by Amy Sumida
“Seren, the things he fears . . . they don't make sense,” Daxon murmured.
“You looked into his fears?” I hissed as I pulled him further down the snow-covered balcony, our feet crunching on the pillowy softness.
“Of course,” he said as if it were obvious. “I had the man by the throat, what did you think I was doing?”
“What did you see?” Killian leaned in close to our huddle.
“Fire.” Drostan frowned. “Which is an odd thing for a fairy with a fire-related mór to fear. So, I don't think it's the fire itself he fears, but what it represents. And I heard screams. Thunderous roars, echoing overhead. Shadows and light. Terrible laughter. His mind is a fucking mess.”
My stomach started to clench as a memory rose, featuring all of those things. Verisande laughing at me. Her demand that I go to her. My body following her orders. The thunder of the helicopter's blades overhead. And then her screams as she burned. Burned from the Dealan, Drostan's lightning mór.
“Daxon.” I shook my head. “You just described Verisande's death.”
Daxon frowned and looked back toward the gazebo. Drostan got up and glanced over at us as if he knew he'd find us watching him. He nodded crisply and strode into the house.
“I don't think so, Seren,” Daxon murmured. “It felt . . . wrong. Evil.”
“Maybe he's afraid that he's evil because he killed someone he loved,” I chided my husband. “You've told me before that fears are often things that don't exist. Monsters of our minds. Verisande's death is haunting him, Dax. Anyone can see that. And any monsters you find in his mind are bound to be born of her.”
“I suppose,” Daxon whispered and looked away.
“You afraid of the lightning man?” Killian teased Daxon.
“No. I'm afraid of what he fears.”
The words sent a shiver through me. Daxon afraid of another man's nightmares; that was damn terrifying. I sipped at my coffee but it had gone as cold as I had.
Chapter Nine
A few hours later, we were sprawled around the entertainment/operations room, some of us searching online with laptops and others sifting through the boxes of evidence from the current case as well as the last one with Verisande. Coffee cups and crumb-speckled plates spotted the floor and table. Ana had set up a beverage station on a side table so we didn't have to go into the kitchen to refill our mugs.
The television was on the news, but there had been no reports of burned corpses and there probably wouldn't be. Any new burned bodies found would be reported to the Human Council and covered up by the people they had working within the Police and Government. Still, we kept the TV on just in case, its volume set low. The drone of reporter voices was better than the anxious sound of shuffling papers and shifting bodies.
Suddenly, Drostan sat up straight and declared, “I think I have something!”
Everyone spun to face him. He'd been sitting cross-legged on the floor, a few feet to my right, searching through stacks of papers. He laid several before him in a row.
“Someone toss me a highlighter.” Drostan lifted his hand eagerly.
Conri grabbed a yellow pen from the table on his way to Drostan, then handed it over as he crouched beside him. His expression shifted into excitement as he saw what Drostan started to highlight. “Shit. Good catch.”
“What?” Wayne asked eagerly.
All of us gathered around Drostan as he highlighted small lines on several pieces of paper. I squinted at them; they looked like credit card statements.
“These are the credit card and bank statements from the victims,” Drostan said as he continued to slash bright yellow stripes across the papers.
Wayne gathered a few papers, perused them, then exclaimed, “How the fuck did we miss this?”
“What?” Killian growled as he snatched the papers from Wayne. “Oh.”
I looked over Killian's shoulder. “Leaves and Beans? What the hell is that?”
“It's a coffeehouse.” Drostan stood up and handed the other papers to Nightblade. “All the victims visited Leaves and Beans on the same day. Well, not on the exact same day,” he amended. “There are groups of them on the same exact days, but it's the same day of the week.”
“Is he speaking English?” Extinguisher Bridget Kavanaugh asked.
“He's saying that the victims all visited this coffee shop on Mondays, several of them on the 8th, then the 15th, and finally, a group on the 22nd,” I explained.
“This place is right downtown.” Killian tapped his cellphone, looking over the website. “Looks popular too. They serve all that foamy girly bullshit. Pumpkin froth, raspberry cream, oatmeal scones, and shit.”
“Hopefully, not shit,” Ainsley muttered.
“You know what I mean.” Kill elbowed Ainsley. “All that sweet stuff women and yuppies like.”
“I enjoy mocha lattes every now and again,” Nightblade said in a voice that dared Killian to call him girly or a yuppie.
“Mochas are all right,” Killian amended. “I'm talking about the drinks that take thirty seconds to order. Like a grande, orange whip, high froth, low fat, skinny, maraschino cherry.”
“A what?” I chuckled.
“I don't know,” Kill huffed. “I don't order that crap. I like coffee. Simple coffee. Because I'm a man.”
“Manhood is not determined by taste buds,” Daxon drawled. “You're a cretin.”
“Maybe, but I'm a manly cretin.” Killian grinned.
