“Yes?”
He bowed slightly. “The doors of the church will suffice.”
I raised an eyebrow at Arún. “They’re the oldest wooden relic on the church.”
He tapped his chin. “If they didn’t work, I will fly you to the park and summon magic from the trees there.”
“Three options.”
I loathed to admit it, but what Arún suggested made sense. He probably knew even more about the supernatural than I did.
In the volume, the priest recounted the incident favorably. He reported no adverse effects afterward. He even commented that the visiting Fae had been respectful about the mental boundaries they had worked out in advance. He avoided unrelated memories. He was even able to recall details of the memory with the added brain power.
I couldn’t come up with a downside.
“There’s never been a side effect?” I asked again, staring at the image on the page, wishing the drawing would flash me a yes or a no. It would make the whole thing simpler.
“None.”
Luck never favored the timid. I just hoped this Fae’s crazy plan didn’t make me his next victim.
We re-assembled back in the Atheneum. I leaned back in a recliner we had moved near my desk. Might as well do this in comfort. Already in a t-shirt and sweatpants. I was halfway into my normal Saturday night routine.
A goggle-wearing Vic had me hooked up to sensors, which were hooked up to her computer, and she had a concoction for every possible outcome lined up on my desk. I had asked her to look out for me. She might have gone a little overboard. Lev watched with an amused look on his face, parked in his favorite chair until Vic asked him for help. He lumbered to his feet and crossed the room. Vic handed him wires and sensors, piling them in his arms. He followed her back to my recliner, where she continued to connect me to her computers.
“At least she’s thorough,” Lev said around his mouthful of burning seaweed. “Doing okay?” He patted my shoulder with a free hand once Vic relieved him of his cargo.
“Yeah.” The hard things didn’t get any easier by putting them off. Kismet demanded I let Arún dig around in painful memories. “Have you made any progress?”
Lev sighed. Tears swam in his eyes. “Aye. I found records that say my wife died back at our home in New Bedford. I don’t know what became of the boy.” Vic took the last of the things and gave Lev a quick hug, pressing a handkerchief into his hand. He dabbed his eyes. “I’ll keep searching for him until I find something.”
When Lev finally remembered bits of his past, he turned into a whale shifter on a mission. That’s when I’d met him, just after he had remembered enough of his history to begin the search. I clasped his hand but didn’t add anything. There wasn’t any more to add. His boy might be dead by now, would surely be dead if he hadn’t inherited some of Lev’s powers. Lev squeezed my hand before he returned to his favorite chair.
Arún mumbled something from up on the catwalk. He had flown up there hours ago and he had surrounded himself with stacks of books. He had asked Vic for a cup of coffee, and little bursts of blue magic guided the spoon that was clinking in the bottom of the mug. I let the rule-breaking slide. I didn’t want an irritated Fae messing around in my head.
“Ready?” I called up to him.
“Indeed.” He dove from the narrow place and landed on the floor. His wings stirred the air around me, and the gust dislodged one of the sensors.
Vic cursed, licked the suction cup, and jabbed it back on my head.
“Ow,” I said.
Beneath goggle-magnified eyes, she grinned and shrugged. “Sorry.” She turned to Arún. “Let’s do the thang. I have a hairy date tonight.” She shimmied her shoulders and made a weird noise at Arún. Probably some weird seduction dance she had learned in some remote village somewhere.
The king-to-be tossed a questioning glance at me.
I sighed. “She’s always like this. We blame the long-life smoothie she drinks every morning.”
“Understood.” He considered the pink-haired woman. “We have odd folk in our kingdom, as well. I believe this is a multi-realm occurrence.”
“I heard that,” she said, and tugged on a cord that ran to the sensor on my cheek. It dislodged with a pop.
She made a move to grab it, but I pushed her hands away. “No, I’ll get it.” I really didn’t want her licking my face again via the suction-cup sensor. There had to be a less fifth-grade way to make those things stick. She should work on that. And I told her so.
