Fae can’t lie, and there was no wiggle room in that statement. But fae can be wrong.
“I found one. A sapling. Just a few months ago.” It had also promptly disappeared after Falin and I had taken it to the former queen, but its existence at all proved that there was at least one spare tree somewhere.
Again surprise flitted across my father’s face, his features so strange and foreign unglamoured, and yet also oddly familiar, as, while I’d never held much resemblance to the face he wore as Governor Caine, I could see hints of myself in his fae face. His eyes narrowed a moment, evaluating me.
“That’s not possible. The High King created and planted the amaranthine trees. They can’t be propagated. There are no spares.”
I frowned. “I found one. It was here, in Nekros.”
“Impossible. It must have only resembled the amaranthine.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “It was only a sapling, and it was sucking down belief magic already, but it hadn’t formed a door yet. It was most definitely an amaranthine tree.”
My father stared at me, and my back straightened in my seat as I met his glare head-on. Then he turned and pushed a button on a small control panel at his side.
“James, prepare to leave as soon as Agent Craft exits the vehicle.”
“Yes, sir,” a male voice said over an intercom I couldn’t see, and then the car, which had been idling this entire conversation, shifted as the driver put it in gear.
Welp, I guess that was my dismissal. I slid across the seat, reaching for the door handle, but my father speaking again made me pause.
“Alexis, you need to get out of this city before you begin fading. You should go to Faerie, but even another winter territory would be better than staying here. There is nothing you can do in Nekros. Do not go looking for an amaranthine tree. Leave. Faerie needs planeweavers, and you are not enough as the only one.”
I bristled, turning back toward him. “I’m not just abandoning all the fae in Nekros without at least trying to find a way to fix this.”
“What can you do here, Alexis? Are you planning on raising the dead? Would they know anything the survivors do not? Are you an expert on bombs? Or destructive magic? No? Then return to Faerie.”
I glared at him. “Even if I wanted to flee to Faerie, my agents are reporting that while all the other winter doors are intact, they are locked.”
“Your Andrews was too young to hold a court. I’m surprised he survived this long.” He waved a hand, dismissing the fact that Falin may be dead as if it didn’t matter, and my jaw clenched. He didn’t even notice, but continued by saying, “Invoke the right of open roads and walk through any other season’s door. Hunker down in the shadow court until this all passes.”
I glared, not even really seeing him through the haze of anger and pain washing over me. Then without a word, I slid across the seat and threw open the door, clambering out without another word—not that I could have uttered one through the grinding of my teeth.
“Get to the safety of Faerie, Alexis,” he said, his voice following me out of the vehicle.
He must have used magic to ensure only I heard his words, because there were several people in the street around the limo who no doubt would have found that command very odd for the Humans First Party governor. But no one reacted. I didn’t turn back and acknowledge his command. Slamming the limo door, I stepped back, and the limo rolled forward, toward the barricades, as soon as I was clear.
“That was a long briefing,” Nori said as she approached, her eyebrows high in an implied question.
I glared at her before reining in the expression. Nori wasn’t who I was infuriated with. Sucking in a deep breath and letting it back out, I forced my expression to soften. “I took a call in the middle of the briefing. Winter’s wasn’t the only door bombed. Spring and summer were attacked as well. I’m waiting to hear about fall.”
Nori didn’t blanch, or if she did, it didn’t translate through her glamour-created skin tone, but the sickly surprised expression that left her lips slightly parted and her eyes too wide made me guess that under the glamour, all the blood had just drained from her face. “That . . . Who would do this? And why?”
And wasn’t that the question.
“Are their courts also locked?”
“I don’t know,” I said, heading back toward the command tent. “I heard the news from a human source.”
Nori didn’t say anything, but fell in step beside me. Her unseen wings once again were emitting that earsplitting sound as she rubbed them together beneath her glamour.
