Tempestuous

by Lesley Livingston

  “We are destined to do this play!” Quentin howled as Alec and Jack manhandled him out of the deluge.

  A silver fork of lightning hit the stage deck in the middle of the theater, and everyone who was still standing around jumped and scrambled for cover.

  Everyone except Kelley, who just snarled fiercely, glaring up into the sky.

  She tugged the hood of her jacket further over her face and ducked down one of the theater’s entrances. Once she was out of sight, Kelley unclasped her clover charm, shoved it into a pocket of her jeans, and rocketed into the sky, leaving nothing but a faint trace of purple light in her wake.

  “Get over here!” Kelley shouted as she burst through the cloud ceiling into the midst of the storm and saw three shadowy figures. They were lounging on the bank of a thunderhead, desultorily hurling lightning bolts from long, skinny fingers. “Now!”

  The glow from Kelley’s Faerie wings cast eerie illumination over the faces of the Cailleach as they approached her, bobbing through the unsettled air like tattered gray kites.

  “Mistressss . . . ,” they murmured in chorus, voices hissing like rain on a tin roof. “Be thou pleased with thine ever-faithful servants? Is yon tempest to thy liking?”

  Kelley rolled her eyes heavenward. “No! ‘Yon tempest’ is not to my liking! Yon tempest sucks!”

  The three Hags exchanged confused glances and mutterings of “more lightning?” “louder thunder?” and “thou didst a shite job on wind duty. . . .”

  “Stop it!” Kelley yelled above the gale. “Just . . . stop!”

  The Storm Hags drifted over to surround her, hunched and weaving in a circle around where Kelley hovered, their robes and long gray hair crackling with tiny forks of fire.

  “Look. Here’s the deal.” Kelley reined in her urge to blast the lot of them out of the air. “I’m in a play. It’s not real. The thoughts I’m thinking when I’m acting the part of Ariel—thoughts about creating, yes, I know, a magical tempest—they are not for the purposes of literal translation. Okay? It’s make-believe.”

  The expressions of disappointment on the faces of the Cailleach were so exaggerated they were almost comical. But then Kelley remembered that her director had come very close to getting a bolt of lightning to the head a few minutes earlier, and the humor of the situation lost its appeal.

  “Here, in this place, there will be no storm-brewing. All right? None. Nothing but clear skies and gentle breezes until the play is done.” She pegged each Hag in turn with a stern glare. “Dost. Thou. Understand?”

  There was further muttering, but they seemed to take her meaning. Grudgingly.

  “Look.” She sighed. “Just . . . clear off this cloud cover and dry up the rain. And behave. Okay?”

  Under the influence of a Storm Hag–conjured, unseasonably warm breeze, the dampness from the sudden downpour cleared away almost completely within the half hour. The read-through carried on after the interruption, and excitement was restored throughout the general cast—and returned to its proper place behind Quentin’s jaded demeanor. Kelley did her best to share in the joy, ignoring the constant, hissing whispers of Fae-based worries that sifted across her mind.

  Multitask, kiddo, she thought. But do it one thing at a time.

  After the reading, the company players began to depart out of the theater entrances in tight little groups. Some of the cast were scheduled to meet again that evening to do a first blocking rehearsal of some of the big scenes. Time was short, so the company had to make as much use of the Delacorte as possible, and that meant night sessions. Kelley gathered her stuff and went to join Jack and Alec. But then she caught sight of a silhouetted figure in the back row of the amphitheater. Kelley’s steps faltered and she hung back. Jack turned and followed her gaze, frowning faintly.

  “You coming along now, Kelley?” he asked.

  “Uh . . . no. No, Jack—you guys go on ahead. I’ll be okay.”

  Alec shot her a quizzical glance. He obviously hadn’t seen the Faerie king sitting in the audience, cloaked and hooded in sable robes, like a deeper shadow in the shade of a pillar.

  “D’you want us to wait for you?” Alec asked.

  “No!” Kelley shook her head. “No . . . I just want to hang out for a bit. By myself. Get to know the new space. Y’know?”

