Luc’s suggestion startled a laugh out of her. “I suppose that’s one way to make lemonade, but before we, ah, stop for refreshments, what do you say we put in a bit more than an hour of hard work for the day and see what else we can find out about Walter Hibbish?” Her eyes slid back to the display of chocolate tattoos she’d noticed earlier, and her smile turned wicked. “Then if you’re a very good boy, maybe we can take a break later on.”
She snagged a box and sashayed over to the cash register. “After all, we’ll need to keep our strength up.”
Luc’s mind was filled with two primary thoughts as he bustled Corinne away from the shop and down the street. On the one hand, they needed to figure out what it meant that one of the last mortals to make contact with Seoc had disappeared without a trace; on the other, he needed to understand why the taste of Corinne D’Alessandro went to his head faster than Faerie wine.
He knew she was his heartmate. Even if he’d wanted to deny it, that part had become abundantly clear when she’d seen through his glamour last night. Still, just being his perfect match didn’t explain why the one little taste of her in the back of the sex shop had nearly snapped his control. He hadn’t touched anything more intimate than her shoulder. Heartmates were said to possess a strong, elemental attraction to each other, but could this really be what the stories were talking about?
For a man who’d learned the finer points of sex from nymphs and dryads, a man known as one of the most desirable warriors in Faerie, Luc couldn’t fathom why one human woman should be able to seduce him simply by breathing. For Goddess’s sake, he’d spent the entirety of last night having her as many times as he could manage. He should be sated, but he’d wanted her again the minute he’d woken, and the desire had only increased with each passing second. How in Ithirwas he supposed to function like this? If this was how all heartmates felt for each other, it amazed him that he’d ever seen any of them outside their bedchambers.
“Luc?”
The sound of her voice surprised him. He’d been so caught up in thinking about her, he’d almost forgotten about her. She stared up at him with those wide, earth-colored eyes, and he felt his blood head back south. “Sorry, what?”
“I knew you weren’t listening. I asked what you think it means that Hibbish has gone missing. I saw the look on your face when Weitzel first mentioned it. You have some sort of theory.”
He weighed his words for a moment before he answered. “Not so much a theory as a whole lot of questions that I’d really like answers to.”
She frowned. “What do you mean?”
“I think it’s a pretty odd time for Hibbish to go missing, don’t you?”
“I think oddis pretty much at the root of this whole situation, but then I’m still trying to accustom myself to the idea of there being a Queen of Faerie, or a place called Faerie itself, so I don’t think I’m one to judge. I’m more interested in what you think is odd.”
He sighed. “I think it’s odd that Hibbish has disappeared so soon after sighting Seoc.”
“Explain.”
It must have been nearing lunchtime, because the sidewalk had begun to fill up with pedestrians, and Luc had to pull Corinne out of the way of a small gaggle of young people who seemed oblivious to the fact that they were expected to share the world with anyone else. He grimaced. “Come on. We can’t stand here and chat all day. I saw a coffee shop down on the corner. Let’s grab a table and swap theories. And maybe some more of that foul brew you love will put you in a better mood.”
“My mood is just fine, but I never say no to a cup of foul brew.” She let him guide her down the block and inside to the table a harried waiter indicated.
“Fine, is it? I suppose that’s why we had to have that little relationship talk in the middle of that atmospheric shop.”
She had the grace to look abashed. “Okay, so my mood is greatly improved.”
“And think how much further it will improve after a cup of coffee.” Personally, he didn’t see what humans liked so much about the dark, bitter liquid, but if it made Corinne happy, he’d be delighted to provide it.
He thought he heard her murmur something about torture, revenge, and Altoids as he helped her into her seat, but when he took his own and glanced across at her, she just smiled sweetly. The expression gave him the willies. Talk about unnatural. He gave her order to their waiter, along with a request for a pot of Darjeeling with lemon and turned back to their conversation.
“So what’s your theory about the weirdness?” she asked as soon as they were alone again.
He paused, taking a moment to weigh his answer. It wasn’t so much a matter of deciding how much of the truth to tell her as deciding how to tell her so she would understand without getting freaked out. “Have you ever heard of a Changeling?”
Her eyes widened. “Oddly enough, I have. A few months ago, I would have assumed that when you asked about a changeling—small c—you were referring to the folktales about how fairies—small fand one e—used to exchange their sickly or malformed offspring for healthy human babies, whom they then raised as their own children back in fairyland. But last summer, another friend of mine actually met a guy who calls himself a Changeling, so I’m going to assume you’re talking about the kind with the capital C.”
“Definitely a capital C. The other sort haven’t happened in a long, long time. Not since the very beginning of our time out of Ithir. These days, the term always refers to the offspring of mixed parents—one Fae parent, and one human.”
“Really? Danice just said it meant half human and half Other. She never mentioned the Fae, even when she married the guy. The jerk.”
“Last night, when I first explained what I was doing here, I mentioned that the only way to travel between here and Faerie, and vice versa, is to use a magical doorway. Remember?”
She nodded.
