by A. R. Kahler
“Okay, Eli. Time to say hello.”
I’ve heard that the ability to draw a perfect circle freehand is a mark of insanity. If that’s the case, I’m outright demented. Then again, I kill for a living and live with faeries—I can’t imagine too many institutions passing that off as normal. The circle I draw is absolutely perfect, damningly so. Mab taught me everything I know about magic, which still isn’t much, and remembering the months she forced me to practice drawing circles of varying sizes still makes me want to rip my hair out. Circles every day, every hour, at every angle. I didn’t shy away from the work, though. On day one she showed me what happened if you tried to summon from an imperfect circle.
I didn’t sleep for weeks.
And even then, I only relaxed after Mab let me change rooms. To one not covered in blood and . . . well, whatever else the summoned monstrosity had left behind.
After the circle comes the series of markings ringing it. These are a little more archaic than the portal spell—summoning spirits has been around since mankind recognized that there was something bigger than them in the universe. I lay out the symbols carefully, first drawing a large serpent eating its own tail around the perimeter, then a half-dozen god names in Aramaic. Technically speaking, if I were a ceremonialist, there’d be incense and candles and probably some blood, but I don’t have the time or patience for that. Besides, Eli and I have a . . . rapport.
The first time I’d dredged him up from the netherworld, it had taken half a moonless evening and two sacrificial lambs. Thankfully we’re okay forgoing that formality now—livestock get expensive. But there’s one thing astral creatures do need, no matter your relationship.
I reach into my pocket and grab a butterfly knife, flipping it open with a small flourish.
“Dinnertime,” I mutter as I stand. Then I slice a triangle on the palm of my hand.
The crescendo of power in my body is almost more painful than the cut. Eli’s very hungry today. I reach toward the rim of the circle and press against a wall of energy. The invisible barrier hums under my hand, but as the blood drips down, it doesn’t fall to the floor—each drop bursts into flames that twist and spiral, caught in some inner whirlwind, and soon the space before me is a tunnel of flame, a whorl of silent heat and ferocity. I don’t remove my hand as more and more blood fuels the fire. The inferno spirals up toward the sky, raging in a pillar brighter than the sun, but somehow dark, as though it isn’t a light that exudes, but instead consumes. Sweat breaks across my skin as my knees go weak and more power pulls from me. Damn it, dude, stop being a dick.
Then a hand slaps against mine, palm to palm, and the flames spiral down, sucked up into the form of a man standing in the circle.
He’s tall and suave, and this time around he’s decided to wear the skin of a Japanese pop star. Lithe and angular, with mussed black hair and sunglasses. And a very fitted, very lavender suit. That’s one small quirk of using chalk to summon a demon—they appear in whatever color you used. Explains why so many demons of old were red and black. All that charcoal and blood.
“Purple, Claire? Really?” His voice befits him, but there’s a hint of crackling under it, a power slowly subsiding.
“It’s a good color,” I reply. Neither of us moves a muscle. Our hands are still pressed together, my palm now slick with blood that drips to the concrete in quiet pats. He examines me for a while, and once more I’m hit with the question—what side of the looking glass am I on?
“What do you need?” he asks.
I don’t tell him anything about Mab, not yet. This is the negotiation phase. And like with all contracts with an otherworldly creature, I have to be numbingly specific.
“I need you to be my ally and follow without question. I need you to do exactly as I say and nothing more. You will be bound to me and only me, to serve as I command for as long as I need you and no longer.”
“Is that all?” His lips quirk in a smile.
“And I need you to not be such an ass.”
He chuckles.
“You are always a delight to do business with,” he says. The embers from his voice are gone now, and his tone slowly slips into something a little more human.
“Your terms?” I ask.
“One human soul,” he responds. “Of my choosing.”
“Of our choosing.”
“Too many hands in the kitchen. But fine. If you make it two.”
I sigh. This is getting pricey. Too bad Mab was so intent on me having him around.
