by Cate Corvin
I wasted no time at all. I turned away and pulled my dress away from my chest, hunting for the first of the hidden pockets.
Inside was a little square of white tissue paper, no larger than a human quarter. I fished it out, pressed it flat, and placed it on my tongue.
It dissolved quickly, dissipating the tingling numbness I was beginning to feel on my lips from the aftereffect of Calder’s disgusting kiss, where he had mixed the rotgut alcohol with the contact poison.
I’d kept my mouth closed, but he’d really gone for the gold. With that much of the poison running through his system, he’d be out for almost half a day, at the very least.
“Thank you for being an overeager pig,” I muttered, searching for the next pocket.
The little bug Robin had given me was tiny, nothing more than a microphone. I searched the walls for a likely crack, found too many to choose from, and finally shoved the bug in one that would be above the eye-level of both the satyr and his bodyguards.
With the mic pointed outwards, we’d pick up any conversation he had in this room, and maybe some from the next if we were lucky.
Finally, I unzipped his leather jacket, fishing his phone out. It took only a second to push the little card into the empty slot, and another ten minutes to let the cloning program download to the device.
When that was done, I stuffed the card back in my dress and replaced the phone in Calder’s jacket.
Then there was nothing to do but wait. I had no idea how long Calder usually took with the water nymphs he hired, but I gave it the promised half an hour, shifting from foot to foot because there was nowhere to sit.
Once I tried to go through a cardboard box, hoping to find some sort of evidence that Brightkin had been here, but a roach crawled over my fingers and nearly sent me screaming into the next room. Besides, there was nothing worthwhile in the box. It was full of stiff-paged porn magazines, all featuring nereids.
Although I supposed that might’ve been a good place to hide something, given that no sane Fae would want to touch it.
When my half an hour was up, I scrubbed my fingers through my hair and whipped it around a few times, used my fingers to smear my lipstick, and tugged my dress into slight disarray.
The Dullahans were sitting at the table when I pushed the door open. “He fell asleep,” I announced, shaking my head.
Neither of them looked up. There was a spread of cards across the table, but they didn’t move, their headless bodies just sitting in silence.
I shrugged, like they weren’t worth my time, and pushed the door open.
The tunnel was quiet when I emerged, the drip of water the only sound. I exhaled and almost gagged, thinking about Calder’s mouth on mine. Maybe if I showered in pure bleach, I’d feel clean again.
I chose the path leading back to the Skin Market, shivering in the chill of the tunnels. It felt so much colder than before… or maybe it was just the adrenaline rush of pulling off a real mission.
It wasn’t until I saw the frost creeping along the wall that I realized the chill wasn’t from the tunnels, or my adrenaline, at all.
14
Jack Frost’s footsteps were so quiet I almost couldn’t hear them. Only the faint splash of water told me he was coming from ahead, and I squinted into the darkness.
His white suit was a beacon, somehow pristine despite the general slime and grime of the Undercity tunnels, and his smile was as cold as the frozen-over puddles underfoot.
“How interesting to see you here, Briallen Appletree. I wasn’t under the impression this was your sort of place.”
I wrapped my arms around my bare arms, trying to rub the rising goosebumps away, but it was impossible. Jack’s cold aura permeated the tunnel, and my breath rushed between my lips in a cloud.
“M-m-my name is Vanora,” I sneered, trying to hang on to the remains of my terrible nereid accent between my chattering teeth.
Jack tucked his salt-white hair behind his ear and raised an eyebrow, stopping only several feet away from me. Steam rose from the ground under his feet and died out when the ground froze over.
“Cute, but I was listening in at the Market, and you should know the native nereids of Tír fo Thuinn pronounce their f’s with a hint of a v. Your accent is more indicative of Atlantean origins. Perhaps Robin should’ve invested in a little more training before sending you out.”
My teeth clattered together painfully, and there was nowhere to go, unless I wanted to head back towards Calder and away from the exit where Robin would be waiting. “I don’t know any R-R-Robin. I j-j-just want to g-go.”