  She was grateful when Jack nudged Alec gently toward the exit. You be careful, the expression in the older actor’s eyes said, as clearly as if he’d spoken the words aloud. Kelley nodded and gave him a reassuring smile. There really wasn’t anything for him to worry about. It wasn’t as if it was her father—or her mother—who waited. It was Gwynn ap Nudd, the king of the Court of Spring—the only Faerie monarch out of the Four Courts who had ever helped Kelley without exacting a price.

  “Highness,” she greeted the king, jogging up the wide, shallow steps.

  Gwynn pushed back the deep hood of his cloak and inclined his head, smiling placidly at her. He was exactly as she remembered him—pale and elegant, with piercing blue eyes and long midnight-black hair that fell down straight to the middle of his back. His gray robes fell in graceful folds beneath the dark mantle.

  “Princess,” he murmured in his gentle tones. “I hope you don’t mind the intrusion.” He waved a long-fingered hand at the stage before them. “I thought I’d sit in and watch. I am such a lover of the theater.”

  “You are?” Kelley was a little surprised by that. But then again, she was well aware that, for some of the Fae, humans were nothing but an endless source of amusement. At least they had been—up until her father had barred the Fair Folk from consorting with them in the mortal realm. Kelley didn’t suppose that there were any theater troupes wandering among the Faerie courts in the Otherworld. “Well . . . how’d we do?” She grinned. “I mean, for a first read-through.”

  “I thought the performances, embryonic though they may be, impressive. The mortal playing Caliban is suitably earthy and raw, the lovers fresh and full of wonder. And you, of course, shall shine brightly as the airy spirit of the isle. And he who plays the sorcerer Prospero is powerfully gifted. He understands. He . . . sees. I should like to talk to him. . . .”

  Kelley shivered. Much as she liked Gwynn, she didn’t want him to suddenly start consorting with her mortal actor buddies. The thought of Gentleman Jack suddenly vanishing into the Faerie realm, never to be seen or heard from again because one of the Fae had taken a fancy to him, made her heart clench a little.

  Gwynn glanced at her sideways beneath the dark wings of his brows and laughed. “Allay your fears, lady. I would not steal away your friends. I do not covet mortal companionship in the way that some of our kind do. I am merely, as I said, a . . . lover of theater. The Tempest is one of my favorite of Will’s plays. I do so love the idea of that island, so rife with wild magicks, and the storms and shipwrecks . . . and I admire the character of his Duke Prospero—one man strong enough to control those elements and make them do his bidding.”

  The whole “exiled ruler” theme probably resonated pretty strongly with Gwynn, too, Kelley thought—although she certainly didn’t say so out loud. She wasn’t about to bring up the fact that Gwynn had been deposed from his throne as sole ruler of the Otherworld by her father.

  But it seemed that the king’s mind had drifted down that avenue of thought without her help. “How is Auberon of late, lady?” Gwynn asked politely.

  Oh . . . you know, Kelley thought, he’s dying. . . .

  “He’s fine,” she said out loud.

  Gwynn gazed steadily at her, almost as if he sensed the lie. Of course, he wouldn’t—because Faerie were incapable of telling untruths. Except Kelley . . .

  “At least, he was when I saw him last.” She shrugged. It wasn’t that she actually cared about her father’s failing health. Really. She didn’t. But she also didn’t see any reason to broadcast it. “I mean . . . it’s not as if we’re particularly close or anything. I’m sure he’s perfectly fine.”

  “I see. You do not much care, is th
at it?” Gwynn asked.

  Kelley glanced sharply at the king, but she got no sense that he was mocking her. Merely asking the question. “I suppose,” she answered.

  “That is a pity.” Gwynn sighed. “For Auberon, I mean. He lacks in not knowing you, lady.” The king stood and pulled the hood of his cloak back up around his face, bowing slightly to Kelley as he did so. “I thank you for the entertainment, Princess. Good fortune go with you and yours.”

  Kelley nodded silently as the Faerie king turned and descended the steps, inky cloak flowing in his wake like a shadow fleeing sunlight. Watching as he turned toward the park interior, she wondered where he was going. Under other circumstances, when the Gate wasn’t throwing tantrums, she suspected he would have conjured up a rift and returned to his court in Faerie. Maybe he just fancied strolling through dangerous places. Maybe it wasn’t that dangerous for him. After all, who was going to attack a Faerie king?

