Again, it hit me that I no longer had to carry the weight of Richard’s debt to Ivan on my shoulders. Assuming Leonides’ deal with Gina and the club was serious and long term, I had a decent paying job, with nothing more taxing than a few hundred dollars’ balance on a credit card to pay off. I was, not to put too fine a point on it, solvent for the first time in months.
And I couldn’t even enjoy it.
The Ford’s engine coughed into life on the third try, and I put the old sedan into gear, heading for home and my own, familiar shower.
THIRTEEN
A FEW HOURS later, I walked into Blueberry Hill to find three vampires sitting in a booth in the back, surrounded by mildly disturbing taxidermy and an overwhelming selection of random kitsch from the fifties.
“This sure brings back memories,” Zorah said, sniffing a french fry and wrinkling her nose before returning it to the pile in the center of the table. “Hey, Von. Come eat this stuff before it gets cold, okay?”
I slid in next to her and snagged a fry, popping it in my mouth.
“Hello, Vonnie,” Rans said. “Was your flat unmolested, I hope?”
“Yup.” I nodded and grabbed another fry. “I think my neighbor has been watching over it for me, actually. The one you put the fear of god into, I mean.”
Zorah let out a soft snort. “Sounds about right.”
Leonides shifted in the booth, settling himself more comfortably. “These two did a little experiment while they were in El Paso. The results were interesting... if not entirely unexpected.”
I swallowed the fry I was chewing, perking up. “Oh?”
Zorah made an affirmative humming noise. “The airline was understandably keen to keep this whole mess under wraps. So... I might have accidentally leaked it to local media.”
I froze with my mouth open to eat another fry, before pulling it away and turning to face her. Visions of standing in front of a wall of microphones, trying to keep my shit together as I pleaded for Jace’s return brought a moment of panic, followed immediately by a moment of lightheadedness.
“Why?” I asked. “If law enforcement isn’t going to help because of the Fae—”
Leonides looked unhappy. “It’s less about law enforcement than it is about tracing how the information moves before getting shut down. Though the last thing these two need is to end up on the Fae’s radar again. A bit of discretion might have been in order, Zorah.”
Zorah leaned back in the booth and crossed her arms. “Hey. I am all about discretion. Discretion is practically my middle name.”
“Says the woman who once barged into Dhuinne without any sort of a plan to get out,” Rans muttered.
“So did you,” Zorah shot back.
“I had a plan to get out,” Rans retorted. “As evidenced by the fact that we’re both here and not dead. More importantly, I’ve never claimed discretion as one of my virtues.”
“Wait, you have virtues?” Leonides asked, deadpan.
I watched the back-and-forth with a frown, trying to change mental gears. “Hold up. You’ve been to Dhuinne? That’s where the Fae are from, right? Their... um, their realm?”
Zorah’s expression turned sour. “Yup—I sure have. So has Rans. Conclusion? Zero out of five stars, would not recommend to others.”
“What’s it like?” I asked, the kernel of a completely insane idea forming. If I could somehow find out who was in charge there... maybe appeal to them directly...
Zorah gave a theatrical little shudder. “What’s it like? Well, let’s see.” She started counting off points one by one, using her fingers. “Crazy plants are taking over the world, at least fifty percent of the Fae Court is populated by assholes, they like to torture people for giggles, and—oh, yeah—the planet’s magic drives humans insane. But, y’know, the flowers were kind of pretty, I guess.”
The magic of Dhuinne tends to warp the minds of older humans, Edward had told me, when he’d been explaining about Fae changelings and the human babies they took as a tithe to Hell. Our brains aren’t designed to cope with it, except in special circumstances.
I filed that away to pursue later. “So, what did you find out? With the media in El Paso, I mean.”
Zorah leaned forward, warming to her subject.
