Blood Rite

by E.J. Stevens

  I started having psychic visions when I was a kid. Not long after the psychometry kicked in, my second sight reared its monstrously ugly head. Much more recently, my wisp powers emerged, showing what my father’s geas had hid all along, the immutable truth that I had never really been human at all.

  You’d think I’d get used to change by now, especially the kind of change that left me fundamentally different than I’d been when I woke up that morning. But the fact of what had happened to me in the Necropolis sat like a lifeless, frozen weight inside my chest.

  Did I even still have a flesh and blood heart?

  That question was answered as soon as Ceff entered the room.

  “How are you faring?” he asked.

  “I’m still cold,” I said, forcing a brittle smile.

  I looked away, toeing a laundry basket. I was so, so cold. It’s a miracle that my teeth weren’t chattering. Maybe, if I bundled myself in every sweater I owned, I might feel more like me again.

  “Look at me,” he said softly.

  My chin lifted of its own accord. Ceff was smiling. His smile was my undoing.

  “It sounds as though you are in need warming up,” he said, nodding his head sagely.

  He closed the space between us, swallowing that distance in the blink of an eye. He reached for my face, rubbing a thumb along my chin. I hesitated, waiting for a vision to come. When nothing happened, nothing psychic anyway, I leaned into his palm, luxuriating in his warmth.

  “You’re probably right, but what do you think will do the trick for a case of Faerie-induced hypothermia?” I asked, meeting his heated gaze. “Coffee? A hot shower?”

  “I can think of better ways to warm up,” he said.

  My stomach tightened. I barely understood his words, or the emotions that crossed his face, when he stepped away.

  “This changes things,” he said.

  I froze, alarm rocketing through me.

  “We’ll have to redo our marriage contracts,” he said.

  Oh, right. Our contracts were for a kelpie king marrying a wisp princess, not whatever I was now. Necropolis queen? Unseelie queen? Queen of Air and Darkness? But it sounded like Ceff still wanted to marry me. I held onto that.

  “We’ll have to hire Forneus to make the changes,” I said, frowning.

  “I am more concerned with the added months of paperwork,” he said.

  “He’ll probably charge extra,” I said.

  I groaned, but Ceff covered my mouth with his, my groan ending in a lustful moan.

  “I am not happy about the delay,” Ceff said, pulling away to look into my eyes. “I want to be your husband. I do not wish to wait.”

  “Well, you could get on with your husbandly duties early,” I said, a grin tugging at my lips.

  “What do you have in mind?” he asked. “I take my duties very seriously.”

  “Everything,” I said.

  Chapter 38

  You hear about afterglow, but for me it was literal. It took a great deal of restraint to pull away from Ceff, drag myself out of bed, and tamp down the brightly glowing wisp magic that joy and passion had drawn to the surface. I didn’t mind the world knowing that I was happy, but going around shining like a lighthouse beacon would cause trouble.

  For all my royal heritage, I couldn’t break the First Law. A crown may sit on my head, but some rules weren’t meant to be broken. At least, that was the logic I was going with for now. I needed hard facts about Faerie, about our laws, our relationship with the human realm, and about what it meant to be a high queen. Too bad Faerie hoarded its secrets like a dragon hoards treasure. It would take time to pry away those secrets. For now, it would be best to keep my head down and stay out of trouble.

  That was asking a lot.

  “You are not going out like that,” Jinx said, waving a finger at my face.

  “Like what?” I asked, grinning from ear to ear. “Happy.”

  “I’ll comment on that later miss fireworks and snowflakes,” she said, wagging her eyebrows at me. “I meant the glowing eyes.”

  “Oh,” I said, touching my face with gloved hands. “Thanks.”

  I closed my eyes, focusing on my wisp magic, and dragged it down beneath my glamour.

  “Better,” she said with a nod. She slid a mug of coffee across the counter. “Here, drink this.”

  “I am sure that Miss Granger needs it,” Forneus said, emerging from Jinx’s bedroom. He strode over and encircled Jinx from behind. “That was quite a spectacle you put on last night. It must have been…tiring.”

