“Well, that’s convenient. For you, I mean.”
“What d’ye want me to say? That I got pulled into another world? That I’ve spent the last year and a half jumpin’ from one realm to another, puttin’ out fires? D’ye have any idea how crazy it would all sound?”
“What I want is for you to tell me the truth. And I don’t care how long that takes. See, I already know how your kind feels about metal.” Maria rapped a knuckle against the nearest bar until it sung. “These bars may not be pure iron, but we both know you won’t be able to break out on your own.”
“Hold on, ye t’ink I’m one of the Fae?”
“Now, you might be thinking Officer O’Malley will come back for you,” Maria continued, ignoring me. “But trust me, that isn’t going to happen. If you fail to cooperate, I’ll cast a spell to stop anyone from finding you in here. They will never open this door, and you’ll rot in here until you fade away to nothing.”
“Wow,” I said, almost as impressed by Maria’s bad cop routine as I was by the accuracy of her information. She’d clearly done her homework. Still, in all the years I’d known her, I’d never have thought Maria would threaten me with a spell—not while she was armed. “Why not just shoot me?”
“I want answers. If I kill you, I won’t get any.”
“Very practical.”
“Please,” Max interjected, sounding tired, “just tell us what the slaugh’s mistress wants from us. If you do, I promise I—”
“No swearing!” Maria nudged him. “You know better than to make a deal with one of them.”
Irritation flitted across the brujo’s face, but he refrained from saying anything more. I, meanwhile, struggled to make sense of what I’d just heard. So, not only had Maria erroneously labeled me a Faeling, but now Max was under the impression that I worked for whomever held the slaugh’s leash. The question was, how could I convince them otherwise?
Max was out; the brujo wouldn’t have recognized me walking down the street. Which left Maria—one of the most stubborn, pigheaded women I’d ever met. A woman who, more than once, had jeopardized her career rather than see me get what I wanted. A woman who had refused to believe anything I said even before I went AWOL for eighteen months.
Of course, there was an idea.
I turned to the detective. “The truth is, ye and I don’t like each other. We never have. I can only guess why that is. Maybe it’s because ye had a t’ing for Jimmy and saw me as a threat, or maybe it’s because you’re a by-the-book bitch who holds grudges way too long. I don’t know, and I don’t care. What I do know is that in all the years we’ve known each other, I never managed to fool ye. Not once. Ye could always tell when I was hidin’ somethin’, even if ye weren’t sure what it was. Hell, I’m pretty sure ye knew I had a crush on Jimmy before I did.” I waved that away, sighing. “Point is, ye had me number from the start. So tell me, Detective Machado, d’ye honestly believe I’m lyin’ to ye, now?”
“Yes, I do,” Maria replied. But then a flash of uncertainty flickered across the detective’s face, so brief I thought I might have imagined it.
“Why not do that spell Camila showed you?” Max asked. “To be sure.”
“Because it gives me a headache.”
Max gave her an eloquent look. The detective sighed, raised both hands, and used them to form a triangle in front of her face—creating a three-sided window for her right eye.
“Well? What d’ye see?” I asked, apprehensively.
“I don’t see anything,” she admitted. “Which means either you really are Quinn, or your glamour is just that good.”
“Is it really that hard to believe?”
“Yes, it is. See, a good friend of hers, Robin Redcap, told us Quinn was dead.” Maria lowered her hands and planted them in fists at her sides. “He insisted she was seen on the other side, that there was proof. It devastated him, and he got himself in all sorts of trouble because of it. So yeah, I’m skeptical.”
I experienced an abrupt stab of guilt at the thought of Robin grieving over me—painfully aware that I could have done more to establish contact and perhaps prevented this. I could have sent word before leaving Fae for the Titan Realm, for instance, or asked Circe to pass along a message on my behalf before diving spirit first into the Underworld. Only I hadn’t. I hadn’t because they would have expected me to listen to their opinions, even though mine was all that mattered.