“Fine,” I say, pushing that train of thought down. Losing steam now could be deadly. “But no kids.”
“You ruin all the fun.”
But he doesn’t change the terms. Instead, he curls his fingers around mine. I do the same. A lancing pain shoots up my arm and through my heart, a power that makes my eyes burn and my blood boil. I bite down the gasp. A second later, our terms are signed and sealed. The pain vanishes in a blink.
I drop my hand and pull a rag from my back pocket, wiping clean the now-cauterized cut.
Eli brushes the blood off on his pant leg, leaving a smear that fades by the second. Not the most charming, but it’s much better than the show he made the first time we met. Apparently licking off the blood of your host is considered good manners. Especially creepy when he’s standing between two dead ewes.
“So,” he says, stretching his arms up. “What brings you my way?”
I try not to notice as his black T-shirt becomes untucked, revealing smooth abs and the wing of an angel over his hip. How ironic. Eli’s not necessarily a sex demon. But he’s also not necessarily not. He clearly sees where my mind is going; he steps closer and brushes aside a strand of my hair.
“Or is it that sort of visit?” he whispers.
I bat away his hand and begin brushing away the summoning circle with my foot. I’d hate to have a drunken teenager accidentally summon something. And by hate I mean would hate to miss seeing it.
“You wish,” I say.
“I do,” he replies, fast and smooth as silk. Ugh. His voice is taking on a distinctly Japanese accent, and it’s maddeningly hot.
“We’re in trouble, Eli.” When I turn back to him, I’ve pushed down the petty emotions, just like Mother taught me.
“Trouble?” He tilts up his dark glasses, revealing pale blue eyes that glow like the hottest part of a flame. “You know how I enjoy trouble.”
“Someone’s stealing Dream. And they’re siphoning it off to a buyer in the Wildness. Mab’s worried there’s someone out there building an army, trying to overthrow her and Oberon.”
“So why are we not venturing into the Wildness?”
I shrug. “Mab wants us to root out the traitors here. You know how the Wildness is—if something doesn’t want to be found in there, it won’t be. Not even her magic can change that.”
“That’s because she has no power there.” The way he says it, it’s almost like he’s suggesting he does. He strolls casually around the warehouse, examining graffiti and dead pigeons with equal amusement. “Still, her logic is sound. It is best not to meddle in the Wildness. The denizens there take much less kindly to strangers than even your dear mother does, and there’s no use dying without a good cause. So where do we start?”
“Seattle,” I say. “We’re going to see a show.”
Five
Large influxes of Dream are relatively easy to find, and just as easy to foretell. Every major concert, every movie theatre, and even some of the less pretentious art openings are assured Dream generators. If it gets a mortal’s imagination going, it’s a source of Dream. And the kingdoms of Winter and Summer have their stakes laid pretty clear—have had for centuries. You know that elderly usher who doesn’t look like they should be up that late for an EDM concert? Probably a faerie and, most likely, one from Winter. That really big author reading that somehow sells out? That’s Summer
’s territory. Every major event will have at least one representative from the Fey to skim the Dream off the crowd and send it back to their monarch.
When you consider just how many venues and concerts and openings there are all over the world on any given day, it’s a little overwhelming. Finding that one concert whose Dream isn’t going to Winter is like finding a needle in a haystack. Even with the tricks Mab taught me, and Eli as a bloodhound, I’m stretching my skills on this one. Normally Mab points someone out and has me attack—I’m not usually searching for them on my own. I’m going on a hunch with this one. I’ve heard reports that this place isn’t funneling as much Dream to Winter as it used to, which potentially means we’re missing a harvester or two. Either that or the shows are starting to suck.
Personally, I’m leaning toward the latter.
I’m not going to say the place is Seattle’s oldest or classiest venue, but it’s definitely one of my favorites. If I’m going to start on this wild goose chase, it’s going to be somewhere I can at least enjoy myself before the killing begins. Which, of course, is when I really start enjoying myself.