“Well... a news story like that—it should have gone viral in no time. Teenage kid disappearing from a flight while it was in the air? That’s a reporter’s dream scoop. So, anyway, I mesmerized one of the airline employees to call into to a local TV station’s tip line with solid information like the flight number and Jace’s name.” She shot Leonides an arch look. “Because—hello—I do, in fact, know the meaning of the word discretion. Especially when it comes to the Fae.”
“But it didn’t go viral, I take it?” I asked, aware that I’d been isolated from basically all outside media for several days now.
“No,” Rans said. “It did not. And the method by which it failed to do so is somewhat intriguing.”
“Of course, by intriguing, he means alarming,” Leonides corrected dryly.
“The story ran on the station’s six o’clock news,” Zorah said, taking up the thread again. “Then it showed up on every other local news station the following morning.”
That sounded pretty viral to me, but before I could say so, she continued.
“And then, that evening, every single station that had aired it ran a retraction, explaining how the whole thing had been an administrative mix-up, and Jace had never boarded the plane in St. Louis in the first place.” She raised an eyebrow to punctuate.
I shook my head slowly. “But... that doesn’t make any sense. It’s too easy to check. His boarding pass was scanned in St. Louis, and again in Denver. Flight attendants saw him on the plane.”
Rans drummed his fingers against the smooth tabletop. “No. They didn’t. Someone has been going through and systematically altering the perceptions and memories of every human involved, from the airline employees to the news reporters.”
Leonides met his eyes and held them. “That seems like an awful lot of trouble to go to for a bit of petty revenge against Vonnie, and by extension, against me.”
“Yes,” Rans agreed. “It does, rather.”
“What are you saying?” I demanded. “If Teague didn’t take Jace as a way to hurt me, then why did he do it?”
“We don’t know yet,” Zorah said gently. “But don’t you find it kind of interesting that Teague only seemed to get interested in you when he realized you were resistant to Fae magic?”
Leonides made a low noise in his throat. “Shit. There’s something else. That waste of space... what’s his name—Richard? He took out a bunch of armed men with a spectral wolf, after they showed up to kill him. You fed him your blood, Rans—just like you did with Vonnie, to heal her wounds. I don’t think he had control over what he was doing... but it was definitely magic.”
My heart kicked against my chest as I realized that I’d barely spared a thought for Richard’s bizarre spectral manifestation. Not since he’d refused our help and run off to god-knew-where.
“You think Teague went after Jace because Richard and I both have magic?” I asked shakily. “But... I thought the magic was only a big deal because the vampire blood made it stronger. Trust me when I say, neither Richard nor Jace have ever showed any sign of supernatural power. I mean, not before... you know.” I waved a hand to indicate the craziness of the past few days.
“Does Teague know that, though?” Zorah asked.
“Besides,” Rans put in. “You’re wrong about that. Richard remembered some of what happened when Teague showed up to play patty-cake with your Russian mafia friends. If he was able to resist Fae influence before I ever gave him my blood, Teague would have noticed it straight off—just like he noticed your pendant.”
My blood went cold, sending a shiver through me despite the pleasant warmth of the restaurant. “How does any of this help?” I asked, a bit desperately. “What do we do next?”
Leonides fiddled
with his untouched drink, still wearing the same unhappy expression he’d had for most of the conversation. “We do exactly what we’d already planned on doing. Poke the Fae asshole with a stick until he shows up at the club, and hopefully slips up.”
It was still too nebulous for me to be able to think of it as a proper plan. Unfortunately, I had nothing better to offer.
“I don’t like this,” I said. “It doesn’t feel like I’m doing enough. Hell, it doesn’t feel like I’m doing anything.”
Zorah covered my hand where I was convulsively gripping the edge of the table. “Von, until we get Jace back, nothing you do is going to feel like enough. You’re just going to need to have faith that this is the best path forward, okay?”
The way she said ‘until we get Jace back’ was comforting—for all that I knew the others didn’t have any kind of a better plan, either.
Leonides shot Zorah a severe look. “I don’t want you two underfoot for this next part. Right now, Teague thinks he has me at a severe disadvantage. If he finds out that I’ve called in the vampire cavalry, he’ll escalate things. And I’d rather not find out what that looks like in real world terms, thanks all the same.”