Arún positioned himself behind me.
Vic hovered. “Do I need to move any of the sensors? Or do anything?”
Arún shook his head. “I have it under control.”
“Vic,” I said. “Just watch the read-outs. You’re only here for the worst-case scenario.”
“Got it,” she said, typing notes on her smartphone and typing things into the computer that was monitoring my brain waves.
The Librarian washed his hands of the whole ordeal, but Lev remained the abiding rock in the middle of it all. He sat on his chair, making next-to-no noise, just puffing away on yet another cigar. He had probably seen it all in the one hundred sixty-five years he had lived in the Cavern, and his demeanor showed it.
“Let’s begin.” Arún’s deep voice stilled Vic’s fluttering, but set my pulse racing.
I grabbed Arún’s wrists. “You sure about this?”
“Absolutely.”
I let go of his wrists and smoothed my beard. I had faced the sharp teeth of man-eaters, the soul-sucking powers of demons, even helped evict one of Vic’s yeti boyfriends. This would be a walk in the park.
But my heartbeat never slowed.
Slowly, hazy surroundings materialized and became clear. I stood next to myself, and the other me, the park, Frank, and the suits were out of focus—like an impressionist painting.
Arún’s voice sounded close to my ear. “Sorry. I’ll clean that up. I went to an art museum last week,” he whispered.
The image cleared until it was a photographic version of my morning. Arún didn’t consolidate visually, but his consciousness hovered nearby.
“We’ll go through the memory now,” he said.
Joe had Napoleon stature and dark hair, cropped close. His hat blocked many details about his odd eyes, but this time I could tell the black pupils opened and closed in reaction to light like my own. I could tell his humanity by his smell.
Their eyes were something that happened after joining the Boss but didn’t change their physiology otherwise. I made a note to ask the Librarian to research this phenomenon.
Joe told his men what to do, but chewed on the inside of his lip, his gaze always returning to the girl, even after all three fedora-wearing men stepped away.
The girl made them nervous. Interesting.
Frank blinked. He had hints of bruises on his face. He had been beaten, but not to a bloody pulp. His shallow breath betrayed a sore ribcage.
“Jason?” He spoke in a hopeful tone, but tears collected in the corners of his eyes. He knew even then that the moment of his death inched closer.
“Yeah,” I said. “Over here.” I mouthed the words along with the morning me.
“It’s not Tuesday. I’ll miss our Tuesdays.”
I shook my head and gritted my teeth. I couldn’t change this.
“Don’t talk that way,” I admonished.
“Let her go,” Joe’s voice interrupted. One of the flunkies pulled a button from his pocket and pressed it. Moments later, the shackles on the girl’s wrists fell away. And all three of them flinched. Even Frank flinched. Why had Frank flinched?
He looked skyward and then stared at me, his mouth moving.
“What is he saying?” Arún asked.
“He’s praying,” I answered.
“Are you sure?” He didn’t sound convinced.
“Replay it, then.” Reliving the death of my friend. I should never have agreed to it.
The third time through, I walked up to h
im until I could hear Frank whisper, “Don’t beat yourself up, Jason. You didn’t know. You couldn’t know. It’s her. She’s a shifter. The handcuffs keep her contained. The Boss wants your fallen angel. Keep Woe safe.”
The shifter’s bindings fell from her wrists. Her irises glowed blue and her bright red lips curled into a crazed grin. And then she descended on Frank.
This time through, I watched Frank, not the attacking woman. She captivated, his face awash in… in…
Pleasure? How could that be?
“No, Jason!” Frank’s yell surprised me. “Go, Jason, go.” He gasped. His voice broke and his eyes rolled back in his head. Frank convulsed.
A brilliant flash obscured the two of them and an almost-familiar smell wafted through the air. When the glare dissipated, Frank lay on the ground and she stood over him, breathing hard.
