Zayn spotted Io at once and began moving his partner toward her. Io let herself slide into the arterial rhythm that thumped her ears and bopped her way over to her annoyed ex-partner. She kept far away from the snake-mouthed female.
“Hey, baby,” she said loudly, not giving Zayn a chance to speak. She was careful not to look into the girl goblin’s eyes, not wanting to know if the pupils were actually slitted. “I hear there’s a big party tonight at Forty Shades of Green. Maybe I’ll see you there.”
“If there’s a big party, you can count on it,” he answered, smiling with his teeth but not his eyes. “Don’t get caught in the bathroom again. I’d hate to have to come rescue you in there.”
The message was clear. Io nodded and then began dancing her way toward the exit. She wanted out before Hille or Toc saw her and decided it was time to invite her down for another party in Glashtin’s office.
Once outside the club, Io found a dark alley and quickly pulled the invisibility spell back over her. She waited until Zayn emerged from the club and then followed him back up the street to the small jazz club, Forty Shades of Green. Like all goblin nightclubs, this one had been decorated by someone with a severe shortage of taste and an exaggerated dislike for bright lighting. The best that could be said about the place was that it wasn’t as loud as it might have been.
She let Zayn choose a table, back from the stage, but not so distant as to attract attention. He ordered a drink and then started scanning the patrons. His face was pleasantly blank but his posture suggested irritation. Io waited until the small foyer was empty and then again cast off her invisibility.
Zayn’s surprised look told her that Jack’s revved up spell was truly effective. Zayn wouldn’t have been able to see her under the magic cloak, but with his own enhanced powers he should have sensed that she was there.
“Hi. Mind if I join you?” she asked, easing herself into a chair without waiting for an answer.
“Where have you been?” he demanded, dropping his voice. “Xanthe’s been looking all over for you. And Hille Bingels wants another date.”
“I’ve been busy doing my job.” Io’s voice was unusually cold, and she wondered if she had picked up some of Jack’s power of intimidation.
Zayn blinked and sat back, suggesting that he was wondering the same thing. “Look, if you’re having a personal party with Jack Frost then you should let Xanthe know. She’s worried about you.”
“I am letting her know. Through you. Xanthe and I won’t be talking directly again until this mission is over.”
Zayn blinked. “Why?”
Io thought about mentioning that she would be staying in Goblin Town, but changed her mind. Jack’s precautions didn’t look so paranoid to her after last night. Before then, the Labyrinth had just been a word, a place that wasn’t real. Now she knew just how real and dangerous it was. Too much was riding on her mission to take chances with idealism.
“You might ask Xanthe that,” she said instead. “She and Jack have a personal history—and Jack isn’t inclined to chat about it, except to say he doesn’t want me near her. Maybe Xanthe will be more talkative.”
Zayn frowned. “Does it matter that they were involved?”
“That’s unanswerable. It might matter a great deal—at least to me. I was the one sent to climb into Jack’s hip pocket, after all. She could have told me a bit about the wolf before throwing me to him.”
Zayn shook his head, automatically denying wrongdoing on Xanthe’s part, but he didn’t look happy with the news. “Where are the other ticks? I can’t find them.”
Io didn’t know, either. She was willing to bet that Jack had moved them somewhere shielded, though. “They’re safe enough. I’m keeping them alive in case I need them.”
“You should have them on you. We might need—”
“Zayn, you want ticks, you get your own. I’m done hosting parasites. Only if you do let them tick you, watch what Ferris does when you aren’t looking. He stuck a big one on my back that he didn’t tell me about. Jack had to cut it out and then burn the wound closed.”
Zayn blinked again. “He burned you?” He looked appalled. Feys did not use fire on other feys. Ever.
“Yep. It hurt like hell, too.”
The waitress arrived with Zayn’s drink and asked Io if she’d like anything. Though she didn’t care for beer, she ordered something German that came in a bottle, requesting that it remain sealed until it came to the table. When the waitress looked surprised, Io smiled and said she wanted to try her new bottle-opening spell.