  Forneus stared across the breakfast counter at me and I stuck out my tongue. Then their words sunk in. The coffee churned in my stomach and I pushed the mug away.

  “That wasn’t just a bunch of lame inuendo, was it?” I asked.

  “Dude, my inuendoes are never lame,” Jinx, forced lightness in her voice.

  “What did I do?” I asked, voice hushed.

  Someone had sucked all the air from the room. It was only when Ceff strode out of the bedroom, blinking drowsily and smiling knowingly, that I breathed normally.

  “I’m guessing this is about last night?” he asked, looking between us. “One moment. I believe I need to be fully caffeinated before we discuss Ivy pulling Faerie into our bedroom.”

  “It was…cool?” Jinx said, not convincing anyone.

  “You have got to be kidding,” I said. “That wasn’t, I didn’t…”

  “I would not jest about what happens in our bedchamber,” Ceff said.

  “No, I know that,” I said. “It’s just, can someone tell me what’s going on? I mean, it’s not unusual for there to be, um, side effects from our wisp magic and water magic, um, combining.”

  Mab’s bones, this was awkward. I’d rather be discussing lich kings than my sex life. How was this even a thing that was happening?

  “Someone needs to put her out of her misery,” Forneus said. “Allow me.”

  Jinx held up a hand, cutting off whatever he was going to say next. She looked at me, eyes softening.

  “Ignore them,” she said. “Pretend it’s just you and me.”

  “Um, okay,” I said, fidgeting on the bar stool. I took a swig of coffee and focused on Jinx. “What’s up?”

  “It’s more like what was in our apartment,” she said. “You made it snow.”

  “There was also quite a spectacular light show,” Forneus said.

  I rubbed a hand over my face. I needed a moment without everyone staring at me and talking about my personal life. If Jinx and Ceff were going along with this, and I wasn’t being punked, then they were concerned. There was a problem here. I just had to parse it out and deal with it.

  “Okay, the snow is new, but I’m not sure why we’re all standing here talking about this before I’ve even had a decent cup of coffee,” I said. “We don’t usually do this unless there’s major trouble or one of the kids are sick. Sparky isn’t sick, is he?”

  It had been late when we returned from London and we’d had calls to make and showers to take. Ceff, Forneus, and I had been covered in corpse ash. While they fought for the shower, my head pounding, I’d wasted no time calling Gaius, letting him know I solved the case, and getting out from under our bargain. We’d decided not to wake up Sparky. Had that been a mistake?

  “Relax, Sparky is fine,” Ceff said, putting an arm around me and pulling me close. “This is about you and your magic, and Faerie’s claim on you.”

  “That doesn’t sound ominous or anything,” I muttered.

  But relief filled me. Sparky was okay. The kids, as I tended to think of my many wards, were safe.

  “We should start at the beginning,” Forneus said.

  “Please don’t,” I said, waving my hand. Whatever they were worried about, I didn’t have an eternity to listen to a longwinded immortal demon. “Just cut to the chase. It snowed and that means?”

  “That means you have some cool new powers,” Jinx said. She drew herself up, shoulders back, and pantomimed holdi
ng a microphone. “And with great power comes…”

  “Stop,” I said, jumping off the barstool and glancing wildly at my friends. “I don’t want great power.”

  “That is not up to you,” Forneus said.

  “It’s part of the gig,” Jinx said. “At least, that’s what we know from a few hours of research. The two of us have been up all night going over what happened and what it means.”

  Jinx and Forneus had stayed up doing research, on me? And what was this gig she was talking about?

  “What gig?” I asked, throwing gloved hands in the air.

  “Becoming queen,” Ceff said.

  “As in, the kelpie king’s wife?” I asked.

  But I knew that’s not what he meant. I already felt it deep in my bones.

  “The Queen of Air and Darkness,” he said, bowing his head slightly. “Queen of the Unseelie Court.”

  “No,” I said, shaking my head. “That’s not possible. I’m no...”

  Queen.

