I poured myself a cup of coffee and sipped from it. Odin let out a chirp.
“It’s mine. Eat your raisins.”
In the parchments we’d found in the safe, the report had mentioned direct contact with the spy. They didn’t use magic or something technological to transfer the information. If I was right, one of the four fae would leave the mansion tonight to pass on the information.
From the desk, I pulled out the two copies I’d made of the parchment missives and read them slowly, occasionally glancing back at the mirrors to see if anyone had moved. Something in the parchments felt weirdly familiar, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.
I sipped my coffee, staring at the mirrors. Elrine went to sleep half an hour later, her arms above her head like some beautiful version of Ophelia floating in the water. Branwen blew out the candles in her room and shut her eyes. Nerius occasionally rose to shuffle around to a different part of the mansion, and the mirror flickered as I followed him from different reflections. When he passed by my room, I did my best to contain my emotions tightly, so he wouldn’t notice my alertness.
I tore open the Doritos, chomping through them. Then, I ate my way through the prawn cocktail crisps, regretting my failure to bring a glass of water.
The hours ticked slowly on, and I downed three more cups of coffee, my heart rate rising with the caffeine. I tried not to think too much about my fears for the upcoming attack, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that our best chance was the London Stone. I just couldn’t quite explain why. Somehow, the attack felt like a bad move, something we were being forced into.
Just as I was tearing into the salt and vinegar crisps, something caught my attention. Branwen sat up in bed, barely visible in the faint moonlight. I glanced at the time—just before three a.m. What was she doing up at this hour?
As she dressed herself, my pulse raced, a mixture of excitement and painful disappointment. I liked Branwen, and deep down, I’d been hoping the spy would be one of the other fae.
I watched her pull on a tall pair of boots. Then she bent over, checking her reflection in the mirror. I felt my heart thump as her dark, almond-shaped eyes stared right at me. She smoothed her hair, then put on a shock of bright red lipstick. She was getting dressed to meet someone, and I wondered if that was how they had gotten her. Had she been lured into a romantic relationship with someone in the king’s army? Someone who had slowly convinced her that their cause was wrong, or that it was bound to fail, perhaps promising her a noble title once this was over?
I’d seen the jealousy etched across her face when Roan and Elrine had gotten too close. Had a broken heart led her to the dark side, or a chip on her shoulder about being a ‘gutter fae’?
She crossed to her door and listened intently before opening it. Then, she walked silently down the corridor. I made a split-second decision and used the other mirrors to focus on reflections around Branwen. I couldn’t lose her now.
Intently focused on the mirror, I watched her creep to the door to the garden and unlock it, furtively looking around her.
She moved in the mirrors, quickly scaling a tall apple tree in the garden to hop over the wall. The wall was designed to keep people out, but someone from inside could easily sneak out unnoticed using this route. From the side mirror of a car in French Ordinary Court, I watched her leap out of the glamour, appearing to spring forth from the side of a brick wall one story up. She landed on her feet, nimble as a cat.
If I stopped her now, she could claim she was out for a walk, nervous about the upcoming attack. Would Roan believe her? Probably not, but I decided not to take the chance. I had to catch her doing something significant.
As she crossed into Savage Gardens, I shifted the reflections, watching her from several windows.
I took a deep breath, and then searched for other mirrors in the house. I merged the windows and mirrors in the mansion with these four. Now everyone in the mansion could have a view of what was about to happen.
It was time to move on to the next phase of my plan.
Branwen suddenly tensed, and so did I. On Savage Gardens, a figure leaned against the wall, cloaked in shadows. I saw her smile, her face beaming as she approached the figure. The silhouette moved into the light, and my heart slammed against my ribs.
It was a banshee from the Court of Sorrow.
I’d seen enough. I had to act fast before Branwen told her everything. I grabbed my gun from the desk, and plunged into the mirror.
