“Think about it like wrapping a second skin around you, but this skin is like a black-out curtain. It keeps what’s you inside and obscures it from those outside. Your magic will make it happen. You have to want it to. Give it a try, kind of like you did earlier. It may take a few times, but once you figure it out it’ll become an instinct.”
I tugged on the now-familiar threads of my magic and hummed as energy danced over my skin, sinking deep like lotion. My stunt by the sea helped me identify exactly where it was and how to draw it to me. I formed my query and set it loose, feeling the magic respond to my request eagerly. A thin, electric film danced around me and sank in. After a few tests, I didn’t even feel like I was being strangled in plastic wrap.
Finn visibly relaxed next to me, his hand falling from my own to play with his own leather bracelet instead. “That’s better.”
“Why didn’t you say anything before?”
“Everything’s happened so quickly I haven’t had a chance to.” He said and nibbled on a nail. The lines around his eyes and mouth relaxed, nearly vanished. “It’s like looking right at the sun. It’s something incredibly intense and beautiful and even though it hurts, you don’t want to look away. You’re kind of addicting, like a candy I’ve craved for too long and finally found again.” He snorted and I had a flashback to Geoffrey when he’d stared at me with a similar expression. “But now that you’ve cloaked, it’s like you’re just another powerful fey.”
I wished I could wrap my fingers in my hair and pull it around my face like I used to do when I was younger and wanted to shut out the world. I didn’t like feeling like a burden. I especially didn’t like that I was a mystery to myself. Instead, I hummed in the back of my throat, clenched my fingers tightly together, and shut out everything around me, ignoring Finn’s attempts at small-talk on the remainder of our trip to the airport.
I was feeling overwhelmed again and wished I could be alone for a few minutes.
I stayed quiet even after Finn paid our driver and hoisted our bags over his shoulder. I followed him through the automatic sliding doors, schooling my face to mask my inner fear. I was an imposter. So was he. This could go wrong in any number of ways.
At the ticket counter, Finn finagled his way through the complex series of stops we would need to take before actually getting to K.C. When he and the woman helping us seemed satisfied with whatever compromise they’d dreamed up, we grabbed our tickets and headed to the checkpoints. Despite my heart hammering hard enough I was sure the security guys could hear it, we made it through easily. My fake passport was glanced at and dismissed. I truly was a ghost.
A few minutes later we were sitting in the terminal, snacking on cheap burgers and chips with our bags haphazardly tossed on seats next to us.
Finn seemed to know I craved space and eyed the international news program playing on the screen above us with a skeptical eye. The United Nations Security Council was in a special meeting today; it was a closed-door meeting as they reassessed the threat coming from a group of three rogue nations banding together. Together they were equipped with a massive arsenal of nuclear weapons at their fingertips. These were countries that weren’t even supposed to possess the knowledge to develop nuclear weapons, let alone be ready to launch them. But there they were, fingers over buttons demanding action from the rest of the world.
America had finally finished developing its missile shield, and the barrier now stretched in one large, light-blue dome encompassing the entire continental United States. Smaller shields were being erected over Hawaii and Alaska. The European Union was fuming over the whole thing, demanding access to the information so they could speed along their own defense programs, but the U.S. wasn’t budging and slapped a big red confidential seal on the whole thing.
The whole point was moot anyway. If the nukes were launched, there wouldn’t be much Earth left to even entertain the idea of sustaining a population. But I supposed everything was about appearances, and, well, it was an election year after all. The zippers on Finn’s pants jingled as his knee bounced up and down while he listened to the report.
He was truly incapable of being quiet.
“What impact will the reemergence of magic have on this whole deal?” I asked, waving idly at the TV while slurping the last drop of Coke from between the remaining chunks of ice cubes in my to-go cup.
Finn’s bouncing stopped, and he stretched his long legs out before him, crossing them at the ankles. He folded his hands behind his head and leaned back into the webbing with a sigh. It felt weird seeing him with red hair. He almost seemed approachable. “Hard to tell, really. Whenever magic rears its head, technology tends to fall to the back-burner. Call it the whole human versus fey complex. Whenever one rises to power, they tend to expound upon their natural abilities exponentially.
“What’s unique about this situation is the sheer firepower we’re talking about here. Weapons capable of destroying the planet in a few pushes of buttons haven’t been around all that long, certainly not long enough to have to contend with the consequences of magic. Magic can be finicky. It’s been known to completely shut down technology, sometimes it merely slows it down, sometimes there isn’t any impact. Basically, we’ll have to see.”
I played with my straw, considering Finn’s words. He gave me one long look and began flipping through a magazine he’d snagged at the checkout counter. Something about golf, I think. The terminal started to fill up as our departure time ticked closer, and I examined the faces of the people around us, surprised to see fey mingling with the humans. Startled, I looked around the room, but no one else seemed concerned.
I poked Finn in the side. He glanced up from his magazine. “What’s going on?”
“What’s going on where?”
“Why can I see the fey? And why isn’t everyone freaking out?” I pulled on the bill of my cap.
