by May Dawson
Silas scoffed. “Somehow, Maddie is mixed up with the fate of the torn universe. My friends are lovely, but a couple of lives don’t matter in comparison to that mission.”
“They matter to you.”
Silas shrugged. “They do. But I’m practical.”
“Christ, Silas.” Rafe raked his hand through his hair.
“Fine, here’s another idea,” Silas said. “We go in, we get the shield today. It would be ideal to slip in during the ball but—we could probably work our way in as part of the setup crew. Then I open the rip, you guys go back to your world, I save my friends. We save the world and we all get what we want.”
My heart lurched. Leaving Silas behind was not at all what I wanted. But Sebastian, Frederick, Isabelle—they were his family. We couldn’t abandon them. If it came down to it, I’d rather live without Silas than have him lose them.
“Nope,” Rafe looked down, shaking his head.
Silas stared at him, his jaw hardening. “Nope? You’re going to have to work with me, Rafe. Like you said, this is my territory—”
“Shut up.” Rafe looked up, locking eyes with Silas. “You are so smart, Silas, but somehow there are still holes in your brain bigger than that tea cup.”
My lips parted, but I had no idea what to say. This conversation was going even more sideways than I had imagined it might. I wouldn’t be surprised if Silas left us to help them, but I also knew how dedicated he was to what he saw as his first mission. Me.
Silas scoffed, but before he could say anything more, Rafe said, “Let’s go get your friends from Elegiah.”
I exhaled shakily in relief.
Jensen rubbed his hand across his face. “They are both so dramatic,” he whispered to me. “It’s exhausting.”
Silas stared back at Rafe. For the first time in his life, the incredible Silas Zip didn’t seem to know quite what to say.
“If you ever lie to me again, Silas,” Rafe said. “I will make sure you fucking regret it. That was completely unnecessary.”
“Don’t ruin it,” Jensen urged quietly.
“Now,” Rafe said. “Let’s make a plan.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Maddie
In order to break into Elegiah, Silas took us to see a Rebel forger. We walked the sunny cobblestone streets to a house to a busy department store where a few men stood around on stools being measured for suits and couples were looking at dishes. Everything had that strange, vaguely vintage vibe of the Greyworld. I’d bet people would love to vacation here if they could safely travel between worlds.
“Are you taking us shopping?” I asked, stopping to look at a display of elaborate ash trays, some of them shaped like open books or oak trees or statues of couples having sex. Well, that had escalated quickly.
People here really seemed to love ashtrays. Maybe they didn’t have lung cancer in the Greyworld.
“Don’t encourage him to blow through more of his money,” Rafe said quickly.
“That private car would have been worth it if you weren’t a killjoy,” Silas said, leading us through the book department in the back of the store. He glanced over his shoulder as we entered an area ‘that felt hushed as a library, with two stories of books reaching up toward a domed ceiling.
Then he turned a corner around a shelf…and disappeared.
Rafe stopped and rubbed his hand over his face. I wasn’t sure any of us had great odds of surviving the Greyworld, but Silas lowered his with every minute.
Then suddenly, Silas was back, one hand tucked into his pocket and his eyebrows raised. “Well? Are you all coming?”
Rafe sighed under his breath, but said nothing.
We followed Silas through a hidden passage. Then suddenly, we were in a second marketplace, but this one was darker and grungier.
I ducked under a stringy-looking banner. A couple of young people dressed in scanty outfits called out to Rafe and Silas, blowing the guys kisses. Carts were set up along the filthy street selling colorful jewelry tangled together, wands, old books, ID cards. I tried to get a look at everything but the world seemed to move too quickly as we plunged after Silas.
Silas had his hands in his pockets, looking perfectly at home in this suddenly sordid scene. Jensen and I exchanged a glance, but we followed him anyway.
“Doesn’t anyone notice all the seedy characters traveling through the fine china section?” I asked.
Silas twisted to look at me over his shoulder. “Seedy? That’s a bit judgmental.”
