by Perry, D. R.
“Look, Ron,” I turned my head, relying on the king’s magic to keep me moving without making me trip over my own feet. I almost reminded him that I wasn’t one of his tithed subjects or even a faerie creature, but that felt wrong for some reason I couldn’t name. The instinct that failed to stop my laughter earlier got my tongue surely as a cat. “I signed on as an intern for Mr. Ichiro before you made this request, and he expects my help.” I paused, thinking about how to explain internships for college credit to a Faerie monarch. “It’s a contract I’ve made with the school and Mr. Ichiro, you see.”
“Does this contract ban you from leaving the mortal realm?”
“Well, no, but it bans me from deserting my obligations.” I sighed. “I have to be there tomorrow because I need to write a paper on the experience for my grade. So I’m sorry, Ron, but I can’t skip out on it.”
“Then don’t.” The king stopped his processional march as we reached the silver SmartCar. My magically-propelled feet took two more steps, then turned me so I faced him. “I will expect you at my hunting lodge twenty-four hours from now. You will be given a weapon, assistance, and a dossier on your quarry.”
“As long as I have a way to get there, I’ll show up.” I nodded once, entirely unclear about how I’d use a weapon in owl form. Only magical shifters got to keep any semblance of a humanoid form in the Under.
“Thank you, Messenger.” His words sounded like a title though his smile made me question any gravity it might have. The king bowed his head again.
“Um, you're welcome, I guess.” I sat on the most urgent of the army of nagging questions our conversation had inspired.
“Gee-Nome,” The king crooked one finger, and the Gnome let go of my leg.
“Your Majesty!” Gee bowed so low, his nose brushed the asphalt.
“You will keep an eye on Olivia Adler. Ensure she comes to no harm and secure her passage at the proper time.”
“Yes, Great King!”
The monarch occasionally known as Ron walked backward, a gust of autumnal wind blowing ragged tux tails toward me as he went. He melted into darkness, the reverse process of how he’d made his entrance beside the sculpture. The last I saw of him that night was his grin, as wide and bright as that cat from Cheshire.
I got in my car, fastened the seatbelt, and drove off. I didn’t worry about driving Blaine back to campus. He could hail himself a Lyft or Uber. I understood his ride request had actually been about giving that long-overdue apology.
“Hoo, boy! I forgot Gee,” I said into the flow of warm recycled air coming from the defrost vents.
“Can’t forget me,” the Gnome said from the passenger seat. I managed not to jump.
Back at the dorm, I didn’t pass Go or collect two hundred dollars. I just flailed my way into pajamas and flopped into bed. Sleep came for me faster than a Gnome could vanish.
Chapter Three
Olivia
I woke up at a quarter past noon and lay in bed, blinking up at the ceiling. I still had my old alarm clock, the one loud enough to wake me in the morning during my time as a day creature. It had an LED projector that lit the ceiling up like a temporal Borealis with digitally inscribed hours and minutes in block numerals.
The clock would have let me sleep for three more hours. This was the earliest I’d risen all semester. My internal clock and rhythms were messed up since I’d gone to bed at an unusual time. I rolled over, trying to ignore the blue-green numbers and the heaviness that meant I’d need to get to the restroom soon, but something was off. Instead of drifting back to sleep as originally intended, I flung the blankets away and sprang off the bed, landing in a defensive crouch.
“Don’t get your feathers in a ruffle.” The little figure who spooked me tucked most of their squat body behind the monitor on my desk.
“Geez, Gee.” I lowered my arms. “It’s not nice to startle someone when she’s sleeping.”
“Didn’t.” The Gnome eyed me warily. “Woke and spooked yourself, you did.”
“Whatever, Yoda.” I shifted my weight from one foot to the other. “Don’t touch anything until I get back.” I grabbed my basket of toiletries and headed out the door and down the hall to the fifth-floor bathroom. I stowed everything under a bench, out of the way of anyone else who might come in.
