Traveler

by Melanie Jackson

  Jack returned to his room in the house on Winder Street in Little Paris and stripped off his shirt. He was in no hurry to wash off the smell of the pretty Gwragedd Annwn, but the goblin sweat that he had picked up in the club was beginning to itch. He needed a shower.

  He cranked on the rusty taps in the Goblin Town hovel and then set about removing his leather pants. The costume had been wasted since he had remained invisible much of the night, but leather was a better barrier at keeping bodily fluids off of the skin, and the Annwn had seemed fond of fetish clothing.

  What an angry thing she was! Maybe the high of so much magic had led him to a minor miscalculation. Perhaps it had been overkill to warn her off the way he had—not that he hadn’t enjoyed parts of discouraging her. The trouble was that after something like that, it was often hard for a woman to just forgive and forget. Especially if the girl had been truly frightened, which he had finally noticed that she seemed to be. The fear was bound to make it all very personal.

  Too bad he couldn’t send her flowers, but apologizing was out of the question. For her own good, she had to remain well and truly frightened of him.

  Jack slipped off his shoes and unlaced the grommeted fly of his pants, and then he stopped, stunned at the sight that met his eyes. His angry little fey had turned his balls bright blue!

  He began laughing. He’d felt her magic entering his body and wondered at the time what it would do. Now Jack wondered, as he stepped into the shower, how long it would last.

  Chapter Four

  That night, outside of Goblin Town in her very own tree house, Io dreamed of Jack. It didn’t take a psychologist to understand what was going on. Her vision of lying naked under Jack was just his leftover magic slinking through her body on little velvet paws while it toyed with her brain.

  But as much as she would have liked to dismiss the dream as a one-time aberration, there was no denying the effect his presence had on her; and her uncontrolled reaction made her both angry and fearful. Even in thought, his hands, mouth, and body seduced her. He’d whispered softly to her in dreams, and her body remembered the heat he’d drawn when they were pressed together. The passion the memory summoned was all at once too familiar for comfort, and altogether too rare to be dismissed.

  “Say it,” he had urged her, lapping at the centerline between her breasts and stopping as he reached her heart. “Eat my heart, drink my soul, love me to death, Jack.”

  But her dream self answered as she had done earlier.

  “No.”

  Whatever her words, the dreaming Io had been unable to keep her fear and longing for Jack’s touch from leaking out of her eyes in long silver streams, and the pewter-eyed death fey had seen and happily dined on her tears.

  She woke up crying, something she hadn’t done since her mother died ten years before.

  “I am not my mother! I cannot be seduced by magic!”

  Infuriated at her lack of control, Io hurled her damp pillow at the closet door and dropped her head onto her drawn-up knees where she blotted her eyes with a rumpled sheet. Then, quickly, she checked the sheet for color. No damp silver streaks marred the linen. There were no patches of red tears. She was only crying tears—not magic, not blood. It was just a dream. Jack hadn’t really been there.

  “Damn it,” Io sighed. She didn’t want to revisit this old fear that she was her mother’s daughter, that if she strayed away from relations with human men who were the natural prey of sirens, that she could herself become prey to some other magical being.

  Well, life could be harder. So her mother hadn’t loved her and she didn’t know her human father— at least Io wasn’t some goblin’s bastard. And the world was full of orphans who didn’t know their parents! Some of them were even fey, though that was rare. Anyhow, the human and feys—they all got on just fine. Not every sin was visited on the children. Io wasn’t the first child neglected because her drug-addicted mother wouldn’t allow anything to intrude on the illusion that her supplier actually loved her. Io had already cried for those things—cried and cried until they were tears of blood instead of salt. It hadn’t solved anything then. It wouldn’t solve anything now.

  Her mother was dead and buried, her sins and weakness buried with her. Io could choose any destiny she wanted. I have free will. I have a choice, Io assured herself fiercely, even though a part of her disbelieved this vow.