I was almost embarrassed, and then he added, “Besides, there are hundreds of entrances. That way they can shut doors as soon as the police find them.”
He led us down an alley, and Jensen muttered beside me, “We’re sure Silas would never mug us, right?”
Silas said, “What do you own of any supposed value anyway, Jensen, besides overpriced clothes and autographed guitar picks? I think you’re safe.”
“Hurtful,” Jensen said. “What do you value, anyway? Since my Air Jordan collection offends you so much?”
“Nothing,” Silas said. “That’s what makes me good at my job.”
Silas certainly didn’t seem to value any material goods. But I wondered if he meant that he didn’t value anything. That disinterest seemed to be what he aspired to.
But maybe we’d ruined Silas as a good Rebel Magician. I wanted to believe that he cared now.
“If you don’t have any money, you can’t buy Maddie anything,” Jensen commented.
“I don’t need anything,” I said quickly.
The last thing I needed was for these males to get competitive about gift-giving; Chase’s beloved home would explode with overpriced handbags and shoes and jewelry if these guys thought it would make me happy.
“And I don’t need to buy Maddie anything,” Silas returned to Jensen.
Jensen rolled his eyes. “You think you’re the favorite.”
“It’s not a competition,” I said, even though I joked about favorites sometimes. The truth was that I adored them all equally. They all completed me in different ways. I’d be lost without any one of them, and they’d be lost without each other, even if they wouldn’t admit it.
“I’m the one she’s afraid she’ll lose,” Silas said, so bluntly that it shocked me.
I stopped dead, staring at him.
But Silas bounded up a few concrete steps and started to pull open a door.
Jensen took one look at my face, then suddenly shot past me. He slammed the door closed against before Silas could pull it open all the way.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Jensen growled.
Silas tilted his head to one side, studying Jensen. “You know, don’t you?”
“Why don’t you spell it out for me. I’m a shifter, I’m a little slow sometimes.”
Silas sighed, and he looked as if he wanted to check his watch, but he met Jensen’s gaze levelly. “This is my world. I’ll do anything to make sure you get that shield, but after that… I don’t know.”
Jensen stared at Silas, his jaw tight. Silas’s face was tranquil.
“Enough,” Rafe broke in. “We’ve got a mission. Feelings can wait.”
“Right,” Jensen said, bitterness in his voice. “Standard.”
Rafe stared at him, tension written across his own face, but Jensen just pulled the door open. He gestured Silas through, curtly.
Silas muttered a word, changing his face back, and suddenly he was once again my blond-haired, cheerful looking man—who had proven to be so easy for people to underestimate. Maybe that was part of why we were so close. We had so much in common.
We entered an art gallery, full of beautiful paintings all of scenes from mythology. It was familiar mythology, all with a twist, from the Greek gods—like a female Poseidon rising from the waves with her trident in hand—to Camelot, including scenes with abandoned swords in the foreground, and Guinevere, Arthur and Lancelot entangled on the Round Table.
“Well,” Rafe said, his tone disa
pproving, even though he seemed to study the painting a bit longer than someone would if they didn’t like it. “The artist is very...gifted. Are these all done by one person?”
“Don’t,” Silas said. “It will make him even more arrogant than he already is.”
“Really? The incredible Silas Zip is talking about arrogance?” An amused voice floated from the back of the shop, and then a tall young man, not much older than Silas, sauntered into view. He had paint smears on his white linen shirt and on his cheek, and his coppery-colored hair was wildly disarrayed.
“I wish no one ever gave me that nickname,” Silas said. “It’s raised expectations terribly high.”
“You gave yourself that nickname.”
Silas shushed him, right before the two of them hugged.
“I’m not introducing you,” Silas said a moment later. “It’s better if you can’t name anyone, and you’ll never find your way back here anyway.”
“In case we get caught?” Rafe demanded.
“Sure,” Silas said easily.
“He’s just dramatic,” the forger assured us. “You can call me Alfred.”
