My bubble deflated. I wanted Vitae to accept me, to treat me like the other shields. Rather than show him how much his disapproval hurt, I covered by rolling my eyes. “Yes, Dad.”
Vitae’s jaw clinched, but he let go of my keys.
I hurried away toward my Jahammer in desperate need of some dark chocolate.
Quayla
The drive through Atlanta dragged on, particularly under the disapproving glower of the bronze angel. I tried to flow between the traffic, but too often jockeying drivers blocked the easiest paths.
When I’d been younger, the challenge of flowing through traffic without getting stopped had been something of a game. Drivers of that era hadn’t cut each other off for another car length. They hadn’t been anywhere near as impatient or egocentric. Road rage hadn’t even been some writer’s nightmare rather than a fact of life that had mortal governments writing laws to limit the bloodshed.
The DeKalb Farmer’s market hadn’t been any more polite than Atlanta byways. It’d taken me twice as long to stock up on fruit and chocolate croissants because the woman in front of me refused to surrender her position in line while she sent children running for last minute items.
I pulled into a parking lot separating Ponds de Leon Flowers and Camp Woof—a doggy daycare run by a fabulous old man who’d have made a perfect match for quirky Mrs. Cox if he hadn’t been gay.
Pete’s one of the good ones, a shining example why we should protect humanity from the Sidhe.
The bell over the door jingled as I entered the flower shop and inhaled the mixed perfumes. The sweet symphony wasn’t quite as wonderful as the garden back at headquarters, but it was definitely my second favorite olfactory happy place.
“You’re late.” The petite Korean college student’s glower worsened. “Ugh, you ruined your hair. What are you wearing?” She flipped up a hand and looked away. “Never mind, I don’t care.”
“Morning, Judith.” I grimaced at my reflection in the mirror behind the counter. “I don’t like it either, but I haven’t had time to fix it.”
“You should be shot for visual affront of the public.” Judith picked up a small clutch and pushed past me toward the door.
“Where are you going?” I lifted my flower-covered reusable shopping bag. “I bought the mango raspberry croissants you like.”
“I need decent coffee. I couldn’t go get some because you didn’t bother to show up at a reasonable hour.” Judith turned a flat stare at me. “How do you get away with always being late, anyway? Owner should’ve fired you by now—if he ever actually came into the shop. Never mind, I don’t care.”
“There’s tea in the back.” I smiled. “Besides, you could’ve picked up coffee on your way to work.”
“I did.” Judith marched out of the shop. The door’s bell jangled her displeasure.
Judith’s anger wasn’t the worst thing that had happened that day, but it reminded me of how Dylan had replied or not replied when I’d asked him for help ordering an Uber.
The weight on my shoulders doubled.
If things went badly that night, I might have to call Vilicangelus to erase Dylan’s memory. Clearing out all the pictures made me want to cry, but the prospect of erasing the man I loved so that no memories of us even existed shriveled my soul.
I open the bag, ripping aside cellophane to let me at one of the chocolate croissants. I chewed. The pastries the farmer’s market sold were wondrous, but all I tasted was pencil shavings.
I needed to talk to someone who wouldn’t lecture me or tear out my heart and stomp on it. I rushed out the front door not even bothering to lock it. Neither of us made food, but Camp Woof and I often exchanged treats so I’d bought extra pastries with every intention of delivering them next door.
I just hadn’t planned on delivering them on the brink of tears.
A scruffy-looking man in clothes worn to the edge of indecency came up the block, turning to approach me directly. “Excuse me, miss? Could you help a veteran hard on his luck?”
I glanced skyward, thanking Heaven for reminding me how much worse things could be and how I could still improve lives. I dug out a package of croissants and offered it.
He took it with an uncertain expression. “Thank you, but,” he lifted the hem of a ratty shirt. “I was hoping you could help me with some money, so I can go to a salvation army for another shirt.”