“That’s interesting,” Arún murmured.
The woman’s shoulders drooped. Her smell had changed again. Her lavender eyes morphed to brown, searching until she identified me. “Was he your friend?” She didn’t want to be here. She hadn’t wanted to kill Frank.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she whispered. “What was his name?” Her face twisted. She pressed her palms to her forehead and swayed.
Before she could take a step, they slapped the handcuffs back on her wrists. Her posture straightened and she was once again the mechanical woman who had arrived.
Arún asked, “Did you see that?”
Breathing hard, I couldn’t ignore the fresh wave of anguish. I hadn’t seen anything but Frank dying again. “What?”
Arún didn’t answer.
Then I was back in the Atheneum. My fingers cramped from squeezing the armrests of the recliner. I sat up slowly, my stomach upset and my face was wet.
Vic stared at me.
I tilted my head. “What?”
She didn’t answer either.
I tried to stand, but a wave of dizziness knocked me back to my seat. Nobody spoke. The eerie silence unsettled my composure.
Lev must have seen my rising panic. He flashed two thumbs up.
Arún stepped in front of me. He offered a hand up.
I hesitated only a moment before I let him help me to my feet. Big mistake. He doused me in magic, and I gagged from the stench, but the nausea was gone. I couldn’t tell which was better: dealing with the smell or dealing with the upset stomach.
“Good job, priest. I think we got what we needed. Did you see it?”
I thought back over the memory replay. “I don’t think…”
“That’s not unusual,” he said. “The emotions are still high.” He sat on the coffee table.
I took Woe’s spot on the settee. She was not going to be happy when she figured out Arún had decided to help us. “What did I miss?”
He stroked the white feather. “The woman is your peacock shifter.”
“I figured that much out,” I scoffed. “Frank believed she murdered transients.”
Arún stroked his chin. “It’s not as simple as that. She’s being held captive. Did you see the handcuffs?”
“Yeah.”
“They’re made by an old metalsmith who’s worked for my family for years,” he continued. “I recognized the binds. They’re part metal, part magic. They’re made for Fae. They work on this shifter, too.”
I glanced at Lev. He was listening as closely as I was. As a shifter himself, he had a personal interest. “Why does she kill for them?”
He shook his head. “She doesn’t.”
I gave him a dark look.
“Not on purpose,” he continued. “I believe they starve her. They keep her tied up until she’s ravenous. By the time they put somebody in front of her, she can’t control herself. Did you see the bright flash at the end?”
I nodded.
“That always happens at the moment of brain death. The body is left behind. It’s only a shell. You can smell her powers, right?”
“What does that have to do anything?” Vic asked.
Lev leaned in.
“Sure.” I wasn’t sure what that had to do with anything.
Arún continued, “The reason it smells all muddled is because she’s always sucking up the energy from other beings. It confuses things. It makes her hard to track.”
“That complicated things,” Lev rumbled.
The Librarian wrung his hands.
Arún crossed to another bookshelf and pulled out a volume from the same collection as the first book he had selected. “Read this. She’s a shifter and a psy-vampire, of sorts.”
I had heard of those, but never seen one. “Is there a way to track her?”
“Maybe,” he said.
“Can we control her?”
“Maybe.” He dropped the book on my desk.
“Maybe?” I drummed my fingers on my desk. “You’re not much help.”
“Jason, really,” Vic sighed. “He’s trying.”
“I’ll have a talk with the metalsmith who made those bindings.” He frowned. “I believe we have a storehouse of such restraints. We use them on Fae that commit crimes.”
I steepled my fingers. “Your people commit crimes?”
He didn’t quite roll his eyes, but I got the impression that he wanted to. “Every several hundred years, we have some kind of excitement.”
“When will you go?”
“As soon as possible.” He winked at Vic. “I promised Woe a trip home anyway. I want her to meet my parents.”
“What?” My voice came out as a squeak.
“I’ll let you know when we get back.”