Jack touched the tunnel one with one long forefinger, freezing it over. He leaned against the spot with his arms crossed over his own chest, cushioned by the spiky frost that burst from the ice, and smirked at me. “But I wanted to speak to you without Robin’s interference, so I think you’ll go nowhere for now.”
He snapped his fingers. Tendrils of ice grew out of the floor around my feet, snaking over my platform heels and climbing around my ankles. They burned like cold fire where they touched my skin.
Another snap, and I felt something like a sticky cobweb being peeled away from my skin from head to toe. I looked down and saw my own warm-toned skin, my dark curls spilling over my shoulders instead of the pale blue silk of the nereid disguise.
“Oh, you fu—” I bit my insult off at the end, teeth still clicking together on every word. “Thank you so much. I really wanted to walk into the Skin Market wearing my real face.”
Jack rubbed his chin contemplatively, looking down at me with a faint crease between his brows. “This is all very curious. Robin has never taken more than a passing interest in his agents, but you… he seems to be quite fond of you. Why might that be, Briallen? What is Robin planning now?”
He abandoned his cushion of clean frost and began to circle me with slow, deliberate steps. “Who are you to him?”
I scoffed, but it was hard to maintain an air of aloofness when I was shivering so hard I was vibrating. “I’m his agent. Nothing more, nothing less. As for what he’s planning, that’s his business and not mine to tell.”
“Such loyalty.” Jack stopped in front of me, only inches away. It was a testament to how brutally cold his aura was that I actually wanted to lean against his warmth just to escape it, even if he was utterly infuriating. “What does he hold over your head to make you so faithful?”
I almost burst out laughing. Would he believe me if I told him six faerie fruits had bound me to Robin? “That’s not your business, either. I work with him because I— I want to be an agent.”
Horror filled me. I’d almost told him it was because I liked Robin. More than liked him. That wasn’t the sort of information the enemy needed.
“Hmm.” Jack began walking again, coming closer on every turn. “I took the liberty of looking into you, Briallen. A dryad from Emain Ablach, living on a Seelie visa… but Emain Ablach is a very insular community. Few enter, and none leave. Given that your mother appears to be one of the Hesperides, I would’ve thought she’d be determined to keep you close to home.”
His pale eyes cut through me like a knife when he stopped again.
I was too shocked to reply at first. I’d told no one who my mother was when I entered Avilion.
Jack was right in deducing that she was one of the Hesperides; in fact, she was the gardener of the Grove of Golden Apples, the protector, the one who decided who was worthy to eat the mythological fruit or not.
“In fact, it’s very interesting that you claim to hate apples, given who you are.” Jack leaned in close and my icy breath touched his face. “Why is that?”
My lip curled over my teeth. “Do you really want to know why?”
“I want to know everything.” Jack sounded almost pleasant, but his glacial eyes were lit with avid interest.
“Fine.” I rubbed my arms, the chill seeping into my bones. “I won’t tell you a damn thing about Robin, but I’ll give you this in exchange for leaving him alon
e. My mother is Pomona, the head of the Hesperides.”
I reached out with a shaking hand and touched the damp wall. Beneath the stone there was rich, dark earth.
“I hate apples because they taste like failure,” I said bitterly. “Because I’m defective and I have no place at home in the Grove.”
My magic took seed in the soil, pulsing with new life. Tiny roots burst from the seed and crept between the stones.
The wall groaned as the roots became twining, thorny branches, displacing stones that fell to the floor with hollow thuds.
“Emain Ablach doesn’t want or need me. All I do is choke the life from the apple trees.”
The vines and branches reached out for Jack, plucking at his white suit and enveloping him in their thorny embrace. The Gentry didn’t move, allowing them to curl around his arms and legs like eager lovers, his gaze fixed on my face. “I see.”
Tiny buds grew from the thickening branches and unfurled into pale pink, glowing blossoms. The scent of springtime filled the tunnel.