“Well, Robin was wrong. Not about me bein’ on the other side. That happened.” I lowered my eyes, forced to acknowledge the probability that everyone I cared about assumed I was dead. “It’s a long story. But I went there to get Max back. When I found out about the coma he was in, I realized—”
“It was your fault?” Maria accused.
“That’s not—”
“So, she’s the one?” Max interjected. “The one who stole my magic?”
“Wait, I did what, now?”
“If she is who she says she is, then yes,” the detective replied, scowling at me like an overprotective mother meeting her son’s girlfriend for the first time.
I shook my head. “I didn’t steal anythin’ of his, I swear.”
“Then explain how Max has managed to forget only two things since he woke up. You, and how to do magic. Nothing we teach him sticks.”
I held a hand up for silence as I processed this latest wrinkle; it had been awhile since I was last accused of robbing someone of their metaphysical gifts. Honestly, I’d assumed Max’s memory loss was a result of being essentially brain dead for so long, but what if there was another explanation?
“Max was there,” I said, at last. “In the Underworld. I found him.”
“You did?”
“Well, technically we found each other. But he knew who I was and helped me escape. We saved each other. Anyway, I was there when he started to wake up. I even heard Camila. She was tellin’ the doctor off and refusin’ to leave the room.” I shook my head, caught in the memory of Max’s lips pressed to my own in a farewell kiss. “I told him to go ahead without me.”
A glance in the brujo’s general direction confirmed my suspicions; Max stared into the middle distance with a wretched expression splattered across his face. Maria must have noticed, as well, because she reached out to him almost instantly. Max jerked away from her touch like he’d been zapped.
“I thought it was a dream,” he admitted, shuddering. “A nightmare, really. Victor was there. The things he did…the things he made me do…”
“He’ll never hurt ye or anyone else, ever again,” I swore vehemently, sounding far less sympathetic than I would have liked. “Frankenstein is dead.”
Max choked out a laugh, though it sounded more like a sob. “You do not understand. He cannot die.”
“I took his soul,” I declared, my voice laced with so much bitterness I almost didn’t recognize it. “I swear to ye that Victor Frankenstein will never steal another body. He’ll never see another sunrise or smell another flower. He will never torment ye, or anyone else. I swear it by the screamin’ stone and the arm that sings, by the black pot and the bright blade.”
As I finished the strangely worded vow, the overhead lights flickered and a tension within me I hadn’t noticed eased—spilling down my spine until I felt loose and oddly pliant. By the time the lights came back on, however, both Max and Maria were staring at me with wide, startled eyes.
“Now that was a spell,” Maria said, breathlessly.
Max nodded, then turned to his companion. “If what she says is true…”
“It means Camila can actually go through with her plan,” Maria finished for him. “We need to tell her. She’ll want to start making arrangements as soon as possible.”
“It will still be risky.”
“She won’t care.”
“No,” Max admitted, sighing. “She will not.”
I held up a hand. “Sorry, what risky plan are we talkin’ about, exactly?”
“No, I’m sorry,” Maria said. “You may n
ot be lying about Frankenstein, but I still don’t trust you. Quinn or not, you’ve been gone a long time, and I have no idea whose side you’re on. Which means, until we figure that out, I think it’s best you stay here.”
“Stay here? For how long?” I asked, more outraged than alarmed.
“That depends on what Camila says. She’ll know what to do with you.”
“If Victor is truly gone,” Max chimed in, “then you will have her gratitude. Our gratitude.”
“No offense, but I’d rather have the key to this cell.”
“Just keep quiet until we come back,” Maria insisted. “Do that, and I’ll think about letting you out.”
“Oh? And what makes ye t’ink this cell can even hold me, Detective?” I purred, splaying my arms wide in challenge. I waited, daring her to dismiss the perceptible difference between the bright-eyed, foul-mouthed girl she’d encountered so many years ago and the jaded thing I’d become. I let her see how little the threat of incarceration frightened me. How little anything frightened me, anymore.
And why should it?
