Edge of Magic (Tara Knightley Series Book 1)

by Jayne Faith

  “No, just meeting up with a friend,” I said.

  She cast a quick frown at me. “You’re going into Faerie for fun?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Then what? Is it a guy? You’re an adult, Tara. You don’t need to hide it from me if you’re dating someone.”

  I rolled my eyes. At my age, I didn’t need my sister reminding me I was an adult.

  “It’s a guy, but it’s not a date,” I said grudgingly. “I wouldn’t even call him a friend. He’s more of an associate.”

  For the love of the goddess, I was twenty-seven years old. Even though Felicity was ten years older, the way she talked to me sometimes made me want to yank my hair out. Which would just further cement in her mind that she was the older and wiser of the two us and had every right to pry into my business without a shred of shame.

  She started to say something else, but I held up a hand.

  “I’m not answering any more questions,” I said. I pointed at the skate park. “You can let me out here.”

  I didn’t think Ray was there yet, but getting dropped off a block away from the doorway would keep Fel from getting an eyeful of him if he’d already arrived. The less she knew, the better.

  She pulled over to the curb. “Please be careful, Tara.”

  “Always.” I reached over to give her a quick one-armed hug.

  “Do you need me to come and get you later?” she asked before I could shut the door.

  I shook my head. “I’ll get a ride.”

  Ray could probably give me a lift, but even if he couldn’t, I didn’t want to try to coordinate transportation with Felicity. I had no idea how long I’d be gone. I suppressed an exasperated sigh over not having my own car as I waited for my half-sister to drive away. Once the Honda was out of sight, I jogged over to the concrete pillar.

  Just as I got there, a large black SUV pulled to a stop across the street. The lights and engine shut off, and Ray got out. He covered the distance between us in what seemed like only a few steps of his long-legged stride.

  He flipped his fingers in a wave.

  “Hey,” I said. “I appreciate you doing this on short notice.”

  He shrugged and stuffed his hands in the front pockets of his jeans, shifting his weight back to his heels as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

  “No worries.” He lifted his chin at the doorway etched into the column. “What is it you want help with?”

  “Before we get into that, I need an oath from you,” I said.

  His dark-blond brows inched up. “For what?”

  “I need a promise that you won’t hunt the Dullahan skull, have anyone else hunt the skull on your behalf, or give anyone else any other info about my hunt for the skull. I also need you to swear that you won’t ever speak of me in connection with the individual I’m going to be asking you about.”

  I hoped that covered it all. Language for Fae oaths was tricky, and it was easy to leave loopholes.

  He pulled up straight and held his hand up palm-out, as if he were getting sworn into court. “I have no intention of double-crossing you again.”

  Sure, he meant that in the moment, but things could always change.

  “That’s good to know, but I still need the oath,” I said.

  “No problem.” He peered down at me, a spark of curiosity in his dark-blue eyes. “You’re going to hunt the skull even though Shaw doesn’t want you to, huh?”

  “Yep.”

  “Ballsy.”

  I knew he wanted an explanation, but I didn’t owe him one. Once I mentioned O’Malley, Ray would no doubt put the pieces together anyway.

  I recited the words of the oath, and he swore to uphold the agreement. My blood quickened and warmed, and silvery Fae magic shivered through the air between us, sealing the promise.

  “Okay, what’re we doing?” Ray said, rubbing his hands together eagerly.

  “I need you to help me get in with someone. Possibly strike a deal. But first we have to find him.”

  “Who?”

  “Isaac O’Malley.”

  Ray’s expression fell, and then his face tightened. “Why would you get involved with him?” He seemed genuinely distressed.

  “Because I think he’s part of my path forward,” I said. “The one that will give me some control over my life.”

  He’d started shaking his head slowly. “Tara—”

  I cut in. “Do you want my help with the thing that was stolen from your family or not?”

  Ray looked off to the side, his jaw muscles twitching. “Yes. But this isn’t a good idea.”

