by Olivia Hart
She turned and left the bar, grabbing Tony’s hand as she left. I ordered another vodka cranberry since it would take a while to get her away from the crowds of people with their hands up her skirt.
I looked into the mirror again, and I saw a man standing behind me. Jet-black hair that hung down below his shoulder, lips that seemed too red to be natural, and features that were just a little off. Beautiful beyond anyone I’d ever met, but off.
More than anything, his eyes were different. Not the shape of them. Not really the placement on his face or even the color. Deep blue that made me think of the oceans. But they seemed to pull me in with an energy I’d only seen in two people in my life.
My mother and father. I’d forgotten so many things about them, but I’d never forget their eyes. They burned with a fire that couldn’t be forgotten.
Now, I was seeing that same fire in his eyes. I turned around trying to see the rest of the man who was looking at me. There wasn’t anyone with long black hair. I stood up, looking through the crowd. He should have been easy to see. He’d be tall and so different from everyone else.
He wasn’t there, though. He’d disappeared in the half a second it took to turn around. How was that even possible?
I sat back down on the barstool, but when I looked at the mirror again, he was still there. I blinked, but he didn’t disappear. He gave me a half-smile, our gaze meeting in the mirror, and I turned around as fast as I could.
Instead of the man, Sasha, Tony, and Tiffany stood behind me. I looked all around just as I had before, trying to spot the man, but he was gone.
“Who are you looking for, Rose?” Tiffany asked.
“A guy with long black hair. Like a clean rock star or something. He’s tall.” Everyone started looking around, even Tony.
“I don’t see anyone like that,” Sasha said after a few moments.
I frowned, my lips pressing together as I took one last look around. “I was looking in this mirror, and he was there, but when I turned around, he was gone.” I sat back down and looked in the mirror, but he wasn’t there.
What was going on? That was so freaking weird. Was I going crazy? Last night, I did something and got away. An impossible thing. Now, I’m seeing a guy in a mirror when he’s not actually there.
I left the rest of the drink in the glass and shook my head. I called the bartender for my tab, and then we left the club.
Something was going on. Something strange. Maybe I really was going crazy. I looked at Sasha and Tiffany, doing my best to ignore Tony. I would give them another hour, and then I was going home. I was going to spend that hour drinking enough that when I got home, I would be able to pass out.
They’d had their fun. I’d had my twenty-first birthday. I needed to feel safe now.
Chapter 4
Sebastian
She was part fairy. There was no doubt in my mind. Her eyes had burned with raw magic as all fairies’ eyes did. I’d half-expected that. The contract had indicated as much. No other half-breed would have been able to pull enough power from the Immortal Realm. Why would Seraphina want her dead?
Seraphina rarely involved herself in dealing with half-breeds. The siren had been killed because she was dangerous and because she would draw far too much attention. A half-fairy wouldn’t. She wouldn’t be able to draw power without training or desperate need.
I needed more information.
As I strolled past the buildings that surrounded the club with my hands in my pockets, I thought about the girl. She was beautiful in a very Dark Court way. Her chestnut hair was more than a little wild. Fair skin that had a natural tan from spending time in the sun. She was meant for the woods, not this city.
And that magical scent. Dark power that had no outlet, no direction. It just swirled around her. Intoxicating power that longed to be used. For the first time in centuries, I felt something stir inside me. Not a physical urge. Something more. Something deeper. Something darker.
I sighed. I didn’t want to kill this girl. At the same time, I didn’t want to force Nyx into a confrontation that only one of us would walk away from. Seraphina had to have known that I’d hate doing this. This had nothing to do with killing the girl and everything to do with pushing me into a position that would give her an excuse to execute me. Then, the Dark Court would rise up against her, and she would have a good enough reason to slaughter them all.
If only Nyx would have let me just hide her away in the Dark Court. Seraphina wouldn’t have even looked for her. She hated spending time in the Dark Court.
What a twisted web you weave, Seraphina. You were meant for that damned Court of Light. No one in the Dark Court could be so cruel and vindictive.
I gritted my teeth. No, I would have to kill this girl, but first I would come to know her at least. I would understand her so that at least someone remembered her after she was gone into the void.
Walking into an alley, I touched a shadow and felt the warren beneath it. It was time to meet the girl that had to die.
* * *
I lay down on the roof above the girl’s sorority house. She’d come home several hours ago and would almost certainly be asleep. Especially with how drunk that girl had been. It was almost painful to watch her get hauled out of the car by her friends, and it had been especially painful to see the guy putting his hand under her skirt as he “helped” her.
That was none of my business though. I wasn’t here to judge her life, only to understand it. Someone should since her friends most certainly wouldn’t. No human could ever understand a half-breed’s life. The need to be around others of their kind would be a constant burden that would never be relieved.
It would feel like they were wearing someone else’s skin. Especially since she’d never touched the Immortal Realm, never claimed her magic. She would never know what it was like to let all that power loose to change the world before her eyes.
