Moment of Truth

by Edwards, Hailey

  With their spyglasses offline, they would be that much more cautious about monitoring the exits.

  “If his sigils fail,” Midas said, “they’ll assume we’re evacuating high-value targets and move to intercept.”

  “The sigils won’t fail,” Bishop grumbled, “but that doesn’t mean the coven can’t counter them.”

  The Faraday might be spyglass proof, but that protection didn’t extend to us.

  “Glamour is out.” I began to pace. “We can’t risk obfuscation sigils either.”

  “There’s a way,” Midas promised me, “and we’ll find it.”

  “We’re trapped.” I spoke the bitter truth. “Either we fight our way out, or we sit on our hands.”

  Reaching for me, Midas lowered his voice. “Hadley…”

  “Any show of hostilities from us will ignite the war brewing on the rooftops,” I countered, “as well as alert them we’re on the move.”

  I bet they could guess what would tempt us out of our hidey-hole too. As many practitioners as the coven had dispatched to the city, I didn’t want to think how much worse Buckhead must be.

  “I…” Bishop worked his jaw. “I can take you.”

  “You?” Gooseflesh pebbled down my arms at his grim expression. “How?”

  “It’s not safe,” he said, ignoring the question. “I’m not safe either. Not when I’m…there.”

  Left unsaid was I wouldn’t be either, but I heard it loud and clear. Pretty sure Midas did too.

  “What do you mean?” I slowed to a walk then to a full stop. “How are you not safe?”

  “I’m not this man.” Bishop stared at his hands. “I want to be, I try to be, but I’m not him.”

  A pang of understanding pierced my heart. “I know a little about that.”

  “You know too little about me.” He angled his head toward the wall. “I should have prepared you.”

  As much as his dire warnings worried me, I couldn’t work up any outright fear. Not of him.

  “You can get me out of the Faraday,” I clarified. “Without the coven knowing?”

  “Both of us,” Midas interjected. “She’ll need all the help she can get to tackle the archive.”

  I had always been curious how Bishop moved around the city, but he kept his secrets closer than I kept mine.

  “I can do two now, two in about an hour.” He glanced between us. “Choose your teammates wisely.”

  “Midas and I will go now.” That was a no-brainer. “Ford and—”

  That fast, I had forgotten. I almost named Ares. She would have been a natural pick for our team.

  But the days of relying on her were over, and I couldn’t afford to let myself forget it.

  “—Remy,” I finished lamely. “There are seven of her, so that’s our own mini army right there.”

  “Remy can find her own way,” Bishop reminded me. “Tell her where to meet you, and she’ll be there.”

  Sneaky was her middle name, and she had been the one to spot the coven stakeout in the first place, but I worried she was spreading herselves too thin. I didn’t want to risk losing another part of her.

  “All right.” I checked with Midas. “I don’t have another pick. What about you?”

  As a nurse, Lisbeth served us best inside the Faraday, and the rest of the OPA was clear of the building.

  “Hank.”

  “Hank? As in, Hank-Hank. Doorman Hank?”

  “He’s good in a fight, and he’s smart. You saw him take down Lillian. That was straight detainment. Operating on his lowest, least violent setting.”

  “Okay, you convinced me.” I trusted him to know his—our?—people’s strengths. “Doorman Hank it is.”

  “Good.” Bishop made it sound the opposite. “That’s settled.”

  An uncomfortable silence fell, a shroud that muffled the room, the quiet only broken when he rose.

  Cold spiked the air around him. “Do you have everything you need before we go?”

  “Let me grab a few things first.” I threw out my hands. “Wait here. I’ll be right back.”

  Midas stared down Bishop as I scurried from the room, hit the elevators, and retrieved the cross-body bag of supplies from our apartment. Breaking personal records for speed, I zipped back downstairs then powerwalked, super casually, to where I’d left them.

  Neither had drawn blood, whatever else they might have done while unsupervised, so I called it a win.

  “You’re certain?” Bishop cupped my jaw in his palm. “You must be, if you accept my offer.”