  “Your input has been noted,” I said. “Now, do you think we should start at McStaggers Tavern? That was where you spoke to him not long ago.”

  “O’Malley wouldn’t be there tonight,” he said.

  “Then where would he be?” I asked.

  “Los Angeles.”

  I let out a short, surprised little laugh. That was definitely an answer I would have guessed. “And now you’re going to tell me how you know this.”

  “Work,” he said.

  I narrowed my eyes. “C’mon Ray. If you’re going to be cagey, it’ll just waste both of our time.”

  He inhaled and then let out a long breath. “It was a year ago. It was a job for a collector in L.A., and I got temporary use of a restricted doorway inside a club that O’Malley frequents.”

  “But O’Malley wasn’t your client?”

  “No.”

  “Who was?” I asked.

  Grimacing, he scratched one temple with an agitated gesture. “I’m bound by confidentiality.”

  “Okay, the name of the club owner, then?” I had to start somewhere.

  “Alexandra Hart.”

  “Fae?”

  “I don’t think so. She’s a witch. Probably full human.”

  Obviously, Alexandra Hart wasn’t Ray’s client or he wouldn’t have been so forthcoming in naming her, but either way, the name meant nothing to me.

  “What’s O’Malley’s connection to the club?”

  “I’m not sure,” Ray said. “He must have some kind of agreement or relationship with the owner.”

  “How’d you meet O’Malley?”

  “At that club,” he said. “My client introduced us.”

  “What else do you know about him?” I asked. “Don’t say nothing. I know you spoke to him at McStaggers.”

  Ray lifted a hand. “I only did that as a show of respect. Because that’s what you do when you go into an establishment where a man like O’Malley is sitting in the back booth and you and that man have been previously introduced. That conversation wasn’t about anything of consequence. I really don’t know him at all.”

  I sighed, disappointed that Ray didn’t have more to offer.

  “Okay,” I said. “It’d be nice to have more information about him, but either way, we need to go to this club in L.A. so I can speak to him.”

  Ray nodded.

  I waited, but he didn’t offer anything.

  “I don’t know any L.A. doorway sigils,” I said, trying to control my impatience. “Do you?”

  “Oh! Yeah, sorry. I do, actually. We can’t use the restricted doorway that’s in the club, of course, because my access was revoked after I finished that job. The only other one I know will put us out in Santa Monica, which is pretty far from Hollywood where the club is.”

  I smothered another sigh. “How far?”

  He shrugged. “Maybe a half-hour drive, if there’s no traffic?”

  I gripped my forehead. I doubted “no traffic” was a wise assumption for the Los Angeles area at any time of the day, and I didn’t have money to throw around on a long ride-for-hire.

  “What’s wrong?” Ray asked.

  I dropped my hand. “Money’s really tight right now. I can’t be buying expensive rides.”

  “Then it’ll be on me,” he said.

  Not being in a position to argue, I nodded my thanks.

  “Ready?” he asked, moving ov
er to the doorway and looking back at me.

  I reached up and placed a hand on his shoulder.

  “Let’s do it,” I said.

  He muttered the chant, traced the sigils, and together we stepped forward into the shimmering arch. The cold nothing of the netherwhere swept away all sensation.

  We emerged on a narrow, unlit street, which I realized was actually an alley. The humid salt of the nearby ocean wafted up my nose, tainted by the tang of rotting food coming from a nearby dumpster.

  Ray had his phone out. “I’ll get us a ride.” His thumbs worked over the screen for a minute, and then he looked up. “A car should be here in ten minutes. I’m going to have him drop us off a few blocks from the club, just to be safe.”

  “Cool.” I pointed to the nearest way out of the alley. “Let’s get away from this stink, shall we?”

  We walked out onto the sidewalk, and I took a quick look around. The buildings immediately in front of us were commercial use and mostly dark. But one street away, there were bright lights from restaurants and plenty of foot traffic.

  “How far’s the ocean?” I asked, wondering if we might have time to get a glimpse.