Since leaving Boston, I’d lost my mind in a foreign land, had a lover murdered before my very eyes, and watched the lingering remnants of my mother’s spirit fade away to nothing. I’d been reborn, first as a warrior and again as a goddess. I’d sailed across monster-riddled seas, fought alongside giants, and backtalked Titans. I’d survived a drinking contest with the boatman of the River Styx, started a bar fight in Valhalla, and leveled Atlantis. Oh, and let’s not forget I’d slit my best friend’s throat rather than watch him turn into a monster. I’d done all that and more—trading away what innocence I had left, not to mention a year and a half of my life, for the power it took to look Maria in the eye without so much as a flicker of fear.
“Nice try,” Maria said as she herded Max towards the door with one hand and waved back at me with the other. “Try to behave while we’re gone.”
“Oy, Maria. Oy! Ye better get back here and unlock this door, Machado! I mean it!”
They were already gone.
Chapter 8
The steel bars of my prison were a whole lot sturdier than I’d have preferred, but I was glad to discover they didn’t affect me the way they had in the past; at one point, the merest touch of steel against my bare skin had chafed like gritty sandpaper, while iron in its purest form had seared my flesh as though I’d shoved it against the glowing coil of a burning stove. I took it as a sign that my aversion to iron—an affliction felt to some degree by all with Faeling blood—had lessened since becoming a goddess. That, or I’d developed an immunity while on one of my many adventures. Unfortunately, there was no way to be sure either way, and no one to ask. Circe had helped me fill in a lot of gaps, but she was Greek from the tips of her sandy toes to the top of her sun-bleached hair. Her pantheon had inspired epic poems, architectural marvels, and the spread of civilization. Mine, meanwhile, found their way into fairy tales and were blamed for meteorological phenomena like moonless nights and dense fog.
I know, I know...first Otherworld problems.
But still.
I paced the tiny cell, stalking its perimeter while I debated what to do. On the one hand, I could play along, remain behind bars, and hope Maria kept her word. On the other, I could break out and end this little farce, consequences be damned. Not so long ago, it wouldn’t have even been up for debate. I’d have changed into my Valkyrie armor, torn the cell door off its hinges, and put Maria in her place—by force, if necessary. Hell, even if unnecessary. But at what cost? I needed Maria to trust me, not fear me.
I sighed, walked to the corner of my cell, and leaned against the wall, letting my head rest against the cool stone. For the first time in a long time, I let my mind dwell on trivial things—like how long it had been since I last had a hot shower instead of a cold bath, or brushed my teeth with something other than a twig. I thought about how much I missed having nothing pressing to do. No lessons, no chores, no unwanted contact with the outside world, and certainly no quests.
And yet, there were some things I could have done without. Like all the ambient noise; for example, even within the confines of a concrete cell, I found the incessant buzz of the fluorescent lights and the gurgling rush of water gushing through the pipes almost unbearably oppressive. I’d simply grown too used to the sound of the surf lapping along a beach, to the beat of waves against the hull of a ship, to the crisp, pregnant silence of a valley cloaked in snow. Which is probably why I noticed the clatter of approaching footsteps across the tile floor long before their owner appeared.
“Come to let me out, Machado?”
Except it wasn’t Maria who walked through the door.
It was a man, though unlike any man I’d ever seen before. Truth be told, I struggled to describe him; I got the faintest impression of someone tall and athletic, someone graceful and kempt, but that was as much as my brain could process. Stranger still, after I stepped away from the corner to see him better, all I found was a dark shape silhouetted in shards of light, like a saintly figure pulled directly from a stained-glass window. As I watched, colors arced across his body, shimmering in vibrant arcs like sunlight across the iridescent scales of a dragonfly, leaving me speechless with wonder. When at last he spoke, his lips and tongue shone red like ripe strawberries.
“Quinn MacKenna.”
He said my name like a prayer. I shivered, feeling as though someone had walked over my grave, aware of my body in a way that I hadn’t been in since I was a teenager; every inch of my skin tingled with need and an involuntary groan escaped my lips. Indeed, the abrupt desire to be touched hit me like a physical blow, turning my legs to jelly so that I collapsed against the door of my cell.