My phone buzzed as I neared the glow of the command tent. I dug it out of my purse, hoping it was Agent Bleek with good news. It wasn’t the FIB office, but one of my roommates, Caleb. He was fae, and no doubt had been hit as hard as the rest of us during sunset. Every fae on this continent likely had been, but most didn’t know why. Yet.
“Hey, Caleb, you okay?” I asked by way of greeting.
“Something is wrong,” he said, and I could hear the undercurrent of panic in his deep voice.
“I know. And it’s bad. The amaranthine tree was destroyed. I’m at the crime scene. I . . . I don’t know what we are going to do yet. We are working on it.” That was as reassuring as I could be.
There was silence on the line for a long moment, and if I hadn’t been able to hear his slightly ragged breaths, I might have thought I’d lost the call. Then he said, “Maybe that explains it. Al, the castle. It’s gone.”
I froze, one foot still hanging in the air, midstep. Then that foot dropped, awkward and unsteady.
“What? How? Where?”
“I don’t know, Al.” Panic laced Caleb’s voice, making the words thready. “It’s . . . just gone. The door just opens to the empty backyard.”
Nori, who’d been walking beside me, turned to stare at me. I barely saw her.
How could the castle be gone? That was where I lived with a half dozen friends. It had superimposed itself into its own little pocket of folded space inside the mortal realm when I’d first aligned with the winter court. But now . . . the winter court had no hold on this land. And the castle, along with its mixed pocket of Faerie and reality, was gone.
“Who was inside when it vanished?” I asked, my voice sounding very far away. When had it vanished? When the amaranthine tree was destroyed, or during sunset? If it was this afternoon . . . Where was Rianna? She was a changeling. If she was caught outside of Faerie during sunset, she’d turn to dust.
“Rianna made it home earlier. I heard her and Desmond pass through the house about an hour ago. So, after that at some point?”
Sunset then. It had to be. But if Rianna was in the castle when it vanished, where was she now? Had the castle moved to Faerie? Or somewhere else in mortal reality? Somewhere winter still held? Or, hell, it could be back in limbo—it had spent several months there when I first inherited it. Wherever it was, I had to hope it had still shielded Rianna from the time between during sunset.
“Holly?” I asked.
“At Tamara’s.”
So, safe then.
“With Holly out, I was working late in my studio. PC is here with me,” Caleb said, and I would have been embarrassed to admit how relieved I was to hear that my dog hadn’t gotten whisked away to parts unknown.
Nope, just one of my best friends, probably a brownie, a garden gnome, dozens of gargoyles, and . . .
Shit. Roy and Icelynne, the two ghosts who’d moved in, were likely in the castle as well. The reality at the castle was blended, part the planes typical for the mortal realm, including the land of the dead, but with enough Faerie that it could sustain a changeling. But if the castle had returned to Faerie proper, there would be no land of the dead. What would happen to the ghosts?
I almost asked Caleb if he’d seen them, if they’d been at the castle or if they’d gone to Tongues for the Dead for the
day. But of course, Caleb wouldn’t have seen them. He wasn’t a grave witch. He couldn’t see ghosts.
Shit. This was bad. I paced back and forth, the phone clutched to my ear, but neither Caleb nor I speaking.
“Al, with the door gone . . . what are we going to do?” Caleb finally asked, his deep voice sounding lost. Caleb was an independent who held no love for the courts. But he was still fae. He needed Faerie to survive.
And Holly . . . she wasn’t fae, wasn’t even a changeling, but she was addicted to Faerie food. Mortal fares turned to dust on her tongue, providing her no nourishment. Without my enchanted castle serving up a feast daily, what would she eat? It wasn’t like the Bloom was going to open back up its kitchen anytime soon.
My gaze fell on the spot where the charred amaranthine tree had darkened the skyline all afternoon. In the darkness, I wouldn’t have been able to see it even if it were still visible, but my father had said it vanished at sunset. I stopped pacing. My castle apparently vanished at sunset as well.
“Caleb, I have to go,” I said, already running toward the Bloom.