Finn surveyed the terminal. He replied, “You’re magical. You can see past their glamour for the most part.” He returned to his magazine. I shoved my hands deep into the front pocket of my hoodie, trying to be inconspicuous as I peered down the aisle.
Across from me, a woman with flawless, dark chocolate skin and elongated, tipped ears tapped out texts on a cell phone. When she glanced up, I sucked in a breath at her the lack of whites in her eyes and slits fanning out around her nose. Down a ways, a man twisted what I first thought was a dreadlock around his finger, but then realized it was really a long black snake, one of many spouting from his head. A small child peering out the monster-sized windows at the tarmac was actually a troll, and a winged creature the size of my big toe with purple-spiked hair was head-banging to a mini-iPod on the windowsill.
“How many Fey are there?”
He answered without looking up. “Well, it’s hard to tell really. But I’d say it’s about a 60-40 split in favor of humans.”
I swear I saw stars for a minute. “You say that like it’s nothing.”
“Among us, yeah, I guess it is. That’s why it’s interesting to see what will happen with the shift swings back in favor of magic. Considering how long it’s been since the last switch, humans are in for an incredibly rude awakening.”
“Have any fully emerged yet?”
He wrinkled his nose and turned another page. A model posing in a gold bikini beckoned with one elegant finger. “Maybe in some smaller communities, sure. But most won’t try yet. Magic is still really too fresh a concept for them to completely unmask.
“Most are waiting for a reason, call it a flash-bang moment, to come out of hiding. In many ways, it’s easier to stay hidden, especially with how weak the magical field is right now, and how long it’s been since people actually saw fey let alone still believed in them. Give it a few months and sure, more and more will start stepping from the folds.”
Talk about revolutionary.
“What do they see when they look at me?” I thought about my cloaking spell and Finn saying they’d look at me and think I was any normal fey.
“You look human. But that’s not a bad thing,” he hastened to add at my expression of alarm. “Many fey look like humans. In all actuality, it isn’t all that strange. Like elves,” he coughed the word out like it tasted bad. “Being fey really only means ‘possessing magic.’”
That shut me up and I spent the next half hour in a haze of thought. I barely noticed when we were called to board, didn’t pay much attention as we found our seats, and only vaguely noted the wheels leaving the ground.
17
Zara
I huddled in my seat, face buried in my sweatshirt, biting back moans of agony.
I couldn’t concentrate past the raging migraine that swallowed me whole. It had started about an hour into the flight and refused to let up. Finn nudged my side and I flinched before lifting my aching head. I tried to open my eyes, immediately snapping them shut when the overhead light cut a searing wave between my lids. Yeah, that wasn’t going to happen.
“Hey, what’s wrong?” Finn pressed his lips to my ear, speaking quietly.
“Migraine.” I forced the word out between clenched teeth. I leaned against him and buried my face in his shoulder, trying to shove the pounding in my head away.
“That’s weird,” he murmured, rubbing my back in a comforting motion. “Being what you are, you shouldn’t get sick. Or deal with human health issues for that matter, even things like migraines.”
Hearing him, but neither comprehending nor caring, I groaned again. He slung his arms around me, pulling me close. It felt good. If we weren’t careful, we almost stood a chance at becoming good friends. Maybe even great friends. Hell, this migraine had me all kinds of messed up. I tried to stop thinking. Maybe that would make the pain go away.
“Have you always had migraines? Headaches?” He said this in the tone of a man who’d had some major epiphany. “I’ve seen you rubbing your temples, but I figured it was a nervous habit.”
With my face still pressed into his chest, I nodded weakly and brought my arms over my head to keep the light from sneaking through the crack. Where was he going with this?
If anything, Finn now sounded even more excited, and his voice got louder, only softening when I flinched against him in pain. “I need you to try something for me, Z. I know it really hurts right now, but I think this will make you feel better. No, I promise it will make you feel better.” He moved against me, pushing me back into some sort of sitting position despite my pathetic protests.
“That’s right, sit up. Open those eyes.” I pursed my lips but didn’t even think about doing that. Promise of no pain or not, I wasn’t going to subject myself to that horror. “OK. Fine then. Don’t open your eyes. But I do need you to reach out with your magic and find the glass of water on my tray. Find it, and then I need you to manipulate it somehow. Something small. Make it spin or slosh or rock or something.”
I definitely didn’t know where he was going with this, but I was able to muster up enough strength to send a strand of energy out around me like a force field, a radar searching for a target. The water blipped red on my metaphorical screen and I zoomed in. Carefully, oh so carefully, I caused it to form a funnel inside the glass, working up the sides but never breaching the rim.
“That’s good, really good,” Finn whispered. “Now, how are you feeling?”
That phrase, that one simple phrase stopped me cold.
The crippling migraine from before, similar to ones that kept me home from school for two straight days, was pulling back. The nausea receded. I risked slitting my eyes and breathed a sigh of relief when I didn’t immediately feel like gouging out my eyeballs.
“How…”
“Your magic. It has to be your magic. Your entire life your magic has been calling to you, demanding attention from you, but you’ve never had an opportunity to release it until now.” The more I spun the water around in the cup the better I felt. I balled my hands in my lap and fully sat up, looking around at the full plane for the first time, blinking soberly.
