by Z. J. Cannon
In all fairness, I thought as I hung suspended in time, still waiting for the gun to fire, it wasn’t as if she hadn’t known I wasn’t the stealthy type. Maybe I should have reminded her that I hadn’t even been able to do something as simple as kidnap her without drawing the attention of her fae bodyguard first, and shortly after that, the entire FBI. But that would have required getting too close to one of the subjects that, by mutual agreement, the two of us never brought up. The time I had kidnapped her was one. The time I had almost killed her—also not subtly, I should add—was another.
I didn’t know what kind of miracle let my forearm slam into his wrist at just the right angle, popping the gun from his grip a fraction of a second before it would have gone off. Whatever it was, I knew better than to count on that luck holding. I took full advantage of the moment, sending him tumbling to the ground with the weight of my body, then landing on top of him hard enough to wrench the breath away from both of us. Before I had a chance to pull in another breath—let alone give him the chance to wrestle free—the syringe was in his neck. His attempt to throw me off ended before he could do more than raise one arm, and he went limp under me.
I carried him over my shoulder back to the car and propped him up in the driver’s seat. I was as gentle about it as I could be—they weren’t the bad guys here. I pocketed both their phones, and tossed their guns into the trees, just in case they woke up prematurely. Skye had told me this stuff should last for a good eight hours, but the operative word there was should—this was my first time trying it out, and I knew better than to take any claims made on the internet at face value.
I stepped back and regarded my handiwork. Not bad, considering this was far from my forte. I hadn’t made anything explode, or even done any damage to the landscaping, and for me, that was an achievement. I only hoped Delaney felt the same way.
Then I checked my watch, and winced. Delaney’s meeting would be well underway by now. I only hoped she was doing all right in there without me.
With one last glance behind me, just enough to assure myself Skye’s drug was still working, I jogged up the driveway.
Chapter 2
Thankfully, there were no branches to step on inside the house, which meant it was easy to creep in without being heard. Whatever magic the house was still imbued with caused any twigs, leaves, and other assorted biological matter shed by the plants to disappear into the floor almost as soon as they fell. I didn’t understand exactly how it worked—I had tried to learn the finer points of magical theory once, but I had come away from the attempt with nothing more than a raging headache and conviction that only the fae could understand the how and why of magic. And while I had fae blood, I was not fae.
So I had long since stopped wondering how the house did any of what it did. I was just grateful it didn’t try to eat me when I walked across the floor barefoot in the middle of the night.
As I padded through the hallway, which curved back and forth and twisted around on itself in ways that didn’t match any human design sensibilities, Delaney’s dog walked up to me with a wag of his tail. He gave a hopeful whine, sniffing at my pockets.
“Quiet,” I warned him in a whisper.
He jabbed my pocket insistently with his nose, then stared up at me with his one good eye. The message was clear.
“You want a bribe? Fine. Will this buy your silence?” I held out one of the scraps of beef jerky I had learned to keep in my pocket.
The jerky disappeared. Buster lay down with a contented sigh and closed his eyes, no longer in any danger of revealing my presence to our visitor. It pays to know someone’s price. I bent down to give him a quick scratch behind his good ear, then tiptoed past him and into the main room.
The room was an explosion of color. Oranges in one corner, mangoes in another, oversized purple grapes hanging from a vine that climbed up one wall. And everywhere was green—greens of every possible shade. The room was even warmer than the outdoors, and more humid. Delaney kept making noises about putting in air conditioning, but I always pointed out that the fae magic would probably ensure the temperature stayed the same regardless. Besides, I had suffered through too much of the bitter Hawthorne winter to give up a single moment of the summer heat that brought my blood to life.
Most of the roof was taken up by a giant skylight—or what looked like a skylight. During the day, it always showed a cloudless sky, no matter what the weather was actually like outside. Once the sun went down, every night was a full moon, bright enough that we didn’t need electric lights. The moonlight provided plenty of shadows for me to hide in as I approached Delaney and her visitor. I ducked behind a cluster of trees in bloom with garish orange flowers, trying not to sneeze as the sweet scent tickled my nose, and peered through the branches at the two of them.