  The wind outside whistled a tuneless threnody, announcing that autumn had truly arrived. Io braced her foot against the wall and gave a tiny shove, setting her bed to rocking. She huddled under the covers and let the swaying of the hammock soothe her. When she felt more collected and able to balance her thoughts with reason, she opened her eyes and looked out the multipaned window set afire with diamondlike brilliance by the rising sun.

  Her night in Goblin Town had convinced Io of two things. The first was that she should probably avoid Jack Frost forevermore. It was hard to admit, since she had made it to adulthood unscathed by any weakness of the heart, but she wasn’t immune to such folly after all—and Jack had somehow managed to get his mental bristles in her brain even without drinking her tears. The tiny barbs had sunk deep in Io’s psyche, giving him a limited power over her. Distance was probably the only thing that could diminish his hold.

  Unfortunately, Io had a feeling that Fate and Xanthe had arranged for her path to cross and recross the death fey’s trail.

  The second thing she had come away with was an unsupportable conviction that whatever drugs they were experimenting with at The Madhouse were of a truly dangerous kind. She had seen what addiction to goblin fruit did, and the goblins knew what it did too. It was one of their favorite tools for manipulating people.

  Fortunately, the goblins of Goblin Town couldn’t grow enough of the fruit to support a whole city of addicts—but Io wouldn’t put it past Glashtin to contaminate everyone who entered his nightclub with something just as nasty to ensure a steady business for his wares.

  He had to be stopped! He had to be.

  Xanthe wouldn’t like the suggestion, because it meant treading on sensitive toes in both business and law enforcement, but the best place to look for stores of magical drug concoctions was with Goblin Town’s only commercial chemist: Neveling Lutin—an exception among goblins, a magical creature not afraid of high-tech. If someone in Motor City were making poison aerosols, it would be Neveling Lutin. The possibility had to be investigated, and if such a poison were found, it had to be neutralized.

  Feeling tired but resolved, Io rolled out of her hammock and, not bothering with its cloth ladder, dropped lightly to the floor. She padded to the shower on swift feet, feeling the cold of the wood flooring even through the needlepoint rug. Clearly it was time to start wearing nightgowns and socks to bed. It got wintry early up in her tree house.

  As expected, Xanthe was not convinced that a change of plan was in order, even after hearing Io’s report of the strange trance of the crowds at The Madhouse. Zayn had felt something too, but apparently he wasn’t concerned by it, so Xanthe was choosing not to make waves and possibly endanger her mole in Lutin’s factory.

  Io could understand her boss’s decision, but she didn’t agree with it: something that was happening more and more frequently. Io was grateful to the woman for offering her important work after her mother’s murder, but she didn’t care for the assumption on Xanthe’s part of a controlling interest in Io’s life stock. Xanthe wasn’t chairman of the board in Io’s life. Nor had she the right to ask Io to suspend thinking. They hadn’t made any such bargains when Io came to H.U.G.

  “We want you to go back in tonight and make contact with Jack again.”

  Io’s heart rolled over, but she didn’t allow herself to panic. “That is not wise. I told you what happened.”

  “He took you by surprise at your first meeting. It won’t happen now that you know to be on guard,” her mentor insisted. “Io, you must do this. We need to know what Jack Frost is up to. I don’t trust him. He’s a loose cannon and could
ruin everything!”

  Io looked at Xanthe’s determined face and suddenly wondered if this were something personal. Jack had certainly seemed to know Xanthe well enough to guess at her actions. The possibility of the two of them having a relationship, either past or present, raised a lot of uncomfortable questions about conflicts of interest on Xanthe’s part, questions about the woman’s motivation.

  Io wanted some answers, but chose not to press for them at that moment. Xanthe wasn’t ready to admit to any rivalry, and arguing about Neveling was futile when she was in this mood. Io rose without further dispute.

  “You’ll go back tonight?” Xanthe asked sharply. Worry pulled at the woman’s eyes and stitched itself between her brows.

  “Yes. I’ll go back.” Io buttoned up her sweater. She was going above ground to do some shopping for appropriate clothing, and it was cold outside. “Was Zayn able to track Hille?”