“Say that again?” My voice came out hoarse, and I reached for the glass after stopping the momentum to take a small sip.
“Think about it like this. You have a lot of magic, too much magic to control, and it’s all building and building inside you because you didn’t have an outlet. You bottled it all up and eventually, like anything that’s become too much for its container, it exploded.
“Maybe the headache is a warning of that imminent explosion, maybe it was the explosion, I don’t know. But what I do know is that you need to make sure you constantly use your magic in some way. It doesn’t have to be anything major.” He waved a hand at the glass I’d emptied. “But it needs to be something. You have to siphon off the extra stuff because you’re a God. You’re a literal repository for energy and magic. And since you’re the First, you probably have even more energy than the others!”
“You’re saying my migraines were always caused by my repressed magic, and now that I have an outlet, I’ll finally be migraine free?” I asked stupidly. Seriously, why was this, of everything else that had been thrown my way, the hardest thing to grasp?
“Yes!” he exclaimed. “If you ever start to feel a headache coming on, remember that you need to burn off some of that extra magic you’re carrying around.”
I looked around the cabin and grunted, wishing I could tell what time it was, but the darkness made it impossible. I was suddenly ravenous and wondered when dinner would be served.
18
Zara
“Why are we here, again?” I grumbled. My hands were braced on my hips as I stared up at the sign boasting the words: Dirty Deed.
A nightclub.
Finn had roped me into coming to a freaking nightclub.
“I told you back at the hotel. There’s a guy I need to talk to here. His name is Ryder. I used to know him a few years ago,” he said, brushing hair out of his face. My eyes narrowed. A few years could mean anything from seventeen to four-hundred. “We need backup and he knows everyone in the industry. He’ll be able to get us some security as we track down the Gods.”
“Would he have answers about my parents?” I’d tried calling my mom at the airport when we’d landed using a phone at the help desk, but the number was still out of service. I’d tried calling my dad’s phone, too, but he didn’t pick up and Finn told me not to leave a voicemail. “Or about the Order?”
Finn stepped forward when the line moved, and smoothed his hands down his black, button-up shirt. “It’s entirely possible.”
“Does he know we’re coming?” I asked, looking up at the sign again.
“Yes.”
“Is this the same guy who gave you that package?”
“No.”
Earlier today, after changing planes four times in about nineteen hours to finally get one that landed in Kansas City, I’d expected Finn to make us hunker down in a hotel and rest for the night. But he’d caught me by surprise when he instead opted to rent a car and drove us to some neighborhood an hour away from downtown, and then vanished inside a sketchy-looking house with broken windows and weed-ridden, uncut grass.
When I’d reached the limit of my sanity twenty minutes later, he’d emerged at the door, waved at a dark, shadowy figure inside, and strolled to the car clutching a package the size of a large Stephen King novel. He wouldn’t even let me touch the stupid thing and tossed it in the back seat without as much as a word.
The kelpie was silent on the way back downtown where he rented a room with two beds using that crazy, never-ending reservoir of money he seemed to have. It was a good thing he was loaded because I’d lost my wallet somewhere back in Norway and couldn’t even think about touching my bank accounts without alerting everyone to my presence.
At the hotel, I’d changed and removed my contacts because they burned my eyes. Then I’d tried watching television. Someone had already tuned it to national news coverage and the first image on the screen was my face. The story was a short one and similar to what Finn had told me. Eight world-clas
s swimmers, all on fabulous career trajectories, died tragically when carbon monoxide filled the room at the hotel they were staying at. But one of the swimmers remained missing.
“Anyone familiar with the whereabouts of Zara Ramone is asked to call their local authorities immediately,” the clip from the police chief’s interview with media said. “At this point we don’t believe her to be in any danger, but her parents are concerned about her well-being.”
A quick montage followed, highlighting my achievements and those of my friends.
I’d gone a little numb again seeing the familiar faces. Thankfully I’d talked to Mom as soon as I could, because I couldn’t even imagine how much this news would have worried her and my dad. But I couldn’t figure out why she hadn’t contacted my coach about it. Or called the authorities.
The television went black and Finn shielded it with his body, the remote clutched in one hand. “That’s not helping anything.”
“I was watching that,” I had protested without any real heat.
“And I turned it off. Now go shower and change. We’re going out. We’re meeting with a guy I know.”
I’d expected an office building or maybe a restaurant since it was getting late. But a nightclub hadn’t occurred to me in the slightest. The beat rippled through my body, and for the first time all day I allowed the invisible weight of worry to fall from my shoulders. Maybe I needed this, a change in scenery. If we stayed at the hotel, I’d probably spend a sleepless night dwelling on everything that had gone wrong in my life.
We finally reached the front of the line and I presented my ID to the bouncer at the door. He didn’t even so much as glance at the fake license and stamped a blue, double overlapping D on my hand. His fingers lingered over my skin after pressing the cold rubber to it, and I frowned as I pulled it back, giving Finn a glance. My counterpart winked and flashed his ID in response. The bouncer didn’t linger over his face as he had over mine, and he ushered us through the door and into the darkened club with one last look that settled on my lips.
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