The instant I wrapped my hands around the steel bars, however, the need receded. I still craved the sensation of someone’s flesh pressed against my own, but I could think. I could get angry.
“What are ye doin’ to me?” I demanded through clenched teeth.
The dazzling being gazed upon me with eyes of every color. As I straightened, they eased from a bright blue sky to the darkest ocean hues, from honey brown to pitch black, from emerald to moss. The effect should have been disorienting, but it wasn’t; every shade was lovely in its own way. Heart-wrenching, even.
“I am liberating you,” he replied, and I could hear the power in his voice. “Do you not wish to be free?”
“I can get out anytime I want. So get the hell away from me.”
“I do not speak of this cage. I speak of you. Of what you deny yourself.”
“What are ye?”
“I am whatever you want me to be, Quinn.”
I both heard and saw his power reach out to me this time. It washed over me in a wave of multi-colored light, clinging as it passed. And yet, the effect was minimal compared to what he’d done before; goosebumps pebbled along my arms as though I’d been licked by a cool breeze on a hot day, but I could tolerate it. I glared through the bars.
“Knock that shit off.”
“Quinn, please, you look so uncomfortable. Step away from the door. Let me help you.”
The door. I wound my hands tighter around the steel bars, gripped them until the metal creaked and my knuckles went white. Within moments, the nimbus around the stranger began to dim until all that remained was a faint glow. His eyes ended up stuck somewhere between green and grey, leaving them murky and unremarkable as they implored me to do what he wanted.
“Quinn, just let go.”
“Not goin’ to happen,” I snarled. “Now, what manner of Faelin’ are ye?”
“I have no idea what you mean.”
“Don’t play dumb, we both know why your magic isn’t workin’.” I shook the bars until they sang, and grinned like a madwoman. “Pretty stupid, comin’ at me in a room full of metal. Who sent ye? And why?”
The Faeling sighed. “He said you would be difficult.”
“He?”
“Oh, well,” the Faeling said, holding a set of metal keys
pinched between his fingers the way you might a stinking diaper. “It’s as my father used to say: if you can’t seduce them, kill them.”
“Come again?”
The Faeling didn’t reply. Instead, he fiddled with the keys until he found the one he wanted, then strode toward and shoved it into the lock of my cell door. When it refused to turn, he drew back and fetched another, clearly irritated.
“Humans and their ridiculous mechanisms,” he muttered as he tried the next key.
I considered taking a swipe at the bastard, but the moment I eased my grip on the bars his glow intensified and his eyes began to swirl again. Which meant my options were limited; I could either lash out and risk being put under his spell, or hope it took him long enough to find the right key for help to arrive. Unfortunately, I found neither choice appealing.
“Help! Somebody help me!” I shouted, jangling the door. “Maria! Max!”
I continued to scream their names, but no one came, not even as the Faeling cried out triumphantly in Gaelic and the lock finally disengaged. Thinking he’d won, he tried to yank open the door, but I wasn’t about to let that happen; I dug in my heels and pulled with everything I had, yelling until my poor throat felt raw.
Within seconds, however, a pitiable howl joined mine; the Faeling’s hands sizzled where they touched the metal bars, and his ethereal glow was completely doused. In its place stood a tall, lithe creature with uncommonly large eyes, milky skin, and hair so curly it framed his entire face like a helmet. Objectively, his was a lovely, effeminate face—the sort that, in repose, attracts artists and poets obsessed with innocence and youth. Or it would have, were it not for the hateful expression smeared across it.
“Stop struggling and let me kill you!” he hissed through crooked teeth and pale lips.
“Fat fuckin’ chance.”
“You are making this much harder than it has to be.”
“Killin’ me, ye mean? D’ye even hear yourself when ye talk?”
The Faeling opened his mouth to speak, but another voice cut through the din of our struggle so that we both froze like children caught chucking rotten fruit through the neighborhood bully’s bedroom window on a bet.
Moonshine: Phantom Queen Book 11—A Temple Verse Series (The Phantom Queen Diaries) Page 6