  Offer had the ring of a fae bargain to it, but Bishop had never required trade for the help he gave freely.

  “I trust you.” I held his gaze. “You won’t hurt me.”

  Heaving a sigh, Bishop took my hand and intertwined our fingers until I started losing feeling in them.

  “Hold tight,” he ordered, serious as I had ever seen him. “Don’t look back. Don’t let go. Don’t panic.”

  “Um…”

  Bishop hauled me into the shadows gathered in the corners of the room and down into the dark.

  Eight

  Biting cold ripped the air from my lungs, and the glare of an unfamiliar sun stabbed me in the eyes as it reflected off the untouched snow carpeting the ground for miles in all directions. “W-w-where?”

  “I’m not telling,” he said, a faint lilt flavoring his voice, “so don’t waste your breath asking.”

  He yanked on my arm, and I was happy to fall in step with him, praying the activity would warm me. The thing I noticed about Bishop, as my teeth chattered and eyelashes sparkled with frost, was the tiny smile on his face as we trudged through the drifts.

  The flakes didn’t stick to him, so much as they kissed him then slid aside, as if welcoming him home. The touch didn’t melt them. I couldn’t tell if his skin was that cold, or if it was an odd trick of the light. But what I knew in my bones, what sent Ambrose bounding ahead of us like a hound on the hunt, was that Bishop had brought me into Faerie.

  I was in Faerie.

  The Faerie.

  And Bishop just…just…walked right in. He traveled this path on a regular basis. He…belonged here.

  I mean, duh, I knew he was fae. A fae fae. A Faerie fae. But this demonstration of power staggered me.

  What the frak was he? Who the frak was he? What was a power like him doing in Atlanta?

  “Almost there,” he called back to me without turning.

  Bishop angled us toward what appeared to be a teeny mountain. It must have been a million miles away. With flat white all around, I had no reference for scale or distance. I had no clue how long it would take us to get there, and I wasn’t sure, if I was being honest, that I would survive in this clime to reach it.

  Kicking up snow as he skidded to a halt beside me, Ambrose, still in his hound form, barked once.

  And I heard it.

  Wait a minute.

  The snow. He’d affected it. It dusted my pants. He had weight and heft in this realm. The bark had been real, audible, not another of his mimes. That meant he could change shape and speak to me here. He had a voice. Any question I thought to ask him, he could answer in this place.

  Assuming I could con Bishop into bringing me back again.

  Questions bubbled up in me for Ambrose, but I couldn’t get my lips to cooperate. They were too numb. I had no control over my facial expressions either. All exposed skin was sheeted with thin ice that crackled as I moved, forming and reforming, as if it wanted to frost me into an ice sculpture and keep me as a bright spot of decoration for the barren landscape.

  Gulp.

  With a whine in his throat, Ambrose leaned against my leg. A subtle warmth filtered through that side of my body until sensation returned to that hand. At his urging, I looped my fingers through his collar, which I shouldn’t have been able to feel, and let him feed magic into me until I almost felt normal.

  “Thanks,” I said when I was able, and it drew Bishop’s attention. “He’s real here.”<
br />
  “He’s always real,” Bishop countered, the color leaching from his skin and hair until he began to resemble the landscape. “The difference is, he’s soaked up enough ambient energy to manifest. He probably can’t do human. Yet. But that size or smaller, yeah. He can make himself tangible.”

  The glamour Bishop used wasn’t a charm, and he always wore it. Always. He was simply so powerful that if he decided to be perceived a certain way, then that was how he would be seen. And here, in his element, he didn’t waste effort on dulling the sharp edges of his appearance.

  “You didn’t think to mention that before you brought me here?”

  “He could kill you.” Cheer honed his voice into an arctic blade. “He could rip out your throat, lap up your blood, and chew on your bones. But it would kill him. He would die with a full stomach, but he would die all the same.”

  Anticipating my instinctive recoil from his graphic words, Bishop tightened his grip until the bones in my hand grated against each other.

  “None of that.” He smiled, his teeth sharp-edged and gleaming. “You’re my guest.”

