by Eli Grant
“I got work in a few hours.”
“When don’t you? You could take fifteen, catch up. The guys have been asking about you.”
I shook my head again, more reluctantly this time.
“How’s Trip?” I asked. “I heard he got picked up.”
“He’s fine, made bail. It was just a drunk and disorderly.”
“Mariposa said it was during a job?”
“Yeah, it was during a job, but when he saw it going south he downed two shots of tequila and started kicking over garbage cans. Once the Mundie cops were in range, boom. These aren’t the thieves you’re looking for. Only drunk people here.”
“Lunatic. He’s lucky it was human cops and not wolves. His jedi mind trick would have got his ass beat before it got him arrested.”
Domino nodded and silence lingered between us for a moment, interrupted only by the insects screaming in the grass of the median, getting louder as the afternoon wore on.
“Oh, Anton thinks he’s found the spot for that tattoo parlor he keeps talking about,” Domino said, corner of his mouth turning up. “He says he’s saving a chair for you if you want the job.”
“Right.” I rolled my eyes, trying not to smile. “Where’s this spot, right next to the world’s first vampire tanning salon?”
“Yeah, and it’s right off the city’s new flying-pig based transit line,” Domino confirmed, and I couldn’t keep myself from laughing.
“You sure you don’t want that drink?” Domino asked after a beat. “You got at least an hour.”
“I can’t,” I answered. “You know it isn’t about the time.”
He sighed.
“At least let me give you a ride,” he said. “It’s too god damn hot to be walking.”
I couldn’t argue with that, though I was tempted.
Domino’s car was old but well taken care of. He wasn’t the type to waste money on something flashy that would only get him pulled over every five minutes. We rolled through Bayview at a leisurely pace, windows down, traffic slowing as we drove through an area dense with construction. The Fae transformers on the power lines and the tingle of magic on my skin marked this area as Fae-space. Probably a temporary zone set up for construction, which the mundane construction was only a cover for.
“What are they building?” I asked, curious.
“You didn’t hear?” Domino asked. “Arena, for the tournament.”
“Oh shit, that’s soon isn’t it?” I squinted, trying to find the outline of the real project under the distraction. “I completely forgot.”
“Othernet hasn’t been talking about anything else since New Year’s,” Domino said, looking at me critically.
“I don’t follow the news,” I said with a shrug. “This is the wolf arena? Why didn’t they use the old one in Dogpatch?”
“I assume they would have if it had been up to them.” Domino hung an arm out the window as the traffic crept slowly around the construction. “But you know the vampires. They’d rather build something new than fix up the old one after they’ve been ignoring it for thirty years. And the wolves sure as shit don’t have money for that. If it weren’t for the vampires they wouldn’t have an arena at all.”
“Mm, that’s debatable,” I muttered. Domino made an ambiguous gesture of his head that suggested he agreed, but that conversation was too heavy to get into right now.
“My parents took me to see the vampire arena when I was a kid,” I said, trying to remember more than just fragmented images of stained glace and statuary. “Last tournament was before I was born, obviously.”
“I’ve never seen any of them,” Domino said with a shrug. “Tournament don’t mean shit to me. I can’t even attend the damn finale, and it’s not like anyone but the vampires ever win anyway. When they let changelings compete, then maybe I’ll care.”
“That’ll never happen,” I said with a dry laugh. “Fae would have to admit you exist for that.”
“Not under the Fae then,” Domino said, scowling, and I realized he was taking this more seriously than me. “As our own race. Fuck the Fae.”
I thought about him staring up at Potrero Hill, where the Fae held court on Earth, and where the entrance to the Fae realm would stand open on the final day of the Tournament of Five Races. The entire magical community would be welcome in Fae for that one day. All except changelings, as usual.
“Nah,” I said, looking away. “They’d have to change the treaty. Make it the Tournament of Six Races. That’d be way too much of a pain in the ass. Besides, it’s all bullshit anyway. The vamps will just win like they always do. Pretending the tournament actually decides who’s in charge is just pageantry at this point. Bread and circuses or whatever.”