  Well . . . who attacked Auberon? she thought.

  She watched the King of Spring until he disappeared out of sight underneath a grove of pines. For her part, she was going to hightail it out of there by the fastest route possible. The park just wasn’t a safe place anymore—not even for her.

  “Hey there!” A voice hallooed her from up in a tree as she took the path veering sharply west. “Kelley!”

  “Beni?” She peered up into the branches of a tall oak. “What are you doing up there?”

  “Boggart. Big one.”

  “In broad daylight?” Kelley was surprised by that.

  “Yup,” Beni said. “If a news crew had caught sight of it, they’d probably call it just another rabid raccoon, but it was definitely a boggart.”

  “So say you,” said another voice.

  Kelley saw Bryan, the other half of that dynamic Janus duo, leaning against the bole of the tree, not helping Beni out of his precarious situation in any way whatsoever. In fact, the way he was leaning against the tree, it looked as though he’d probably been trying to shake Beni out of its branches. They probably had some kind of bet going.

  “Personally, I didn’t see the thing. But, seriously, Ben. If you say so.” Bryan grinned over at Kelley. “Hello, Princess.”

  She smiled back at him. “Bryan, please just call me Kelley.”

  “It disappeared into a rift,” Beni protested as he swung himself down out of the branches and dropped lightly to the ground. “A raccoon wouldn’t have done that.”

  “Why didn’t you follow it?” Bryan taunted him.

  “No way! I think that rift had actual teeth. . . .”

  The lads started to aim punches at each other, and Kelley shook her head, smiling at the good-natured roughhousing. For such a couple of goofs, they sure knew how to fight. “What’s going on, guys?”

  “Trouble,” said Bryan.

  “Fun,” said Beni.

  “Gate’s coming apart at the seams.”

  “And we get to kill anything that comes through the holes!”

  “Listen . . . ,” Kelley said. “Seeing as you guys are hanging around anyway . . . could you do me a favor and keep a bit of an eye on any of the theater company who happen to be coming or going in the park for the next little while? We’re rehearsing—sometimes at night—and I don’t want anything to happen to them.”

  “Sure thing,” Bryan agreed. “Not like there’s anyone else to protect. I haven’t even seen a power jogger all day. And you’d practically have to shoot those freaks in the knees to keep them from running around the park.”

  “Yeah. Well. News gets around,” Beni said, rubbing his arm where Bryan had landed a blow. “Even the maintenance workers and groundskeepers are finding themselves conveniently fluish these days. Nobody wants to hang out around here just at the moment. It’s worse than it was during the Nine Night!”

  “Where are the rest of the Guard?” Kelley asked, looking around. Not like she expected to see them—the park was enormous, and the Janus tended to spread out to cover more territory.

  “Dunno.” Bryan shrugged. “We just got orders to stick mid-Gate and keep an eye out. I haven’t seen any of the others for days.” He didn’t seem concerned. Kelley figured that, outside of work, the Guard didn’t really socialize, en masse. It wasn’t like they did potlucks or went bowling.

  In the distance, they heard low, rumbling snarls. Beni’s face lit with excitement, and the two Janus started moving in that direction. Bryan turned to Kelley before they went and said with a grin, “Y’know, Kelley—when Sonny gets back from the Otherworld, you should both come with us on a hunt some night. Sonny’s actually fun when you’re around.”

  Kelley felt her smile freeze on her face.

  As the lads disappeared into the trees, she turned and headed for the nearest exit out of the park.

  Chapter XI

  Sonny held a finger to his lips—unnecessarily. Maddox had already gone dead silent and was listening intently. Voices. Two voices. Someone was in the subway tunnel, near the Faerie glamour that concealed the entrance to the obsidian passageway where they stood. Sonny thought he might have detected a familiarity in the tones of one of the two speakers.

  The first was female. Sharp with anger: “Of course I’m sure. We’ve been searching around down here for days, and I haven’t had so much as a twinge from anywhere else.”

  The hard stone of the subway tunnel distorted the words, but Sonny suddenly knew who they belonged to.

  “This is it—it has to be—but I still don’t understand why we’re doing this. I don’t like it. . . .”