Satisfied with the answer, the goblin server retreated.
“Those extra arms must come in handy in this line of work,” Io said conversationally, when Zayn failed to initiate conversation.
“You’ve changed,” Zayn finally said, looking troubled. He asked diffidently, “Has Jack done something else to you? I can feel his magic all over you.”
Io shrugged. “Jack’s my problem. We have something else larger to worry about.”
“The jewel?”
Io shook her head and sighed. “Zayn, I am only going to try to tell you this once, so please try hard to listen and not make any judgments about my story until I’m done.”
“Okay. But wait until the girl brings your drink.” He was beginning to look freaked.
Io stared at him. “Why are you with H.U.G.? I mean, I know what happened to your brother. But have you thought about why H.U.G. took us in?” she asked.
“Because it is illegal to discriminate against people with handicaps,” he said flippantly. Like many feys, he was grateful for the Supreme Court’s legal protection, but also annoyed that his basic biology should be considered a handicap. He was annoyed that the few physical manifestations of his heritage—in his case, fractal eyes and very pointed ears—he had to hide under long hair and hats if he wished to pass for human.
“Like H.U.G. cares about legalities. Get real, Zayn. We should have asked ourselves this question long ago.”
The waitress returned. Io smiled a bit and thanked the goblin who put her beer on the table. She made a show of using one of the spells she had pickpocketed and blasted the bottle cap off with the force of a rocket. It stuck itself into the acoustical tile ceiling.
People at nearby tables applauded.
“Geez! Let’s just call for a spotlight,” Zayn muttered.
“Relax. This is what tourists are supposed to do.”
“What are you going to do about Hille?” Zayn asked, his voice again lowered once everyone had looked away. He still sounded disgruntled. “She’s been asking for you all over the place.”
“Nothing.”
“What?” Now he looked shocked. “But we need to follow her!”
“No, we don’t. Here’s the thing,” Io explained, lowering her voice as far as she could and still be heard. “The situation is much worse here than I was told. I’ve been down in the hive—”
“The what?” He looked bewildered.
“The Labyrinth. Jack and I went down last night—”
“Are you nuts! You’ve had no combat training—”
“For the goddess’s sake, shut up! Geez, Zayn, are you retarded?” she hissed, losing her temper. “What did you think would happen when Xanthe threw me at Jack? Of course I’ve gone down with him—and I don’t mean that in any sexual sense, though that was clearly what our boss expected of me.”
“Io—”
“Now, I am telling you that things are bad down there. There are acres upon acres of goblin fruit just waiting to be harvested. And I am asking myself what they have been feeding these plants that they could have a crop this late in the fall. You probably should be asking some of these questions, too.”
Zayn began to look troubled. But when he spoke it was to address the lesser of problems. “They shouldn’t have sent you in, Io. I was against it. You aren’t ready for this, not trained to read the facts and make useful assessments. And Jack Frost is—”
“Jack Frost is glad to
be back and ready to be out with his babe,” Jack said, slipping into the chair next to Io. He leaned over and kissed her, easing the steel-fist spell out of her before she could even think to protest the extraction. “Got your clothes all packed, babe, so you don’t have to borrow my shirt again.”
“Thanks,” Io muttered, trying to hide how disturbing his kiss had been, even without any intent at hanky-panky on his part.
Zayn stared at them, completely unnerved. For the second time that night, someone had sneaked up on him without his detecting their presence, and he didn’t like it.
“Nice to see you again, Zayn. But I think we have to be going. Places to go, people to see,” Jack said, his smile colder than the ice in Zayn’s glass.
“Okay,” Io agreed, deciding that she wasn’t going to get anywhere with Zayn that night. He was too much the obedient soldier and needed time to move through proper channels. She stood up. “Tell Xanthe that I’m fine and doing just what I should be.”
“Where are you staying?” her ex-partner asked, rising to his feet as Io and Jack did.