  “Yes. The tick worked like a charm.” Xanthe answered with satisfaction, smoothing down her blond hair. “She went into the old art museum and then down into the Labyrinth. Zayn wasn’t able to follow there, but the tick showed Hille heading toward the lake where Horroban’s villa is thought to be. We need to find it as quickly as possible.”

  “Why?” Io asked. She got a swift worried look for her question.

  “Because that is also where they have been doing a lot of excavation, of course.” Xanthe’s answer was slow in coming, as though she had to dredge it from some uninhabited part of her brain. “It seems likely that this is where they expect the jewel to be found.”

  Io nodded once. She knew that she should be concerned about Horroban finding the jewel that powered the magic of Goblin Town, but somehow it didn’t seem worth the effort. None of the magical cities’ jewels had ever been found—even by the wizard’s guild that had been searching in New Orleans for over three hundred years. Io was convinced that Horroban was being clever and using a quest for the jewel as a red herring to distract his enemies while he got on with whatever piece of villainy he’d really been dreaming up in his twisted green mind.

  Moreover, now that she had cleared out the distracting emotions from the night before, Io was thinking that Jack Frost had probably guessed this too. He’d been at the club last night; he had to have felt whatever was riding the air. He wouldn’t be wasting his time looking for the Motor City’s impossible-to-find magic generator.

  Chapter Five

  The hour before dawn found Io back in Goblin Town, leaning against the flying buttress that propped up the north side of the old Trinity Lutheran Church tower. The granite and limestone building was wonderfully deserted, and inspirationally tall, which suited her purposes, so in that respect it was an ideal place to be.

  In terms of comfort, it left a lot to be desired. Io turned her head out of the wind. From up there on the slate tiles and tasteless sixteenth-century gothicstyle tower, the city had a certain Victorian dignity. Even ruined Brush Park still had a stateliness about it.

  But it was cold! Abnormally, bitterly cold. Nor did it relieve Io’s chill to look at the unhappy figures who waited with her: martyrs, confessors, saints, and judges, all frozen in stone. She was especially careful not to stare at the crucified Jesus who asked plaintively: Is it nothing to you, all ye who pass by?

  Instead she alternately looked at her target and at the old Fox Theater, whose exterior was lit up like the Las Vegas strip. It was gaudy but beautiful. She had heard that they still showed movies there. Perhaps one night…

  A sharp wind came around the side of the buttress and buffeted her, slapping at her face with damp hands.

  “Damn it.”

  She was hoping that her luck held and that it didn’t rain. Spying on Neveling Lutin’s perfume factory was difficult enough without adding obscuring weather. Rain would also make the stone parapets slippery, something she didn’t need.

  Io shivered. She had skipped wearing leather clothes and opted for dark jeans and a black pullover sweater. The garb was practical and flexible for what she had in mind, but not nearly enough protection from the wind, which had a bad habit of sending sudden gusts to creep down her nape with ruffling fingers.

  Io wished, not for the first time, that she could smoke. A burning cigarette would keep her hands warm and help her kill off the hours before she could go inside. But that wasn’t something feys did, fire in nearly all forms being anathema to her kind. Only certain fire elementals and death feys—

  Io slammed the door on that thought.

  She flexed her freezing fingers inside her new leather gloves and looked about for the hundredth time, assessing her chances of making the leap to factory ledge and the French doors beyond. The narrow outcropping was flanked on either side by a pair of stupid but friendly looking stone gargoyles, which were bolted into the sidewall. There were also power lines running everywhere in lethal nets. Most were dead, but a few connected to the factory were still humming with power, their electrical hissing charging the dampening atmosphere with static. The smoking remains of a dead squirrel hung between two lines, testimony to their power. Io would have to avoid those or she’d end up crispier than that fried critter.

  The image was not a felicitous one, and Io closed her eyes and began controlled breathing to counteract the nausea. She tried not to think about either Jack or Xanthe, who were both probably wondering what she was up to.