  Maddox’s eyes went wide, and Sonny knew that he had recognized the voice as well. With a tap on his shoulder, Sonny gestured Maddox to follow him closer to where the sound was coming from.

  Standing just inside the tunnel mouth, they waited. After a few moments, they could see shapes moving, dim and shadowed, in the train tunnel beyond. From their side of things, the veil made it look as if they peered through a heavy gauze curtain. Sonny and Maddox edged as close as they could and listened.

  “You’re not afraid of the dark, are you, Cait?” said the second voice.

  Cait. They’d heard right. She was a fellow Janus Guard—one of only a few other than Maddox who Sonny considered a friend as well as a comrade in arms.

  “That’s not what I meant and you know it,” she snapped.

  Sonny strained again to make out the male voice. It could have been . . . yes. Maddox knew it, too. He turned to Sonny and mouthed the man’s name. Godwyn. Godwyn’s low chuckle unaccountably raised the small hairs at the back of Sonny’s neck. What were the Janus doing underground?

  Cait seemed to be wondering the same thing. “I’ve heard nothing about any disturbances in the city’s tunnels,” she said. “Or on any of the trains or in the stations. Not from the Lost Ones. Only human misbehavior, and that is not in our mandate to . . . correct.”

  “We’re not looking for Fae in these tunnels. We’re looking for other tunnels that will lead us to the Fae. To their gathering places.”

  “To sanctuaries. I know that. What I don’t know is why.”

  “Why do you think?” Godwyn’s tone remained pleasant. Friendly.

  But Sonny stiffened as he heard the rasp of a blade being partially drawn from a sheath, followed by the slap of the hilt as it was returned home with a flourish. A braggart’s gesture, except for the fact that Godwyn was virtually unparalleled in the use of a sword.

  “Where are the others?” Cait asked. “Where’s Ghost?”

  “Don’t worry about Ghost. And don’t worry about the others, either. We’ll have support soon enough. In the meantime, what you need to do is concentrate on tracking down and neutralizing whatever Faerie trickery keeps their little Lost clubhouse hidden from prying eyes. You say the entrance is around here somewhere. Find it. Then we’ll have some fun breaking up their nasty little party.”

  “We’ve never taken the fight to them before,” Cait argued. “Not like this.”

  “About time then, wouldn’t you
say?”

  Beside Sonny, Maddox frowned deeply, shaking his head.

  Cait was silent for a moment. Then she said, in a carefully neutral voice, “When was the last time Aaneel spoke to the Winter King?”

  Godwyn’s own voice went flat and hard. “You think Aaneel gave orders without sanction? I suppose you could always go and ask Auberon yourself—if you really want to question that. Do you, Cait?”

  There was another long silence. “No. I guess I don’t.”

  “Good. Then find the damned glamour and let’s get on with it.”

  Sonny and Maddox watched silently through the veil as Cait unslung her leather tote from across her body and knelt beside it on the ground, fishing through her stores of magickal paraphernalia. “This could take a while, you know,” she muttered in reluctant tones. “A long while.”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” Godwyn grunted, and Sonny could see his shadow hunch against the wall as he settled himself to wait.

  A distant rumbling sounded—like far-off thunder.

  “Train,” Godwyn called blandly, and Cait picked up her things and pressed herself against the opposite wall, a bare instant before a southbound train hurtled down the tracks, rattling and squealing, making a tremendous racket.

  By the time the end car had passed the veiled archway, Sonny was already running back toward the reservoir grotto. He’d heard enough.

  Thoughts in a tumult, Sonny pounded along the tunnel, Maddox running silently at his heels. As if the treacherous political machinations of the Fair Folk weren’t enough, now it seemed that he had Janus double-dealing to add to his list of bewares. Whether or not Godwyn was acting under orders from Aaneel, Sonny would have staked his reputation that Godwyn was not following the wishes of Auberon. Even Sonny’s own lingering mistrust of the Unseelie lord wasn’t enough to convince him that Auberon had issued some sort of Lost Fae extermination edict. But that was exactly what he suspected Godwyn was up to. There was no other reason to seek out a hidden community of the Lost who were responsible for no greater transgressions in the mortal realm than the theft of day-old baked goods.