In the shower, I tried to imagine washing away all the turmoil I’d felt in the week since the fire in the house in Olneyville. I shut my eyes, attempting to sort through my thoughts of words and images. That didn’t work out so well for me.
Events from the previous week flashed across the backs of my eyelids like a movie trailer on a silver screen, except in slow motion. Tony sailed through the air, missing the trampoline Bianca and I had fallen on. I caught the glint of orange from the streetlight on his copper dagger this time. Falling from three stories wasn’t guaranteed to kill a shifter, not even a relatively small one like Tony, but he’d fallen with a dagger made from his bane metal sticking out of him. That knife was as fatal to cat shifters as silver is to werewolves.
“No.” My legs buckled under me, doubt smiting me. Could I be wrong? Was my faith in Tony simply denial? The water from the shower stung my skin too much, so I shut it off. After that, I couldn’t move. The chill in the water felt like the icy grip of death. The door creaked on its hinges, exchanging tattered remnants of water vapor for the cold, dry air in the hallway.
“I don’t get it.” I couldn’t identify the voice with the bathroom’s echo, but it sounded familiar. “Like a lot of stuff about feelings and how people express them. Facts are facts, right?”
“Can you blame her?” The door punctuated the second woman’s voice. “Well, maybe you can't. You might have a mate, but you’re not a shifter. You don’t know what it’s like.”
“So explain.” With the door closed, I realized Lynn Frampton was the first speaker.
“There’s no one way to explain it,” the second woman said. “It’s different for everyone. When it happened to me, I refused to believe it, too. I tried so hard to sense him, I started hallucinating. Hearing his voice, thinking I saw him. I limped all the way from my house across town to Federal Hill because I thought I smelled him one night, but Ren was gone.”
“But Beth, Ren was actually alive all that time.” I heard the faucet turn and the sound of running water, then splashing. “What if you weren’t hallucinating?”
“There’s no way.” Beth Dennison’s sigh bounced off the tile like a trapped sparrow. “Ren wasn’t anywhere near me back then. Also, his scent changed after he took up the pelt, and more than that. So much is different about him, I’m not even sure if he’s my mate anymore. As far as I’m concerned, he may as well have been dead all these years.”
“So, should Olivia just give up?”
“That’s too much judgment even for my taste.” I heard a faint click and caught a whiff of something chalky, probably some kind of makeup. “She’s the one living her life, not me. But I think Olivia’s setting herself up for disappointment, whether Tony’s dead or not. If they were mates, and he somehow survived, they might not be compatible anymore. Ask any Psychic or Undeath Magus. Surviving what should kill changes a person forever.”
“I hope you’re wrong.” I heard Lynn sigh. “Come on. We’ll be late for class. I can’t believe you talked me into that Extrahuman Entertainment elective.”
The door creaked again. Open, then closed. After a while, I could move again and stretched my legs out in front of me. My needled limbs reminded me of slow starts. That was how things had been between Tony and me until he put his foot on the brakes. I closed my eyes, remembering that seemingly endless party at the Dennison place five months earlier. I could almost hear his voice.
“So, what did you want to talk about?” Tony had stayed in the shadows, leaning against the old stone wall at the border of the back lawn.
“I just, um, wanted to see how you’re doing.” I hadn’t moved closer to him at that point. Standing in the late-afternoon sunlight helpe
d me stay awake even during day’s hours. Moving into the half-light at his side might have cost me the ability to stay conversational. And I was nervous. There was that back then, too.
“Really?” He’d turned his head to peer at me from the corner of his eye instead of straight on. My cheeks had flushed with heat.
“It’s a party, Tony.” I’d blinked, wishing I didn’t wear my emotions so openly in any situation that had to do with him. “Everyone else is off doing party things, not hiding in a hedge.”
“I’m not everyone else.” He’d faced me head-on that time but avoided locking gazes with me.
“I know.” And I should have said more than that, but my courage was as dry as the Sahara back then.
“So why bother?” He crossed his arms over his chest.
“Because I care,” I remember fixing my gaze on him, staring until he’d had no choice but to lock gazes with me.