Chapter 24
I leapt from a large window to the chilly street and into the glare of a streetlight. Branwen stood with her back to me, but the banshee spotted me as I materialized, and her eyes widened. I quickly raised my hand, pointing my gun at the banshee. I recognized her as the young banshee I’d seen sitting by the fire in the underground complex. She moved faster than I expected, slipping into the shadows, where I couldn’t see her. I nearly shot after her, but in the darkness, it would only mean wasting one of my precious few bullets, and I didn’t want any unnecessary noise.
Branwen leaped forward after her, and I shouted, “Branwen, stop!”
She whirled to face me, shock hitting her face when she registered the gun pointed at her chest. “Cassandra? There was a banshee down there. She’s going to get away. We need to go after her.”
“You need to stay still,” I said, my fingers clutching the gun tightly. “If you move, I’ll have to shoot, and I don’t want to do that.”
“What are you talking about?” Hysteria tinged her voice. “Stop aiming that iron weapon at me! Have you lost your mind?”
“Knives on the ground. Now.”
“Cassandra, lower that fucking gun.” Her eyelids began to flutter.
“No. Here’s a better idea. You slowly remove all your hidden knives and then come with me—”
A strong hand grabbed my right wrist and twisted it, hard. I fired, but the shot went wide. I elbowed my assailant, and whirled to face him. A huge figure swung for me. I realized it was my shadow just as its hand connected with my cheek, my face blazing with pain. I had been standing quite a distance from the streetlight, and consequentially, my shadow was eight feet tall.
I kicked at its knee, but it didn’t even budge. One of its hands closed on the gun, the other gripping me by the throat. It jerked my weapon away, and the fingers around my throat tightened. I struggled, lungs burning, my vision blurring as I tried to breathe in. Air. I tried to pull the dark ethereal fingers apart, tried to kick my attacker, but it was useless. Panic rose in my chest, and I bucked and writhed in desperation, the world around me dimming. Air. I glanced at the mirror on my wrist, trying to feel the reflection, but all I could feel was my desperate need for air.
I grabbed the shadow’s body and jerked myself to the left. We both rolled sideways, the fingers around my throat slipping.
I sucked in a ragged breath, reality shifting back into focus. Ten feet away from me, Branwen stood motionless, her eyelids fluttering. I couldn’t win against my shadow. I had to get her.
I bent my knee and kicked the shadow hard. Then I rolled and bounded to my feet. My shadow was already charging at me when I flicked my hand and leapt into the reflection on my wrist.
I landed a few yards away, plunging out of the side mirror of a car on the opposite side of the street. My shadow whirled around, searching for me. I pulled a stiletto from the sheath on my belt, and estimated my distance to Branwen.
Quietly, I crept alongside the row of cars, keeping my head low until I was right across from Branwen. Then I leaped over the hood of the car, dashing for her.
My shadow froze, and Branwen swiveled into a crouch, stilettos in both her hands, baring her teeth in anger. “I don’t know what’s going on, Cassandra, but you need to stop.”
“I saw you sneaking to meet the banshee, Branwen. Give it up. It’s over.”
“That’s a lie, I never—”
“Everyone saw it, Branwen. As soon as you sneaked out, I began to transfer the images to the mirrors
around the house. Nerius was on watch, and he saw it. I’m sure he woke up everyone else. They all know. They’re all watching right now.”
Her mouth hung open, her arms lowering to her sides. “What have you done?” she finally asked in a frail tone.
“What have I done? You were sneaking out to meet our enemies.”
“You fortal whore!” she screamed. “What have you done?”
Her eyelids began fluttering again, and I noticed my shadow begin to move. I bolted just as it lunged forward. I reached Branwen in three steps and punched her hard. She flew backward and slumped on the floor, out cold.
Out of her control, the shadow slithered back to my body, latching on to my feet. I stared at Branwen, then bent to pull the stilettos from her clenched hands.
I felt his powerful presence behind me before I heard him approach. I turned around, my body exhausted. There was no sense of victory, only a hollow feeling of sadness.
“You saw it?” I asked Roan.