Who chooses to be called Alfred?
“Tell me about your latest scheme,” Alfred said, gesturing us into the back of his gallery. “I assume you didn’t come here to buy some artwork for your home because you’re finally settling down.”
“No,” Silas confessed.
“No happy ending for you until there’s a happy ending for the Rebel Magicians, I imagine,” Alfred said.
I was glad Silas’s back was to me, so he didn’t see the look on my face as we headed into the enormous space behind the gallery, which was unexpectedly bright—with sunlight that seemed to come from nowhere—and filled with paintings in progress. There was also a long desk cluttered with cameras and equipment.
Alfred threw himself down onto a wheeled stool which glided across the room to the desk, as if it knew where he wanted to go.
“We need four tickets to Elegiah, so to speak,” Silas said.
Alfred froze. “You know you’ve always got a ticket to Elegiah waiting for you, Silas. All you need to do is turn yourself in, and if the police manage not to kill you in their excitement, you’ll be there by tomorrow morning.”
“I don’t want to go that way,” Silas said. “I’d like to play a guard.”
“I see,” Alfred said. “And your friends?”
Silas rested his hand on the top of my head. “Prisoner, prisoner, guard.” He pointed to Rafe when he said guard.
“It’s like the world’s worst game of duck, duck, goose,” Jensen muttered.
“Duck, duck, goose?” Alfred said curiously.
“It’s their weird version of prisoner, prisoner, guard,” Silas explained to him. “I don’t know what geese have to do with anything, but their world is a mystery. Can you do it?”
Alfred sighed. “And let me guess. You want me to halt all my jobs—and the Medusa—” he gestured at an enormous painting of a beautiful woman with snakes for hair, “and take care of you before I do anything else?”
“I do,” Silas admitted.
Alfred sighed. “Only for the kid who stole not just prophecy but an entire prophet from the Shen monastary, who killed the Ringmaster when no one else could and who even made Keen laugh once.”
“Please don’t embarrass me,” Silas said mildly, but I didn’t think he really minded one bit. From the way Alfred looked at him, he obviously worshipped Silas.
Rafe snorted, and I could’ve sworn he mumbled, “Incredible,” under his breath.
“I need pictures of all of you,” Alfred said. “You’ll need to dress up. Ugh, you’ll need uniforms. We have to do this all old school.”
“I need prosthetics too,” Silas said. He touched his chin, turning his face from side to side as he ducked to look into a mirror on Alfred’s desk. “As much as I hate to lose this handsome face. I can’t go in like this.”
We went down the street to a tailor’s he knew, who was clearly perplexed by what he was being asked to do, but did it anyway. He pushed his other projects out of the way, clearing the table, and set out the uniforms; then with a flutter of his fingers, scissors and needles and thread began to dance, forming the pieces of our future costumes. I would have watched wide-eyed if Silas didn’t drag me away so he could get his magic-free makeover.
An hour later, Silas was adjusting his lapels absently as he stood in front of the mirror, dressed in a crisp navy blue suit. “Well, I enjoyed a few weeks out of uniform, anyway.”
“It’s only for a day,” Rafe said, as if he were trying to convince himself. “We get in there, Maddie and Jensen find your friends, and we sneak back out.”
“Twenty-four hours, tops,” Silas said, and we all groaned.
“Good thing you’re going as a guard,” Alfred said to Silas. “Although the grounds are warded from magic anyway, just in case a prisoner manages to overcome the marks. There are stories.”
“Just stories,” Silas said.
Alfred gave him a look. “We know there are some overpowered wizards in this world.”
“More stories,” Silas chided.
“Says the man who might have the strongest magic since Arthur himself, who died to close the rips,” Alfred shot back.
“He wasn’t as strong as Merlin,” Silas said.
“Different gifts for different heroes,” Alfred said.
“I’m no hero,” Silas said, but I was pretty sure everyone else in the room heard it as a lie as much as I did.