They were sitting together on a stone bench in front of the waterfall. Delaney sat straight-backed, hands folded in her lap, her face a neutral mask. Only a slight tremble at the edges of her lips betrayed her tension. She wore a sedate navy blue suit—one of approximately three colors of clothing she owned—that looked like it had come straight off the ironing board. As usual, she didn’t wear any makeup, which made the toll the past couple of months had taken on her that much more obvious. She might as well have aged ten years since she had faked her death back in March. At least the last of her injuries from my attack had finally healed, and without leaving any scars.
Carroll looked to be about Delaney’s age, somewhere in his mid-sixties. He had what I suspected was a permanent hunch to his back, and the face of a good-natured professor. He dressed like one, too, in a tweed jacket and suspenders. Unlike Delaney, he made no attempts to hide his emotions. Behind his glasses, his eyes kept darting from the waterfall, to the parrot perched at the top of a tall palm tree, to Delaney herself. I couldn’t tell which of the three bewildered him more.
He shook his head. “I still don’t understand.” He had the voice of someone who had been tired for so long he had forgotten what it was like to be anything else. “You’re dead. Murdered by that man who held you hostage. I went to your funeral, for Christ’s sake.”
“A funeral without a body,” Delaney pointed out, her voice crisp. “I know it’s hard to take in, but we have a lot to go over tonight, and to be frank, my survival is going to be the easiest part for you to accept. So can we take that as fact, and move on?”
He started to shake his head again, then stopped and took a breath. “All right. You’re alive. It’s not as if you aren’t proving it to me right now, just by sitting right there in front of me.” He reached out a hesitant hand toward her, but pulled it back before he could touch her.
Delaney placed her hand gently on his. “In the flesh,” she said softly, as he visibly tried not to jump.
“Well, I can’t say I’m not glad to see you,” he said, staring down at her hand like it was the eighth wonder of the world. “When I found out you were dead…” Another shake of his head, more like a twitch this time. “There were so many of us out to change the world, back when we first got started. We were all so young then, and even the worst of our planet’s problems seemed solvable. All we had to do was recycle and drive less, right?” He gave a bitter laugh. It sounded more exhausted than his voice did.
“Not for the two of us,” said Delaney. “We had the right idea from the start. Leave the feel-good stuff to the aging hippies, and go straight for the throats of the big polluters. I think that’s why we worked so well together.” A soft smile spread across her face.
I stared. I didn’t think I had ever seen her look so… comfortable before. Of course, a lot of that probably had to do with the fact that every time I saw her, she was with me. Standing mere feet away from an unexploded bomb of uncontrolled a magic—magic that had come within inches of killing her mere months ago, no less—wasn’t the kind of thing that was likely to put her in a smiling mood.
“I still can’t believe you actually took that last step and went into politics.”
“A sheep in
wolf’s clothing, that’s me.” Delaney laughed—a bright, genuine laugh that, for a second, made her look decades younger than her sixty-something years.
“I won’t say I didn’t consider it, from time to time. But it always came down to the perennial question—how much can you change the system from the inside before the system starts to change you?” His face sobered. “Not that my way has changed much of anything, whatever promises your esteemed colleagues like to make over all the expensive lunches I treat them to.” The slump in his shoulders grew as he heaved a sigh loud enough for me to hear from my hiding place. “You ever think we made the wrong choice, all those years ago? Maybe we should have gone into dentistry. It would have paid better, and we’d probably have more to show for it.”
“That’s why I brought you here.” Delaney leaned in toward him. The soft nostalgia was gone from her face; now her eyes were painfully intense. It was enough to make me want to take a step back, even though I wasn’t the one she was looking at. “Everything we’ve been working for… it’s not a pipe dream anymore. We can eliminate the world’s dependence on fossil fuels. Not reduce. Eliminate. Not only that, there may be a way to reverse most, if not all, of the damage that’s already been done. Rebuild the coral reefs. Get the ice caps back to the way they were fifty years ago. For the first time in our very long careers, we have a real chance.” She paused. The intensity in her gaze grew. “But I need you to promise me you’ll hear me out. Whatever you might think of what I have to say.”