“That’s what I do.” I took a deep breath, crushing my magic back inside, where it couldn’t break loose and wreak havoc.
Jack was held in place by my twisted, climbing tree as much as I trapped in his ice. A bud blossomed near his face, bathing his pale, sharp features in its warm light.
“Different isn’t defective, Briallen,” he said quietly.
I dropped my hand from the wall, allowing my warped tree to take over from there. It would find these dark tunnels a pleasant home for its spiky, choking branches. “Goodbye, Jack Frost.”
He touched one of the blossoms near his arm, drawing a thin line of blood across the back of his hand when he came too close to a thorn.
My ring was frozen over. A thin layer of frost melted to drops when I spun it around on my finger.
Jack looked up at me again, a faint smile on his lips that seemed real, not an affected expression. “I look forward to seeing you again.”
“Spin me a tale,” I whispered to my ring, then I stepped out of the ice and sideways into pooling shadows, no longer here nor there.
It was a dizzying sensation, spinning the shadows. From one shade to another, I burst through the tunnels, sometimes on the ceiling, sometimes in a crack in the wall, and once in a Fae’s shadow.
I hid in the shadows cast by a lantern, and then behind a sign, stepping invisibly through the Skin Market until I slid through the cracks in the wooden door, right in front of the stairs leading upwards to Sobek Street.
Another step took me to the shadow of a streetlamp, and then to the darkness behind Robin. He was jingling coins in his pail, but didn’t startle when I grabbed him from behind and yanked him with me.
We burst through Sobek Street easily, and as the sun set over Avilion, Robin pulled the power of the shadows away from me. We were dumped in a small public garden with a pond.
I laid flat on my back in the grass, gasping for breath, my head whirling. I felt like I’d just been stretched out wide and shrunk down to the size of a thimble multiple times in the span of several minutes.
Robin was next to me, already sitting up and leaning over me. “What happened?”
I blinked, trying to make the sky and branches overhead stop spinning, and focused on his eyes. A giggle escaped me. “You have four eyes, boss.”
His lips flattened. “Where’s your glamour? Did Calder catch you?”
I tried to sit up, my stomach cramping with nausea from whirling around, and Robin slid a hand behind my back to help me. It was impossible to ignore how warm and rough his hand felt against my skin.
“Calder didn’t catch me. I planted the bug and downloaded the chip to his phone after knocking him out, but Jack Frost caught up to me in the tunnels.” I swallowed hard as my stomach slowly settled. “He asked me what you were planning, and… just some stuff about me. I think he likes getting under people’s skin.”
“He does. That’s probably what he’s best at.” Robin rubbed my back in small circles. “Not bad spinning shadows for your first time.”
I took a deep breath and released it. The ground was starting to feel a little more solid beneath me. “Yeah, I probably should’ve practiced first.”
“Mmm.” Robin made a noise of agreement and got to his feet, pulling me with him. “Let’s get home. We’ll go through the cloned copy of Calder’s phone and decide our next move.”
He kept an arm around my waist, keeping me from falling over from vertigo. I didn’t try to remove it.
Sisse sat on top of Robin’s Acorn laptop, staring at me as I drank a mug of chamomile tea.
“I can’t believe you met Jack,” she sighed. A little hand fluttered to her chest. “Isn’t he dreamy?”
“He’s as cold as ice,” I said incredulously. “Literally.”
I’d traded out my revealing clothes for a pair of black jeans and boots, and a top that tied around my back and left most of my midriff exposed. The wardrobe had seemed to sense my desire for dark clothes, matching the tinge of darkness in my mood.
I never told anyone why I’d left Emain Ablach. Not even the twins, or Ioin. They all just thought I hated the small-town life.
They didn’t know I was such a failure that Pomona had let me leave with a mix of exasperation and relief that I wouldn’t destroy any more of our island—but mostly relief.
Some of the other dryads had whispered their hopes that I wouldn’t return when they thought I couldn’t hear them.