I lay on the roof of the sorority house and closed my eyes, reaching out and searching for the only person in the house with any sign of power. There it was, the shimmering ball of magic inside her. Dark and twisted, it writhed inside her, full of pain and longing.
I built a tie between us out of my own power, a skill every incubus knew instinctively, and I left my body to join her in her dreams.
* * *
A tile floor. Aisle after aisle of racks of food. Boxes and bins filled with produce.
She was drunk and dreaming of a grocery store? I guessed that her friends decided against giving her anything to eat after getting her drunk. I shook my head softly. Terrible friends.
I approached the girl and noted that she still wore the same outfit that she’d gone to the club in. A corset top that accented her thin waist. A miniskirt that would have made any man want to run his fingers over her legs in the hopes of discovering what lay under the fabric.
“Good evening,” I said as I approached her while she filled her basket with produce.
She glanced at me and then turned all the way around to look at me. “You!” she exclaimed. “What are you doing in my dream?”
I raised an eyebrow and cocked my head in surprise. “What do you mean? Why wouldn’t I be in your dream? You tried to catch me, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” she said, giving me another glance. “But you shouldn’t be here. I didn’t create you. I would never have given you those clothes?”
I glanced down at myself. I wore the same thing that I wore to most human women’s dreams, a pair of slacks and dress shoes. No shirt. It wasn’t especially creative, but human women were generally appreciative of it.
“What’s wrong with my clothes?” I asked.
“You look ridiculous is all,” she snipped as she went back to picking up cantaloupes and sniffing them.
“Most women would disagree with you.” I stepped closer to her, and I could see her pick up on my magical scent. The same one that drew the Fae to me.
“If you walked into a grocery store wearing that, they’d throw you out. Even with your sexy man
abs.” She smiled at me and ran her fingers over my stomach. “I’m not going to throw you out, but you may want to put something on or he might,” she said, pointing at a fat security guard that she’d just created.
I looked up at where the ceiling should have been but saw dark clouds with streaks of purple lightning. She was struggling to build this world. A part of her wanted to build something different, but she was in desperate need of normal. Something she knew.
She grinned at me and a pink sequined corset appeared around my chest. “There, that should keep the guards at bay,” she said with a cheeky grin.
I bit my tongue to keep from saying something overly snarly at the girl. I wasn’t here to fight with her. I was trying to learn more about her, to understand a girl that would die tomorrow.
“What’s your name?” I asked, ignoring her attempt to annoy me.
“Rose. What’s yours?” She moved the basket, not paying as much attention to me now that I was “properly dressed”.
“Sebastian. Why did you try to catch me tonight?”
“The fire in your eyes. My parents had a fire like that, but nobody else does. I wanted to know what was different about you.”
Her parents were both magical? Then she wasn’t a half-breed. She absolutely needed to be brought to the Dark Court to find out exactly what she was.
“I’m half fairy,” I said, not needing to hide the truth. She’d wake up tomorrow with barely any memory of this anyway. Worst case scenario, she’d wake up tomorrow, remember it, and then I’d kill her. Maybe a little truth before she died would be better for her.
“Uh huh. And I’m a freaking unicorn. Try again, Tinkerbell.” She put one of the cantaloupes in the basket and moved on to the lettuce.
“You might be. Can you tell me about your parents?”
“Why?” She turned around and looked me up and down, and I could tell that she was doing a lot more than taking in my slacks and sequined corset.
“I didn’t create you. But you’re here. I create my dreams. All of them. So, how in the hell are you here, Tinkerbell? And why are you asking about my parents?”
I blinked. No one acted like this when I dream walked. Well, almost no one. “I’m visiting your dream. Like I said, I’m half-fairy. I need to get to know you.”
She smiled. “Oh right. Almost forgot your wings, Tinkerbell. Don’t worry, they match your outfit, and I’m sure they’ll help you visit other people’s dreams like the magical creeper you are.” A pair of cheap costume wings appeared on my back, and I tried to pull them off me, but they were attached to the corset.
I gritted my teeth. The corset had been funny. This was a little much.
“When did your parents die?”
“My dad died in a car accident when I was six, and my mom died almost a year later.” She smiled as she said it.
“I think you need to go, Tinkerbell.” She looked up at the clouds that had grown larger with more frequent purple lightning. “It’s about to get bad in here.”
I ran my hand through my hair, and was about to say that I wasn’t worried, but then I found myself laying on the roof of the sorority house. I reached out to test my tether to Rose and found that it had been cut.
I’d never had a tether cut before. I didn’t even think that someone could cut my tether other than an incubus or succubus who was stronger than me. How could an untrained twenty-one year old do it?
I tried to reset my tether but found that it wouldn’t stick. I could find no purchase in the twisting, writhing ball of magic within Rose.
The original thought was to learn about the girl so that someone would remember her, but now that I’d met her, I knew that I couldn’t get any closer. She was too different, too unique. If I found out any more about her, I’d never be able to go through with killing her.
I sighed. Tomorrow, she would have to die. There was no other option. What a waste.