Rans’ mouth twisted in displeasure. “Agreed,” he said. “It’s probably best if we let him continue to think he has the upper hand. Angry people aren’t the only ones who make mistakes. Cocky people do as well.”
Leonides gave a decisive nod. “Let’s get to it, then. Vonnie, I don’t suppose you know where to find your ex in all this mess? I’d rather not have him become a pawn in this game without our knowing about it.”
I tamped down the rush of bitter anger over Richard’s behavior with the skill of long practice, reinforcing the reflective mirror inside my pendant at the same time, just in case.
“At a guess? He’s probably crashing on someone’s couch. I could make a few phone calls,” I said.
“Do that,” Leonides replied. “Right, then. Zorah, Rans—I assume you’ll be lounging around at the Four Seasons for a few more days. I’ll keep you posted. Vonnie? You’ve got a shift at the Fox to prepare for.”
I sighed, resigned to several days of play-acting while my heart continued to shrivel slowly into a cold, black lump in my chest. “Yeah. I’m going. Only... I, uh, might need someone to give the Taurus a jumpstart so I can get home. I’m parked down the block.”
FOURTEEN
FOR FIVE AGONIZING days, I pasted on a happy face and stood woodenly behind the bar at what used to be the Vixen’s Den. The staff, the tapas menu—even the musical acts remained the same. If it weren’t for the new sign out front, you wouldn’t be able to tell that the ownership had changed.
I was aware of both Len and Kat watching me with worried expressions whenever our paths crossed during a shift, but I didn’t have the excess emotional energy to devote to reassuring them that I was all right.
What would be the point? I was about as far from all right as it was possible to get.
When I wasn’t working, I insisted on staying at my apartment rather than the penthouse. Yes, walking past Jace’s room to get to and from the bathroom was a special kind of torture. Yes, I probably would have been safer staying with Leonides. But for one thing, my sad little apartment was a touchstone of normalcy in a world gone nuts, and for another, it gave me more privacy for scheming.
During his stint as my beardless version of Dumbledore, Edward had given me his cell phone number in case I needed to ask any questions about my magic after we parted ways. And right now, I had a biggie.
“Hello? Vonnie, is that you? Is everything all right, my dear?”
“Hey, Edward,” I greeted. “Yeah, no, I mean... it’s not an emergency or anything, but I’ve got a question for you.”
“Oh? Ask away.”
I took a deep breath. “So, you told me that the Fae realm messes with humans’ minds... except in special circumstances. What did you mean by that?”
There was a longish pause on the other end.
“Edward?” I prompted.
“Well... the first part is fairly straightforward. Unless they’re very young, humans exposed to Dhuinne’s magic for any significant stretch of time tend to become catatonic. Often permanently.”
“And the second part?”
Another pause. “Why do you ask, Vonnie?”
I swallowed. “Because I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that the answer is, ‘unless they have magic.’ And I wanted to confirm it.”
Edward cleared his throat. “Indeed. There have been tales of magically adept humans visiting Dhuinne and returning relatively unscathed. Also, I’m personally aware of a gentleman who’d briefly been taken by the Fae when he was a baby, and who was taken again, decades later, as an adult. He was... deeply affected. But he recovered afterward to a significant extent—apparently thanks to the Fae magic he absorbed during his first stint in Dhuinne as an infant.”
I nodded to myself. “Okay, cool. Thanks for the clarification, Edward. Bye.”
“Vonnie—” Edward began, but I was already disconnecting the call.
Tapping my fingers restlessly on the cracked linoleum of the kitchen table, I debated my next step. I was going to need some serious help if I really intended to take this fight to the Fae, and my options were pretty limited. Especially since I didn’t get the sense that either Zorah or Rans would be all that receptive to the suggestion of a return trip to the faerie realm.
* * *
Ironically, that evening at the Brown Fox, the mountain came to Muhammad, rather than the other way around. Or at least, Teague came to the club.