“Sorry, my address isn’t fixed,” Io answered. Knowing it would outrage him, she still suggested, “You can leave a message for me in the bathroom here—if you feel comfortable sneaking into the women’s john. Put it in a plastic bag and leave it taped under the tank.”
“Why not the men’s?” Zayn asked, clearly peeved. “If you have a cloaking spell, you could retrieve it there.”
Io shook her head. She didn’t explain that the spell was Jack’s. “Men’s bathrooms are disgusting. I’m not touching anything in there.”
Jack threw back his head and laughed. Normally Io liked the sound, but tonight it grated her ears like breaking glass. Something had happened to piss him off. Getting him away from Zayn seemed like a really good idea.
“Time to go,” she said to both men.
“Lead the way, babe,” Jack answered, dropping a possessive arm around her shoulder.
Io resisted the urge to look back at Zayn as they left the club.
“What happened out there?” she asked, once they were out in the street and moving away from the bright lights of the downtown area. Jack didn’t drop his arm, and she didn’t ask him to.
“Our problems have potentially gotten a whole lot bigger.”
Io used a troll word, and this time Jack didn’t bother to tease her.
“What now?” she asked.
“It looks like Xanthe may be in cahoots with the goblins,” he said bluntly.
“What?” Io was stunned and, for one moment, disbelieving. She twisted to look up at Jack, unconsciously using the truth spell. “How? Why?”
Jack shook his head at her.
“Untrusting little fey,” he said, obviously feeling the magical probe. “I wouldn’t lie to you about this.”
“Sorry,” Io muttered, reeling the spell in.
“Xanthe has a kid sister who has disappeared. Rumor on the force is the kid is living in Goblin Town, an honored guest of our favorite goblin. He’s kindly making sure that she gets a generous supply of what she craves and all the partying she can handle.”
Io shook her head. “Her name’s Chloe. She disappeared? I don’t for one minute believe she’s here willingly.”
“Neither do I.”
“But then why didn’t Xanthe ask us to find her?” Io wondered aloud, speaking more to herself than Jack. “Zayn and I are here. We could be looking.”
“Probably because a rescue op has a damn poor chance of succeeding, and Xanthe doesn’t want anyone cowboying about and getting the kid killed. There is also the credibility factor. I don’t think H.U.G. higher-ups would take kindly to having a director-in-charge of the northern U.S. with a sister who is a goblin-fruit junkie.”
“So, instead of asking for help and admitting that she is compromised, Xanthe is dithering about, not doing anything to directly mess up Horroban’s plans, but trying to gather information and look efficient while she comes up with some arrangement to save her sister?” Io sighed. “Well, hell. I knew something was wrong when she pushed so hard for me to come back to Goblin Town. The goals were too amorphous. The mission had no shape. And the only reason she wanted me near you was so she could tell Horroban where the real danger was coming from.”
“My thoughts exactly. But I’m glad you see it.”
“It’s a little hard not to. It’s like finding a big, fat spider swimming in a glass of curdled milk.” Io thought about the developments, unconsciously resting her head against Jack’s shoulder.
“I don’t honestly know what she’ll do,” she told him after a moment. “Not if push comes to shove. Xanthe is really fond of Chloe.”
“I know she is. So, for sure she can’t be trusted with any information. You can’t pass anything along through Zayn.”
“Goddess, no!” Not with how fond of Chloe Zayn was. He’d had a sort of crush on her forever.
“However, this mess doesn’t change our job any. Our objectives are the same as before,” Jack reminded her. “It’ll take the lab a day to do the analysis of that fruit and see if the addiction content has been raised. In the meantime, we still need to find out what Neveling Lutin is up to—that is, if you’re still in. Things are getting really tricky and I wouldn’t blame you if you decided to pull out.”
“Put a sock in it,” Io snapped, without real heat. “I’m in, and I’m staying. So, we go back into the Labyrinth and find Neveling?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Damn. Want to bet the gargoyles are on duty tonight?”
