Out of the Blue

by Lyra Evans

  Then again, the Three Courts had been operating all these years thinking Selkies were myth, and they’d apparently been visiting the Three Courts all along.

  “Banshee?” Cobalt said, thinking.

  “Oh right,” Aspen said. “Right the hermit lady who screeches and kills people with her voice. I remember those old stories. Sort of sexist, weren’t they?”

  “Ah.” Cobalt nodded. “We called them Sirens. They were said to be women who were scorned or harmed in some way, made exiles of the Court. They would disappear into the darkest trenches, perverting their powers and the culture of the Selkies until they could come back and wreak their wrath upon those who shunned them.” He paused, considering. “Yes, I supposed that is rather sexist.”

  Niko shook his head. “Until I have some empirical evidence that a Banshee was indeed responsible for this, I’m going to continue operating as though this case is a murder investigation. Should we come across a Banshee during that investigation, we will then, and only then, turn over our findings to the Department of Mythical Creatures. In the meantime, anything else at all?”

  Aspen seemed almost disappointed by his dismissal and shrugged. “The only other thing I found was this marking on his inner wrist.” She reached with gloved hands to lift Indigo’s right hand, turning it over to expose a patch of delicate, pale bluish skin. Printed there was the faint emblem of a stamp. The emblem was a thin line with a circle of stars around the tip of it.

  “Finally,” Niko said, more than a little relief in his voice. Cobalt walked closer, leaning in to inspect the image. “A useable lead.”

  “What does it mean?” Cobalt asked.

  “It means that at some point in the last few days, Indigo must have gone to a club in the pleasure district.” Niko nodded to Dr. Aspen and made for the door. “Which gives us a place to start.”

  “You know which club he went to?” Cobalt asked, nodding to Dr. Aspen as he followed Niko out. He removed his surgical mask and tossed it into the garbage by the door.

  “Oh yes,” Niko said, doing the same with his own mask. “I’m acquainted with the Magic Wand.”

  Chapter 7

  There were no clear lines dividing the districts of Maeve’s Court. Except for the financial district, which clearly stood out from the others with its sleek glass and chrome buildings and neurotically clean streets.

  The pleasure district, however, was not so distinct in its presence. It blended rather seamlessly with the entertainment district, the restaurant district, and the fashion district that bordered it. Most tourists and newcomers to Maeve’s Court got easily confused by the arrangement of districts, understandably thinking that the pleasure district and the entertainment district were one massive place. Indeed, the lines drawn between what counted as entertainment and what counted as pleasure, in Maeve’s Court, were generally blurred. There were certainly shops and clubs in the entertainment district that some particularly conservative Werewolves or Wizards might find alarming, while a few places in the pleasure district might seem positively tame or even mundane for those tourists seeking a particular kind of excitement on their vacation.

  The reality was that there were few things considered taboo in the Maeve’s Court pleasure scene. Fae were known, after all, for prioritizing pleasure above all else. Well—pleasure and mischief. As a result, certain clubs catered to very niche kinks and interests, some more eclectic than others. Given Fae interests, there were even a couple clubs Niko knew of where patrons paid to be outsmarted and tricked into ridiculous deals, sometimes with rather permanent effects. Those clubs needed very restrictive licenses to operate. They didn’t always bother to get them. Those raids were fun.

  Niko turned down a street where the pleasure and fashion districts blended near seamlessly into one another. Cobalt had been quiet for the ride, lost in his own thoughts or perhaps taking in all the details of Maeve’s Court he could through a car window. As Niko parallel parked along the street between a large delivery van unloading spools of brightly coloured cloth and a tiny convertible parked in front of a storefront filled with clear plastic shoes, Cobalt frowned.

  “This is a Court unlike any other,” he said vaguely, and Niko pulled his keys out of the ignition, studying his ‘partner’s’ face.

  “In what way?”

  Cobalt glanced at him, then nodded out the window toward the plastic shoe store and the building next to it, its windows swathed in rich, bright fabrics, the door painted a solid, opaque red. There was no sign above the entrance for that one.

