by Eli Grant
Suddenly, the radio in my ear crackled to life.
“—can’t wait any longer or they’re going to block off the street!”
“Just wait, god damn it! She’s going to make it! Evie, Evie, come in!”
“Domino,” I gasped, and my legs nearly gave out as relief washed over me. I heard an instant clamor of relieved voices through the radio.
“Get outside! We’re in the van, on Taylor street!”
I was too stressed, too afraid, too exhausted and in pain to ask where he’d been. I just ran, making for the exit of the garage.
I burst out into the cold night and saw the van idling just a few feet away.
The back opened and Anton and Mariposa waved me towards them frantically. I stumbled towards them and let them drag me in. I collapsed in the back, breathing ragged, as they slammed the doors and shouted at Domino to drive.
He pulled out smoothly, driving slow and calm. Cop cars sped past us, sirens screaming, as we drove casually away.
No one spoke until we left Fae-space, the night shifting around us to mundane darkness.
“Jesus fucking Christ, Evie!” Domino shouted from the front seat. “What the fuck happened? Are you hurt? Anton!”
Anton reached for me, to check me for injuries, but I held up a hand to stop him.
“I’m alright,” I croaked. My voice was wrecked. I wasn’t sure if it was from smoke inhalation or if my throat was just burned. “Where’s Trip? What happened to you guys?”
“Trip is fine, he called me like fifteen minutes ago,” Domino said impatiently. “He’s at a god damn bar with some drunk witches.”
“Mari?” I asked, twisting to look at her and regretting it as pain flared in my side.
“The fucking panel zapped me,” Mariposa explained, holding up her burned and bandaged hands with a grimace. “Whisper ate most of the charge, which is the only reason I’m alive. But it shorted out my com and knocked me the fuck out. Anton and Whisper had to drag me out of there.”
“And when security spotted us they put a whammy on the communications,” Domino continued. “They didn’t come back on until we got out of range of whatever spell they used. Now what happened to you?”
An Elder vampire died on top of me and I set myself on fire in front of the Triumvirate, that’s what happened. But I was too tired and my throat was too sore to shout the way I wanted to. I just shook my head.
“We all made it out,” Mariposa said, sitting down with her back to the passenger side seat where Whisper was riding. “That’s all that matters. I knew there was something screwy with this job. We shouldn’t have agreed to it.”
“There’s no point in regrets, it’s done,” Anton said. “We’ll just lay low. The covers Dante got us were good. No one’s going to connect us to this.”
“Saw my face,” I croaked, the pain in my throat bringing tears to my eyes. “He knows my name. Knows where I live.”
“Who does?” Domino asked, gripping the wheel with white knuckles.
“Ryan. Dante’s cop. The one I—” I had to stop, my throat hurt too badly to keep going. But they got the idea.
“Son of a bitch,” Dante hissed, hitting the wheel.
“Does anyone else smell smoke?” Mariposa said, sniffing the air.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Anton asked, concerned. “You look... burned. Or at least your clothes do.”
“Not burned,” I struggled to say, and wincing rolled onto my back. “Might have broken a rib though.”
Anton didn’t say any more, but leaned in to run his hands over my side, pressing very lightly to find the break. He knew when he found it by the god awful sound I made.
“Evie,” he said quietly. “What the hell happened to you?”
I craned my head to look at what he was staring at. It was a small round hole in my dress, right where I’d broken my rib. There was something in the hole, glinting in the light, about the size of my thumbnail. As I watched, Anton reached in and pulled the thing out, revealing the unbroken, if very bruised, skin beneath it. He held the thing up to the light and I swallowed, sore throat stinging, as I realized it was a single, crumpled bullet.
“I don’t know,” I answered honestly, feeling more shaken than ever.
“The news is already hitting the Othernet,” Mariposa said suddenly. She was looking at her phone and hadn’t seen the bullet. “They’re saying we murdered someone? Did you kill someone?”