  Io opened her eyes when she felt the night sky shift over to morning. The Fox Theater went dark. Next to it, the last of the dim green lights in Neveling’s factory finally shut down and the street below quieted, though the strange light that lurked beneath the manhole covers didn’t fade for a few minutes more. The goblins were going underground and the few humans left in town would be heading for their beds.

  It was time to go…if she was going to do it.

  “Yes, time to go,” she whispered to herself.

  Io caught the edge of the parapet while she found her balance and then began her run down the narrow abutment toward the nearby factory. Her softsoled climbing shoes ran out of slate after a half dozen steps and Io launched her body into the air, arms reaching before her as she fell toward Lutin’s building.

  Startled pigeons flapped off in alarm as she hurtled at them out of the dimness, but Io didn’t look at them or the street beneath her. Her eyes were fixed on the ledge-sized balcony sandwiched between Lutin’s twin iconic monsters. She might be part fey and therefore have an edge over her human neighbors when it came to healing, but if she fell from this height, she was as dead as anyone would be.

  Impact with the factory was hard enough to knock the air from her lungs, but she stayed on the ledge. Her fingers were wrapped around a gargoyle’s stony face, her feet safely in the middle of the unrailed balcony as she gasped for suddenly missing breath and fought the urge to look down.

  “Thank you, goddess,” she wheezed, grateful that goblins didn’t use railings on their skyscrapers. She would not have been able to make the jump if the usually spiked fence they often favored on shorter buildings was in place.

  She barely had her breathing under control when she heard the latch on the French doors turn. Startled, she twisted about. Flight was impossible. Her muscles tightened in preparation to fight whoever stepped over the threshold.

  “Calm down, little fey,” Jack said quietly. “And get inside before you fall off that ledge. You aren’t a gargoyle, you know.”

  Cursing inwardly, Io loosed her hold on the stone monster and stepped through into a darkened conference room. She kept a good arm’s length between her body and Jack’s, but even with that space she could feel the hum of his magic. It danced wildly on her skin.

  She didn’t want to notice, but it was impossible to escape the fact that while moonlight loved him, so did the dawn. His skin drank in the new gold light. His silvered eyes refracted the fresh radiance and returned it to the sky. He didn’t look human, but he was beautiful.

  “I had a feeling that we’d be seeing each other again,” Jack said,
closing the doors behind her. He sounded more amused than disapproving.

  “Unfortunately, so did I,” Io muttered truthfully. “Could you turn down the juju wattage a bit? I feel like I have ants crawling all over me.”

  Jack stared at her as though puzzled by her request, but obligingly throttled back on his power.

  “Your stunt just now really has me wondering about you. You aren’t Xanthe’s usual style of female operative. Considering her standard tunnel vision, I had the feeling that she and Zayn were worried exclusively about Horroban’s scavenger hunt out at the lake.” The words were casual, but Jack’s eyes were measuring.

  “They are worried about it,” Io answered without thinking. For some reason, it didn’t occur to her to lie. “This is just some extracurricular snooping I am doing on my own. The jewel really isn’t important. Not to me.”

  Jack looked into her eyes as though weighing her sincerity. Io let him look his fill. She had her contacts in and felt protected.

  “I’ve checked all the offices. All that’s left aboveground is the lab,” he informed her at last. “Let’s go see what they are brewing up in the bathtubs. My bet is that it ain’t gin.”

  Io shook her head. “I wouldn’t take that bet because I think you’re right.”

  “Lady feys first?”

  “No thanks. Lead on.”

  “As you like.” He moved toward the hallway and out into it.

  “So, what spell did you draw tonight?” he inquired conversationally, taking her off guard.

  “I can make things smell like apples,” Io answered in disgust.

  Jack chuckled. The sound was low and made Io shiver.

  “For a magical being, you have rotten luck…By the way, I knew the moment you left the city last night,” he added, as he led the way down a whitetiled corridor that shone painfully with the rising sun’s probing rays.

  “You did?”