  “In other Courts, the plastic shoes would most likely be associated to the sex trade, not considered high fashion. And you’d expect spools of fabric delivered to a dress-maker or seamstress. But here the fabrics are, themselves, a sex object, used in a pleasure club to titillate.”

  Niko raised his eyebrows, mildly impressed. “You’re more perceptive than the average newcomer, I’ll give you that.”

  He was right, of course. The shoe store was a boutique run by one of the Court’s up-and-coming designers. From what Niko had seen in Uriah’s old magazines, she had an obsession with clear plastic, being that it’s both invisible and obviously there. And the fabric was for patrons with cloth fetishism. Niko had never been in there, but he’d known a few people who had. In another life.

  Adjusting his shoulder holster and double checking his service weapon, Niko opened the door and got out of the car back into the blazing heat of the day. The wave of hot air crashed over him, almost as tangible as a real wave. He squinted into the daylight and pulled his sunglasses out.

  “Are you expecting to use that?” Cobalt asked, emerging from the vehicle and nodding toward Niko’s gun.

  Sliding his glasses up his nose, Niko allowed his eyes to adjust to the change in lighting and shrugged noncommittally. “One can never be too careful,” he said. Cobalt considered this and reached back inside the car to pull something out of his iridescent bag. When he straightened, he had a rather large knife contained in a leathery sheath.

  Niko studied him as he affixed the sheath to his belt. “That an official Royal Guard weapon?” There was a certain amount of sarcasm in the question, but Cobalt didn’t seem to notice.

  “No, this is mine,” Cobalt said, his expression impassive. “The Royal Guard are not equipped with any kind of weapon.”

  Niko stopped on the sidewalk next to the car, trying to process that information. “You don’t have any weapons? How do you—protect the King?”

  Cobalt tilted his head slightly. “Our training ensures we have no need of weapons to take down any assailant.”

  A shiver ran down Niko’s spine despite the warmth of the air. He felt the frisson deep into his core, and his cock twitched. Again he felt himself dropped into a flood of images of Cobalt over him, pressing him down, spreading him wide.

  Jaw tight, Niko forced the thoughts aside with increasing difficulty. “Then why take your knife?” he asked, his voice slightly hoarse. He coughed to clear his throat and turned away, needing a distraction.

  “As you said,” Cobalt’s melodic words came from over his shoulder. “One can never be too careful.” Niko nodded once and began to lead the way toward the corner of the street, tracing the route back to the Magic Wand. Cobalt fell into step comfortably beside him, his easy confidence playing well with the atmosphere of Maeve’s Court. As he glanced around, taking in the details, so too did passersby take him in. Every person they passed stopped for a least a second or two to gawk at him. Niko’s jaw felt fastened with wire. “I do find it somewhat surprising,” Cobalt said from seemingly nowhere, “that the MCPD are issued firearms.”

  Niko felt himself straighten under the intense and swooning gaze of a group of Fae across the street. In his usual uniform of dark clothes, sunglasses, heavy boots, and a shoulder holster, Niko was used to commanding authority. He was also used to getting a lot of attention, particularly the lurid kind of looks they were receiving now, but never while he was dressed as his detective self. The last
time he’d felt eyes on him like this, he was undercover. The shift in paradigm was unsettling to him.

  “What should we be issued?” Niko asked, trying to keep the edge from his voice.

  “I would have expected nothing at all,” Cobalt answered, and Niko cast him a sidelong look. “Fae magic is so fascinating and so flexible. Seems to me, a Fae with police training would never really need to use a firearm if they’re crafty enough.”

  Niko’s steps faltered a heartbeat, but he caught himself, not letting it show. Crinkling his nose with a sharp sniff, Niko said, “So you do know how Fae magic works.” He sucked one of his teeth. “Then why offer me your hand when we met?”

  “To see if you would take it,” Cobalt answered, completely unbothered.

  Niko’s frown deepened. “You were testing me.” Cobalt nodded. “And Uriah? Do you plan on testing every Fae you meet?"

