pretty damn sure it was, but . . . well . . .”

  “What?”

  “She isn’t what I expected . . .”

  “Why not?”

  Clay sighed. “She’s different.”

  “Of course she’s different,” Ethan said. “You haven’t seen her in twenty-two years. Unless she found the fountain of youth, she’s going to be different.”

  “No, it’s more than that.”

  “Then what is it?”

  “It’s just that she . . .” Clay’s gaze fell on me, imploring me to help again, but he needed to do it. He needed to say the words.

  “Fuck, this is harder than that time we had to interrogate the manticore. And it didn’t speak English.”

  “Look, it’s not easy—”

  “Just spit it out,” Ethan insisted with a roll of his eyes.

  Clay moved his hands from the back of his neck only to scrub his face. “She’s fae!”

  “Holy shit! No way.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And it’s really her?”

  “We’ve spoken to her a couple of times in the last few days,” I said. “But for what it’s worth, I believe her.”

  “Me too, at least, I think I do now,” Clay said. “Honestly, it took me a bit to get used to the idea.”

  Ethan issued a low whistle. “Wow,” he said, rubbing one hand across the back of his hair. A range of emotions flashed across his face in a series of expressions. “Heh. Okay then.”

  “What?” Clay asked with a frown.

  “Just, there’s a lot of things that make sense if that’s true.”

  “What?” Clay’s exclamation was louder, more incensed.

  “It’s understandable you wouldn’t see it. You don’t really remember Mom,” Ethan said. “She was so beautiful.”

  Ethan’s expression became wistful, no doubt remembering his mom. It was a similar expression to the one Clay had worn when talking about how the scent of magnolia flowers reminded him of his mother. It struck me once again how similar Clay and his brother appeared in their most vulnerable moments.

  Clay’s jaw clenched, and he curled his hands into fists. “Of course I don’t remember her! We were taken from her before I got to know her!”

  I reached out for him, and traced my hand over his forearm to help calm him.

  “Taken? No,” Ethan said. “I mean . . . surely not. Although, Dad—well, huh . . .” He frowned. “He always said she left. Do you think . . . maybe he left when he found out the truth?”

  “How can you be so goddamned blasé about this?” Clay shouted, his raised voice drawing the attention of a handful of passersby.

  “I’m not blasé, but I guess it’s not completely out of the blue either.”

  “What?” Clay raked his hands through his hair, tugging at the lengths. “What haven’t you told me?”

  “Nothing solid really. Only rumors. Let’s just say that since you showed me that information, I’ve kept my eyes open and ears to the ground.”

  “Information?” I asked.

  “It was nothing,” Clay said, shooting Ethan a deadly glare.

  “Yeah, just some stuff about a case,” Ethan added, glancing away.

  “So you’re totally fine with this?” Clay asked. “You don’t have any questions? Nothing?”

  “Oh, I have questions. Plenty, in fact, and I plan to get answers for them all. But I’m not going to freak out about it until I get more information.”

  “You want more information? How about the fact that Dad’s been lying to us all,” Clay said. “Our whole lives are nothing more than a series of lies. Mom never left us; we were stolen from her. And Lou . . . she was never replaced by a changeling.”

  “She’s fae?” Ethan guessed, catching on a little quicker than Cla
y had.

  It was also likely that Clay’s guilt had hidden the truth from him until he’d had time to process it through the filter of his assumed responsibility for Louise’s suffering.

  Clay nodded. “We all are, at least partially. I think it’s what’s made us so good at our jobs.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked—he hadn’t yet mentioned anything like that to me.

  “We’ve always had an uncanny knack of knowing when others are around. Even back in high school, Eth, Lou, and I had to take on the hardest assignments because of our natural abilities to hunt quicker and more efficiently than any of the other operatives did. The only time I’ve ever missed it was with you.” He met my eye. “But I think that was because I didn’t want to see it. It’s part of the reason we moved around as often as we did. I always assumed those skills were just because we were twelfth generation Rain. But after what was said last night . . .”

  “Stop,” Ethan muttered, clearly seeing something in Clay’s words that I’d missed. “You don’t know that. I mean, if we were fae, wouldn’t the protections have hurt us?”

  “Maybe we’re more human than anything, but we’re at least partly fae. How else can you explain the coincidences? The number of times we’ve stumbled across monsters? I mean, look at the damn wendigo in Canada! You really think anyone would be unlucky enough to stumble into the hunting ground of not one but two of those things without some sort of supernatural aide?”

  “I don’t know. I guess I can’t.”

  “Don’t you see?” Clay asked, his lips curling into a snarl. “Our ability is a fae trait. It’s well known that all fae have some basic psychic ability. All of our knowledge—the stuff that made us excel at hunting and killing nonhumans—stems from being others ourselves. Dad had to have known that, and he used that ability anyway. He used us.”

  “I don’t believe that. Maybe he lied, but—”

  “But what? Maybe he had a good reason to? What possible justification could there be for treating us like that?”