by Amie Gibbons
I thought I’d hit my head.
Or something in the room made me see things.
Cuz Carvi reared up as a giant horse-man.
Centaur.
I remembered the word after a moment.
He was a gold steed with the strong legs of a working horse, and a thick body that flowed into his buff, naked chest. He had a quiver and arrow strapped to his back.
His gold eyes were bigger than in real life.
And he had bright gold horns coming outta short, dark hair I had a feeling was his natural color.
He was, ahem, hung like a horse too.
And it kinda glowed with lines of gold magic.
Once I saw his him glowing, I saw the lines twining up through the rest of him.
“What are you?” I breathed, looking at my Carvi.
And I knew, truly felt for the first time, that that wasn’t his true name.
His true name held power and majesty.
It was fear.
Sex.
Even a little bit of madness.
And I’d know it if I knew my mythology.
I wasn’t sure which of us thought that.
“The center must hold,” Carvi said in a deep voice that made me shiver. “I am born of chaos, just as you are born of blood and water. I can hold this back, but you have to run.”
He pulled his bow off his back and loaded an arrow with the speed and precision of the superhero by the same name, and shot.
The arrow nailed a piece of the moving mass, the chaos…
And pinned it down.
Making it hold its shape.
He pulled the bow again and again, pinning down the shifting colors and making them hold still, whispering under his voice as he did.
Pyro flew in from nowhere.
Grant on his back.
“Run!” Carvi yelled.
“Not without you,” I said.
“Ariana, that is an order,” he yelled, shooting another arrow.
“Pyro, get Grant out,” I said, tapping my baby and running for Carvi.
“What the-” Carvi said, sounding much more like himself as I bounced off the ground, using his back like a vault, but landing on him instead of bounding over.
“Giddyap!” I chirped.
“I give the orders around here, little girl,” he said, sounding a hell of a lot happier. “Your brain can handle so much more than I gave you credit for. I had to shift to maintain this. Grab on.”
I inched forward, grabbing onto his shoulder, trying not to squish the quiver of arrows.
I grasped a lot tighter when he galloped, the chaos churning around us making me sick, but unable to touch us.
Cuz of Carvi.
We crashed into the hallway, and Carvi kicked the door closed behind us with a giant golden hoof.
The chaos that’d seeped into the hall already dissipating and swirling away around the corner.
Good.
Let the Fae deal with the aftermath of their disgusting prison.
I slid off Carvi’s back and ran to Pyro as he slid Grant to the ground.
Grant stared straight ahead, and my stomach lurched for a whole new reason.
“No, no,” I whispered, kneeling in front of him. “Grant? Grant, it’s Ariana. Can you hear me?”
He didn’t so much as blink.
“Carvi?” I asked, voice breaking.
“Get us out of here, lea,” Carvi said, voice holding something I didn’t understand. “Get us back home, and we’ll see what we can do for him.”
I nodded, not even realizing I was crying until my eyes burned and I felt the first tear roll down my cheek.
I held up a hand and ripped through the world as easily as I had earlier.
But I was starting to feel the strain and exhaustion from all this ripping without spells in place thing.
I think.
Pyro inched under Grant again, and Carvi helped lift the large man to settle him on Pyro, and my carpet flew him through the hole in the universe, going slow so the statue stiff Grant didn’t fall off.
Carvi swept an arm in front of him, indicating I should go first.
“You first,” I said.
“Why?” he asked.
“Cuz I don’t trust you not to stay here and do some serious damage if I go first,” I said.
“You have a problem with me doing damage to Fae?” he asked, a warning in his tone.
“I have a problem with you doin’ it without me, and without a plan,” I said. “We got a lot of hunting to do, we’re gonna need you to do it, and we’re gonna need a plan. So come on. We go home, we rest, we regroup, and we get that army you were hollerin’ I should’ve brought in the first place.”
“And then, lea?” Carvi asked, eyes glowing.
“Then we declare war,” I said. “Cuz far as I’m concerned, they fired the first shot. So now we drop the first bomb.” I shrugged. “And the next one and the next one. But we do it smart.”
I held my hand out to him. “Deal?”
“That’s not how I seal deals, lea,” he said, grabbing me and kissing me, hard and fast, before tossing me onto his back and galloping us through the hole in the air and back to our world.
Chapter fourteen
“How are you?” Carvi asked as I slid off his back.
He rushed to AB curled up on the hotel’s bed.
Apparently he wasn’t worried about anyone seeing this version of his body right now.
What was he?
Now I knew why everyone kept asking me that.
It’s really discombobulating when someone you thought you knew, or something you thought you knew what it was, suddenly wasn’t.
Especially when you had no clue what it was.
Cuz that made it just plain scary.
As much as I loved Carvi, and I did love him, seeing him like this, now that we were back in our dimension, scared the crap outta me.
Cuz here it was real.
And this meant I had no clue who or what Carvi was at all.
“I’m…” AB’s voice broke and she burst into tears.
Carvi pulled her into his chest, stroking her messy, wet curls as she cried out the pieces of her broken heart.
“What happened?” Carvi asked me as I walked up to them.