I shook my head quickly.
“Not me,” I said, my voice breaking. “Poisoned. Died right on top of me.”
“Shit,” Domino muttered. “I guess that explains why things went crazy so fast.”
“It gets worse,” Mariposa replied, her voice getting quieter as she read the breaking news. “They’re saying he was an Elder.”
Horrified silence followed.
“You’re telling me we’re going to get pinned for the murder of a god damn Elder and we didn’t even get away with the fucking treaty?” Domino said.
“There’s no amount of laying low that will fix this,” Anton said in a low worried voice. “Killing an Elder? They’ll hunt us like dogs.”
“If we had the thing we’d at least have enough money to get out of the country,” Domino growled. “Fucking Dante. If I ever see that bloodsucker again I’m going to stake that motherfucker to a tanning bed.”
I tried to speak, but my voice was gone, producing only squeaks. I patted what was left of my dress with shaking hands instead and, fumbling, pulled out the black case. Thank god for dresses with pockets. And that I’d convinced Dante to lend me the miniaturized Fae-space tech that let him do his Mary Poppins infinite pocket thing. The case might have burned otherwise.
“Is that what I think it is?” Mariposa asked as I opened the case. I answered by pulling it out and handing it to her. I’d grabbed it in the last seconds before Redmond and his friend had entered the chapel.
“We did it,” Mariposa said, awed, holding the Treaty of Five Races in her blistered, shaking hands. “We stole the magical Declaration of Independence.”
chapter
13
“THAT’S DEFINITELY CRACKED,” ANTON SAID, his fingers probing my side while I bit off bitter curses. “But I don’t think it’s broken, which is good news. I can’t do shit about broken bones.”
“What’s the point of magic if it can’t fix broken bones?” I complained. A quick pass of healing magic and a cough drop had restored my voice, though I sounded like I’d been smoking a pack a day for about forty years. I ached all over and I felt more tired than I’d ever felt in my life, but the fractured rib was the biggest thing on my mind at the moment. I’d barely noticed it when it happened, but ever since the adrenaline had stopped pumping it had been growing steadily more and more painful, until every breath I took felt like getting stabbed. I wasn’t ready to even think about the fact that it was the result of being shot at point blank range. My powers had done some weird things tonight, but they’d all been powers I already knew I had. I’d never deflected bullets before. Then I remembered the incident at the bodega and wondered if that was true. I’d assumed the guy had just missed, but if he hadn’t...
“Not even the wizards up at the university can do bones in one sitting,” Anton pointed out. “Nothing fixes bones but time. And I ain’t no wizard to begin with. I’m a glorified first aid kit. I can decrease the inflammation, make sure it’s set right, help with the pain. But you need a Mundie hospital. X-rays and prescription anti-inflammatories and two months of rest.”
“Can’t do hospitals,” I said, gritting my teeth as the stabbing pain threatened to bring me to tears. I was wary of hospitals to begin with. Being magic, especially a changeling, you never knew what was going to show up in tests, which made mundane medicine a non-option. As for non-mundane medicine, there were three options in Otherside. A free clinic in the Mission district, a couple of pricy private practices in South Beach and Noe Valley, and the wizards at
the university that specialized in healing magic. The clinic was permanently over capacity, the private practices didn’t see anyone without an appointment, and only vampires could afford house calls from mediwizards. “The first aid kit will have to be enough.”
Anton shook his head and sighed, laying his hands flat on my ribs.
“Hold still. This is going to hurt.”
“Can’t be worse than getting shot to begin with.”
A soft glow surrounded his hands and an antiseptic scent mingled with the stale fast food smell of the air in the back of the van. Searing pain like he’d just stuck a branding iron into my side lanced through me. I screamed, the van swerved violently, and I tried instinctively to roll away. Mariposa shoved the Treaty into Whisper’s hands and dropped down next me to hold me down so Anton could keep going.