“Right,” Domino muttered, shrugging it off. He was quiet for a moment. We edged a little further along the street until I could actually see the harried construction worker waving people around the obstruction. Walking would be faster at this point, but the air conditioning made the wait worth it. Domino was still staring ahead, frowning in thought. “… What if the Fae did win, though?”
“What?” I asked, scrunching my nose.
“What if the Fae won this year?” he said. “Internet says their champion is really impressive, decked out with some kinda crazy magitech never seen outside of Fae. There are pretty decent odds they could do it this time.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“I thought you didn’t give a shit?” I asked sarcastically.
“Fuck you,” he replied. I rolled my eyes.
“If anyone could do it, it’s the Fae,” I admitted with a shrug. “It’s not like the wolves or the trolls stand a chance. Even the witches are a long shot. But it still wouldn’t make a difference. Fae aren’t any different than the vamps. Fuck, I mean, at least the vampires understand how the economy works and shit. What do the Fae know about the stock market or international trade or whatever?”
“Maybe it’d be better,” Domino insisted. “You don’t know. That Queen, the summer one, she seems chill?”
“She seems Fae,” I countered. “Who knows what they’re thinking? And if you think the vampire Ancients are out of touch, the Fae have all been around since the beginning. At least some vampires were born this century. There’s not a single Fae that isn’t older than any vampire in the Triumvirate.”
“I’m just saying,” Domino gripped the steering wheel tighter. “Maybe if the Fae were on top, changelings would get a little more respect.”
“I doubt it.”
Domino didn’t answer, but I knew that stubborn scowl on his face meant he knew I was right and wasn’t ready to admit it. I used to like how stubborn he was. Now it just made me tired. I sighed and looked away out the window.
“Like I said. It’s all bullshit anyway. Bread and circuses. And nothing ever changes.”
The car crept past the construction worker and the traffic began moving again. Silence rode with us into the hot red afternoon.
***
Dante was on my mind the rest of the day. I couldn’t shake the question of where he’d found my name and how he knew that I used to run with Domino. I’d never been caught for anything more serious than pickpocketing and that was all sealed with my juvenile record. And I couldn’t imagine someone like Dante poking around Bayside asking about a high school kid who used to boost shit for the local gang. Even if I had been pretty damn good at it.
I was more worried by why he knew than how. I didn’t want to know what kind of reasons a vampire might have for digging into my past. And if Domino was right and he wasn’t going to stop...
Dwayne didn’t fire me as soon as I walked into work that night. No, he decided to wait until the end of my shift to drop that particular bomb, and it came from Harvey himself.
“You know how much I need this job,” I pleaded, gripping my apron like I could keep him from taking it by force.
“I know,” Harvey said, and fuck him for looking genuinely
upset to be doing this to me. “But after last night—”
“That wasn’t my fault! Nothing was even stolen!”
“Yes, but with the repairs, the damaged stock, I just can’t afford to keep everyone. I could reduce your hours, but—”
“No,” I said, swallowing the hot coal of anger in my throat. “Don’t bother.”
I dropped the apron and swiped a bag of jerky on my way out the door. If Harvey noticed he didn’t bother to stop me. Son of a bitch owed me more than a bag of jerky. Dwayne, useless ass ever covered by the shield of nepotism, waved at me as I left.
A bitter pit opened in my stomach as I walked home in the dark. It spilled out black, pungent smoke that made my chest tight and my eyes burn. How was I going to pay the fucking rent? Even if I got a new job tonight I wouldn’t get paid in time. If we lost the apartment, I didn’t have shit for savings. Aaron would lose his scholarship if they found out he was living in a shelter and I’d be fucked for finding another job without an address. I felt a flash of useless, terrible anger at my parents for their estrangement from the extended family I assumed was out there somewhere, and for not having better life insurance, and for leaving us. It was immediately drowned in an ocean of guilt. It was my fault they were gone. Probably my fault we didn’t know the rest of our family.