“I'm secure enough in my masculinity to drink whatever the fuck I want,” Daxon shot back.
Killian contemplated that with a scowl that became more and more uncertain.
“Monday, the start of the workweek,” Wayne murmured into the silence of Killian's shaking beliefs on manhood and its correlation to hot beverages. “They'd be less sharp than on, say, a Friday.”
“And they all visited the shop early in the morning.” Drostan tapped one of the papers. “They're targeting people as they get their morning coffee. I'll bet they drug the coffee and follow the victims out to get their license plate numbers or just follow them to work. Then they wouldn't even have to touch the humans. They'd know who was dosed and where to find them.”
“That's brilliant,” Conri murmured. “Like alligators hunting zebras when they go to the river to drink.”
“Crocodiles,” Gradh corrected. “Gators live in swamps.”
“Whatever,” Conri huffed. “You know what I mean. These fuckers are lying in wait like predators.”
“Then we'll lie in wait for them.” I grinned at Drostan. “We know just when and where they're going to strike next.”
“Tomorrow is Monday,” Drostan declared smugly.
Chapter Ten
Leaves and Beans—horrible name by the way—was on one of the main streets in downtown St. Louis, in a business district, and opened at 5:30 AM. We didn't go in right when they opened, but we had the shop surrounded by the time the lights came on, with hunters and extinguishers posted on the sidewalk, in alleys, and even at the backdoor of the shop. When it started to get busy, I strolled in with Killian, ordered some coffee, and went to sit in one of the booths near a window.
Despite most people being on their way to work, several of the tables were taken, half of them by customers waiting on their to-go orders. So, when Drostan walked in a few minutes later, under a glamour like the rest of us, he had to stand against the wall until a table opened up. Then he settled at a table with his coffee and pretended to peruse a newspaper.
We surreptitiously watched the baristas and all the customers, particularly when they went near the pickup area or the little table with sugar, cream, cardboard sleeves, and napkins near the door. We figured it was either an employee dosing the coffee before it left their hands or a customer slipping it in after the coffee was made. The fairy, or fairies, we were hunting was likely under a glamour, possibly even sitting at one of the nearby tables, hanging out, looking harmless, just as we were. In case they weren't dosing the coffee at all
, Wayne was in a van across the street with Daxon, supervising the operation and recording video from the cameras we'd planted both inside and outside the store, and our people outside would be watching for any suspicious behavior as well.
“It's in the sugar,” Drostan's voice hissed in my ear through the comm unit I was wearing. “It's not the coffee, it's the sugar!”
I glanced at the station with the sugar. Sure enough, a man in a suit was fixing his coffee while he casually screwed the sugar lid back on.
“He doesn't have to dose individual cups at all,” Killian murmured. “He only had to get it in the sugar and now he can wait for people to dose themselves.”
The businessman took his coffee to a table when one opened up, just two feet away from Kill and me. He pulled out his cellphone and started scrolling lazily on it in between sips of his coffee, but every time someone added sugar to their drink, he took their picture, then started tapping—likely sending it in a text. Which meant that he wasn't alone. There was a team working on this; one man inside telling the others who had taken the tainted sugar.
“He's photographing the victims and texting their picture to someone,” Kill whispered into his comm unit.
“First victim: woman, mid-forties, blonde hair, black suit,” I added. “Stop her before she drinks anymore of that coffee.”
“On it!” Extinguisher Lance Sloane said.
Glancing out the window, I spotted his blond head moving through the crowd on the sidewalk.
“Do it subtly,” I advised. “He's got someone outside, watching her.”
“Copy that,” Sloane said.
I watched Sloane “accidentally” knock into the woman, then apologize profusely, his movie-star smile making her forget all about the coffee. I chuckled as I saw him take out his cellphone to get her phone number.
“I think I need more sugar in my coffee,” I said to Killian.
Kill nodded. It would put me on the guy's radar, but I didn't want anyone else getting drugged. I wandered up to the station and grabbed the sugar. The man had positioned himself perfectly to watch the little table, but the room was full, and I had just enough cover to snatch up the sugar, unscrew the cap, and pour the contents into the convenient hole for garbage, located right in the tabletop. A woman, who had been shielding me from the man's view, gaped at me.
“There were ants in it,” I whispered to her. “I didn't want someone getting extra protein in their coffee.”
“Oh, no! You should have shown it to the barista.”
I shrugged. “Hindsight. It was an automatic reaction.”
I left the empty sugar container there and went back to my table. There were packets of sugar in a basket too, there shouldn't be any complaints for at least a few minutes. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the sugar-man snap my picture before I sat down. I didn't care; my glamour looked like a cross between Jessica Alba and Amy Schumer.
“Hey, you're out of sugar,” a young guy in sneakers and a baseball cap announced as he set the empty sugar container on the pickup counter.
“That's weird. I just filled it this morning,” a barista said as she took it.