  Cobalt laughed, a low and rumbling sound that settled deep in Niko’s belly. “That wasn’t about him.”

  Swallowing the curse on his tongue, Niko said, “Do you intend to keep putting yourself at risk in order to test me? Or can we settle your trust issues now?”

  Cobalt seemed to consider this a moment, but the smirk on his mouth was more than Niko could handle. “I’d say the issues are resolved.”

  Niko grumbled. “I should’ve let Uri deal you.”

  Again, Cobalt laughed. They turned another corner, the air distinctly different as they made their way down into the pleasure district proper. Incense perfumed the air with rich scents and aphrodisiacs of the strangest and most potent kind. There was a kind of musk on the air that permeated the skin and made even the most prudish character malleable to the possibilities of the district.

  “What do you think he would have done?” Cobalt asked.

  Probably tried to steal your sex appeal.

  Niko hesitated, wondering if that was really what he thought of Uri now. “Probably nothing terrible or lasting,” he eventually said. Uri was, after all, a cop. And not a bad one. He wasn’t opposed to tricks, but he would never have harmed someone out of spite. “He’s not that bad.”

  Cobalt seemed to press closer briefly, and Niko was overcome with the scent of him, above all the scents of the district, of the street, of anything else at all. He smelled the ocean salt and a breathtaking breeze and the freedom of open water and sunlight on sand at high tide and—again, the vaguest scent of wet wood. Niko felt himself drowning in it, and his body reacted immediately. Blood rushed through him, toward his groin, and a particular taste emerged on his tongue.

  A palm pressed to the small of his back, and Niko jerked back to reality, his hand rising on instinct to the grip of his gun. Cobalt held up his hands, his eyes shining with interest, and Niko realized that he’d stopped in the middle of the street.

  “You seemed far away for a moment,” Cobalt said by way of explanation. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

  Dropping his hand, Niko tried to steady his heaving breaths. He shook his head.

  “It’s nothing,” he said, though he was sure it was definitely something. “I shouldn’t have overreacted. I’m just not used to—” He cut himself off abruptly, wildly alarmed at his need to explain himself to Cobalt. Or anyone. But no one had touched him like that, touched him there since—

  “You never did explain,” Cobalt said, his words coming out slowly, his tone soothing as aloe on a burn. “About the gun,” he added, seeing Niko’s confusion.

  Niko searched around them, trying to ground himself back in what they were doing, in where they were, in the case. It was the pleasure district at work on his mind. That was all. The pleasure district magic. The scents on the air, the drugs that filtered through everything, the runes inscribed in every doorway, along the very sidewalks beneath his feet. That was all.

  “Guns are the great equalizers,” Niko said, slowly coming back to himself. He ran a ragged hand through his midnight blue hair. “You’re not always close enough to a suspect or a threat to make a deal. And sometimes circumstances don’t allow that. Wizards and Witches can lob spells from thirty feet away or more sometimes. And fighting another Fae—well, they’ve got all the capacity you have and sometimes more imagination. And Werewolves—they’re an altogether different kind of danger.”

  “How so?” Cobalt asked. Niko thought it obvious, but he reminded himself that Cobalt had only spent time in Nimueh’s Court prior to this, and the relationship between Nimueh’s Court and Connor’s Court had only recently turned positive.

  “Let me put it this way,” Niko said, “if you ever find yourself facing down a fully transformed and fully enraged Werewolf, either you’ll have a gun with silver bullets on hand, or you’ll be dead.”

  Cobalt’s eyebrows raised, his amused expression otherwise unchanged. Niko got back to walking, too unsettled by this area of the street to linger much longer. Cobalt again fell into step with him.

  “Have you ever been shot?” Cobalt asked suddenly. Niko felt his instinct tell him to freeze, to panic, to run. He felt the box in his mind unlock, unlatch, and open slowly. He felt the ache as though it was happening right now. But rather than give in to his instincts, to allow the question and the memory and Cobalt to see that hidden part of him, he kept steadily onward.