“Christ, can you guys keep it down?” Domino shouted from the front as the van straightened out. “You want me to crash this thing?”
“I was wrong,” I howled. “This is so much worse than being shot! Jesus, stop, stop!”
“Almost done,” Anton promised. “Hang in there.”
Healing magic was one of those practices the witches dismissed as natural magic, ie: magic done by anyone who wasn’t a witch. Witches did academic magic, shit any witch could do if they had the power and knew the spell or ritual involved. Even vampires could learn some spells with enough time. Natural magic was pretty much impossible to learn if you didn’t have the predisposition. You were just born knowing how to do it or you weren’t. Which drove witches crazy, especially since healing specialist witches were super rare. They could come up with spells to do pretty much the same thing as a troll’s ability to accelerate plant growth or a goblin’s ability to pull raw ore out of stone, but nothing could replicate healing magic. So if you didn’t like the idea of being healed by a werewolf, you were pretty much out of luck. Not all wolves could do it, but they were the only race that got healing magic with any kind of regularity. Apparently it was supposed to supplement the accelerated healing all wolves had which could occasionally cause serious issues, like healing bones in the wrong places or overbuilding scar tissue until it turned cancerous.
“There,” Anton said after a few agonizing minutes, sitting back as he caught his breath. “That should help for the time being. You need to seriously take it easy though. Get yourself a shit ton of aspirin, try not to get out of bed for anything less than life or death, and let me work on it once a day or so and we’ll have you back to full health in under a month.”
“Is it going to feel like that every time?” I croaked.
“Possibly.”
“...Whatever. I’m so tired right now I could probably sleep for a month anyway. Let’s just get paid so I can go to bed. We’re heading to the rendezvous with Dante, right?”
The pain was easing off as Anton had promised, and I decided to risk sitting up. The pain came stabbing back so fast I retched, my head spinning. Anton steadied me quickly and helped me lean against the wall and gradually it eased off again. Still struggling to see straight, I gestured to Mariposa to give me back the Treaty.
“Hell no,” Domino scoffed. “I’m taking us home.”
I breathed in too deeply in surprise and nearly passed out. Anton handed me two aspirin and a water bottle with a sympathetic expression.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” I asked, throwing back the medicine. “Dante is waiting for us.”
Mariposa was trying to take the Treaty back from Whisper, but Whisper was frowning at the document curiously. They signed at each other in a silent, urgent conversation.
“Fuck Dante,” Domino replied. “His bullshit plan nearly got us killed. That was probably what he wanted. I’m not going to give him another chance to fuck us over. We’ll find our own buyer.”
“Dante already has a buyer,” I pointed out, trying to control the anger rising in me. Even more than usual, I couldn’t afford to get pissed off right now. Just breathing hurt enough as it was. “What are you going to do, post an ad on Craigslist? There’s not exactly a huge market full of people willing to buy priceless stolen historical artifacts!”
“We’ll figure something out.”
“I need that money tonight, Domino!”
“Hey,” Mariposa interrupted our mounting argument. “Whisper says there’s still magic on this thing.”
“What?” I snatched the Treaty from her impatiently, running the tips of my fingers over the parchment. “It’s just the preservation spells. A document this old would crumble on contact with the air without them.”
“No, under that,” Mariposa insisted, translating Whisper’s emphatic signing. “Deeper, older.”
“Older than the preservation spells?”
“Did you miss some kind of security hex?” Domino asked, his voice rising.
“No,” I said sharply, swallowing the defensive doubt that tried to grip me. “I would recognize that. Just give me a minute.”
I ran my hand over the paper again, searching, and felt the pads of my fingers catch. Once, two times, a third. More still, scattered up and down the page, small and unobtrusive, nearly invisible under the heavy preservation spells, and like Whisper had said, old. Very old.
“What is it?” Mariposa pushed.
“I’m not sure,” I admitted. “It’s not security, I can tell you that much. It almost feels like... beauty magic?”