“Good. The thing is, that wasn’t always true. It used to be that the Fae could build a kind of portal, using magic, and do it anytime and anywhere they wanted. But having that power led to abuses, like stealing human children. So a long time ago, that power was stripped away; from then on, the only paths between the worlds were the doorways. That’s one of the reasons why taking human babies back to Faerie stopped, because in order to make the trip, the Fae would have to not only find the right baby and make the switch, but also find the nearest door between the worlds and get the baby through before getting caught. It just got too tough. And since the Queen could hardly afford to seem like she approved of the whole practice, she didn’t exactly make those doors easy to find.”
He closed his mouth as their server approached and wáited until he was done before leaning forward to continue his tale. “But some Fae continued to find them. Worse than that, some humans found them, too, and a few came into Faerie looking for the lost children. Once, a human man managed to convince some of his neighbors that the Fae were responsible for the death of their crops and their cattle, and they formed a small army to attack us. That was an extreme example, but it made an impression on the Queen. Eventually, she decided to close almost all the doors between the worlds so she could control the passage of anyone into and out of Faerie.”
“Sort of like the Berlin Wall of alternate realities, then.”
Luc gave an amused snort. “Well, I suppose there are worse analogies. Anyway, all but five of the doors in Ithirwere permanently sealed, and the five that were left were all charmed so that while they exist at different corners of the world in Ithir,in Faerie they all open into the Queen’s palace.”
“And she’s a one-woman border patrol?”
“She makes the decisions about who passes, yes. Very, very rarely someone discovers a new door that has opened on its own, but those are shut as soon as they are discovered. I heard that the one leading to the Winter Court was closed just recently after some sort of incident there.”
Corinne frowned. “Then how did Seoc get here to begin with? For that matter, how could you have gotten here in the
past like you said you have?”
“I had permission,” he said. “And we think Seoc snuck through one of the palace doors when a room was left unguarded.”
Her eyebrows climbed toward her hairline. “I bet that as the head of the Queen’s Guard, that really chaps your ass, doesn’t it?”
He frowned. “It doesn’t make me happy. While I had a man stationed in the room the night Seoc went through, he was distracted from his duty, and it is ultimately my responsibility to make sure that kind of thing doesn’t happen.”
“I wasn’t saying it’s your fault. I just want to have my facts straight.”
“Well, the fact is it doesn’t matter how Seoc got here, because he’s here now and so are the five doors back to Faerie. But those are the only doors on Ithir. A door can lead to any number of alternate dimensions; Faerie is only one of them. The only way for Seoc to tell where a door goes is to have been told in advance, or to try it and see what happens.”
“And he’s the reason why we’re having this conversation.” She frowned. “Wasn’t the point of this conversation originally to discuss why Walter Hibbish disappeared?”
He had to give her points for persistence. “I’m getting to that.”
“Get faster.”
“Fine. I think Hibbish disappeared because Seoc was experimenting with the doors and needed someone to test them on.”
Her eyes widened. “You think Seoc killed Hibbish?”
“No, I think he sent him through a door.”
TEN
Corinne did her best to wrap her mind around the information Luc was giving her, but she just didn’t think her brain was that flexible. Maybe she should look into mental yoga.
She shook her head. “But you just said that the Faerie Queen closed all the doors between Ith—um, between here and Faerie. So how did Seoc send Hibbish through one?”
“He didn’t. At least, he didn’t send Hibbish through to Faerie. I think he sent him into limbo.”
Her jaw dropped so hard, she almost heard a crash. “He sent that guy into eternal nothingness?”
Luc’s mouth curved in a brief grin. “Not exactly. Limbo isn’t any one specific place. It’s what we call the place between any two worlds. It doesn’t technically exist, so a being who can do magic can shape it to be anything he or she wants.”
Corinne grimaced. “You sound like a theoretical physicist.”
She knew whereof she spoke. She’d dated a theoretical physicist for a while in college. She still got occasional flashback headaches.
“Okay, so Hibbish is…somewhere that’s not here and not Faerie. But why was Seoc experimenting with the doors? Are you telling me he came to—er, he came here without already knowing what door he’d need to get back? No one could be that stupid.”
“You haven’t met Seoc.”
“Huh?”
“He’s exactly that stupid. Now I think he’s looking for the doorway back.”
“You’re kidding me.”
He shook his head. “I wish. One of the five remaining Faerie doors is here in Manhattan.” He topped off his tea and added a fresh slice of lemon. “Mab opened a new door for me when she gave me permission to come here, but she’s the only being I know capable of still using that kind of magic. Seoc needs to know where the permanent door is, and I think he’s trying to find it.”
“But what’s so bad about that? If all of you want him to go back to Faerie, and he’s trying to find his way back there, why not just let him? Or better yet, help him find it and get him home even quicker.”
“Because I don’t think he’s looking for it so he can use it to go home. I think he’s looking for it so he can prop it permanently open.”
He said it so gravely and with such a forbidding frown on his face that Corinne could only speculate. “And that would be a bad thing.”
He nodded. “That would be the thing I told you about last night. That would allow anyone and anything that wanted to travel between our worlds to do it. That would upset the balance between them. That would do all those bad things I told you about last night.”
Corinne blew out a breath. “Right. So then it’s important for us to stop him.”