“You shouldn’t.” He hadn’t blinked, so I’d gotten to watch the pupils in his hazel eyes go vertical for a moment. Something about that confrontation had called to his cat side’s instincts.
“I’m stubborn.” The left corner of my mouth had curled up, unintentionally. He’d licked his lips, but then stopped himself and pressed them into a flat, thin line.
“I know.” He’d leaned back against the ivy-covered wall behind him, closing his eyes and breaking the flow of whatever energy had gone between us. “Stubborn people get hurt. I ain’t letting that kind of thing happen to you.”
“You’re worth the risk.”
“I’m not.”
“I’ll be the judge of that.”
“Look, I’m not here to party. I’m here for a reason, a favor I’ve gotta pay back before things get heavier than they already are. It’s serious business.”
“Then let me help.”
“No.”
“Why not? I’ve done it before.”
“Yeah, I know. We saved Henry, and you almost got eaten by a Grim.”
“But you kept me safe. And then you do stupid things like asking why I care and why I’m here.” I’d swayed, weight shifting from my left foot to my right.
“And I still ask because so far, you haven’t come out and told me the real reason a chick like you gives a damn about a cat like me.” I wasn’t exactly sure how he managed to fade into the shadows even more, but that’s what had happened.
“For someone so vague and secretive, you sure love being on the receiving end of a straight answer.” I’d put my hands on my hips and stepped all the way up to the line on the grass, that divide between the fading sunlight and full shadow.
“Yeah, so why don’t you be a pal and lay one on me?”
“Tony, no one survives alone. That’s the reason this whole pack got started in the first place. And you notice everyone’s pairing off.” I’d dropped my arms, wringing my hands.
“Yeah, I know. I think maybe that’s not such a good idea unless the timing’s exactly right.”
“Time is what you make of it.” I’d taken a deep breath and stepped into the darkness and across Tony’s figurative line in the sand, too. “I’m seizing the moment.”
“Wait, what?” Tony’s eyes had widened as I stepped closer to him, and then our lips met. Diurnal me was always a clumsy creature. I’d stubbed my toes against his and stepped back with some mumbled apology.
We’d stood there blinking at each other for forever and a nanosecond at the same time. The world came apart and went back together again. Tony’s eyes had gone feline and he’d pressed himself against me like metal to a magnet, tilting his head to kiss me back more thoroughly than I’d dared. And even with the black-hole gravitational inevitability between us, he’d somehow found the strength to push me away, saying “not yet.”
Back in the present, I got my feet under me and stood. I had no idea whether Tony and I had been mates, but probably we were. If Beth was right, it didn’t matter now, anyway. All the hope I’d fed and watered over the week curled up, shriveled and crispy-brown like that poor philodendron I’d neglected back in middle school. I threw my nightgown over my head, not caring that my hair soaked through the flannel, and shuffled into the hall. A group of people blocked the way to my room. I didn’t bother looking up at them until one spoke.
“O-Olivia?” Lynn’s hands went to her reddening cheeks. “You were in there while we—” Her face went to the other extreme, color making a quick exit to leave her pale. “I’m so sorry. And Beth’s sorry, too.”
“No way.” Beth shook her head, sensibly bobbed hair bouncing to emphasize her denial. “I’m not. No one else should waste her time and make the mistake I did over Ren.”
“But look at her, Beth; she’s grieving.” Kimiko Ichiro tugged at Beth’s sleeve. “We both know what that’s like. Show a little love.”
“Yeah, but there’s a piece you don’t understand.” Beth shrugged Kim off. “This is love. Tough love. We don’t have time to mope or hope. After all this,” Beth gestured at her prosthetic leg, which she’d lost in the accident that had almost killed Ren, “I didn’t have both the Gatto Gang and Richard Hopewell out for my blood. Olivia does.”
“I’d say that means she needs sympathy more than ever.” Lynn put her hands on her hips, narrowing her eyes at Beth.
“No.” Beth turned to face Lynn, staring her down. “She needs to accept that the Tony Gitano portion of her life is over now and move on before she gets herself whacked.”