Deciding to raise a changeling couldn’t have been a popular decision. Since they aren’t classified as a race, they have no rights and aren’t formally acknowledged, which is why our parents forged our documents. On paper, at least, my brother and I were low-level witches. The only difference between us was, I knew the truth, and he didn’t.
I stopped under the darkness of a broken streetlight as the pit within me yawned and the smoke boiled in my lungs. Changeling. I wanted to avoid even thinking the word, but I saw it whenever I looked in the mirror, heard it every time I claimed to be a witch, the lie clumsy and wrong-shaped on my tongue. I wrapped my arms around myself like I could hold myself together, like I’d fly apart if I let go. I grit my teeth, smoke slipping out past my lips and curling up past my eyes. The sight made my heart rate spike and I held myself tighter, pressing the anger and helpless frustration down, before it could flare up out of control.
All changelings are a little crazy, a little dangerous. I was no exception.
I took a deep breath and held it. I let my thoughts drift out of focus, spreading myself out across the night, letting my sense of what was “me” get fuzzy at the edges. As my detachment grew, I felt the ripple of magic against my skin as I melted into the night.
Nearly invisible unless I moved under direct light for as long as I could hold my breath, I shuffled towards home in a willful daze. The eyes of passerby slid over me without recognition, dismissing me as a heat mirage when they noticed me at all. The camouflage skill was the most useful ability I had, and not just because I had a lot of reasons to need to hide. The mild dissociative state that using it triggered was also damn useful for stopping myself when I started tasting smoke.
Drifting, untethered from myself, the anger was still there. The fear and panic was still twisting in my guts. But it was distant and alien, like I was looking at it through clouded glass, feeling it through thick layers of heavy fabric. Everything was slow and numb, like moving underwater, and my thoughts were skittish animals wandering in a fog, fleeing the moment I tried to focus on them, running down paths I couldn’t control. Being in that headspace could be terrifying, but anything was better than the alternative.
I was eleven the first time I dreamed of fire. In the dream, I was walking through it, calm and unafraid. I could feel it on my skin, warm but not painful, soft as feathers. The sight of it filled me with a sense of pride and power. I spread wings and flew on the updrafts, trailing smoke and flame. I woke feeling reborn, full of a sense of purpose and strength.
By the time I was twelve, I’d started to put together that I wasn’t a witch. But my parents wouldn’t say the word changeling, and I was afraid to ask. I realized I was stronger than the other kids at school, faster too, without training or even really trying. I started shorting out spells by accident. During an escapade with Domino, I discovered how to camouflage myself. Every new gift just excited me. I wanted to do more, be more.
Then the Ferroux heist went wrong. We barely escaped with our lives, Lord Ferroux’s mansion burning behind us and the taste of ash on my lips. Domino and the guys were excited, amazed by what I’d done. But all I could think about was the searing heat, the fear.
I dreamed of fire again that night. But it was different this time. The fire was so high, so hot. I’d always felt in control of it before, powerful. But this time it just kept getting bigger, wilder. I got scared. And the more scared I was the bigger the fire became, the more it began to burn me, until I became so panicked that I woke up, and found a nightmare waiting.
My room was burning. Every inch was engulfed in flames. I ran. I didn’t know what was happening, or that I’d caused it. I didn’t even process that the flames weren’t burning me. My brother’s room was next door to mine. I dragged him out of his bed, but he wouldn’t wake up. I opened his bedroom window, pulled him out into the grass. I would have gone back in for my parents, but by then the fire department had arrived and they wouldn’t let me. So I stood in the yard and watched everything I’d ever known burn.
Later, they would tell me the fire had started in my room. Faulty wiring, probably. No one could explain how I had lived. My six year old brother had to be resuscitated on the lawn by first responders. They told me my parents died of smoke inhalation long before the fire got to their room. They never even woke up. They told me this like it was a good thing. At least they hadn’t suffered. But when I dreamed about it later, I heard them screaming anyway.