“You could say that. But first, we have to find him.”
“True.” She drained her coffee mug and frowned. “Well, I was going to focus this afternoon on finding Hibbish. He gave the most complete statement about seeing Seoc, so it made sense that he’d be able to give us the most details, but his sighting wasn’t the most recent.”
“Whose was?”
Corinne pulled out the notebook to double-check. “Rabbi Aaronson. He reportedly spotted Seoc near his synagogue in Morningside Heights.”
“That’s farther uptown, isn’t it?”
She nodded. “North of Central Park. And that was just three days ago.” She reached for her cell phone. “He was one of the calls I made this morning. I left my number on his office machine. Let me see if he called back.”
He watched while Corinne dialed her voice mail, seeing her impatience grow as she navigated through the prompts to listen to her new messages. When he saw her go pale, he knew something was very wrong.
“What?” He reached across the table to cover her hand with his. Her fingers had gone icy cold.
Corinne shook her head and put the cell on speaker before laying the phone down between them.
“This message is for a Corinne D’Alessandro.” The woman’s voice sounded think and shaky, as if she were very old or very upset. “Ms. D’Alessandro, this is Rebeccah Silver from the Temple Beth Elohim and the office of Rabbi Levi Aaronson. We received your request for an interview, but I’m afraid that Dr. Aaronson has…Dr. Aaronson was killed last night in a mugging near his home. I hope—” She broke off, drew a raspy breath. “I hope you’ll understand if I refer you to the media relations office at the Jewish Theological Seminary with further questions.”
Corinne pressed the button to end the call. For several minutes, they both remained silent, considering the implications. For her part, Corinne wasn’t quite sure what to make of the news. This was New York. Muggings happened, and sometimes, people died; still, this was at least the third coincidental event to make her list since she’d first heard about sightings of an elf on the streets of Manhattan. So far, nothing had linked directly to the subject of the sightings, but the questions were beginning to pile up.
She spoke first. “You don’t think that Seoc would have—”
“No.” Luc spoke firmly. “I can’t picture it. You don’t know Seoc, but he’s…he’s just a boy. He’s spoiled and immature and willful, and I don’t think he’s stopped one time in his ridiculous life to consider the consequences of his actions, but he’s not a killer. I don’t know if he’d be able to manage a kill if he tried.”
Corinne drew back. This was news to her. “When you say boy, you don’t mean he’s a child, do you?”
“No, of course not. He’s legally an adult, though not by much, according to Fae standards. He’s only just over three hundred. But he’s not a child; just an idiot.”
Corinne choked on her coffee. “Three hundred? As in three hundred years old?”
“About that. Three hundred and seven or eight, I think.”
“And you call that a child? What are you? Four thousand? Give or take?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” He shot her an impatient stare. “I’m only nine hundred and twenty-seven.”
“Oh, well, I guess you’re lucky Dmitri doesn’t make you sit at the kids’ table for Thanksgiving dinner!” Corinne set her mug down with shaking hands. If only it were filled with vodka instead of Kenya select. “Nine hundred twenty-seven. Holy Jesus.”
Some of her distress must finally have filtered through to Luc. His expression softened and he reached for her hands, cupping his fingers around hers. “Try not to panic,” he said. “Time is different in Faerie, and the Fae age differently from humans. Technically I’ve lived somewhere in the neighborhood of that many human years,
but to my people I’m in my prime, nothing more. Think of me being around, oh, thirty-five or thirty-six.”
Her fingers continued to tremble. “Is that what it comes out to in the New Math?”
He chuckled.
Corinne struggled to breathe slowly and deeply.
She could handle this; really she could. So what if the newest man in her life was older than the country she lived in? Was that really such a big deal? After all, Reggie was one of her best friends, and Reggie’s husband was even older. He’d topped a thousand before the two of them even met, which meant Luc was practically wet behind the ears in comparison.
Yup, wet behind his cute, pointy ears.
“Oh, God.”
Luc squeezed her fingers. “Do you need to put your head between your legs?”
“I’m not going to pass out.” Probably. “I just…I need a minute to cope, that’s all. Just give me a minute.”
He fell obediently silent.
Okay,Corinne told herself, taking another deep breath. Think about this calmly. Rationally.Age was just a number, right? A concept humanity had agreed upon to keep track of the passage of time. The only reason it was important to a relationship was because it often indicated how long two people might have together and how similar their backgrounds and perspectives were likely to be. Considering that her background and Luc’s had happened in different dimesions, they could pretty much assume the “shared experiences” ship had sailed. How else was age important to them?
“Oh, shit, are you going to live forever and never age a day, while I get old and wrinkled and ugly until you find me repulsive and abandon me like a used-up tube of toothpaste?”
Luc let her babble out the question, then nodded. “Absolutely.”
“Luc!”
He squeezed her hands. “Hey, my answer wasn’t any more ridiculous than your question. Don’t be foolish.”
“I’m not being foolish. Tell me the truth. Are you? Going to live forever and never age,” she added hastily when his expression began to turn angry. “I think that’s something I have a right to know.”
Not Your Ordinary Faerie Tale Page 13