“Oh, yes.” I reached into the too tight pocket for the last of the cash I’d kept stashed in my Jahammer. I handed it all to him.
His eyes lit and warmth blossomed inside me.
“Thanks.” He waved and continued down the street.
I entered Camp Woof to the sound of barking dogs. The pet daycare ran by the amazingly warm old man definitely wasn’t an olfactory treasure, but playing with the animals always lifted my spirits.
A thin woman with short brown hair smiled up at me. “Quayla!”
“Morning, Mara.” I lifted my package. “Croissants for a hug?”
She eyed me for only a heartbeat before rushing around the counter to wrap me in her arms. Her warm reassuring embrace offered the slice of solace I needed.
“Your hair isn’t that bad.” She released me. “I’m sure your Dylan will love it.”
I dug a package of her favorite strawberry and cheese from the bag to hide the gut shot she’d just delivered.
Mara tore open the packaging, grabbed a pastry and took a bite. She rolled her eyes in delight, licking a dab of strawberry puree from the corner of her mouth. “Oh, you are a rock star.”
I forced a small smile and set out the other packages I’d bought for their crew. “I have to get back.”
“Sure,” Mara mumbled through full cheeks. “I’ll tell Pete you came by.”
I retreated out the door only to stop short.
Across the street, the homeless beggar got into a Lexus, put on designer sunglasses and drove away.
“Quayla? Everything okay?” Mara asked.
I inhaled, fighting for calm to forestall the surge of anger and disgust that gripped me like a rope in a giant’s tug-of-war. I hurried back to the shop without answering her. Despite the surrounding beauty and quiet, the day’s events met me in the shop, circling my subconscious like vultures.
I’d died that morning.
True, I’d stopped an incursion, but I hadn’t arrived fast enough to save all the animals. Worse, I’d failed to stop the faeries without exposing their existence to the mortals.
Vitae’d insisted upon handling my cleanup, unwilling to trust that I could do the job without endangering Creation.
I can’t even say his anger’s totally unwarranted.
Worst of all, my screw-ups threatened to take Dylan from me—the only thing outside the florist shop that was truly my own.
It’d been over a century since my first, cataclysmic screw-up. I’d tried so hard to make up for that, tried so hard to do everything right.
None of that effort mattered to Vitae.
He wouldn’t even listen long enough for me to prove I’d done everything right.
My Sidhe informant, Grynnberry, had warned me of more impending attacks on animal shelters. So, I’d hit up a Burlington Coat Factory for a slew of small desktop fountains that trickled water over what the box description had called river stones. Sure, short notice forced me to dip into my nest for essence, but I’d worked tirelessly to distribute the seeded fountains to Atlanta’s various shelters as gifts.
I hadn’t had time to replenish my essence. I couldn’t reach out to the faerie that made the really good fountains I normally used to seed our sentry net until the Goblin Market reopened.
Not to mention Vitae would give birth to little vultures if he knew Sidhe helped build my seeds or that I’d let Grynnberry meet me at my apartment when he had intel to trade.
Until that morning, all the animal shelter seeds had remained quiet except the one a gangly young man had knocked off its perch. The no-kill shelter had been surprised to see me return and
twice as surprised I’d known something had gone wrong with her fountain.
At least I didn’t have to call on Vilicangelus to rewrite the wafer’s memory.
After the urgency of Grynnberry’s warning, the long span of quiet left my nerves on edge.
If I had known I’d have so much time, I’d have visited the faerie craftsman as usual. Ralein’s sturdier, custom fountains contained my essence inside the base—protected against spills and wafer foolishness—instead of exposed.
When the attack came, they were grendlings. Why grendlings? What do Wyldfae want with all those animals?
I cringed.
Other than snacking.
The Sidhe breach opened Atlanta up to Faery, tainting the little seed of my essence hidden in Howell Mill’s stress fountain with me mid traffic jam. Nowhere near my nest, my only option for informing Anima was via the statue’s connection to the angel network. I hated using the network because the sanctimonious bastards monitoring delighted in tormenting us.