I never conjured fire again after that, not even when I tried. And from then on, whenever I dreamed of fire, it was only ever that fire, again and again.
I learned to wake quickly whenever I smelled smoke.
When I reached home, I released the breath I’d been holding and stood there for a minute, letting the camouflage dissipate and my scattered thoughts return to me. The anger was all still there, but using my power for so long had tired me out too much to get worked up again. Now I just wanted to sleep and pretend the last ten years had been a bad dream.
The doorknob turned under my hand before I could put my key in and my heart froze. I forgot my financial worries almost immediately in favor of the much more present fear of intruders. I was sure I’d locked the door this morning. Had Aaron left it open? Aaron never forgot to lock the door. He was better about that shit than I was.
I had a crappy little stun gun in my jacket. A gift from my parents, back when my biggest worry was walking home alone at night. I dug it out and clutched it hard as I carefully pushed the door open.
I didn’t even need to step through it before I saw who was responsible.
Dante was standing in my living room.
“Good evening, Evie,” he said with his hello-food smile. “And welcome home.”
chapter
4
HE WAS HOLDING A TEACUP that I didn’t recognize. The rest of the set was on my coffee table.
“What the fuck are you doing in my house?” I demanded, holding up the stun gun, patently useless against a vampire. I didn’t kid myself that he wouldn’t be able to see my hands shaking.
“That incident last night interrupted our conversation,” he replied with a shrug. “And when you didn’t call I worried you might have lost my card. I just wanted to see if you had reconsidered my offer. Tea?”
He gestured to the tea set. Was that fucking Wedgewood? Did he bring a Wedgewood tea set to intimidate me?
“No thank you,” I snapped. “How do you know where I live? And don’t tell me it was Domino. He already told me that you’re full of shit.”
“I followed you home,” Dante replied coolly, and my gut clenched. “Or perhaps I just called your work and asked. Or mayb
e I visited the police station and asked very nicely to see the police report you wrote, where it was written down along with the rest of your personal information. Take your pick really. Learning someone’s address in this day and age is child’s play.”
Maybe if you’re a vampire, I thought sourly, but the anger didn’t stop the chills running down my spine.
“Would you put that silly thing down and come sit?” the vampire asked with a touch of impatience. “I think you know by now that I’m not a danger to you. And we haven’t much time before your brother gets home.”
He phrased it as a request, not a command. Direct orders from a vampire tended to carry a degree of compulsion with them. If you were expecting it and paying attention it was pretty easy to shrug off, depending on the age of the vampire. Unless Dante was much, much older than I suspected, I wouldn’t have had any trouble dismissing his compulsion. But he’d avoided the command anyway. I squinted at him in suspicion and he sighed and sat down on the couch, delicately moving the serape blanket out of the way.
“My apologies for surprising you by the way,” he said, sipping his tea. “I wasn’t sure when you’d be back and waiting around on your doorstep would have been entirely too tedious, so I made myself at home.”
“I’m sure you didn’t want to be seen hanging around a neighborhood like this either,” I said, and he shrugged nonchalantly. But then I paused, realizing something else. He’d broken in.
“You weren’t invited.”
“Gauche, I know,” he said with a flippant hand gesture. “But I didn’t expect you to stand on formality. I’m not courting you after all, this is business.”
“No, you weren’t invited in,” I said more firmly. “You crossed the threshold without an invitation. You’re powerless.”
Vampires didn’t have a lot of consistent weaknesses. Sunlight, silver, hawthorne. The really old ones tended to develop weird, esoteric flaws like being unable to cross running water. But the one big weakness they all had was also the only one they shared with the Fae. They called it threshold law. If a vampire or one of the Fae entered a home without invitation, their powers were reduced dramatically. For as long as he was under this roof uninvited, Dante was essentially a human.