Running when you can see only a foot or so in front of you isn’t the best idea, especially when the ground is littered with the remains of a blasted-out building. I brushed by several people and might have knocked over one. Lights had been brought into the Bloom, long extension cables snaking from them to huge generators outside the building. I was lucky I didn’t trip and break something in my mad dash, but at least I could see by the time I started scrambling over crumbling walls.
I reached the misshapen opening where the VIP door had been and dashed through the jagged doorway. And dropped three feet down into the alley beside the Bloom.
The pocket of Faerie holding the VIP room and the remains of the amaranthine tree was gone.
Chapter 12
Chaos consumed the scene after my discovery that the VIP room had vanished with sunset. The humans didn’t understand. The fae around me seemed to bounce back and forth between a state of numb horror and frantic panic, neither of which was conducive to, well, anything. I spent the time feeling more and more useless. My father had been right, there was nothing here I could contribute. That was especially true now that the bulk of the crime scene had vanished.
At nine I told Nori I was ready to leave. She offered no resistance. She’d been uncharacteristically quiet since the Bloom’s disappearing act. She’d barely said anything aside from a short argument with Martinez over the fire spell we’d removed from the amaranthine tree. The charm, still contained in the Anti-Black Magic Unit’s magic-dampening box, was more or less all the physical evidence that we still had. The bomb techs had removed a few fragments they thought might have been part of the detonation device, but everything else had vanished with the VIP room. Out of clues that might lead to who had caused the explosion, the spell was our best lead. Fae spell, fae location, and fae victims—at least of that particular magic—so we had clear jurisdiction. I agreed to allow Martinez’s team to take a closer examination of the magic involved, but the charm was to remain in FIB custody. So, the charmed box was now resting on my lap as we drove in silence back to the FIB headquarters.
I was surprised to find the office still swarming with agents. The FIB office didn’t close, of course, especially since there were some fae who were nocturnal either due to preference or photosensitivity, but I’d been under the impression that the night shift at headquarters was a skeleton crew. Tonight there were as many agents in house as when I’d left earlier. Maybe that should have been expected considering the events of the day, except that no one seemed to actually be doing anything.
Most of the agents were clustered in the small break room, sitting around the round table. A few sat on the floor along the wall. At least two were asleep.
“Do I need to send them home? Let them know it is okay to turn the case over to those working night shift?” I asked Nori in a hushed whisper.
She gave a wry laugh that held no humor in the sound. “If you can send them home, every fae in this room would offer you a boon.”
I stared at her in confusion for half a heartbeat, and then the implication of her words sank in. “They live in Faerie? All of them? Not one has a home on this side of the door?”
I looked around the group. Every agent I’d met that day was accounted for except Moor, the satyr who’d gone to the bombing scene with us. He’d been inside the VIP room when sunset hit and we could only assume he was now wherever the rest of the Bloom had gone. I’d known that all the agents were court fae—I was the first independent in the history of winter’s FIB organization post–Magical Awakening—but I hadn’t really considered all the ramifications of that fact. After all, Falin had kept an apartment on this side of the door when I’d first met him. I’d just assumed that was standard for agents.
“Is there a safe house, guest house, or anything where we can lodge everyone?” I asked, studying the group.
Nori gave me an odd look, and I realized she was trying to parse out my phrases, as they were apparently not something she’d heard before.
“A place you would put guests or fae under your protection? An apartment or house the agency might own?” Hell, even holding cells would offer places for some of the agents to crash for the night, though that would be the least desirable option.
Nori shook her head. “Fae stationed outside of Nekros have mortal dwellings, but we are—were—close to the door.”
So anyone taken into custody or visiting Nekros stayed in Faerie. Which didn’t help house any of the agents until we fixed the door.
This might be the main office for winter’s FIB on this continent, but it wasn’t a huge organization. There were maybe twenty-two agents here, including Nori and Tem. Still, that was twenty-two displaced people who needed a place to go. If my castle hadn’t vanished, I would have considered taking them home with me, but Caleb’s house had even less space than the FIB office.