Anton snorted.
“Beauty magic? Someone did the treaty’s makeup?”
“Or gave it a makeover,” I muttered, rubbing my fingers over one of the spells, trying to find a loose thread to pull. “It feels like a concealer spell.”
A moment of heavy silence followed as everyone processed the implications of that.
“You’re saying it’s been altered?” Mariposa asked.
“Maybe,” I replied, uncertain. “I can’t remove them, at least not right now. They’re too old and set in. And whoever did it was really good. I wouldn’t have noticed them at all if I wasn’t looking for them. How did Whisper spot them?”
“She says she heard them,” Mariposa replied after conferring with Whisper for a moment. “She says they’re like, uh, missing notes in a song?” She paused as Whisper signed at her urgently, then tried again. “No, not missing—Wrong. Like another voice cutting in, singing a completely different song.”
“I thought you were deaf?” Anton said, looking at Whisper in confusion. She rolled her iridescent eyes.
“She is,” Mariposa answered for her. “It’s just magic she can hear. Apparently it sounds like music.”
“It’s probably just magic white-out from when they were writing the thing,” Domino cut in. “They didn’t exactly have erasers back then. Who cares if they covered up some typos with magic? It’s still going to change our lives.”
“You think of someone we can sell it to?” I asked as I carefully slipped the Treaty back into the case and tucked it into my pocket again. “Because I wasn’t kidding about needing that money tonight.”
“Forget money,” Domino said, and I could see him grinning in the rearview mirror. “It’s gonna get us something better than money. Power.”
“I really hope you mean it’s going to be paying my electric bill,” I said, a threat on the edge of my voice.
“Think about it,” Domino argued. “That Treaty is the symbol the whole damn system is built on, and the vampires let it get stolen. They’ve had that thing since the last crusade! Nobody has served them a humiliation like that in a troll’s age. They’re gonna be desperate to get it back and cover this up. They’d do anything.”
“Yeah, like hunt us to the ends of the earth,” I pointed out. “You’re really going to try and hold the Triumvirate hostage?”
“No, don’t be stupid,” Domino snapped. “We can’t do shit with it ourselves, you think I don’t know that? But we could give it to someone who can. Someone like the Summer Queen.”
“What?!
”
“Shut up and listen to me for a minute!” Domino shouted as Anton and Mariposa jumped in with similar exclamations. “With the tournament a couple of days away, that kind of political leverage could change everything! The vampires could finally lose. And we could be the reason they lose! If a pack of changelings hand Queen Titania the key to finally taking power back from the vampires, she’ll have to admit we exist, that we’re Fae just as much as she is. Shit, even if she doesn’t, them being on top means people will have to treat us at least a little better. Either way she’ll owe us big time, and a boon from the Summer Queen is worth more than anything Dante could pay us.”
“Jesus, Domino, do you hear yourself?” I asked, rubbing the bridge of my nose as an exhaustion headache throbbed in time with the stabbing in my ribs. Pain had worn my patience very thin and the thought of missing out on this payday after everything just because Domino couldn’t let go of this fantasy made me want to scream. “You seriously think you can bribe the Fae into treating us as equals? They won’t even admit we exist.”
“They won’t be able to ignore a favor this big! They’ll owe us—”
I laughed, clipped and harsh, and immediately regretted it as the motion made my pain worse.
“Right, of course, that’s what was missing all these centuries!” I said facetiously. “We just never bought them a big enough present!”
“Would you just shut up and listen—?”
“And I’m sure if we just ask very nicely and be on our best behavior our parents will love us again and we’ll all live happily ever after in fairy land with Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny!”
“And your plan is so much better!” Domino cut back, taking his eyes off the road to look back at me. He was so angry his glamour was shorting out, jumping in and out like a bad TV signal. “You think that leech is going to keep his word? Even if he does, we just go back to living the same stupid shit! Nothing ever changes!”