“Most of it.” He stared at Branwen’s unconscious form. “Nerius woke us all up as soon as the reflection materialized on the window.”
“Now what?”
“We’ll take her to our holding cell. She’ll be interrogated. We need to know how she was turned.” He ran a hand over his mouth, shadows sliding though his eyes. “She was loyal once.”
As I returned with Roan to the mansion, all the adrenaline burned from my body. By the time I walked through the glamoured front door, all I wanted to do was crawl into bed and sleep. With Branwen lying unconscious in his arms, Roan slunk through the shadows of the courtyard, heading for the holding cell. I crossed into one of the halls. Within moments, the sound of oncoming footsteps greeted me, and Abellio and Elrine stood before me.
Elrine crossed her arms, staring at me. “What happened? Is Branwen…” She seemed unable to end the sentence.
“Roan took her to the holding cell.” I blinked blearily. “We caught her meeting a banshee, one of the women from the underground Court of Sorrow.”
Abellio’s deep blue eyes shone in the candlelight. “Why did she do this?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. Maybe we’ll know more tomorrow.”
Elrine narrowed her eyes. “How did you know to watch her in particular?”
I shrugged. I wasn’t about to talk about how I had watched them all without their knowledge, or that I’d seen her giving Roan a view of her nipples. Definitely not now. I crossed to the stairwell, heading for my room. I left Elrine and Abellio behind me, talking in hushed tones.
When I reached the door, I hesitated. My body begged for rest, but I knew there was one more thing I had to do before I could sleep. I crept down the hall to Branwen’s bedroom and turned the doorknob.
In the guttering candlelight, Nerius stood inside, staring at something.
“Oh,” I said. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know… I’ll leave you alone.”
“It’s okay.” His voice sounded ragged. “You can come in and snoop around. I assume that’s why you’re here?”
I hesitated. “Yeah. I hoped there would be something… anything that would give us some more information.”
He wiped his eye with the back of his hand. “Not really. She destroyed it.”
I frowned and moved inside, joining him by the small oak table.
“I didn’t believe it,” he whispered. “Even when I saw… when I woke everyone up. I actually thought she was being attacked by that banshee, you know? I woke Roan first so he could go and help her. And then you appeared, and the banshee fled, and she attacked you… and still I thought there was some explanation for it all.”
“I’m sorry.”
He gazed at a small bowl on the table with a snuffed, half-melted candle in it. Around the candle lay scattered pieces of parchment. A burnt letter.
“She was the good one. The one who always tried to do the right thing. I was the shitty, violent, bad-mouthed brother. She was the one everyone liked. And she always believed in this rebellion. I just can’t understand why she would…”
He opened his palm, showing me the tiny scrap of paper that had ripped his world apart.
“I found this by the candle. She didn’t destroy it properly.”
I picked it from his hand carefully. Several runes were still readable. Tonight… outside… secret…
“I saw her burning it.” He shook his head in disbelief. “Earlier in the evening, I’d come in to say goodnight, and I saw her burning something. She flushed when she saw me. And when I asked what it was, she said it was nothing, just a stupid love poem she wrote. She used to do that, you know? Write poems. But this isn’t her handwriting. I should have known.”
“You couldn’t have known,” I said sadly. “You believed in your own sister. Everyone else did, too.”
“Yeah.” Without another word, he turned, tromping away.
I looked at the table, and then began to pace the room, looking for anything else out of the ordinary. Her stiletto collection lay in her dresser, amidst her clothing. I glanced at the mirror through which I’d watched her, my own reflection looking haggard and worn.
I noticed something on the bed, peering out from below the blanket. I snatched back the bedsheets, finding an envelope. I picked it up, and looked at it. It was empty, with no writing on it. I noticed a faint smell of wood anemone and grass. I frowned at its familiarity. Was that her handler’s scent, the banshee she had sneaked out to meet?
I found nothing else in the room, and after ransacking it, I left it empty.