  I choked on the last word and dropped to my knees. Crap. I’d tried to tell a lie and my fae blood smacked me with the truth. It was a painful wakeup call.

  “I don’t want this,” I said.

  “I know,” Ceff said, reaching out and sliding my hair behind my ear.

  My eyes widened. His fingers touched my skin, but there was no vision. In fact, there’d been no visions in our bedroom last night either. I’d been so focused on being alive, coming home and being with the man I loved, that I hadn’t even remarked on it.

  That wasn’t like me. I’m not sure what scared me more, the lack of visions or the fact that I hadn’t made note of such a significant detail. I was a detective and a hero of the city. Details were my job. They made the difference between solving a case or winding up dead.

  “How did it happen?” I asked.

  There was no sense letting fear take over, or in lying to myself that I wasn’t changed. The best thing I could do right now was treat this like any other case. Gather intel. Focus on the facts. Come up with a Mab-be-damned solution.

  “Like I said, we must go back to the beginning,” Forneus said. “Or, at least, the triggering event. From what we know, the lich king used his sorcery to create a pocket dimension, pulling a piece of Donn’s domain into a bubble of reality and tethering it to the human realm.”

  “The Necropolis,” I said, nodding. “That was one of our theories about the lich king and his kingdom. But he created the Necropolis ages ago, right? It’s been tethered to Highgate Cemetery for at least a century, if the door existed when you were last there in the 1880’s.”

  Good. Facts, theories. Working through the details that build a case and taking down the bad guy. This was my normal. I could do this.

  “It’s not just a theory, Ivy,” Jinx said, leaning forward and speaking rapidly. “Donn came here. For real. And you were right. He totally looks like Santa Claus.”

  Forneus winced.

  “I do not think the death god would approve of that comparison,” he said.

  “What did he want?” I asked.

  “Was he alone?” Ceff asked.

  Our questions were nearly in unison, the possible answers both as deadly. If Donn got pissed or if he brought along his girlfriend, we were all screwed.

  “The Morrigan was not with him,” Forneus said. “But she was mentioned. He warned us that war was on the horizon.”

  “And war is the Morrigan’s bailiwick,” Ceff said.

  “Right, I take it that warning wasn’t his reason to come here,” I said. “It’s not new information.”

  “Super weird to hear Santa Claus warning about the apocalypse though,” Jinx said.

  “Donn confirmed what we already suspected about the Necropolis,” Forneus said. “The lich king created his kingdom by stealing small pieces of Tech Duinn and tying it to the mortal realm. More recently, he picked at the fabric of Tech Duinn’s ties with Faerie, managing to create a small, temporary door through which he stole the night-mare.”

  “Poor, Fernie,” Jinx whispered. “That must have been terrifying.”

  I was glad that Jinx seemed to like Fernie and had gone along with letting the night-mare spend the night in our office. I really did have the best friend ever.

  “Unfortunately, this destabilized each of these realities,” Forneus said.

  Crap.

  “He created weak spots,” I said.

  I could feel the truth of my words. I didn’t need his confirmation, though I got it.

  Forneus nodded and Ceff frowned.

  “The king and queens left their thrones and closed all of the doors to Faerie,” Ceff said. “But Faerie doesn’t like to be caged, and it will always seek balance.

  “So Faerie is like a cat,” Jinx said. “If you close a door, it’ll meow until you open it, or find another way through. Or barf on your pillow.”

  “That is an apt description,” Forneus said.

  “And super gross,” I said. “Thanks for the visual.”

  “Any time,” Jinx said with a wink.

  I don’t know how she does it, but my best friend had made me smile in the midst of another major crisis. Ceff was my rock, but Jinx was my heart.

  “Would this have anything to do with how I managed to shift ley lines around?” I asked. “When Gaius threatened me in our office, I swear that when I reached for a ley line, they moved. I didn’t think that was possible.”

  “Anything is possible when talking about the fate of Faerie,” Ceff said. “Mab and Oberon and Titania left Faerie deeply wounded.”

  “But wounds heal,” I said.