I glanced out the shop windows at my Jahammer.
Like when they blew up my motorcycle’s batteries to punish me for speeding.
Unfortunately, Vitae had forbidden Caelum from connecting Anima’s systems to cellular networks or the internet. So, I’d had to talk Anima out of informing Vitae under constant threat of the bored old buzzards telling him just to spite me.
I needed to focus on something other than my woes, so I turned my attention to the shop. I wove my way through the storefront, checking the water levels in all the live pots. Judith might complain a lot, but I found no low vases. None of the plants left out on display showed any signs of dying.
Judith having taken care of the front, I headed into the back, busying myself checking and filling orders. Caelum had put in a big order for another one of his corporate events. Unlike a lot of customers, he left the arrangement to me. It wasn’t a vote of confidence as much as his disinterest in anything as boring as flower arranging. Since I’d already planned out how to arrange his table displays, all I had to do was go through the motions.
Despite my intentions to bury the morning’s disaster by keeping busy, my thoughts drifted back to it. I’d been expecting a small sortie of Unseelie forces and had intended to take at least one alive to question. Instead, I’d faced several grendling tribes working together.
Probably better that they were Wyldfae. Vitae would’ve thrown a fit if I’d killed some vassal connected to one of the powerful Courts.
I’d never encountered so many grendling in one place. Tribes seldom worked together, and they almost never breached the real world in concentrated areas of Seelie-Unseelie conflict.
That Arch practically thumbed their noses at Vusolaryn and Mariena—the local royals of the Seelie and Unseelie Courts. Why make themselves a target of the two more powerful Courts? There were less contentious places to hunt.
Whatever drove the Wyldfae to assault the humane society had cost me a life and all that came with a rebirth. The more technology progressed, the harder it became for my kind to re-enter the world. We had to be circumspect about what we said on phone conversations. We had to guard against agencies like the IRS or INS investigating renters with no apparent income.
I wasn’t as old as Terrance or Ignis, but I knew enough to hide caches around our territory in case of calamity or death. Unlike my previous Shield, Atlanta’s protected a huge metropolitan era. I’d been relocated to Atlanta just after some huge fight between the older shields. Ignis, Terrance and Mare had apparently overruled or ignored Vitae’s objections to taking personal residences and joining the workforce.
The stodgy life phoenix seemed ill at ease close to the mortals, preferring his books and his lofty tower to the life teeming on Atlanta’s streets.
He even dresses almost a century out of vogue.
Terrance had helped me found Ponds de Leon Flowers—his joking suggestion for a name—just after I’d arrived in Atlanta. I’d changed the shop’s ownership over to a shell company a few decades prior in response to several deaths. Current official records designated Quayla Buckler as just a random employee, not even the official shop manager.
I’d never met or even spoken with the Isaac. To the best of my knowledge, none of the others had either except Vitae. The idea of a phoenix with hacking skills of the Isaac’s level didn’t sit right, but Vitae was unlikely to trust anyone outside our kind.
Regardless of his identity, the Isaac had never failed to rebuild one of us after a death. He’d do his computer magic. By the end of day, new Quayla received a new life all her own, and old Quayla vanished as if she never existed.
Except to Dylan.
I bit my lip to keep it from quivering. I didn’t want to lose him. Despite centuries of longing, I’d resigned myself to a loveless existence of duty and sacrifice like Vitae wanted. Neither Terrance nor Ignis had dated in centuries, though they did defend me when Vitae went after me for what he saw as unacceptable fraternization.
Meeting Dylan had been an accident, an act of God—or so I insisted on believing.
He fits with me in a way I can’t explain. He makes me better.
Anytime duty grew heavy or selfish wafers made my resolve waiver, I need only picture his face to remember why it was so important that they protect humanity.