“I think I already know what you have to say.” Carroll stood. His face closed off as abruptly as if someone had pulled the shutters down over him. “This isn’t the first time I’ve heard this spiel. Arkanica, right? They came to me about a year ago, spouting the same nonsense. They wanted my endorsement to show off to their investors—I guess my name means something after that silly interview last year. They thought plastering my name on their papers would give them the environmentalist bona fides they wanted. But even if I were naive enough to believe their claims—and I haven’t been that gullible in forty years—it wasn’t too hard to notice what they weren’t saying. No mention of how they were making this miracle fuel of theirs. No mention of the cost—and everything has its cost. Wind turbines have a noise-pollution problem; solar panels cost too much to make. And yet these people wanted me to believe their snake oil has no side effects.”
He stared down at Delaney sorrowfully. “What I don’t understand,” he said, voice heavy, “is how they got you in their pocket. Is that how you got this house?” He cast a slow, deliberate gaze around the room, turning a simple look into a silent condemnation. “The Lara Delaney I knew would have lived on the street before she took a penny from the likes of them. But we haven’t spent much time together since the day you decided to run for office, have we?” Another sigh, this one almost too soft to hear. “You should take a look in the mirror sometime, Lara. I don’t think that wolf skin is just a suit anymore.”
Delaney waited until he was done. Then she pushed herself up from the bench and turned to face him. “Because you’re an old friend,” she said, voice tight with restrained anger, “and because even that ridiculous guess is easier to believe than the truth, I’ll forgive you for that assumption. But make no mistake: I have not, and will never, take anything from Arkanica. They’re worse than you know, and if I have my way, I’ll see them wiped from the face of the earth.”
The ferocity in her voice made Carroll take a step back. “Don’t get me wrong—I’m relieved to hear that. But if this has nothing to do with Arkanica, then how is it that two people inside of a year have made me the same impossible claims? And if this is all aboveboard, why the cloak-and-dagger routine? When I got that email, I figured it was a coin toss whether this would be a meeting with a scared whistleblower, or an overly elaborate assassination attempt from someone who seriously overestimated my degree of influence. And while we’re at it, are we ever going to get around to why the rest of the world thinks you’re dead?”
“You just answered your first question,” said Delaney. “I could hardly call you up for a friendly chat when I was supposed to be dead, now could I? I didn’t know how you would react to hearing from me, or who you might tell. As for the rest…” She paused to take a deep breath. “This is where you’re going to have to trust me.”
“I’ve trusted you for forty years,” Carroll assured her. “I have no intention of stopping now. I burned quite a few bridges when I joined your first nonprofit back in the day, but it was you, so I did it without a backward glance. If I could do that, I can hear you out now. Although I have to say, you’re going to have to work to convince me there’s anything to these claims of yours. I’ve got no more appetite for pie in the sky.” He patted his paunch.
“I’m not sure where to start,” Delaney admitted, looking down at the floor. “I must have had this conversation a dozen times by now. Not a single one of those talks has gone well. Of course, I didn’t know any of the others nearly as well as I know you. That’s why I saved you for last, you know. I like you too well to bring you into this business. But no one else is biting, which means I don’t have a choice anymore.”
“Spit it out, Lara,” said Carroll. “What did you bring me here to sell me on? Don’t tell me—a new line of vehicles that runs on unicorn farts.” He laughed.
Delaney didn’t. “You’re not as far off the mark as you might think.”
Carroll took it for a joke. “So you’re a unicorn believer now, are you? You’ve been spending too much time with that granddaughter of yours.”
At that, Delaney winced. So did I. Her granddaughter was a sore spot for her, although of course Carroll wouldn’t have known that. Delaney was dead to everyone now, except for those few she had approached with her proposal. That included her son and his family. She hadn’t seen her granddaughter since she had faked her death, and didn’t know whether she ever would again. It wasn’t something we talked about—the two of us weren’t exactly confidantes—but I saw her lingering too long by the pictures on the mantle when she thought I wasn’t looking, her eyes wet.