  “About four blocks that way.” Ray pointed with his thumb over his shoulder.

  No time for sightseeing. We walked to the corner where our car would meet us, and it arrived right on time. I slid into the back seat of a decade-old Chevy Blazer. The driver, a guy with a salt-and-pepper ponytail, turned to give us a friendly smile.

  “Out for a night on the town?” he asked.

  The radio was playing a moody pop song by a singer-songwriter, a guy in his early twenties with soulful brown eyes a head of thick hair that was always in a sculpted coif. I only recognized his voice because Sasha had been obsessed with his music a year ago. These days, she wouldn’t even acknowledge she’d ever been into the songs.

  “Yeah. Thanks for picking us up,” Ray said. “Hey, could you turn up the radio? I love this song.”

  I gave Ray a baffled look. This was the kind of music he liked?

  Ray shot me a slight frown.

  Oh. He was just trying to get some background noise to give us a bit of privacy.

  “What’s the name of the club?” I asked.

  “Hotel Bar.”

  I squinted at him. Kind of a dumb name.

  He lifted a shoulder and let it drop. “I know. It’s not even in a hotel. That’s L.A. for you.”

  I did a quick search on my phone and scanned the club’s website.

  “How’d the owner manage to get a Faerie doorway installed?”

  “I have no idea, but I’d love to know,” Ray said.

  Doorways required a specialized magic that was a very closely guarded secret. I didn’t know anything about the magic, how the doorways were created, or who made them. But I’d heard that they were enormously expensive, and having the funds didn’t even guarantee getting one. There were only two other private doorways I was aware of. One was on Grant Shaw’s estate. The other was inside the Aberdeen Inn, a very, very old pub in the Duergar kingdom run by a strange Fae man who’d been there so long he was rumored to be well over a thousand years old.

  This Alexandra Hart person, the owner of Hotel Bar, must have had some very powerful Faerie connections and a ton of valuables to trade to get her own doorway. Even odder that she was full human and had achieved such a feat. Maybe O’Malley had been her connection there.

  The website for Hotel Bar didn’t tell me much. It looked like it was going for the same flavor of establishment as some of the older and more famous small music venues around the L.A. area, comparing itself to the Viper Room, Whiskey a Go Go, the Roxy, and others. Alexandra Hart wasn’t mentioned by name anywhere.

  I did a search on the woman, and eventually found enough references that I tracked down a few photos of her. With the screen displaying a picture of a voluptuously sexy woman in her late thirties with long gorgeous waves of ginger hair that looked to be her natural color, I turned my phone so Ray could see.

  “This is Alexandra Hart,” I said. “You’ve met her?”

  He studied the photo. “No, I just know the name. I’d remember her if I’d met her.”

  I looked at the pic again, and I understood what he meant. Alexandra Hart was probably considered plus-sized by unrealistic Los Angeles standards, but she was strikingly beautiful. Her light-brown gaze had a bit of smolder to it, and her wide smile that showed lots of straight white teeth seemed to say she was the type of woman who wasn’t afraid to be direct.

  “Can you at least tell me what general line of work your client was in?” I asked. “The one that led you to Hotel Bar and O’Malley?”

  He shook his head. “Sorry, I can’t.”

  “Is your confidentiality agreement by Fae oath, Earthly contract, or both?”

  He just chuckled, refusing to answer.

  I slouched deeper in my seat.

  “Worth a try,” I grumbled under my breath.

  By the time the car let us off a couple of blocks from Hotel Bar, the sun was long gone. We walked to the venue, and live music blared when the door opened for some patrons ahead of us. Even though it was a Monday night, people were trickling in and my glimpse of the interior showed it was crowded.

  I glanced up at Ray and suddenly realized how much his height made him stand out. Between his unnaturally tall frame and good looks, it’d be almost impossible to keep a low profile. Oh well, nothing to do about that.

  “Ready?” I asked.

  He gave me a little grin of anticipation. “Let’s go.”