If dying isn’t enough to send him packing, enduring Detective Foxner’s looming inquisition is likely to seal the deal. Can’t really blame either of them. If I were Foxner, I’d be digging into my world right now—not to mention turning upside down every life connected to mine.
A lot of things bothered me about the morning’s assault, certainly not least of all the loss of life—the animals more than mine. Unfortunately, no matter how much I tried to puzzle out whys and wherefores surrounding the incursion, the coming confrontation with Dylan kept intruding.
Not even dread over Vitae’s coming inquisition could push aside the possible end of my relationship.
Sweet and smart, compassionate and caring about the environment—few lovers had fit me so exactingly. It was as if we were the same person, separated only—momentarily at least—by gender.
Tears I knew I should save dripped from my nose into the table arrangements.
A tinkling of bells and the wafting aroma of over-sweetened coffee announced Judith’s return. She joined me in the back, frowning. “Quayla?”
I opened my mouth to ease Judith’s concerns, but the young woman filled the silence first.
“Did you stop wearing lifts or something? You seem shorter. That or you got extensions before that stupid perm.”
I frowned.
I might have to fire her if she looks too close.
“Never mind.” Judith snatched up a pair of shears and set to scissoring plants with dour viciousness. “I don’t care.”
Maybe it’ll be all right. Even the most perceptive wafers seldom bother giving someone they know a thorough second look.
I imagined Judith’s reaction if I walked into the store with a new Magnum PI body.
I can almost hear her.
I smiled through the tears.
6: Aftermath
Vitae
I marched off the elevator into the city morgue’s lowest basement. Mortals had been created with near limitless possibilities. Most of the populace exercised this potential watching cat videos on the interweb.
Over recent years, laziness and convenience had become humanity’s goal. It didn’t matter if living five minutes closer to something cost a whole forest and the wildlife dependent on it. The forest came down and newer, closer homes went up. Greater convenience trumped all other concerns.
Proof positive we can never let them know about the faerie.
The current trend for shirking personal responsibility while micromanaging other’s lives had expanded government oversight considerably. Su
ch meticulous administration thrived on mortal functionaries comfortable wearing blinders while they jockeyed for little caches of power rather than thinkers interested in embracing the truth. These regulators of everyone else’s business had no room in their lives for introspection or evidence that might shatter their petty little world views.
Creation might’ve been better gone to the dogs.
Examples dangerous to humanity’s carefully crafted ignorance ended up in Basement E.
“By the gods...,” an eager young voice escaped the far examination room. “This is incredible, just incredible!”
I pushed open a heavy door and stepped into one of the medical examiner’s room. Chemicals and death hit my nose in a barrage as taint rubbed against my flesh like an insistent cat.
A red-haired youth with a lip-mold mustache and a medical coat stared down at an exam table. His teeth pinned a lopsided half grin. A scalpel in his hand deftly scraped a nodule of flesh away from a trollbone blade. Delighted eyes brightened. He bounced on the balls of his feet, a titter escaping his lips like a toddler amazed by a trick for the hundredth time. He cut away another nodule with another bounce, glancing from the regrowing spot and the little growing balls of troll flesh.
I cleared my throat.
The medical examiner glanced up, his expression changing to that of a guilty child. “Who’re you?”
I folded my hands behind my back. “I intended to inquire the same thing.”
The young mortal put down the trollbone and extended a gloved hand. “Bradley.”
The room’s potent taint disqualified the exuberant youth of being Fae Kissed. I’d rather not have touched him, but a gentleman’s greeting—even if unearned—could verify the mortal’s condition. Still I resisted, paying attention instead to the faerie weapon.
The rate at which the small exposed spot regrew the rest of its missing body appeared too slow to offer an immediate concern. Unlike the bone, the numerous flesh nodules weren’t limited by magical acid. They grew outward in all directions without the constraints retarding growth on the trollbone weapon. If I didn’t intervene, the childish mortal’s little experiments might soon grow out of hand into a hungry horde of trolls.
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