Chapter 5
Rose
That dream had been weird. And who was Tinkerbell? I giggled a little thinking about him in a sequined corset and pink wings. Then I remembered the bit of chest hair that had crested the top of it and how much I’d wanted to run my hands through it. That was almost weirder than him being there. I never wanted to talk to men. Much less touch them.
Those eyes, though. I kept thinking back on them. I never thought I’d see anyone else with eyes on fire like that. But had I even seen them? Was I so nostalgic over being reminded of my parents that I was making up people with their eyes?
He hadn’t actually been at the club. We’d all looked for him. Why had I seen his reflection in the mirror? Was I going absolutely batshit crazy?
There were just so many things happening that were completely impossible. Either there was someone playing an incredible series of practical jokes on me or I was losing it.
It all seemed so real, so impossibly real. I could ignore any one of the bizarre oddities. People had weird dreams. They saw strange things when they’d been drinking. But that night in the alley? How could I possibly have escaped that?
“Ugh!” I muttered as I walked down the street to the bus stop. “It’s no use thinking about it. Even if I’m going crazy, there’s not a lot I can do about it.”
I shook my head and took a deep breath. “I guess I’ll just go buy some lunch and try to forget about it all like a normal, not batshit crazy person would do.”
I sat down on the bench at the bus stop and noticed a woman for the first time. How had I missed her when I was walking up to the bench? Had she even been there before?
I looked at her, unable to turn away. This was the woman from the other night. The one who had tried to warn me. The crazy one.
She appeared to be homeless. Covered in clothes that looked like they hadn’t been washed in months, there was a distinct smell coming from her. Yet, she had a smile on her face like there was nothing wrong in the world.
Sitting up straight, with her hair flowing wild and unkempt from a dirty headwrap, somehow, she looked like she didn’t belong with the rest of the homeless that I’d met.
And then I saw her eyes. Just a little bit bigger than normal. Just a little bit further apart. And burning with that fire like the man in my dream. Like my parents. Like me.
In her hand was a small bag, and she dug a handful of birdseed out of it, tossing it to the pavement in front of us.
Birds of all variety flocked to the seeds, and she turned to me, giving me a wide smile. “Good morning, sweetheart,” she said in a full-bodied voice. No hint of the cracking voice of an addict or smoker. And no hint of the crazy from the other night.
If this woman was homeless, she certainly wasn’t the typical homeless woman, and she might have answers to all of the questions that were racing through my mind. I turned to face her and tried to figure out which of the million questions running through my mind to ask first.
“What did you mean two nights ago? The stuff about shadows having claws.”
She reached down, seeming to ignore the question, and put her hand out, and I watched in complete surprise as a dove that had been eating the seeds walked over to her. Reaching down as if it were the most normal thing in the world, she picked the dove up and put it in her lap.
I rubbed my eyes and blinked several times as she petted the dove. It began to coo as though it were completely happy with the situation.
“Why is that bird letting you hold it?” I said it softly, as though my voice would scare the comfortable bird.
“We are all connected, my dear. Even the birds. You just need to know how to pluck the cords that run between us, and you’d be surprised at what will happen.”
With an almost childish grin, she tossed the dove into the air. It flew upward, and I watched it, my eyes following its flight as I wondered what it would do. I felt like an idiot, expecting it to do something special, but after watching the woman pick up a wild bird and pet it, I wasn’t sure what was possible.
Especially after the last few days.
The boys tried to kick the birds eating the seeds as they walked by, but the birds moved out of the way just as they normally would have. “How do you sit next to that creature?” one of them said to me, but then he got a look at my face and noticed how different I was.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I thought you were a person and not that witch’s pet frog.” I felt my cheeks warm as a blush came over me, and I looked down. I’d been mocked my entire life for how I’d looked, but it never stopped hurting. I felt tears beginning to well up, but a strange compulsion made me look back up at them.
The one who had called me a frog began to laugh, throwing his head back. Something flashed in the air above him. He immediately began choking and fell to his knees. I didn’t understand what I was watching, but I couldn’t turn away as the asshole began vomiting on the grass beside the sidewalk.
I glanced at the homeless woman who was smiling even wider than earlier and beginning to giggle. The guy still standing was laughing at his friend as he vomited, and I heard his words more clearly than I thought possible.
“How did a bird shit in your mouth?” I blinked, knowing somehow that this dirty woman that sat next to me had done this. It was crazy. Completely insane. There was no way that anyone could have made that happen, but the coincidence was just too much.
“Dear,” she said, reaching out and taking my hand as she looked me in the eye. “The world is about to become a very strange place for you. Very strange, indeed. Remember this moment.”
At that moment, the bus pulled up, brakes squealing slightly, but I couldn’t think of anything except the woman’s words as they filled my mind. I couldn’t look away. I couldn’t turn away from the woman with eyes that held a flicker of the fire that the man in my dream had.
Then she began to speak. “The Prince is a friend in search of a secret that only you possess. He is death, but he will be your life when he finds your secret. Trust the Prince. Only he will be true.”