  A rumbling threat from Ambrose earned an equally vicious snarl from Bishop, but he eased up on me.

  Maybe, assuming I survived this, I wouldn’t return to bump gums with Ambrose. Or ever again.

  Except in my nightmares. Yeah. I could see this place coming back to haunt me.

  This version of Bishop terrified me, and I got the sense he would revert deeper into his true self the longer we remained in this place. It called to him, I could almost hear it, a song of ice and endless hunger.

  The mountain turned out not to be a mountain but a cluster of figures, each one frozen solid and arranged equidistant in a circle. There was room for one more, and irrational fear coiled in my belly as we raced toward the gap.

  This was not my Bishop. I didn’t know if I could trust him not to slot me into that hole. But I didn’t have much choice. Ambrose herded me there as well. With him pressed against my thigh, I had to stay the course.

  Into the macabre ring Bishop sprinted, his light steps no longer disturbing the snow. I stumbled along in his wake, Ambrose urging me onward, and then I got a taste of how it felt to be a thread guided through the eye of a needle.

  The warm darkness of shadows welcomed us, and tears of relief froze on my cheeks before they melted. I hit concrete when my knees buckled, and bright fluorescent lights forced my eyes closed against them.

  A shiver of fear danced along my spine, an awareness of my vulnerability in the presence of a predator.

  Ambrose was a tingle beside me, still in contact with me but no longer real enough to protect me.

  “Well, that was an adventure.” I sank onto my butt to rest, putting my back against a wall. “How are you doing over there?”

  “Clever.” Bishop chuckled darkly. “Get me talking so you can pinpoint my location.”

  “Hey, you fell for it.” I wedged my eyes open. “That’s one ride I don’t want to go on again.”

  He tapped the delicate skin beneath my chin, forcing my head back, his fingertip a piercing cold so acute I felt certain he must have rammed a stiletto through the bottom of my jaw into my brain.

  “I could make you like it,” he purred. “I could make you want it.”

  Mildly shocked to find I wasn’t dead, just partially frozen, I met his snow-white eyes. “This isn’t you.”

  “You don’t know me.” He exhaled, and a cloud of his breath formed between us. “You can’t know me.”

  “You’re Bishop.” I reached up, so very slowly, and wrapped a hand around his wrist. “You’re my friend.”

  The touch or the words thawed the icy veneer that had encased him during our trek. “I’m sorry, kid.”

  Not sure it was the smartest thing to do, I drew him into my arms for a hug. “You’re fine.”

  Cold radiated through him, frosting his voice as he whispered, “I could have killed you.”

  “Nah.” I released him. “You like me too much.”

  A laugh that sounded torn from his chest melted him more.

  “Midas will be waiting.” He grunted and rose, pulling me up with him. “Still trust me?”

  Offering to take me was a show of trust on his part. He knew what would happen to him where we were going, what it would reveal to me of his nature, and he did it anyway. He believed I could handle it, and I wasn’t going to let him down. Not when I had been where he was, so many times, terrified of rejection.

  “Always.”

  An expression caught between a smile and a grimace twisted his lips. “Back in five.”

  “That took five minutes?”

  “Not for us, but for everyone else, yeah. One-way is more like two minutes and change.”

  Time was elastic in pocket realms, or so I always heard, but experiencing it firsthand was bizarre.

  Careful how I phrased it, I fumbled a vague question. “Is it always…like that?”

  I might have meant it any number of ways, and he could have answered it with just as many truths without homing in on the pertinent one, but he was in a giving mood today. Or an apologetic one.

  “It’s worse when I’ve been with…” He ruffled his hair, but there was no snow to shed. “Vasco brings my nature closer to the surface.”

  Yet another reason for me to keep them apart as much as possible, until or unless Bishop wanted to embrace that radical change in himself, which didn’t appear to be the case.

  “I don’t have trouble controlling my urges here, but there…” He trailed off again. “I want to be the guy you know, the guy you trust, but I’m not always. It’s good that you learned the difference.”