I barely had time to wonder where Ed was when I realized I heard the shower running in the bathroom.
AB smelled like she’d already cleaned up, and she was wearing clean clothes. Though, I wasn’t sure how she’d showered with the cast.
Maybe Fae magic casts didn’t need to be kept outta water?
Carvi already knew what’d happened, didn’t he?
“Ohhhh,” I said as it hit me.
He’d been watching everything on fast, catching what Emily said, but he’d skipped the most important, at least to us, part.
“Emily killed Thomas when we were lookin’ in on her,” I said.
Carvi sucked in a sharp breath as AB sobbed harder.
“We have more than just a kidnapping to make that bitch pay for,” Carvi said in a low growl, holding AB tighter.
I nodded my agreement, and left Carvi to comfort AB as she just kept crying.
And walked back into the living room where Pyro had deposited Grant on the floor in front of the couch.
My old boss stared straight forward.
“Pyro,” I said, “do you know where the rest of the team is?”
He pulled his phone outta the little pocket with a latch I’d sewn for him so he could clip it to his threads to carry stuff with him, typed, and handed it over.
“I texted everyone. They’re all at the hospital. Some in rooms, some keeping an eye on them. They’re fine, but down for the night. Suggested I round up the on-call team. I said we’re keeping this in the family until we know more.”
I nodded. “Good thinking. I don’t think they realize this isn’t just another case where you can call in the backup.”
He hugged my shoulders.
“Pyro,” I whispered without k
nowing why, “is Grant gonna be okay?”
Pyro shrugged and his tassels flew as he typed.
My heart lurched.
“I’m gonna miss hearing you speak,” I said.
He looked up at me, and I could almost see him smile before he went back to typing.
“Typical teen,” I sighed, “always buried in the cell phone.”
I could practically hear him snort in the voice I’d heard in Fairy, and he threw the phone at me, almost too fast for me to catch.
But I did, and stuck my tongue out at him.
“He’s part god, so he might be able to come back from this, but I think we’re going to have to get a spell to counter what was done to him in there,” I read out loud.
“Any ideas how or where to find it or whatever?” I asked.
Pyro shook his top like a head, and I tossed his phone back to him.
He typed furiously, and I kneeled in front of my former boss.
The man I still loved.
“Was he driven mad by that room?” I asked Pyro, even though I was speaking at Grant. “Cuz when I looked in there, I felt he was fighting it.”
I snapped my fingers, jumping to my feet and turning to face my carpet.
“It’s in his head!” I practically shouted. “I was seeing him fightin’ it. But it was in his head. He’s still in there. It doesn’t have him. Or at least, that room didn’t. But it’s in his head, and that’s the battle I saw.”
“How sure are you?” Carvi asked in my head.
“Positive,” I thought back. “I can feel it. Took me a second to realize what I was seeing, but yeah, it’s got him trapped in his own head, and it’s driving him crazy in there. The room being like that was to keep us out, not him in. This is what’s keeping him in.”
Then how did we know we actually got out?
It could be exactly what Carvi could do, what AB had threatened Emily with, the endless loop of thinking you’d escaped just to find you were still trapped in your own personal Hell.
I shook my head.
No, we had to assume we got out and move on like we had.
Otherwise, we’d never get anything done.
And if we were trapped, it’s not like us doin’ nothing in the trap would help us out there either.
But something told me this was real.
“Can I go in there and find him and bring him out?” I asked Carvi.
“You’ll have to fight the madness in there,” Carvi said. “You shouldn’t go alone.”
“Double team again?” I asked.
I saw him nod in my head.
“And after that, we get Emily and the rest of the Fae,” I said. “We need to stop their plan before the eclipse today, whatever that is, which means we need to figure out what it is, but for now, we get Grant back.”
“Very inspirational, lea,” Carvi said dryly. “You need to work on the run on sentences though. Babbling isn’t very leaderly.”
I rolled my eyes. “You hear anything from the gods?”
“Fenrir told me the block has to do with the eclipse. It’s a side effect. He’s keeping an eye out, but gods have their own problems. They don’t meddle in mortal affairs often.”
“Wouldn’t he come out to help his own grandson if he knew what was going on?”
“He knows.”
“What!” I screeched out loud.
Pyro looked at me and I held up a hand. “Sorry, mental speak.”
“Even gods can’t conquer some things, Ariana,” Carvi said. “And Fenrir doesn’t know how to fix Grant. He has something going on that he’s dealing with, but he’ll look into Grant when he can.”
“When he can! That’s how he deals with his own grandson?”
“Gods don’t think like we do, Ariana. They…” He sighed. “It’s almost sunrise.”
“Oh!” My head snapped around to look at the microwave clock in the little kitchen area.
Almost six.
Sunrise would be any minute.
And we’d lose Pyro for the day.
“You going to be okay, baby?” I asked him.
He nodded.
“Will you wake up during the eclipse?” I asked.
He nodded again.
“Good.” I smiled, turning back to the room, waiting for Carvi.
When he didn’t come out, I went in.
He was kissing AB, holding her face like he had mine, then let her go, staring into her eyes as he brushed the tears out from under her eyes.