On the positive side, this time the Fae didn’t show up with creepy hypnotized police officers... much less a SWAT team. Mind you, that didn’t stop my heart from stuttering into a gallop when his familiar copper-blond head of hair appeared at the edge of the crowd. He made a beeline for a table in the back, where Leonides was sitting with an untouched glass of whisky in front of him—his eyes closed as he listened to Monique crooning in the background.
I was already in motion, arriving at the table only seconds after Teague did. Leonides’ eyes snapped open, violet swirling in their depths for the space of a heartbeat before it faded beneath his natural dark brown in the low light. The Fae loomed over him, his pale fingertips pressed to the table’s edge.
“Get you a drink, asshole?” I asked through clenched teeth, as I stepped up to join them.
A hard green gaze flicked to me and held. My pendant throbbed with heat, and I shook my head at him with an expression equally as flinty.
“Nuh-uh. Don’t bother,” I said, feeling around with my mind for the best way to direct the magical focus inside the garnet into something besides heat.
Teague watched with silent interest as I fumbled internally with the current of magic until something shifted, and it started to flow into me instead of manifesting as waste energy. I flinched at the unexpected sensation—that had certainly never happened before. The Fae lifted a slow eyebrow.
“How intriguing,” he said, and the rush of magic cut off abruptly, as though he’d turned off a spigot.
Leonides had been watching the near-silent exchange like a hawk. Now, he leaned back in his seat, drawing Teague’s attention. “So, what can I do for you, Fae? The preliminary legal hearing over the club’s finances isn’t until next month, and it’s not as though I’m active in the ‘den of vice’ business anymore.”
Teague’s eyes narrowed. “And yet, here we stand, in just such a den.”
“You’re standing. I’m sitting,” Leonides retorted. “In this perfectly legal club, owned by someone who isn’t me. So, I ask again. Why are you here?”
Controlled anger rolled off the Fae in waves, and I let myself take vicious satisfaction in getting a rise out of him. The temptation to do something unwise involving magic was... surprisingly strong. But fortunately—not to mention, frustratingly—Edward had made it very clear that even while experiencing the tail end of a vampire-blood booster shot, trying to
take on a Fae in a direct magical fight would be a good way to get my ass handed to me.
Not that Edward had used the word ‘ass,’ of course.
“You appear incapable of taking a hint, bloodsucker,” Teague said with a sneer. “But then, your kind was always little more than a herd of stupid beasts, toiling under the demons’ yoke in exchange for scraps.”
Leonides watched him, not moving from his relaxed sprawl. His brow furrowed. “Hang on. You... really have no idea who I am, do you?” he asked, as though he’d just realized something.
“You’re a filthy parasite who should have been put down with the rest of your foul breed,” Teague said in a voice as cold as a glacier.
But the vampire only shrugged. “Sure, whatever you say. Though I’m guessing if your higher-ups really wanted me dead, there’d be more in the way of smiting going on, and less in the way of schoolboy insults.”
“Everything I do, I do by direct order of the Unseelie Court,” Teague replied icily.
I leaned forward, getting in his face. “Everything?” I hissed.
Leonides, too, had leaned forward—a predator sensing prey.
Teague glared at us, and my pendant flared for a moment before quieting again. “Everything. You play games with me, bloodsucker—toying with your precious club as though it’s a chess piece to be shuffled around the board. Would you be so cavalier, I wonder, if you realized that by doing so, you set yourself directly against the might of Dhuinne?”
Leonides didn’t even blink. “I have no idea what you mean. You already shut me down. I have to make money somehow—it only made sense to sell the building. It’s nothing to do with me what the new owner decides to use it for. I’m just here for the music and the drinks.”
I clenched the edge of the table with a claw-like grip, remembering something else Edward had told me about the Fae.
They couldn’t lie.
“He might be here for the music,” I said. “I’m here for a different reason. Where’s my son, asshole?”
Vampire Bound: Book Two Page 10