“Almost certainly.”
Heat began to drain from Io’s body as it finally understood what it would be doing that night. The flesh of her nape began to creep, lodging its own protest at this plan.
Jack laid a warm hand on the back of her neck and stroked gently.
“Let’s go by your place and I’ll change shoes,” Io said, proud of the calm in her voice. “If I have to run, I don’t want it to be in heels.”
“Okay. I have some nifty tools there as well.”
“Yeah? What kind of nifty tools?”
“Well, for one thing, there is a neat little handgun that shoots bullets forged of cold iron. It even has a silencer.”
“That’s a really nifty tool,” Io agreed, looking up at Jack. “Who gets to play with it first?”
“You know how to shoot a pistol?” Jack asked.
“Yes.”
“Then it’s all yours.”
“Thanks, I guess.”
Chapter Thirteen
They went down and in near Neveling’s factory, and their first stop in the Labyrinth was another cavernous farm covered in a field of the ripening ruby goblin fruit. Io was better prepared for the sight this time, but the spectacle still left a bitter taste in her mouth and had her gut clenching. It was too easy to recall her mother nibbling on the glossy spheres as a smiling Drakkar fed them to her. Feys didn’t age the way humans did when they took the stuff, but they became just as addicted to goblin fruit, and their minds became just as given over to obsession.
“Shall we find out what’s feeding them?” Jack asked.
“Yes.” Io swallowed hard. “Do it.”
Jack knelt down at the end of a row and, drawing on a glove, he pulled back the tangle of barbed vines. The plants were being supplied nourishment by individual drippers, two tubes for each cane. One was filled with a clear liquid; the other was not. It was difficult to judge shades in the eerie green twilight, but Io was willing to bet that the other was thinned-down blood. That was, after all, what goblin fruit needed to grow: human blood, human bones.
“Where are those destructive garden gophers when you want them?” Io muttered.
“At the donut shop with the cops, probably,” Jack muttered back. “Keep an eye and an ear out for goblins. I want to see where this goes.”
Jack pushed vines aside and followed the plastic tubing into the field, tracing the red line to a tank located nearly twenty feet in. The thi
ng was about the size of a coffin and sprouted a dozen spigots off its sides. He laid a gloved hand against its corroding surface and gave the tank a shove. As expected, there was the sound of sloshing liquid. But there were also several hollow thumps, suggesting something solid inside.
Io thought of the junkie she and Jack had seen and tried not to be ill. Jack’s face was also grim.
“There must be what—fifty of them down here in this field alone?”
Io nodded.
They followed an ear-assaulting whine back to a small pump house at the edge of the field where the largest feeder lines disappeared. The pump sounded as if it needed oil. Goblins weren’t big on mechanical items and tended to be careless about maintenance.
“Can we break in?”
“Do we need to?”
“We could do a little sabotage,” Io suggested.
“Not yet. We don’t want them to know—quiet!” Jack grabbed Io and quickly drew her to the far side of the pump house. Two goblins appeared out of the south tunnel and approached the pumping station, hissing dry sibilants at each other as they carried on their argument. They held long bloody scythes in their bony hands, which they occasionally brandished at one another. Apparently goblin gardening was a gory business.
Jack waited until the pair was almost upon them and then he flattened Io against the wall and plastered his mouth against hers. Magic raced over her tongue and down inside where it exploded through every cell of her body. A spell screamed through her nerves, making them wail in shock at the violent intrusion. It was like being spun in a giant centrifuge. At the moment when she thought she might cry out, the invisibility spell completed its circuit, covering up the sight, smell and—most importantly—noise of both of them.
The goblins passed so close that Io could feel the displaced air move around their gore-covered bodies.
Jack held her up against the wall, mouth to mouth and their bodies mated to the knees, until the goblins had left the cave. Only then did he gradually pull his magic back and set her body away from his. Though he was gentle about the extraction, it took a moment for the world to right itself.
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