  Stepping into shadows, he vanished from my senses before I could thank him.

  Ambrose sat beside me on the floor, in his mostly Hadley shape, staring where Bishop had disappeared. I could tell he wished he could go back. The desire hummed like a live wire between us. Unlike the good old days, he didn’t nudge or cajole or act out. He let the moment pass, picked himself up, and extended his hand toward me.

  “Funny.” I laughed under my breath. “Where are we, anyway?”

  The room was small, maybe six feet squared, and empty.

  A weirdly familiar door stood before us, but it could have belonged in any business I had ever visited.

  “Guess there’s only one way to find out.” I opened it and stepped through. “Huh.”

  HQ awaited me on the other side. Bishop must have dumped me in one of his many, many, many supply closets that filled and emptied depending on the day of the week, his mood, and how much time he had spent online shopping the day before.

  The man was an Amazon addict. Seriously. His one-clicker was downright spastic.

  The command center stood to my left, Bishop’s workspace illuminated by Reece and Anca’s screens.

  No Milo, but he preferred legwork to deskwork, so his absence wasn’t unusual.

  Two rows of monitors were anchored on the wall, which was painted an unrelieved black. The upper row held four screens, each about thirty-four inches, and they were blank. The lower row mirrored the one above it, but those were always on and flashing surveillance mooched off city cameras as well as our own private mounts.

  Tonight, they streamed multiple drone feeds and a cartoon about kids with elemental powers on Netflix.

  “Hadley?” Anca’s warm voice echoed through the room. “Is that you?”

  “It’s me.” I walked over and commandeered Bishop’s seat in the command center. “How’s Milo?”

  “Safe,” she assured me. “He checks in every half hour.”

  That was protocol, and I was glad he stuck to it like glue when it hit the fan.

  Leaning forward, she rubbed the small of her back. “How did you sneak out of the Faraday?”

  “I caught a ride with a friend.” I left it at that and trusted her to let it go. “Any news?”

  “We estimate one hundred and sixty-eight coven members are scattered throughout the
city at present, but we can’t be certain,” she reported. “Based on the frequency of new arrivals, our best guess is they bring groups of twelve through the archive every half hour.”

  About the time I digested that unhappy math, Midas exited through the same closet door I had left ajar.

  Ten years’ worth of frown lines creased his forehead, and his inner predator stared out through his eyes. Muscles flexed in his jaw as he clamped his teeth together, but I could hear his growl from here. Nostrils flared wide, he located me by scent, and the worst tension flowed out of his shoulders.

  Safe to say, based on his ominous expression, his journey hadn’t been a walk in the park either.

  Bishop entered HQ on Midas’s heels, tugged a toolbox off a shelf, then retreated to the closet.

  “I’m heading back to the Faraday,” he announced, not meeting our eyes. “See you in an hour.”

  “Bishop,” I shouted to be certain he heard me. “Make no apologies.”

  “Survive,” he rasped, and then he was gone, swallowed by shadows that seemed darker somehow.

  After Bishop left, Midas clenched and released his fists. He might have been working his joints to warm them, but I got the feeling he was fighting the urge to snatch me and run.

  “Welcome to HQ.” I pleaded with my gaze for him to put a pin in this, and he took the hint. “I’m Hadley, Assistant Potentate of Atlanta, and I’ll be your official guide to the Office of the Potentate.”

  Whoa.

  Flashbacks to leading ghost tours deep into the Savannah night lit up my memory.

  Ah, the good old days.

  Back when no one was trying to murder me.

  “These are the guys.” I led him into the control room then made a sweeping gesture. “Say hi, guys.”

  Reece ignored my shenanigans, as usual, but Anca dutifully chimed, “Hi, guys.”

  Too bad Milo was still in the field. He would have sold the joke. He and Anca played well off each other.

  “You two don’t seem surprised to see Midas.” I frowned. “I expected more get off my lawn threats.”

  “Bishop put it to a vote months ago,” Reece said, head bent over his keyboard. “The motion to grant Midas access in the event of an emergency passed unanimously.”