  “Eventually,” he said with a nod. “Faerie is a survivor.”

  “And an opportunist,” Forneus said. “You’ve been drawing power to you, from the ley lines and, if I’m not mistaken, directly from Faerie. You, a direct descendent of Mab, are changing the connections of the human world to the faerie worlds. Your very existence has the potential to alter reality.”

  I gasped and the foot I’d been swinging went still.

  “Faerie always finds a way,” I said.

  Chapter 39

  “Hey, you okay?” Jinx asked.

  “Something’s been bothering me about this case, about the lich king,” I said, running a gloved hand through my hair.

  “Want to talk it out?” she asked.

  I closed my eyes but nodded. Maybe, if I was lucky, that would help. I’d been working through a brain fog lately, fragments of truth swirling through that fog like glitter in a tornado.

  Grief is like a concussion.

  I’d read that when doing an internet search after Kaye went into the hospital, after my dad left, and after the magical doctors, it felt weird calling them witch doctors, called and told me that Kaye had fallen into a coma-like sleep and might not wake up again, ever. Search engines aren’t great at answering the question of how long is normal to grieve the loss of a father who’s still alive but has to leave to save your life, or the loss of your friend who is in a coma after you fought each other with magic. But in my search for answers, I did find one line that resonated with me and my pain.

  Grief is like a concussion.

  It explained the headaches, loss of appetite, and lack of focus. It gave me a scientific medical diagnosis to latch onto when I felt betrayed by magic.

  But a concussion didn’t explain the dredging up of old hurts. Instead of focusing on cases, I relived the feelings of abandonment from my father leaving, not once but twice. Grief is like a concussion, but it was more. Grief made me think about the betrayals by my biological mother.

  Mab had made me think I was responsible for unleashing the Wild Hunt on my city when in truth that was a calculated attack that she had set in motion.

  And, like that, a clear understanding of what had happened snapped into place.

  “I’ve been wondering what motivated the lich king to come here to Harborsmouth,” I said, opening my eyes. “Why here? Why now?”

  “The ley lines?” Jinx
asked.

  I shook my head.

  “I assumed it was the nexus of ley lines, or the power vacuum that Kaye and the glaistig left behind,” I said. “But my gut never bought that theory. Something about it never felt quite right.”

  “What is your gut telling you now?” she asked.

  “That this all ties back to Mab,” I said.

  Jinx’s eyes widened and she glanced around the room, noting the exits. It was a good instinct. My bio mom was the original Queen of Air and Darkness. No matter how much Faerie wanted me on the Unseelie throne, I’m pretty sure Mab could still squash me like a bug.

  “I hate your gut,” Jinx whispered.

  “Me too,” I said. “But think about it. What if the lich king had been another one of Mab’s puppets, little more than a plaything who could raise the dead.”

  “Creating minions to entertain her with, like the huntsman,” she said.

  “Exactly,” I said.

  “Okay, it fits her twisty murdery style, but why send the lich king?” she asked. “Why would she want Faerie to claim you? Why would she want you on her throne?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “But I have a feeling that I better find out.”

  Chapter 40

  Reality, and Faerie’s connections to reality, were changing. I didn’t like the sound of that. Even worse was the implication that I might be the nexus for such change. Add in the meddling of my twisted sociopathic bio mom who liked to throw her toy monsters at me, and things went from bad to intolerably horrific.

  My greatest fear, the one that kept me up at night, wasn’t losing myself to a vision. That’s the lie I told myself, but, deep down, it didn’t track. The thing I’d always feared most wasn’t the danger that stuck to me like congealing ghoul guts, it was the risk that danger presented to the people I loved.

  I hitched the duffel bag over my shoulder and took a last look at our building. My home.

  Sneaking out while Jinx was at work and sending her a vague text message about visiting Kaye was a betrayal, but the alternative might be so much worse. If my very existence altered the fabric of our world, drawing the monsters to me like a bugbear to a honeypot, didn’t I have a responsibility to leave Harborsmouth, and my friends, behind?