“Drink from me,” he said. “It’ll help heal your leg faster.”
She nodded, looking him over and gulping.
“Um,” she said after a moment. “Why are you a centaur?”
“Yeah,” I said. “What are you?”
“No, no,” he said, shaking a finger at us. “You two will not gang up on me. Well, there’s one way I’d love to have you two ganging up on me, but other than that…”
“Seriously,” I said. “What are you?”
“Seriously,” he said, changing back into a man in a blink of an eye, “drop it.”
His voice held the same commanding tone it’d had while we were having sex, and I felt compelled to listen to it.
Uh-oh. Sleeping with Carvi was lookin’ to be a bad idea for more reason than one.
Cuz I turned around and walked outta the bedroom.
And closed the door behind me cuz I didn’t want to see them together like that.
“I never learn, do I?” I whispered.
Then again, it wasn’t like I had room to talk.
I mean, I was with Quil.
Quil!
If the calls didn’t go through earlier, that meant he hadn’t gotten any of my voicemails.
And could’ve been trying to get ahold of me to say hi all night.
I looked around and sure enough, there was a wall phone on the table next to the couch.
“Thank God,” I whispered.
And thank God I wasn’t a typical millennial, and I actually had a few numbers memorized.
I dialed Quil’s number, trying not to laugh at the novelty of using an actual wall phone.
I couldn’t remember the last time I used one of these.
The phone went straight to voicemail, and I rolled my eyes.
Seriously!
I left a message quickly, explaining that we’d gone into Fairy, I’d tried calling him but Carvi thought no calls went through, and said we were trying to save Grant, and then had to figure out how to stop the Fae from coming through during the eclipse, and that we could really use his help.
I hung up just in time to hear a yell from the bedroom.
“Ah!” I ran over, throwing the door open and holding a ball of water in my hand before I even thought about what I was doing.
And found AB and Carvi naked on the bed.
Not doing anything dirty, just spooning.
But Ed had walked outta the bathroom, dressed in clothes a little too baggy for him I’m betting he’d borrowed from Carvi’s suitcase, and he was staring with wide eyes at the pair on the bed.
I sighed and let the water ball soak back into my skin.
I was getting good at this.
Ed was lookin’ a lot better. His blond hair was slicked back with gel, and he’d shaved, showing off sharp, pretty features. He was probably just under six feet tall and skinny.
He’d look like a cute frat guy about to go out, if not for the giant bags under his eyes and the hollow, worn look on his face showing his hunger and exhaustion.
AB stared straight forward with wet eyes and her glasses off. Hadn’t moved even when I busted in.
She looked like she was back in shock.
Even her modesty had gone out the window, cuz she wasn’t reacting to Ed seeing her naked at all.
“Hello,” Carvi said, patting AB’s shoulder as he unwrapped from her and sat up.
He hopped off the bed and walked up to Ed buck-naked, holding out his hand. “Carvi.”
Ed’s mouth fell open and he
looked at me.
I held up my hands. “Don’t look at me, that’s just how he is. Go with it.”
“I’ve never touched another dude naked,” Ed said, shaking his hand.
“Well now you have,” Carvi said, voice low and tugging at parts of me I thought would be exhausted and fast asleep after the pounding they’d taken.
Ed paled, dropping Carvi’s hand and stumbling back so fast he hit the wall just to the side of the bathroom door.
“Carvi,” I scolded, propping my hands on my hips. “Seriously, aren’t you done yet?”
“Never,” he said, turning that look on me before going back to Ed. “And your name’s Ed, correct?”
“Oh, right!” Ed said. “No, we weren’t saying real names in there. I’m Shawn.”
“Shawn!” I said, looking at AB.
She didn’t even twitch.
“What, why?” Ed/Shawn asked.
“Cuz that’s the name of the guy Emily hired us to get from Fairy,” I said. “That was the job. She must’ve gotten something off of you, like a hair, and used it for the tracking spell, and that’s why we found that square. I figured after she betrayed us it was some random Fae, but it was you.”
“Is that why they grabbed me?”
I shrugged. “Seems like a lot of effort when the only point was to give us someone to track. Could’ve done that with any piece of any Fae. Probably more like they already had you, so thought you’d be easier to use in case I wasn’t a complete idiot and actually looked into things before I left. Let me guess, you go to Florida State?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I’m a chemistry PhD candidate.”
AB stirred a bit, and I looked over as she rolled to her back.
Small and naked and completely oblivious.
I grabbed the robe laying on the chair next to the bed and put it over her lengthwise.
She would care later that people who weren’t supposed to were seeing her naked.
I looked at Ed… er, Shawn, and he blushed.
He’d been lookin’ and felt ashamed of himself for it.
“I will snap your neck,” I said, meeting his eyes.
They flew wide.
I pointed at him. “She already went gaga over the last part Fae she slept with, Thomas, and we think his magic is what got to her, so you’re not goin’ anywhere near her.”
“Thomas is the guy we watched that woman murder?” Shawn asked.
I nodded.
“You think that’s what got to AB about him?” Carvi asked.