“How familiar are you with Irish mythology?” Delaney asked.
“Oh, so it’s leprechauns, is it? You found the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Well, that explains the house.”
“I’m talking about the fae,” Delaney said.
It took Carroll a few seconds to realize Delaney wasn’t joking. His laughter faded into an uneasy chuckle. Then even that disappeared. “You’re serious.”
“Arkanica had the idea first,” said Delaney. “That miracle fuel of theirs? They’re calling it ‘faelight.’ The concentrated magic of the aes sidhe, extracted from the blood of unwilling research subjects. Some of their investors know it, too. They’re smart enough to keep it quiet, but they’ve toured Arkanica’s labs. They’ve seen the cost of the future Arkanica is promising. Your instincts were right—the free lunch Arkanica is offering comes with a very high price tag.”
Carroll took a step back, then another. A heart-shaped leaf as big as his head brushed his neck; he jumped a foot in the air. “I still don’t know what happened to you when they said you died,” he said in a shaky voice. “But whatever these past couple of months months have been like for you, it can’t have been easy. It makes sense that the mental strain—”
Delaney rolled her eyes. “If you want to call me crazy, just say the word. I don’t have time to stand here all night listening to you dance around it. But I’d like to remind you that you agreed to trust me.”
“That was when I thought you were going to tell me you had made some kind of devil’s bargain with the oil companies,” said Carroll. “Not that you’ve been performing experiments on… on mythical creatures.”
“Not mythical,” said Delaney. “And not me. Never me. Some prices aren’t worth paying. I asked you here because I have something different in mind. A few months ago, one of the fae approached me—”
“Approached you,” Carroll echoed. “You
make it sound like you sat down for a business meeting.”
“Try not to interrupt. He came to me looking to make a deal. He thinks he can convince his king and queen to sign an agreement promising to use their magic to solve our energy problems, and repair existing environmental damage. Since their realm is tied to ours in some way, they would benefit too. They’ve started feeling the effects of climate change almost as much as we have.”
“Their realm,” said Carroll, shaking his head. “Kings and queens. Fairies. Do you have any idea how crazy you sound right now?”
“At least you said the word this time,” said Delaney, although she hardly sounded ecstatic about the fact. “But to answer your question, yes. I know exactly how it sounds. Which is why I need your help. If we’re going to make this work, we need to sell it to the public. You not only have friends in high places, but after that interview, you’re one of the country’s most trusted environmental experts. If they’ll listen to anyone, it will be you.”
“Not after I start talking about fairies and magic, they won’t.” He backed up a little more, sidestepping the plant with the giant leaves.
“I know it sounds crazy,” said Delaney. “I came within an inch of calling the police, when the Summer Court emissary showed up in my office and gave me his story. But that was before I saw their magic in action. I promise you, Ab, this is real.”
“So then show me.” Carroll spread his arms wide. “These fairies, this magic—where are they?”
I saw Delaney tense. I tensed, too, from behind the tree. This was a long-standing argument between us. From the start, Delaney had wanted me to be a part of these conversations. Nothing said The fae are real like seeing one standing in front of you, showing off his pointed ears. But I couldn’t be her floor model.
I would do everything I could to support her plan to make this alliance happen, even though I was still mostly convinced nothing would come of it but bloodshed. I had spent my entire centuries-long life learning firsthand how humans tended to react when they saw magic in their midst, after all. I had the scars to prove it. But my son had died for this plan—or if he hadn’t, he was in the hands of Queen Mab right now, probably wishing he had. And if I had taken his side from the start, if I hadn’t wasted so much time trying to save him from himself, maybe he would still be here right now. So I had promised myself—and him, even though he didn’t know it—that I would help put his plan into action. I had spent months protecting Delaney, in ways she knew about and ways she didn’t, while she tried to build on his vision.