  We went up to the counter, and Ray paid for our tickets. The beefy-armed bouncer eyed us as we went through the door. When I saw what was beyond, I stopped short.

  There was a metal detector.

  “Oh, shit,” I muttered to Ray.

  Chapter 24

  I’D PREPARED FOR the night as if I were going to a job, and I was carrying several throwing knives and shurikens that would definitely set off a metal detector. It was a very stupid mistake.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “I’ve got a lot of, um, metal on me,” I said, gesturing to my belt.

  “Can you leave your stuff with the bouncer?”

  “That’s going to look odd,” I said. “Knives, throwing stars. Some of this stuff isn’t exactly legal to be carrying around on this side of the hedge.”

  Not to mention that if I left my weapons and someone swiped them, I’d be out a major expense.

  Ray grasped my elbow and pulled me off to the side so a group of hip-looking bearded guys in their mid-20s could pass by.

  “We’ll find another way to get you in,” he said. “Go around back and look for other doors. There’s got to be a delivery entrance. If it’s locked, text me and I’ll try to get back there to let you in.”

  “Good idea.”

  Ray headed toward the metal detector, and I turned in the opposite direction and retraced my steps out to the sidewalk.

  “Didn’t you just go in?” the bouncer boomed at me.

  “Gotta have a smoke,” I said. “I’ll go down to the corner so it doesn’t waft through the door.”

  He nodded approvingly.

  I stuffed my fists in my jacket pockets and headed to the end of the block. Then I turned the corner to go around to the back. There was an alley, and I didn’t even need to count doors to figure out which ones were connected to Hotel Bar. There were two of them, and they were labeled. One read Hotel Bar Deliveries, and the other read Employees Only. I tried the employee door and found it locked. The delivery entrance door was closed, but when I pulled the handle, I found the catch had been covered with duct tape, preventing it from locking. Inching the door out, I peeked in through the crack.

  A short hallway was poorly lit with a flickering fluorescent fixture that wasn’t fully up to its task. On the left side of the hall and just a few feet away from me was a closed door marked Storage. Beyond that, a swinging door popped open, and a server came out w
ith a tray of paper-lined baskets. The smell of burgers and fries came on the draft that traveled down the hall and outside.

  On the right, there were three doors. The closest was an employee restroom; the next one was cracked open, revealing a slice of filing cabinet. Probably the office. Beyond that was another closed door.

  At the end of the hall was a black curtain, and I assumed by the noise that the main area of the club was on the other side. The server had disappeared through there.

  I let the door fall closed and sent a text to Ray, letting him know I thought I could sneak in.

  Creating a quick story in my head that would explain my presence if anyone happened to ask, I pulled the door open just wide enough to slip inside. I grabbed the clipboard that hung outside the employee restroom as a prop for my story and started striding down the hallway.

  When I neared the office door, I realized there were people inside having a hushed conversation. I halted. Creeping forward, I caught a glimpse of a forearm with gold bangles on it and a long wavy lock of ginger-colored hair trailing over a shoulder.

  My pulse bumped as I shuffled backward. That was Alexandra Hart in there. With a darting glance down the hallway, which was empty at the moment, I pressed against the wall and crept closer. Realizing how suspicious I looked, I shifted so I was leaning more casually, and I raised the clipboard so it’d look like I just stopped to check something.

  “. . . and yes, I realize you did me a huge favor,” a female voice was saying. “But don’t kid yourself, Zeke, you did it more for you than for me.”

  “That’s irrelevant,” an unseen man snapped. “You owe me, and you’re not keeping up with your end of the deal.”

  “Look, I’m doing my best,” the woman said. I assumed that was Alexandra speaking. “But you’re asking me to get mixed up in something extremely risky.”

  They were whispering, but their heated words carried more than they probably realized.

  “I should have asked for a binding oath,” the man said. “Is that what we need here, Alex?”

  My ears pricked at the mention of an oath. The man must be Fae. Only Fae could initiate oaths.