Chapter 25
The next day, a thick sense of grief hung over the mansion. Nerius stayed in his room, his door shut, refusing food. Elrine and I hardly spoke to each other, both of us cocooned in our bubbles of misery. I had no idea where Roan and Abellio were, but I could only guess they were involved in interrogating Branwen. Even Odin had fallen quiet, hardly squawking the occasional Poe quote.
It was dusk before Roan returned, and his voice boomed through the mansion, summoning us to meet him in the library. When I pushed through the door, I found him standing in the center of the dusty, candlelit room, grimly leaning against a bookshelf. “The war council will begin in an hour,” he said. “I want the four of you on lookout by the time it starts.”
“Why?” Elrine asked. “We caught the spy. What else is there to worry about?”
Roan met my gaze. “Branwen could have passed on information to the banshee before Cassandra got to her.”
I nodded. “I don’t think she managed to say anything, but it’s best to make sure.”
“How do you want us deployed?” Abellio asked, chewing at his fountain pen.
“Elrine and Cassandra should take the roof. Cassandra, I want your eyes on the north. Monitor every street within five hundred yards to the north. Can you do that?”
“With mirrors, sure.”
“Good. Abellio and Nerius, I want you monitoring the garden wall to the south of the mansion. Make sure no one comes that way.”
“We can’t keep a lookout as good as Cassandra,” Abellio said.
Candlelight danced over the planes of Roan’s face. “Our cell is not the only one keeping watch tonight. The rest of the perimeter is handled by different cells.”
It was a good reminder that we weren’t in this alone. There were plenty more rebels on our side.
Roan started toward the door, before turning back to us. “Don’t leave your post until the council is over. We’re a day away from victory. Let’s not make any mistakes now.”
Thankfully, a cloudless canopy of stars hung over us. Rain would have made it into a miserable night. Elrine and I dressed in sweaters and sat on the roof of the mansion, on lookout duty. On the tiled roof, I laid out eight mirrors, each reflecting the starry night sky. As the breeze rippled over my skin, I felt for their reflections, searching for a good vantage point. Slowly, the mirrors flickered to visions of the London streets.
“Does that cover all the positions we need to watch?” Elrin
e asked.
“I think so.”
She nodded. “Looks good.”
We sat in silence, our gazes alternating between the mirrors and our view of the dark street below.
After a few minutes, Elrine pointed at one of the mirrors. “Look. What’s that?”
I stared at the mirror pointing to Crosswall. It looked as if a black hole of darkness was slowly swallowing the street. Passersby seemed oblivious to the incoming dark void, simply moving aside to avoid it as it rolled in the center of the street, a cloud of writhing smoke.
I swallowed at the eerily familiar sight. “I actually think he’s one of ours. He helped us save you and Scarlett, remember?”
“Vaguely,” Elrine said hesitantly. “I was mostly out of it that night. But I think I remember… he was there, but wasn’t. I was feverish. I thought I was hallucinating.”
“His name is Drustan. I’m betting there’s a car in the midst of that darkness.” A memory of riding in a car within the void flickered in my mind, and I glanced at the stars, strangely reassured by their silvery light. “I’ll make sure.”
I pulled out my phone, dialing Roan. It took him a minute to answer, and I could hear him fumbling with his phone. He still wasn’t used to modern technology.
“Yes?” His deep voice rumbled through my bones.
“Any chance Drustan is somewhere around here, driving with his car?”
“Yes. He’s nearby.”
“Thanks.” I hung up the phone, shoving it back in my pocket.
After a minute, the roiling darkness pulsed onto Savage Gardens. From the way the humans reacted on the streets below, it was clear they didn’t see it the same way we did. To them, it was just something to avoid. As Drustan’s darkness moved closer, the light dimmed around us, the stars blackening. I couldn’t tear my gaze away, feeling as if I were watching a void devouring our world. Then it began fading, and I realized I’d been holding my breath.
Agent of Darkness (Dark Fae FBI Book 3) Page 19