“Marks? What are these marks?” Jensen asked, his voice hard and protective. He glanced at me. The two of us were the ones going in as prisoners; it would give Silas and Rafe more room to maneuver with the rescue, while Jensen and I got in and found our prisoners. Since men and women could be separated, I needed to go in to find Isabelle and Keen.
“The marks block your magic,” Alfred gestured at the tattoo gun on the table. “We’ll make them artificial, of course.”
“They’re considered a sign of shame in our society.” Silas shrugged. “Doesn’t matter to me.”
“Of course it wouldn’t bother you,” Alfred said.
“Another mission, another tattoo,” I said, thinking of the invisible ink runes that I’d carried in to the Coven of the Day. “Just once, I’d like to get a tramp stamp on spring break like a normal girl.”
“You could get my name.” Jensen nudged me.
“I think you’ve already marked me as yours sufficiently, McCauley,” I said, which made him smile, although he answered, “Never.”
“So, Silas,” Alfred asked as he was working on precisely pasting photographs onto paperwork, “what did you think about Dirtside?”
“Have you ever been?” Silas asked.
“No.” Alfred’s tone suggested that Silas had just asked if he ever enjoyed a vacation to Chernobyl.
It hurt my feelings. Our world was a mess, but it was still home.
“The worlds all have their good and bad,” Silas said absently. Alfred had put him to work, and he had a jeweler’s glass over his eye, carefully forging an ID. “There’s a lot I like about it.”
Alfred let out a laugh. “Oh? Like what?”
Silas seemed to consider. “For one thing, they’re innocent of magic. No one is guarded there the way they are here, expecting that any face might be a trick. They believe that what they see is actually…what they get. Also, I love Starbucks.”
“You’ve spent a lot of time there,” Alfred observed. “So where in the world feels like home now?”
My breath froze in my chest, hoping that Silas would say home was where our family was.
“A rebel magician has no home,” Silas said.
He didn’t even look away from his work.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Tyson
Raura, Arlen, Lake and I rode together through the Fae forest; we were just crossing the border between Spring and Summer, where the lands seemed to merge into one another in
ceaseless beauty. Lush greenery spread to either side of us, broken by occasional shimmering blue mountain streams. It doesn’t matter how beautiful the scenery is when the company sucks.
None of them were talking to each other, which made me uncomfortable.
So I decided to pull a Silas and make everyone even more uncomfortable. I said to Lake, “I know why Arlen and Raura aren’t talking. Why aren’t you talking?”
Lake’s eyes widened. Raura huffed a sigh, and shot me a look that should technically have caused my immediate immolation.
“I never talk,” Lake said, although I was pretty sure it was actually Arlen who usually kept to himself. I was pretty familiar with grouches. Lake wasn’t one of them.
“Come on, let’s go scout ahead,” Raura told Arlen. “You can glower at me just as well.”
“I’m not glowering at you—” Arlen began, his tone acidic, but Raura was already rising in her saddle, moving into a gallop. He frowned at her, frowned at us, and then galloped after her.
It was just Lake and me, who shook his head.
“Those two,” he said.
“They’re both emotional idiots,” I agreed.
“But they love each other,” he said. “Whenever they wake up to it.”
Was that what he was afraid of, being left out? I knew from my time in the Fae world that different pairings, including ménages and harems, was not unusual here.
“And?” I prompted, when he seemed unwilling to go on.
He flashed a stubborn look my way. “Eventually they’ll realize.”
“Lake, I was there when Turic told Raura you loved her, remember?” I said.
“Turic was an evil warlord.”
“That doesn’t mean he didn’t have eyes. Everyone can tell you love Raura.”
“Yeah, and I always let her down.”
“Really? Have you ever asked her what she thinks about that?”
He shook his head.
“Maybe you should try,” I suggested. “It might be more effective than hoping she notices, because Raura has many amazing and kickass abilities, but I don’t think emotionally healthy is on her list of attributes.”