He grinned and then let himself out. Vic and Lev followed moments later.
With the plan decided, I couldn’t get one thing out of my head.
Somehow, Arún’s grin didn’t make me feel better… about anything.
34
Off to Eilean Ren
Woe
Over New Haven City
I paced in front of the wall of glass with my arms crossed.
The lights of the city winked and twinkled below. Arún had been gone for hours, and I didn’t want to wait anymore. I ate leftovers for dinner. I had packed and re-packed my suitcase. He could have at least sent me a brain-message or something.
The handle jiggled and I spun, ready to give Arún a piece of my mind.
The door creaked as it opened slowly. I leaned to the side to see him, but nobody was there. I approached the empty hallway, cautiously listening for any out-of-place sound. I could see the closed doors of the elevator beyond. Arún should be the only other person who could get up here. The building had excellent security.
I grabbed the fire poker as I passed it, raised it over my shoulder like a baseball bat and crept forward.
A hulking shadow growled from behind me, and I screamed. I spun, ready to beat the enemy to death. But instead of an enemy, a silver-eyed Fae grinned at me.
“Boo,” he whispered and kissed me on the mouth. I made a fist and punched his chest. He deepened the kiss, and then I forgot my anger. I melted against him like butter on his favorite skillet. He didn’t play fair.
When he finally broke the kiss, he crushed me to him. “I’m sorry I’m late, Woe. Time got away from me.”
I pushed away from him. “You decided to help Jason?”
Arún shrugged. “Maybe. I thought we could decide once we were back from our trip.”
I couldn’t help it. I clapped like a little girl. “Really? We’re still going?”
“Naturally. You still need to meet my family. I’ve already sent word. We’re going tomorrow.”
His words filled me with excitement.
And dread. Lots of sudden, heart-stopping dread.
I swallowed. The nerves were awful. I was about to meet Fae royalty. Arún’s parents.
The next morning, I woke to Arún shaking me. I’d gone to sleep in the spare bedroom.
“Ready to go?” Arún mimicked a chipper squirrel, already out of bed and fully dressed. The smells
of breakfast wafted through the apartment.
Arún, the alarm clock… I could have smacked him.
“Coffee,” I said. “First. Coffee.” I really needed to cancel my lease at the other place.
He held up one of only three mugs in the place. Steam curled above the light brown liquid. I scooted upward and back until I leaned against the headboard.
He jogged back to the kitchen where something smelled like butter and cinnamon. I staggered into the dining room a few minutes later, wearing only a t-shirt. A plate with freshly baked cinnamon rolls, light and fluffy as clouds, awaited me on the table/counter.
“These taste like Lev’s,” I said after the first mouthful.
Arún’s gaze lifted from the newspaper and drifted down my body. Even still groggy, Arún stirred aggressive things in me that Jason didn’t. I shivered, suddenly hoping he’d put his newspaper down.
“He shared the recipe with me before I left last night.” Arún went back to reading the paper, but laid his hand on my bare knee, running his fingertips along the sensitive skin behind it.
Two cups of coffee later, we behaved like a regular couple at breakfast, like in the sitcoms on the snippets of television that I had seen, finishing our meal and playing footsy under the table. While he cleaned up the kitchen, I headed to the shower.
Afterward, I changed into slacks and a button-down shirt I’d bought in a store where the clerks had made me uncomfortable, constantly asking questions about my size or asking if I wanted to try them on.
Next, I tried to do my make-up.
I was still new at painting my face. I stabbed myself in the eye with the mascara wand, so I washed it all off and started over. This time, I dusted my cheeks with a light pink blush and carefully applied the mascara that had attacked me earlier.
Arún poked his head into the bedroom. “Ready?”
I grimaced. “As ready as I’ll ever be.”
“Then let’s go.”
He grabbed my bags and started toward his bedroom. “Can you get the door?”
Woe for a Faerie Page 19