Plus, this place is crawling with creatures from the otherworlds, Fey and astral. Something about the gloom draws them in. Must remind them of home.
When Eli and I emerge from a small alley, Seattle’s giving us its usual charm. The night sky is heavy, and rain falls in a constant mist, everything wet and glistening and a hair on the cold side. Eli produces an umbrella from somewhere and raises it above our heads, like he’s trying to be a gentleman or something. Perfectly courteous, until you realize the silver handle is in the form of a bound and screaming child.
I start walking down the street and he keeps pace, expertly navigating puddles so his expensive Italian leather shoes don’t get wet. I mean, they look expensive. I’m sure they’re human flesh. Probably an Italian.
“So we’re here in this beautiful weather because?”
“Because this is the last place that reported a leak.” Which, after saying it, I realize sounds kind of funny, but I don’t correct the language.
He glances over at me, and I catch the faintest glimpse of blue flame from behind the glasses. A group of drunk college students skirt around us. Seriously, how are they already drunk? It’s like nine on a Tuesday.
I’m jealous.
“You keep speaking of secrecy, keeping our actions hidden from this third party. But won’t killing off their suppliers be a red flag?” he asks.
I stop in the middle of the sidewalk and glare at him.
“Do you remember our terms? Without question. Explicitly stated.”
“I’m not questioning,” he says. “I’m just trying to learn more about your plan.”
“My plan is to do exactly what Mab says and get it over with. She knows more about what’s going on than I do and that’s fine by me. I’m the weapon, not the mastermind behind it.”
“It still surprises me you’re okay with that,” he muses, but he doesn’t press the subject. Probably because he knows I’d send him back missing a limb.
This is why I hate having him around. It’s not the advances or sarcasm—those I can handle. Hell, those I enjoy. It’s the fact that he questions. And when he questions, I start to wonder what I’m doing as well. The rage inside me grows, but it’s not at him, not really. It’s at this third party, the one who’s threatening my livelihood and making me question everything.
“Suppliers die all the time,” I finally mutter, continuing down the sidewalk. “It’s part of the job. We just need to find one who will talk and direct us to their buyer. Then we’re done.”
“Then perhaps tonight will be our lucky night.” He holds a hand out and watches the rain collect and sizzle on his skin. “It’s already going so fortuitously well.”
The exterior of the venue is pretty nondescript, jammed between a pizza place and a shady-looking convenience store. There’s your usual marquee announcing tonight’s show—Roxie Rhode and the Long Island Truckers—and a ticket booth out front, a line of college kids smoking shitty cigarettes and wearing beanies stretching around the block. It’s Seattle’s University District, which explains the red eyes and bad fashion choices and scent of pot that drifts through the crowd like a ghost. The main drag—The Ave—is teeming with bars and corner stores and vegan restaurants, all a little dirty and run down from the rain and soot and clientele. And in some strange twist of irony, it’s probably one of the few places in the mortal world I feel at home. It’s shabby in a fashionable sort of way, the faintest layer of grit coating everything like a teenager pretending to be tough. Phone poles are covered in peeling posters and decades of staples and nails, the gutters flowing with leaves and trash and dark water. It’s kind of disgusting. But it’s crawling with magic, and like so many places where “the youth” gather, it’s infested with Dream. Mostly the darker kind.
Eli and I don’t bother with the line, nor do we pretend with tickets. From what I can hear, the show’s already started, and these kids are either just loitering or the opening act is really bad. I walk right up to the ticket booth and wink at the cashier, an older woman with salt-and-pepper hair and a green shawl.
“Business as usual?” she asks.
“You know it. They any good?”
She shrugs and looks to the line behind me. The kids are eying us suspiciously. Eli’s dressed like some skeezy music manager, and I could easily be his mail-order bride. Or escort. They must think we’re some sort of famous.
“They seem to think so,” she says, and waves us on.
“Thanks, Val,” I say, and head inside.