I had no idea why I had spilled that secret to Jack Frost, of all people. I didn’t trust him.
I didn’t even like him.
“He’s gorgeous.” Sisse made it sound like that decided the matter.
“Yeah. And a jerk. There’s plenty of other gorgeous Gentry to ogle if I feel like it.” I studiously avoided looking at Robin as I said it. “He froze me in place, Sisse.”
“You got out,” she said reasonably, and under her breath added, “I wouldn’t have tried to escape.”
Robin ignored us completely, clicking through the files the chip had transferred over to his laptop. The program he was running analyzed every message Calder had sent on the burner phone that operated off a non-approved network.
“Anything good?” I asked, desperate to stop hearing about Jack. Yeah, so he was beautiful, like a prince made of ice. And I wasn’t entirely sure he actually meant me harm.
But if he was Robin’s counterpart, getting friendly with him might be opening the door to betraying my boss, even if it was unknowingly.
“Yes,” Robin finally said, clicking a few more times. “Calder and Prince Brightkin have plans to meet in Myrage again next weekend, and there’s a veiled reference to the Undercity. However, there’s nothing concrete on where the girls are kept, and I’m curious how Calder gets in and out of Myrage without being seen.”
“We need better insider information.” I tapped my nails against the mug. “We need to know exactly what Calder knows. Even on a burner phone, he’s not going to come right out and state his plans or hiding places.”
Robin nodded, running a hand through his dark hair. “Right. That’s why we’re going to kidnap him, and I’ll take his place in glamour at their next meeting.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Boss, I like the way you think.”
15
It was well after dark when I decided to go home, but to my surprise, Robin didn’t offer me a ride.
He pulled on a dark coat and opened the door. “Let’s get dinner.”
I blinked in surprise and ignored Sisse’s giggling when I snatched up my coat and purse and followed Robin out the door.
He held out his arm for me as we walked through Thornwood. I left my bike parked behind the stone wall of his house, figuring I’d just walk tomorrow. No one would steal it out of a yard in Thornwood. “Dinner’s on you, right?”
“Of course.” He almost sounded offended. “It was my invitation.”
“Good. Because I’m starving after all that.” I linked my arm throug
h his and tried to pretend it was just because I was hungry that my stomach was doing barrel rolls in my abdomen. Maybe he was just concerned that using the ring had completely addled my brains. “You don’t think the Ghosthand is out right now, do you?”
Robin thought for a moment, his arm tightening a little. “Unlikely. Not only was breaking their cycle once unusual, but you have me with you.”
“Right, a hitman in shining armor.” I smiled up at him. “Much better than a knight.”
We walked out the gates of Thornwood and down Main, where the city was still buzzing with life. TVs in the bars were playing the footage of the latest Ghosthand murder again, with Oriande Snowdrop breathlessly regaling listeners that no nights were safe now.
The news seemed to have the opposite effect on Avilion’s usual revelers. Instead of hiding in their locked houses, the nightlife was vibrant and alive now.
“When did Oriande show up?” I asked, catching a glimpse of her perfectly made-up face through another window.
“Right after we got you out of there.” Robin glanced at the reporter with a look of distaste. “I didn’t think you’d want your face plastered all over the network.”
It would’ve completely busted my cover as Robin’s agent, so it was for the best that he’d dragged me away from Jack Frost before the news anchor showed up.
One of the bars’ double doors was wide open, and I caught a brief snippet of Oriande’s precise words. “—discovered by a Lesser Fae who was unavailable for questioning after the Seelie Garda released her—”
I wondered how much Robin had to do with that unavailability.
We didn’t stop to eat until we were on the verge of crossing into the outskirts of Mothwing Falls.
Robin tugged me towards a pair of tall wooden doors. “Have you ever been to Rosetta’s?” he asked.
I glanced at the menu posted by the door, the neat script curling across old-fashioned parchment, and my eyeballs just about bugged out of my skull. “Uh, no. This isn’t exactly in your average bike courier’s budget.”