“What is the daily limit on the card Fa—the king—gave me? Do I have enough to rent hotel rooms for everyone? Are there other petty cash accounts we can use to make sure everyone has somewhere to stay tonight?”
Nori opened her mouth to answer, but a chair scraping across the floor as it pushed back cut her off.
“Ma’am, if it is all the same to you, I’d rather stay here with other courtiers,” a male fae said. His skin was pale gray, which should have made him look sickly, but with his dark hair shifting in an unfelt breeze and his eyes glowing with an inner light, he came off more as eerie, like he would have been more in his essence stalking through a thick fogbank. His voice was familiar, though.
“Agent Bleek?” I asked, and he nodded, his hair defying gravity to float around him. Other fae nodded and murmured their agreement with his statement. Well, suit themselves. “You and anyone else who wishes to bed down here is of course welcome to until we can make other arrangements. Anyone who would rather have a real bed, we will rent a hotel room for. What supplies will you need for the night?”
In the end, only about five agents accepted the offer of a hotel room. With almost everyone staying, we needed to make a supply run for pillows and sleeping bags, as well as some basic groceries, though the office had only a mini-fridge and microwave, so there weren’t a lot of options there. A long debate started on why not just glamour everything needed, but Nori pointed out the fact that with the local tie to Faerie gone, magic needed to be conserved as it might not be replenished. It was a sound argument, and Nori, Tem, and I ended up going on the supply run. I probably could have had Nori drop me off on the way, but these were my people now; I’d do what I could.
By the time everyone was set for the night, either with supplies or in one of the only hotels in the Magic Quarter, and the fire spell was stored securely in a safe in my office, I was dragging. It had been a long day. I considered bunking down in my office, but I did have a home to go back to, so I didn’t need to
add any more crowding to the office. I felt bad having Nori take yet another trip to drop me off—she’d had as long a day as I had—but I couldn’t drive myself. Beyond not being able to see, I didn’t have my car.
“Do any of the agents have the ability to contact Faerie through magical means?” I asked as we drove back to Caleb’s house. “Through mirrors, perhaps?” Because I’d seen that done more than once, so I knew it was possible.
I couldn’t see Nori in the darkness of the car, but I could feel her stare at me. “No,” she said after several seconds passed. “That is primarily a Sleagh Maith magic.”
Oh. Right. And I was the only Sleagh Maith in the FIB, but I certainly had no idea how to do it. Yeah, I was feeling more and more useless.
It was midnight when I trudged up the steps to my old loft. My heart raced as I scanned the landing, trying to force my bad eyes to pick out any misplaced shape that might indicate more roses had been left, but the porch was clear. I’d seen no more roses since the bouquets this morning. Maybe I wouldn’t see any more. After all, we were cut off from Faerie, so unless my stalker had stranded himself as well, he was probably not even in the realm anymore.
I’d just inserted my key in the lock when a face appeared in the center of my door, startling me. The fact that I could see the face despite the darkness, and that the face moved through the solid wood of the door, should have tipped me off whose face it had to be, but I still jumped, stumbling back enough that I nearly tripped down the stairs.
Roy’s eyes flew wide, his glasses slipping down his nose, and he grabbed my arm, steadying me. I guess, for once, it was a good thing ghosts were solid to me.
“Don’t do that!” I hissed as I straightened, sucking down an unsteady breath. I moved farther from the edge to the step.
The ghost looked momentarily confused, his shoulders slumping as he pushed his glasses back into place. “Don’t help you?”
“Don’t startle me. You can’t just pop out at me through a door like that. Give me some warning next time,” I said, shoving my key back into the lock. Then I turned and gave Roy a quick one-armed hug, which was awkward, because I really wasn’t a hugger, but I’d spent most of the night thinking he’d probably gotten dragged to Faerie, where ghosts couldn’t exist. “I’m glad you’re okay.”
Grave War (An Alex Craft Novel) Page 12