“You’ve got no idea what the hell I need!” The staring match left a space between them and Kimiko, a way out. “Way to talk, like I’m not here.” I darted through before the Tanuki could stop me. But I felt a warm tingle somewhere near my elbow, which told me she’d tried, anyway.
I turned the corner, heading down to the other end of the hall and my room. I kept going past the elevator and looked back over my shoulder to see if any of them had followed. As I saw that they’d stayed put breath poured from my mouth, cooling the tears on my cheeks.
That’ was when I bumped something flat and papery and ended up falling and whacking my head on the hardwood. A rustle and a slap met my ears, along with a little dismayed noise, vaguely familiar. I blinked, lifting my arm in an entirely useless attempt to get up. I saw a head of long, straight hair a paler platinum than my own.
“Are you okay, Miss Adler?” Sir Albert Dunstable, Sidhe knight of the queen’s court, tossed his head, peering at me over the wire rims of the glasses he didn’t need in the Under.
“Hoo, boy.” I sighed. “I think so.” A glance at the floor confirmed my suspicions. I’d knocked a pile of papers out of his arms, scattering them all over the floor in front of my room. “Sorry about your file.”
“Your file, actually.” Albert let go of my hand, then reached over to scoop stray paper into the manila folder still in the crook of one arm. “I brought everything Mr. Ichiro wanted you to look over before we’re in session this evening. Are you sure you’re all right?”
“I bumped my head and my dignity, that’s all.” I shuffled some of the fallen documents into an untidy pile, realizing that many of them were photos.
“Are you sure?” He opened the folder and put it on the floor to make for easier cleanup. “You look, um, unwell.” His stack of papers went into the folder.
“More like unkempt. I woke up too early.” I put my collection on top of his. “You can tell Mr. Ichiro that this won’t affect the trial.”
“No, that’s not what I’m talking about, Miss Adler.” He closed the folder, then picked it up. After that, he offered me a hand up.
“Then I don’t get what you mean.” I shook my head and stood on my own, mostly to see if I could do it myself. My head felt like a soft-boiled egg. “And call me ‘Olivia,’ please.”
“Then call me Al. And listen, Olivia.” Albert leaned against the wall while I unlocked the door to my room. “I overheard those three in the hall, what they said at you.”
“That’s absolutely none of your business.” I pushed the door op
en and stepped across the threshold into my room, standing to block him from entering. Albert was Seelie and Gee Nome Unseelie. They’d have trouble occupying the same room on a good day, and I had the feeling this wasn’t one of those.
“It’s not. But Beth’s wrong.” Albert pushed his glasses up his nose. “You need to let yourself grieve, or mope as she put it. And you shouldn’t give up on him.”
“But Al, I’ve finally decided to accept the fact that Tony’s—”
“Don’t you dare.” Albert stood with a posture that made me imagine him in a suit of armor. “Do not use that word next to Tony Gitano’s name.”
“Give me one reason.” I stood there, unblinking.
“Hope, Olivia.” He tucked his chin, eyes forward as though about to go to battle. Maybe he was after a fashion. “You need to keep on believing. For your own sake and everyone you care about.”
“That makes no sense.” I had to watch myself, be sure I didn’t ask Al too many questions, or I’d owe him a favor.
“You’ve never been to the Under.”
“I don’t get what kind of point you’re trying to make.”
“It’s not like this world.” Albert shook his head. “The same rules don’t apply. The Monarchs reign supreme, each in his or her own demesne. And the king has done something nearly unprecedented as far as you’re concerned.”
“Maybe I missed something because I’m all about the laws over here in the non-Faerie realm,” I shook my head. “I don’t get what’s so odd about the Goblin King asking a favor from me.”
“That wasn’t some mere favor he called in.” Albert tilted his head. “Didn’t you realize that he set you on a Quest?”
“Wait.” I froze in the doorway like an owl shifter statue. “He just wanted me to find some deadbeat and evict him or her from his demesne. That doesn’t sound like a quest.”