Eli and I settle ourselves up in the balcony, near the back. The opening band is already in full swing, and truth be told, they suck. The guitar’s too loud to hear whatever the singer’s screaming, and they’re all jumping around like they took a little too much coke beforehand. The music doesn’t really fit with the old opera-style room, with its high domed ceiling and velvet seats and dramatic aqua uplighting. No wonder there were so many kids smoking outside.
Still, it gives me time to get ready for tonight’s kill. About a week ago, our contact here dropped off the face of the earth. Or, more likely, was dropped into Puget Sound bound in iron chains. Again, nothing too unusual for the line of work, but someone has been taking in the excess Dream. The stuff tends to collect and grow stale if no one gathers it. And, according to my senses, this place is spotless. Dream has this feel to it, almost a scent—it’s like the tingle right before a lightning storm, that scent of rain and electricity. It had taken me four years of training to be able to feel it, and two more to be able to trace it and judge its potency.
“Anything yet?” Eli asks. Being from the netherworld, he’s attuned to Dream like a bird is attuned to the magnetic fields. But I appreciate him deferring to me. Maybe I finally had worked out the language to our contract.
“Nothing,” I say. Not surprisingly, the band’s not generating enough Dream for even the most eager scavenger to skim.
I glance around the room, staring at the backs of heads and wondering who here is working for the Fey. Sometimes, the skimmers are faeries themselves, but more often than not they’re humans with some sort of magical proclivities—creatures from other planes attract too much attention. Take Eli, for instance. To most mortals, he looks like a normal guy. But I can smell his otherworldliness, the tang of ether and sparks. I can feel the heat of him, radiating like a furnace of wrongness. Creatures from other planes never feel like they belong, which is why so many earthbound Fey are solitary.
There are maybe a dozen or so creatures scattered throughout the crowd. I sense a few Winter Fey, and one outcast from Summer who’s wearing way too bright a pink coat for a night like this. The rest are unclaimed—Fey or supernatural creatures with no ties to Summer or Winter. Some might be from the Wildness, but others were born on Earth, or on some other plane altogether.
Mab tried to train me to distinguish them all, but with literally thousands of planes of existence, it was a vain attempt.
I keep my eye on pink-coat and the Wild Fey over in the corner, just in case.
Finally, the lights go up and the opener leaves the stage amidst halfhearted clapping. As many of the patrons stand to stretch or leave, Eli and I linger, watching faces, looking for traces of Fey attempting to go unnoticed—a stray flicker of light from an eye, a feather hat that’s not really a hat, that sort of thing. Because of course someone out there made charms to hide Fey from those trained to seek them out. Thankfully they’re really damn expensive.
“We better find them during the next act,” Eli mutters beside me.
“Excuse me?”
“You heard.” He looks over to me, then goes back to scanning the crowd. “I didn’t come here to listen to crappy music. And you still haven’t fulfilled your part of the bargain.”
“Help me bag a traitor tonight and you’ll eat. In the meantime, do yourself a favor and shut up.”
He chuckles. But he doesn’t talk.
There isn’t anyone suspicious in the crowd, and by that I mean everyone looks a little bit suspicious in my paranoid state. Then the next band—clearly Roxie—takes the stage, and I think I know precisely who’s stealing the Dream.
Everyone but the singer is Fey. And they’re all unclaimed.
The musicians are all men, wearing fifties-style suits and fedoras and sunglasses. No doubt the glasses are to hide the glow from their eyes, which means they’re probably ifrit or some other dangerous variation of elemental faerie. But even though they’re Fey, it’s the singer who looks truly otherworldly.
She’s in a tight leopard-print dress that reaches her thighs and wears thick white wedges. Her dark hair is swept back, her bangs done up in a large pin curl with a red flower on the side. She is curvaceous and dark-skinned and gorgeous, and when she takes the stage, I can practically feel everyone’s attention narrow in on her. It’s not just her beauty, though. There’s something about her that demands attention. Something not entirely human.