  “Yes,” he said, stopping in front of a dark building. Before Cobalt could ask anything further, Niko nodded to the sign above the door. It was a circular silver sheet of metal with a precision cut logo in the shape of the stamp on Indigo’s wrist. “Welcome to the Magic Wand.”

  The building was not unlike the shops and clubs on either side of it, except that it was painted black. The old brickwork, from whatever this place had housed before the Magic Wand settled in, was covered with a thick layer of black paint, but the aging mortar and cracking stones were still visible if you got close enough during daylight. The main door was reinforced steel, also painted black, and there were no other remarkable features on the façade of the building beyond the single silver sign.

  The day was too young for these kinds of clubs to be open to patrons, but the owner and some staff were likely on hand to prepare for the night’s clientele. And they would likely have some amount of prep work to do. The Magic Wand, like most of the pleasure clubs in Maeve’s Court, catered to a particular niche. Though outwardly the Wand’s claim of any kind of magically enhanced pleasure money could buy seemed innocent enough, the truth was rather seedier. They frequently straddled the border between legal and illegal offerings, and they were a known hotspot for illegal prostitution and unlawful magical enhancements. The owners always kept clean of whatever shady deals were going on in their club—an attitude of don’t ask, don’t tell—so they never got drawn into warrants served on the premises. But Niko knew the people in the back office had to know what was going down in the shadowy corners of their club every night. They had to.

  Niko stared down the door for a moment. There were definitely invisible cameras set up around the entryway, as well as around the sides and back of the building. But being that it was still only early afternoon, he thought no one was probably keeping a close watch on the feeds. The door itself had no outside handle, indicating it was only opened from the inside. But Niko was not so easily stopped.

  Pressing a hand to the area of the door where a handle would usually be, Niko made a series of finely tuned trades. First, he traded his physical touch sense for magical touch sense, then once he located the warding mechanism around the inner door handle, he traded the physical matter of his hand for magical matter. His hand disappeared into the door, his magical fingers fiddling with the warding spell. After a moment or two, rejigging the warding, Niko released the locking mechanism, and the door swung slightly open. He traded back for his regular physical sensation and matter. He looked over at Cobalt only to find Cobalt watching him with rapt attention. A shiver ran down Niko’s spine again.

  “That was beautiful,” Cobalt whispered, and Niko tensed, feeling exposed.

  With only a sof
t grunt, Niko led the way inside. The hallway was dark, the lighting turned to its lowest setting and recessed into the ceiling. The floor was mirrored, reflecting the low light back up and along the black walls. Everything was either black or mirrored, giving the faintest sense of a funhouse. The air conditioning was set high, probably because there were normally many more bodies heating the interior. Niko felt bumps rise on his skin from the sudden shift to cold, but he took the relief from the outside heat regardless.

  As they moved down the hallway toward the main room of the club, their footsteps echoing softly on the mirrored floor, Niko sensed a subtle quavering in the air. Pulling his badge from his pocket, he stepped out into the main hall of the club to find several anxious and angry Fae emerging from a hidden hallway at the opposite side of the room.

  “I don’t know how you got in, but you should probably run now,” the tallest man said, his voice hard. He was definitely more angry than alarmed. “You triggered the silent alarm. The police are on their way.”

  Niko held up his badge. “How convenient,” he said. “The police are already here.”

  The man who spoke, clearly the owner, was about Cobalt’s height, his skin a pale whitish colour, as though he was ill-acquainted with sunlight. His hair was cropped short and neat and was the colour of a blood orange. He wore two parts of a three-piece suit, his jacket likely abandoned in his back office, and the tailoring fit him well. The two people behind him were wearing something closer to uniforms. The woman was dressed in a tight-fitting black dress, cut just below her butt and with a deep v-neck to emphasize her cleavage. Her hair was done up in a fierce bun atop her head, the colour of a shamrock. The man was wearing tight black pants and a black tank top that looked as though it adhered to his skin. His arms were decorated with glorious vines painted with blooming flowers that stood out in brilliant contrast to his copper skin. His hair was purple.