I glanced at Killian, and he grimaced.
“He's on the move,” Drostan's whisper came through my earpiece. “He knows he's been made. Target in a dark blue suit, green tie, Black coat, dark hair, fair skin. Caucasian, mid-twenties. Exiting now.”
“Copy,” a chorus of voices said.
We waited a minute before following him out, Drostan leaving just a few seconds after Killian and me. The sugar man headed down the sidewalk without looking back. Kill and I strolled after him, smiling at each other and holding hands, while Drostan headed around the building in the opposite direction.
“Do not fucking lose him!” Wayne shouted in my ear.
The sugar man got on his cellphone and scanned the street as he spoke urgently. Yep, he knew something was up. Maybe I shouldn't have messed with the sugar, but any human consuming that shit could have ended up as barbecue. I could only hope that poor woman hadn't drunk a fatal dose before Lance stopped her. Getting her phone number was smart of him; we could check up on her later.
“Target headed into the 9th Street Garage,” one of the hunters reported. “Closing in.”
“We're right behind him,” I added.
Kill and I strolled into the parking garage after the sugar man. A bank of elevators waited to our right, but he wasn't there. Either he'd gone into the bottom floor parking or was using the stairs.
“I'll check the stairs,” Killian offered.
I nodded as I hurried into the garage's first-floor parking. A few people were headed to their cars, so it took me a minute to spot him.
“He's on the ground floor,” I whispered.
“Do not approach him alone, Seren!” Daxon's voice hissed in my ear.
“I'm on my way!” Killian added.
“Nearly there,” a few hunters said.
“I see you, Seren,” Drostan's voice came last. “I'm on your left, I'll grab him.”
I saw Drostan coming in from the side of the garage, his glamour of a twenty-something blond man in a puffy jacket blending perfectly into the flow of people hustling to and from their cars. Drostan's eyes were set on the sugar man as he made a beeline for him.
“Drostan wait!” I hissed.
“Do not approach, Drostan!” Wayne said at the same time.
But Drostan didn't want to give this man a chance to evade us. I saw it in the determined line of his shoulders, evident even beneath the thick jacket. He was going to take this guy down right there, in front of human witnesses if need be. I hurried forward while trying to be quiet, running on the toes of my boots. Drostan reached the man first. One hand filled with light as the other stretched toward the sugar man. But the man spun just before Drostan could release his magic and blew something into Drostan's face. Drostan gaped at the sugar man as the light faded from his hand and he crumpled. The sugar man caught Drostan just as a van backed out of the stall beside him.
I jerked to a stop and called on my firethorns as the sugar man tossed Drostan in the van. There was no way I was getting any closer after watching him dream-dust Drostan—a magic that I'd thought was limited to my father and me. But I didn't have time to worry about that. I lifted my fireball, aiming it at the van instead of the sugar man. I wanted to make sure they couldn't get away with Drostan. But before I could launch my magic, golden dust sparkled down around me and an arm wrapped around my waist. My firethorns died out as exhaustion swept through me, and I felt myself falling.
“Sweet dreams, Your Majesty,” a smug voice said.
Chapter Eleven
I woke up in a warm bed, sighing and stretching, coming back to awareness slowly.
“Seren!” Drostan's voice jerked me back to harsh reality.
My eyes popped open as his hands grabbed mine. “Drostan?”
“Are you all right?” he asked urgently.
“Yeah. I think so.” I sat up and took a look around. “What the blue blazes is this?”
We were in a luxurious room, sitting on a huge bed draped with a green velvet comforter. Matching drapes hung from soaring windows on the right wall and from the thick, polished, mahogany bed posters, carved with vines and butterflies. The room was massive, broken up into sections by groupings of furniture. The bed was in a collection that included a dresser, chaise lounge, and an armoire, every piece looking as if it were an antique, mismatched in that old money way. Across the room, a cluster of pale green couches gathered around a fireplace in the far wall. A flat screen television hung over the mantle, bracketed by tasteful Asian vases. Between the couches and the bed, a dining set waited beneath a twinkling chandelier. It was like three rooms in one.
“I think this is a prison,” Drostan said as he warily glanced around as well. “I woke up beside you a minute ago. The last thing I remember is having something blown in my face.”
“Yeah, me too,” I muttered as I climbed off the bed and
headed to a window. My coat and purse were gone, as was the comm unit. “And that's my trick. Mine and my father's. I've never met another fairy who could do that.”
“Do what?” he asked as he joined me.
“Dream-dust. I blow a lavender powder off my palm and it puts people to sleep.”
“Oh,” Drostan murmured distractedly as he glanced over his shoulder toward a door.
“I assume you tried the door?”
“No, I didn't. As I said, I just woke up.” He went over to it, but, surprise, surprise, it was locked. He tried his magic on it to no avail, then muttered, “It must be reinforced with iron.”
